Secessia

Interesting, FWIW ...

Concerning overall Civil War strategy -

There were objective observers. Two were Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, then in exile in England, where in March 1862 they composed an analysis of the progress of the Civil War of quite remarkable prescience. Marx and Engel's interest in the Civil War was not political. As revolutionaries they hoped for nothing from the United States. It was simply that as men with a professional interest in warfare and the management of armies they could not prevent themselves from studying military events, and prognosticating based on their lessons.


Marx concluded that, following the capture of Fort Donelson, Grant, for whom he had formed an admiration, had achieved a major success against Secessia, as he called the Confederacy. His reason for so thinking was that he identified Tennessee and Kentucky as vital ground for the Confederacy. If they were lost, the cohesion of the rebel states would be destroyed. To demonstrate his point, he asked, "Does there exist a military centre of gravity whose capture would break the backbone of the Confederacy resistance?"


His answer was that Georgia was the centre of gravity. "Georgia," he wrote, "is the key to Secessia." "With the loss of Georgia, the Confederacy would be cut into two sections which would have lost all connection with each other." It would not be necessary to conquer the whole of Georgia to achieve that result, but only the railroads through the state.


Marx had foreseen, with uncanny insight, exactly how the decisive stage of the Civil War would be fought.

- The American Civil War, by John Keegan, pgs. 161-162