[gumby]

FWIW insurgent asymmetric warfare was how the US primarily fought its own revolution (there were a few set piece battles as well, e.g. Yorktown, hardly insignificant).

In the end I believe quite a bit of cash spread around Whitehall is what made the difference, though not everyone will agree.

In the US civil war there was much less of this for reasons unclear to me.

[jessaustin]

One theory would be that CSA's draconian conscription operation (watch or read Cold Mountain, for example) emptied the countryside of its natural defenders. The conscription level may have been necessary given the idiotic location of the CSA capital, but quite a bit about CSA was idiotic.

In Missouri, which didn't secede but had a lot of Southern sympathizers, this conscription wasn't really a thing, and there was lots of asymmetric warfare. It actually started in the 1850s in what would become Kansas. (There are good movies about this too: The Outlaw Josey Wales and Ride with the Devil.)