Blockade, foreign support, and Confederate supply

An army alone could not keep the Confederacy alive. Prussia had sometimes survived military disaster because outside subsidies sustained it, but no comparable sponsor could reliably support the South. Britain was the only power capable of breaking the Union blockade and had neither the strategic incentive nor the political desire to do so, especially given British opposition to slavery. Food, clothing, weapons, ammunition, and replacements therefore had to come from an increasingly strained internal system. Once that system could no longer feed or equip soldiers, desertion and political disintegration mattered more than the nominal survival of formations on paper.