{"product_id":"9780842028813","title":"Retreat to Victory?: Confederate Strategy Reconsidered","description":"Did Confederate armies attack too often for their own good during the   Civil War?  Was the relentless, sometimes costly effort to preserve   territory a blunder?  Why great battles in Pennsylvania, Maryland,   Virginia, and Tennessee rather than well-laid ambushes in Alabama's   sandhills or the pine forests of the Carolinas?\u003cp\u003e  These questions about Confederate strategy have dogged historians   since Appomattox.  Many have come to believe that the South might   have won the Civil War if it had only avoided head-on battles,   conducted an aggressive guerrilla campaign, and maneuvered across   wide swaths of territory to exhaust the Union's willingness to   continue the war.  \u003ci\u003eRetreat to Victory?\u003c\/i\u003e Confederate Strategy   Reconsidered challenges this widely held theory.  Robert G. Tanner   argues that deep retreats and battle avoidance (the strategy of   maneuver rather than combat) were not available to Southern leaders   in planning their wartime strategy.  The South fought as it did for   valid reasons, according to Tanner, and this book examines these   reasons in detail, including the South's need to protect its   slave-based economy, to establish a state's rights-oriented   government, and to win independence from the Union.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e    On War provides a single measure for testing claims that the South   could have prevailed by avoiding battles and forcing the Union to   hold large tracts of land.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e  Provocative and carefully researched, \u003ci\u003eRetreat to Victory\u003c\/i\u003e offers a   fresh perspective on Confederate strategy and makes an important   contribution that no one interested in the Civil War or military   strategy in general will want to miss.  \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Scholarly Resources, Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47015830880496,"sku":"9780842028813","price":89.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780842028813_p0.gif?v=1763753744","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780842028813","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}