The Union's Civil War Victory: Strategically Inevitable, Politically Precarious

I was watching a couple of history specials this afternoon on PBS about the American Civil War.  The first was an episode of Ken Burns' documentary series and the second was about the Battle of Gettysburg.  After watching both programs, I came away with the feeling that there are two camps of thought about the inevitability of the Union victory over the Confederacy...

One group of folks seem to be of the opinion...like my old college American History professor...that the North had too many advantages over the South, with its greater population, industrial economy, and control over the high seas.   Their strategy over the course of the war was to blockade the Confederacy by sea and then carve it up by taking control of the Mississippi River throughout its course, bisect the South by cutting through Georgia to the seas, and starving out Robert E. Lee's Virginia army.  And as far as I can see it, they have some very good points...the Rebels were definitely suffering from severe shortages and broken communication and transportation lines by 1864.  And as long as the conflict remained on southern land, those living in the north did not feel physically threatened by the conflict reaching their towns and farms.  But the analysts holding the view that a Union victory was a slam-dunk from the start fail to take into consideration the political angle to the war and how close...from the Battle of Gettysburg in July of 1863 to the conquest of Atlanta in July, 1864...the northern population came to turning against Lincoln and rejecting his presidency in the 1864 presidential election in favor of peace candidate George McClellan. Had Longstreet's more prudent strategy prevailed over his superior Lee's of massive attack against Union positions around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on the third day of battle or had the Confederates gained the high ground as they came so close to doing on that second day, a Confederate victory on Union territory could well have tipped the political scales against Lincoln: as it was, an invasion into Pennsylvania by Lee's forces was in itself traumatic enough.  But although the North was slowly starving out the South through sieges such as at Atlanta and Petersburg (Virginia), the downside was that the war was dragging on, seemingly endless.  And the country was weary of it all, with no final victory in sight...

So strategically the South didn't have a chance...but politically they came very close in 1864 to changing the North's political landscape in their favor.  Had McClellan won that fateful election, who knows what would have happened. But Sherman was able to take Atlanta (due in part to Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his ill-advised replacement of the competent General Joseph Johnston with the incompetent John Bell Hood) and Lincoln's popularity rebounded on to his reelection that November...