Rant: The idea that the South would have won with better generals is lazy

I tried running a Gettysburg alt-history simulation using a modded version of Ultimate General last month, set in 1863. Gave Lee better intel and Longstreet's plan. The Union still held the high ground and Meade's reserves crushed the flanking move. People forget the North had 22 million people and 70% of the railroad tracks. Has anyone else run a realistic sim that busted a popular myth?

3 comments

3 Comments

finley_gonzalez4922d ago

Right, because the thing holding the Confederacy back was just a lack of good generals, not a total lack of factories, supplies, and bodies. I ran a sim where the South had perfect weather, magic railroads, and every decision made by a ghost from the future and they still ran out of bullets by 1864. Maybe if they had better logistics they could have lost in 1865 instead.

bennett.evan22d ago

You mentioning "magic railroads" got me thinking about something people overlook. The Confederacy had decent railroads for 1860 but totally different track gauges everywhere. In my experience running a service business, even small mismatches in your system cause huge delays. For the South, it meant unloading and reloading supplies at every junction. That wasted days and horses. A unified rail system with standard gauge and maybe some tunnels through Appalachia could have shifted troops faster. Still wouldn't fix running out of lead and powder, but the logistics alone made every campaign a disaster before it started.

oliverhernandez22d ago

Yeah, that tracks. I've done a bunch of runs in Ultimate General and the resource gap is just too big to overcome no matter what you tweak. The best I ever got the South was a draw in 1865 by bleeding the Union dry in Virginia, but then Sherman just kept rolling through Georgia. @bennett.evan is right about the rail thing too, that mismatch alone probably cost the South weeks of march time every major campaign. If you want a real challenge, try the 1864 scenario with the South's industrial output capped at historical levels, it's brutal.