The draft riots are a classic case of an anecdote being conflated to serve as representative of the entire nation, when in reality the South's desertion rates were consistently higher throughout the war and they had to constantly police their own core territories for deserters. The draft riots moreover where caused primarily by new immigrants who were truly not invested in the conflict either way yet.Simon_Jester wrote:Of course, the Union was in much the same position for quite a while, as illustrated by draft riots and as you say by the fact that in early 1862 it was still shocking for an army of sixty-six thousand men to lose two thousand dead, eight thousand wounded, and three thousand captured or missing.
The south didn't just have only three armies, they had three armies that were constantly shedding men at a rate faster than the Union's. That again is not a nation that is really gung-ho for war except for a small minority.
There's a difference between a disdain for heavy casualties - and the Union remained adverse to casualties right to the very end hance Grant getting criticized for the Wilderness Campaign and Licoln's reelection coming into doubt - and an invasion of core territories. Again, the real casus belli of the war is the constant and malicious attempts by the Southern states (more specifically its ruling class of slave owners) to subvert the democratic processes of the United States, by allowing the minority of slave-holders to hold sway over the rest of the country - as demonstrated by how they got extra representation power even though the slaves in their districts didn't get to vote.Although that would then tend to support the premise that the Union would have been more likely to fold if invaded- except that as Stas notes, being invaded usually tends to galvanize a nation's will to resist, not weaken it.
Apologists try to obscure this reality by pointing to how the North wasn't really into equality of black and whites, hence putting the blame on the war on the minority of abolitionists. However, that is nothing but an insidous lie that serves to make people forget that both the North and large portions of the South were in fact decisively anti-slavery regardless of their feelings on the race issue - because slavery is not only a moral issue, but an economic and political one.
Why should a Kansas farmer have his farm bought away by a plantation mogul who can bully his way into buying the land by the use of his slave labor? Why should a Northern factory worker accept a system wherein he may end up unemployed if the factory manager decides to replace his paid laborers with slave laborers? Why should a Virginian accept a law exempting wealthy slave owners from military service - a law that was passed by lawmakers who were exclusively wealthy slave owners? And why should Maine accept electoral college votes from South Carolina when a good chunk of those votes is based on "representation" for slaves who cannot vote and who are in fact actively exploited by the system?
That's why the Union Army always stiffened up when they were fighting on home turf- and every single Southern invasion turned out to not only be a miserable failure but also a source to further strengthen the Union's resolve. The Union was in fact the aggrieved party from start to finish, and much of the South in fact did not want the war which is why so many areas simply surrendered without a fight including its largest city.
This is also why all of the notions that Lee could have won by invading the North was nonsensical; and has parallels with Napoleon's mistaken idea that taking Moscow will cause Russia to surrender. There was never even a guarantee that the North would surrender once Washington DC fell - its economic heartlands of New York, Boston, and Chicago would remain untouched, the strangling blockade will remain in place, the South will most likely still not be recognized by other nations so long as the North kept fighting; and the worst case scenario perhaps is Lincoln losing the election albeit that still not a guarantee that his replacement will accept peace on anything but unconditonla terms.
In short, the South had to invade the north not because it had any realistic prospect of winning by invasion, but because it's the only fairy tale scenario that Lee could spin to help the delusional Southern seccessionists and their modern-day apologists sleep at night by thinking they had a chance. In reality it was hopeless, as hopeless as Hitler's V2 rockets and as hopeless as Napoleon's taking Moscow.
By contrast, when the North invaded core southern areas resistance did not stiffen - instead it collapsed almost outright. How else could Sherman have marched hundreds of kilometers without a supply line had the South really been so dead-set to fight? Why were no partisans harassing him, no roadblocks fighting for every crossroad? Why did the the Confederate armies that could have fought him simply avoided battle? Heck, how else could he have taken several cities almost without a shot being fired? The contrasts between the result of Southern invasions and northern invasions shows who really had the resolve to win this conflict, and who was the truly aggrieved side.
