Re: Strategic Reserve.

["John Garrison" <corrjng@rbnet.com>]

B.Rumary <brian.rumary@virgin.net> wrote in message
VA.0000099f.01e6d24e@brian.rumary">news:VA.0000099f.01e6d24e@brian.rumary...
> > Had it not been for railways the south would have lost much sooner than
we
> > did in the War Between the States.
> >
> Sorry but the poor state of many railroads in Dixie was one reason that
> meant they hadn't really got much chance in defeating the Union in a long
> war of attrition.
>
> Both the Confederacy and the Japanese in WW2 tried to win against superior
> forces, using a knock-out blow and much better generals. Both failed
because
> the blow failed to achieve total history and the were then worn down by
the
> side with greater productive capacity.
>
> Brian Rumary, England
>
> http://freespace.virgin.net/brian.rumary/homepage.htm
>


Ah but there were small roads that to spite battle after battle were able to
keep running if slowly and sporadically. The Louisa Railroad (later to be
the Piedmont Sub of C&O, now CSX) was trashed and thrashed but manged to go
well enough to keep some materiel moving. Farther south there were roads
that were remarkably untouched. Indeed the the inability of the South to
prove credible in the end, in my view, was the agrarian econmy that could
not provide enough revenue to support a war.

Sadly, though I"m dyied in the wool southern I know deep down that had we
won we still likley would have starved to death. That is the irony of it
all. We were right, and we were wrong. And in the end things have worked out
for the best somehow.