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Let's say you're redoing the Civil War and you get to play one of two characters: Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis.
Would it actually be easy to win the war playing as Jefferson Davis?
Obviously, the South would never have been able to conquer the North. The North had immense economic, technological, naval, and manpower advantages. But they didn't need to. They just need to impose enough of a cost on the North that the North would come to a settlement. This doesn't appear that far-fetched. The re-election of Abraham Lincoln was no sure thing in 1864. Had the war not turned decisively in favor of the Union, its possible that McClellan could have won. In the end, he still captured 45% of the votes and won three states (NJ, DE, KY). If McClellan prosecuted the war as President like he did as a General, its likely the South could have held out for a long time. Situations like the starvation of Union prisoners in Andersonville, and the sheer awfulness of the conflict would have likely have proven intolerable without a sure path to victory.
So what could the South have done?
Fabian tactics. They should have simply refused to give battle whenever possible, and harassed Union communications. Johnston did just that as he retreated in the face of Sherman's army. But then he was replaced by the Confederate government because they preferred someone who wanted to fight. Then Sherman took Atlanta.
Lee's incursion into Pennsylvania was a fatal mistake that did more to weaken the Confederate cause than anything. He may have been a good tactician but this strategic blunder is unforgivable.
But the real weak point here is Jefferson Davis. He often involved himself in military decisions and wanted commanders who took an aggressive posture. While appropriate for a stronger force, this is entirely inappropriate for a weaker one. Confederate doctrine should have been preservation of precious manpower, avoiding giving battle, never fighting when not intrenched etc... That last part is also key since the Civil War showed some signs of a proto-WWI type environment.
In any case, in hindsight, the war seems eminently winnable for the South. Which character would you play: Lincoln or Davis?
I agree with most of what @Shrike and @birb_cromble have to say about a Fabian strategy not working. But I want to put a finer point on it. Your thought experiment is in a pretty common vein among history buffs, and while these can be fun, as intellectual exercises they are often lacking. The reason for this is that the participants too often presume to second-guess the actions of the real-world participants with the benefit of knowing how everything ends. It's illustrative that you bring up Joe Johnston's actions in the Atlanta campaign and point to them as wise and prudent, in contrast to the recklessness of John Bell Hood. This is a pretty common take among Civil War buffs. Almost no one, however, says the same thing about Johnston's actions during the Peninsula Campaign two years earlier, or equates Lee's actions in the Seven Days to Hood's in Atlanta. It's because we know now that Lee's actions spooked McClellan enough that the Union ended up withdrawing from the Peninsula entirely. If you're going to take the position that Davis should have undertaken a Fabian strategy you don't get to apply it only to the situations where, with hindsight, that would have worked. You can't just tell Lee to not invade Pennsylvania; you also have to tell him to fall back to Richmond during the Seven Days, and to be prepared to abandon it if the situation became untenable. No stupid shit like dividing his army to attack a larger force. Of course, had the South actually pursued this strategy, the war would have been lost in 1862, even with an idiot like McClellan in charge of Union forces.
In 1862, Johnston had strategically retreated against a less aggressive general while he was more evenly matched in terms of manpower. By July 1864, he had spent the previous two months strategically withdrawing in good terrain for defensive battle. By the time he reached Atlanta, the situation had worsened. If I'm Jeff Davis, by that point I'm waiting for a telegram saying that he doesn't like the looks of Sherman's position and the only prudent thing to do is abandon the city before Sherman outflanks him, cuts the rail lines, and lays the city under siege. Remember that you aren't fighting some idealized war with the benefit of hindsight; you're taking a position on what Davis should have done given what he knew at the time, using the people who were actually involved. Whatever ideas you have about what Johnston should have done had he stayed in command, he probably wouldn't have done them. If he had any intention of fighting a decisive defensive battle for Atlanta, the time to do it was weeks earlier when he had a terrain advantage. Part of the reason he got canned in the first place was because he chose to retreat to a less defensible position.
And even if he had, so what? People act like he could have just hung out in Atlanta indefinitely, and that the North would have grown restless and elected McClellan to end the war. First, he couldn't have stayed in Atlanta that long. When Hood attacked Sherman, it was to prevent Sherman from positions that were disadvantageous to the Confederacy. What you're suggesting is that Hood should have just let the Union take these positions unopposed. From this perspective, Hood's attacks, while costly in terms of manpower, allowed him to stay in Atlanta about a month longer than he otherwise could have. If the Union had taken the Macon railroad on their first shot at the end of July, they Confederates would have given up Atlanta a month earlier than they did in the historical timeline, not later. And even in the unlikely event that Johnston could have held Atlanta until November, and McClellan won the election, you still need to keep in mind that Lincoln was in office for another four months. There was no way that Atlanta was surviving the winter intact with that much of a Union advantage, and developments elsewhere, particularly Virginia, would have meant that by the time McClellan took office on March 4, the war would have been over anyway.
I say all this as someone who thinks that the Confederacy could have won the war, and who thinks that Jeff Davis and others made a lot of bad decisions. I don't think that Union victory was inevitable. But I'm reluctant to point to any specific tactic or strategy that the Confederates could have used to win the war.
Yeah, the confederacy would have been better served by a more aggressive strategy, because they were going to lose a war of attrition and needed a decisive victory early.
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