n the war, Northern armies were in the heart of the Confederacy. It was during long marches that Union troops destroyed farmland. Invading troops would burn farms and leave the land in ruin. Union soldiers also killed livestock. Since the South was an agricultural society, it depended on its farms. Cotton, the chief export of the Confederacy, was burned bale after bale. The Union, safe in the North, was immune from the effects of Total War. The Confederacy never had the chance to begin Total Warfare. This is because the Confederacy lost the Battle of Gettysburg, which is the turning point of the war. If the Confederacy would have won this battle and marched onto Washington D.C., then Southern Total Warfare could have been a possibility. The dream that was the Confederate States of America never was realized. European style warfare lead to a great number of causalities on both sides of the Civil War. The North could sustain this damage and the Confederacy could not. As Southern numbers dwindled, the North delivered the final blow. The Union destroyed Southern morale and its economy. The Confederacy should have taken a better look at how the Union was formed in the first place. The American colonies won the Revolutionary War with a smaller number of men and materiel. It was not won with the doctrine of Napoleonic warfare, but that of semi-guerrilla tactics. Had the Confederate States of America used semi-guerrilla tactics, the outcome of the Civil War may have been different....
