Was the South's devotion to states' rights a major reason for its failure to win the Civil War?

Answer 1

No. It was a major reason they fought the war, but not a reason they lost. The North's industrial superiority was the main reason the South lost. Actually you could say yes. Davis, the president of the Confederacy had zip power because of the state's righters, so he couldn't get anything done. Davis even found it difficult to get troops to fight outside their home state. Some states within the Confederacy even threatened to secede even further such as Georgia.

Answer 2

Some historians point to State's Rights as one of the elements combined with other ones that helped to bring about the Confederate defeat. Although the future looked bad for Southern states, they still could lean on the 1857 Dredd Scott case to aid them temporarily.On the other hand, many Confederate governors were rebellious towards the central government in Richmond regarding the "new" state's rights issues. Since the survival of the their war for independence did hinge on a strong central government in Richmond, the state's rights issues is often explained in a different manner among those historians who discount that issue as a factor in the South's defeat.

Basically the debate flows away from that issue as a decisive issue in the Confederate defeat. It is often claimed that state's rights had a positive effect on the Southern war effort. That is because the states were able to use their "freedom" to focus their efforts at local, county and state levels to supplement the work of the Richmond government. The proof in the pudding relies on the situation that the 11 states had to maximize their resources to match those of the North or the war would have ended 2 years earlier. On short notice, the South managed to field huge armies and supply them that placed them at a level comparable to European armies and of course in good comparison to Northern armies. Any number of factors within the Northern political situation could have resulted in a war weary North to let things slip away. The Union had an entire western frontier laying ahead of them. Copperheads, unpredictable abolitionists, and poor military morale were always hovering over the situation.