Content area
Full Text
Abstract
Jefferson Davis evaluated the Confederacy's national resources and capabilities and decided that in order to win its independence the Confederacy was going to have to fight mostly on the strategic defensive. Davis maintained mostly a defensive outlook throughout the Civil War but shifted to strategic offensives a few times when he believed or was persuaded that an exceptional offensive was likely to contribute to winning independence. During and after the war Davis called his strategic approach the "offensive-defensive." Although it is a cumbersome term, the "offensive-defensive" strategy remains a valid phrase to describe the strategy Davis used to conduct of the war.
This essay argues that Confederate President Jefferson Davis employed an "offensive-defensive" strategy, one of the American Civil War's important and controversial strategic aspects. Davis selected this strategy for the Confederate States of America (CSA), adjusted it from time to time, and used it throughout the war. Given the problems and uncertainties facing the CSA, the "offensivedefensive" strategy was a good choice. Davis's strategy was ambitious, as he intended to provide protection for all states of the CSA, an intention difficult to fulfill and made more difficult as the CSA added new states. During 1861 Davis placed greater emphasis on the "defensive" aspect of his strategy, with one notable exception, but later approved or agreed to strategic offensives.1 In his memoir, Davis called his strategy the "offensive-defensive" but evidently he never specified the origin of the term.2
As in the United States, the Confederacy's president took primary responsibility for formulating national strategy - how to employ the human, political, economic, and military resources to achieve the nation's political goals. Davis's goal was Confederate independence. Most historians of the Confederacy have accepted Davis's term, although some place greater stress on "defensive" and downplay the "offensive."3
In February 1861 Davis stood ready to take the field for the South as a general, but instead the Confederacy's founders selected him to serve as the provisional president. He accepted the appointment and arranged to travel from his home in Mississippi to the CSA's first capital in Montgomery, Alabama, to give his inaugural address. On the way, his train stopped in various cities, including two in Mississippi, Vicksburg and Jackson, where Davis spoke to cheering crowds. Providing...