The Confederacy’s theory of victory at the start of the Civil War was straightforward — so logical, the historian Emory M. Thomas writes in “The Confederate Nation: 1861 to 1865,” that “the Southerners adopted it naturally without thinking it out or writing it down.”
It went like this. The Confederacy could not win an offensive war. The South in 1861, Thomas notes, “stood at the short end of almost every index of military might.” It would have to “husband resources and spend its limited substance dearly,” which meant it had to stand on defense. At the same time, the territory of the South was too large to fight a purely defensive war. The strategy was to take advantage of the Union military necessity — it had to invade to suppress the rebellion — to fight an offensive, defensive war.
The goal was “the destruction of the invading force.” The Confederates “hoped they could at least stop and at most destroy the armies sent against them,” Thomas, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Georgia, explains. “When the North had enough killing, peace and independence would follow. Thus, in a way, the Confederates hoped to employ a strategy of annihilation to work a passive sort of exhaustion upon their enemy.”
The South had to be aggressive. It also had to be fast. Confederate leaders knew they could not afford a protracted war. They had to spill as much Union blood as quickly as they could to turn the Northern public against the Lincoln administration and empower “peace Democrats” (otherwise known as Copperheads) eager to bring the conflict to an end.
The Confederate need for speed was why Union victories at Shiloh in April 1862 and Antietam in September that same year were so significant. At Shiloh, Union armies led by Ulysses S. Grant and Don Carlos Buell successfully repelled a Southern counteroffensive. Soon, they would capture a strategic railroad line that would limit the Confederacy’s ability to defend its territory in the west. And at Antietam, the Army of the Potomac pushed Robert E. Lee out of Maryland in what remains the bloodiest day in American military history. Crucially, the Northern public celebrated the victory despite the terrible loss of life. The battle demonstrated, for both sides, that this would be a war of attrition — one the wealthier and more populous North could afford but that the South could not.
I bring all of this up because I have been thinking about the Confederacy’s theory of victory in the context of the Trump administration’s attempt to consolidate a personalist, authoritarian regime. The similarities lie in the importance of speed. To effect his desired transformation, President Trump had to fight a multi-front war — he had to either overwhelm his opponents or, if they did not break after the first charge, bleed them dry with a constant stream of attacks. Eventually, under this theory, resistance would end. The media, elite universities and other, similar institutions would fall in line and with them the rest of civil society.
For this to be successful, however, the president would have to husband his most important resource: public opinion. If he could realize his authoritarian aspirations and satisfy his constituents — the voters who gave him the White House a second time — then he would probably win his war. But if he alienated the public too quickly, he might not be able to overcome its discontent. He would find himself in his own war of attrition with angry voters, intra-party critics and an opposition hoping to win back power off the president’s failures.
When I look at the last two months in American politics, what I see is essentially this dynamic. Trump set out to remake the nation. He set out to remake the nation in his image. Some people, and institutions, bent the knee. But others resisted, and their resistance — along with the images of Trump’s efforts (soldiers on the streets, terrifying immigration raids) and the material impact of his policies (life has gotten more expensive since he took office) — pulled the president into a political quagmire of his own making. This has only gotten worse with the shutdown and the growing questions around Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, who was awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges when he died in federal custody in 2019.
Trump entered office as popular as he had ever been, with an average approval rating of just under 51 percent and average disapproval around 39 percent. Now, more than 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the president and just over 40 percent approve. Recent individual polls conducted for Reuters, NPR and The Associated Press show Trump with approval as low as 36 percent and disapproval as high as 62 percent. On Tuesday, Congress almost unanimously passed a bill forcing the Department of Justice to release its files on Epstein. And MAGA stalwarts like Representative Majorie Taylor Greene are breaking from the fold to pursue their own interests.
My Civil War analogy is not precise. It mostly reflects the fact that I spend a lot of time reading about the American Civil War, so it is often top of mind. And yet, if you will indulge me, it does feel as if November 2025 is to Trump what April and September 1862 were to the Confederacy. Not the beginning of the end, but the beginning of the beginning of the end.
What I Wrote
I wrote this week about the president’s outrageous corruption, the relationship between his corruption and his authoritarian designs, and the way our political system has failed to confront corruption in all of its forms.
If Trump’s first term was marked by a level of graft and self-dealing that would have embarrassed a Tammany stalwart, then his second term seems to be an explicit effort to outpace his previous record and set a new high-water mark for political corruption in the United States.
Now Reading
Philip Yaure on Frederick Douglass and the fight for birthright citizenship for Time.
Pema Levy and Ari Berman on John Roberts’s tenure under President Trump for Mother Jones.
K. Sabeel Rahman makes the case for a third Reconstruction for Dissent.
T.M. Brown on the rise of zero-sum thinking in American culture for The New Yorker.
Adam Gurri on the war on professionalism for Liberal Currents.
Photo of the Week
I spent too much money and bought a new film scanner. It was … very expensive. But I am pulling way more detail out of my 35mm negatives than I could with my old scanner! I took this with a Leica M4-P using Kodak Gold film from the 11th floor of a hotel in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (I was giving a talk in the area).
Now Eating: Chicken and Red Lentil Soup
I happened to have a couple pounds of red lentils in my pantry so here, again, is a red lentil soup. But this one is a little different. It is much heavier on the aromatics. You also enhance the flavor by poaching chicken thighs (or breasts) in the soup.
I think this recipe — which comes from New York Times Cooking — benefits from a few modifications. First, add a teaspoon of ground cumin and a half teaspoon of your chile powder of choice (I use Kashmiri chile powder) along with the turmeric. Second, use chicken stock (preferably homemade) instead of water. And finally, add the juice of a whole lemon to the soup itself in addition to the juice you’ll use for the yogurt sauce. Altogether, you’ll deepen and brighten the flavor. Serve with a warm flatbread.
Ingredients
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3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
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2 large onions, thinly sliced
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6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
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1 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs
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1 ½ cups red lentils, rinsed
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1 teaspoon ground turmeric
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Salt and freshly ground black pepper
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1 cup finely chopped mix of parsley, dill and mint
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1 cup plain full-fat regular or Greek yogurt
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2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (from 1 large lemon)
Directions
Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high. Add the onions and cook, stirring often, until deeply charred around the edges and tender, 10 to 12 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring often, until softened, 2 to 3 minutes.
Add the chicken, lentils and turmeric, and season generously with salt and lots of pepper. Toss everything a few times so that the turmeric can coat the other ingredients.
Pour in 8 cups water, turn the heat to high and bring to a boil. Then, adjust heat to medium-low and cook, stirring occasionally, until the lentils have split and collapsed into the broth in a golden mush and the chicken is cooked through, 20 to 25 minutes.
Using tongs, remove the chicken thighs, let them cool slightly, then shred and return to the pot. Sprinkle in the herbs, taste and season with salt and pepper as necessary.
In a small bowl, combine the yogurt and lemon juice and season with salt. (If using Greek yogurt, thin with water until it reaches a runny consistency.)
Ladle the soup into bowls, then spoon the lemony yogurt over before serving.
The post Trump Is Mired in a War of Attrition appeared first on New York Times.
