[he was not really a guerrilla fighter, he was a mobile offensive tactician, like WWII tank commanders- Patton, Rommel, Montgomery]
- were looked upon by a good portion of the Southern population- the middle class- as the only way to win the war. They were winners, and their abilities and ideas were not accepted by Richmond or taken seriously. The only problem with a guerrilla style war is it ravages the land and people; an unsupported and lawless guerrilla army has to take to survive and unless they moved into the North, the only sufferers would be in the South.
A guerrilla war taken into the North, like Indian Raids, or the hordes of Huns invading Europe, would be another optional strategy. However, most Southern soldiers were by 1865, wanted only to go home and protect life there. Southern culture and society did not favor sending their young men off to invade and destroy foreign lands for conquest or a war upon civilians; or fighting a war to extermination. No, the Southern mindset was to defend home and family and to survive, either by secession and independent self determination or resistance to outside coercion.
J.E. Johnston favored the war tactics of George Washington, not winning battles but keeping the army alive and fit. The thinking was the existance of the Army (smaller and more mobile) would have always kept the Confederate cause alive (and a legitimate government alive). A combination of Forrest's + Morgan + Johnston + Mumford + Hampton's ideas- all stressing a smaller mobile army built on the idea of long lasting survival may have been a better alternative to West Point ideas of massed armies and logistics. But we will never know.
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David Upton