WI no Fort Sumter?

TFSmith121

Banned
Forts Pickens-Barrancas, Jefferson, or Taylor become the

Forts Pickens-Barrancas, Jefferson, or Taylor become the flashpoints.

Or the secessionists in the Upper South or Border States...

Or any one of a hundred other possibilities, including the blockade...

Once South Carolina seceded, there would be war within 12 months, and there was...

Best,
 
I'm hard pressed to see how there isn't another Sumter at another Federal fort or outpost. There are very few sovereign governments that will stand for that sort of thing, period. Also, closing the Mississippi to US commerce, or slapping a toll on where they hadn't been one before seems like a really excellent way to have every border state that uses the Mississippi river to decide the CSA has to be crushed, and fast.

Also, false flag attacks in reality tend to be far, far more rare that false flags in rhetoric. People who are willing to kill for their beliefs tend to be quite proud of having those beliefs, and the 19th Century in particular tended to be ascribe dedication to a belief with a willingness to be martyred for it rather publicly. Considering how heavily religious the abolitionist movement was, it's hard to believe that they'd go in for that kind of deceit. Especially when you have a few thousand fire eaters chomping at the bit for a glorious struggle for independence willing to blow something up for them.

Long-term expansion into Mexico could make for an interesting time-line, given the circumstances. As Mexico is not merely a stage on which various CSA victories play out, we should look at what was happening there at the time. There is Benito Juarez, the Liberal party President, and no fan of... most of what the South stood for, facing the Maximilian, the Habsburg Mexican "Emperor", who was personally fairly liberal, had in fact several times tried to hire Juarez, and was no fan of... most of what the South stood for. A host of Norte slavers pouring over the Rio Grande seems like just the thing to spark a reconciliation, which would have a host of its own butterflies.
 
Forts Pickens-Barrancas, Jefferson, or Taylor become the flashpoints.

Or the secessionists in the Upper South or Border States...

Or any one of a hundred other possibilities, including the blockade...

Once South Carolina seceded, there would be war within 12 months, and there was...

Best,
Oh yes, too many fire-eaters on both sides; also, Lincoln would have to act sooner or later or be considered weak.

However, the nature of the flashpoint could change the way the war was fought; if the South is clearly the aggressor, the North will rally around Lincoln. If the North acts first, however, Lincoln will have a deeply divided nation to lead.
 
edmund_ruffin.sized.jpg


This isn't a man who was willing to wait for members of the "Yankee race" to start the war.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
But what happens if the North moves first?

If Lincoln moves first without a Southern aggressive movement, I can see Kentucky going over to the Confederacy and there being more Confederate sentiment in Missouri and Maryland than was the case IOTL. This, needless to say, is very good news for the Confederacy.

Moreover, it will help the Confederacy diplomatically, since they can appear more forthright with their all-we-ask-is-to-be-left-alone rhetoric. Since it is likely that the Confederacy will gain more military successes early on, it greatly increases the chance of diplomatic recognition by Britain and France.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Except the rebels by definition have acted first

Oh yes, too many fire-eaters on both sides; also, Lincoln would have to act sooner or later or be considered weak.

However, the nature of the flashpoint could change the way the war was fought; if the South is clearly the aggressor, the North will rally around Lincoln. If the North acts first, however, Lincoln will have a deeply divided nation to lead.

Except the rebels by definition have acted first; and if "the sacred soil of the slave - um, sovereign - state of Florida is to be redeemed" they will act at Pensacola (Barrancas and Pickens) or Key West (Jefferson and Taylor).

Ruffin, Yancey, etc were looking for a fight; there's a reason they started one, after all...

Best,
 

TFSmith121

Banned
1) Public rejoicing - Lincoln is as much a chief executive as Andy Jackson

American people psychology is core of my question.

If the South moves first as IOTL, the North reacts, Lincoln asks for volunteers and his only problem is to find enough space to house them all :D.

But what happens if the North moves first? Will popular response to Lincoln requests be nevertheless positive? Isn't there the risk of vast sectors of northern public opinion feeling shocked and somewhat appalled by a move which reminds of a "king" putting down a popular revolt? and therefore soldier recruitment ending up unsatisfactory?

1) Public rejoicing - Lincoln is as much a chief executive as Andy Jackson; 2) Yes; 3) No; 4) No.

The sectional crisis had been brewing for decades, since the foundational document of the nation state - the slave power was real. In the past, the southerners had threatened war (1832, being the most obvious); the north and the west were ready for it. There's a reason Lincoln was elected, after all.

The percentage of those who would "let them go" was generally miniscule.

Best,
 
The firing on Fort Sumter is a lot more several minor mistakes with a catastrophic chain reaction than a deliberately provocative element, and so could occur at any federal facility on rebel soil (Harpers Ferry Arsenal, St. Louis Arsenal, Norfolk Naval Yard, the New Orleans forts, or if Maryland seceded as it nearly did, the completely surrounded Washington DC.) But the later it occurs, theoretically the better organized the Confederate Government and industry becomes.

If Missouri seceded as it nearly did being about evenly split, the Confederacy controls far more of the Mississippi as well as the Missouri River-the superhighways of the pre-western railroads era. Missouri had already developed sizable lead and iron mines, walnut forests (gunstocks), and raised a lot of food. St. Louis was a key federal strongpoint and westernmost arsenal for that matter. It probably creates much more of an Upper Midwest battlefront that perhaps breaks away pro-secession Southern Illinois like West Virginia and Virginia split then. With Chicago's rail hub threatened, that would drain Federal troops considerably to this new vast front, the Copperhead strategy of 1864 but in 1861 instead.

Maryland having extra time to decide to secede might do the trick and would add substantial manufacturing capacity to the Confederacy along with the Chesapeake Bay port advantages (and of course the disruption of DC as the federal government packs up and flees, perhaps it becomes the Confederacy's capital instead of Richmond, certainly the buildings are already there. The Naval Academy at Annapolis is lost too.

Assume Kentucky joins a more organized Confederacy with more time to think about it and campaign internally. That changes the Ohio River Valley corridor access and moves the battlelines further North. As John Keegan points out, when you taken into account the main rivers as the logistics corridors/avenues of approach, the Civil War's conflicts and lack of progress make far more sense.

Drawing on the newest histories of the Knights of the Golden Circle movements, with only a month or two's delay, the assembling military expedition in Texas (1860-1861) under the Knights of the Golden Circle leadership to putatively go assist Benito Juarez's forces in kicking Maximilian out of Mexico for the eventual repeat of how Northeastern Mexico became Texas might well proceed rather than turn East and become the early, already drilled and equipped units of the Confederate Army.

Arriving instead in Northern Mexico with 10-30,000 troops under often commanders who'd fought 14 years before in Mexico, as well armed if not drilled as the Austrians and French troops/commanders but considerably ahead of the Mexican resistance, they might have won and likely turned on Juarez and kept much or all of Mexico. Conquering all of the countries along the Gulf of Mexico and Cuba to make them slave plantation states was the overarching goal of the KGC for decades of filibustering expeditions and schemes.

So drawing off what would have been the nucleus of the Confederate Army into Mexico until 1863-5 defangs Confederate saber-rattling considerably. Napoleon III's otherwise very sympathetic regime to the CSA is lost as an ally, apparently he planned to ally as soon as Britain did from Amanda Foreman's "A World Set On Fire."

But with the choice between a battle for plunder and conquest in Mexico vs. a defensive war fought on one's own homesteads with only degree of loss at stake, I think the CSA's population would have taken the far more attractive option.

The North's radical abolitionists, a minority, would still be wrestling with the financial interests in New York where the dollars for Southern agricultural commodities sale and financing passed through as a huge part of the NYC economy as well as the feedstock for New England's textile mills, cigar factories, apparel makers, rum distilleries, etc..

Lincoln's lack of a clear majority and reliance on a political party of recent origin would make governance even more challenging without a clear, unifying foe like the CSA (and he would also flirt with supporting Juarez in Mexico with either troops or at least supplies, sending tens of thousands of U.S. Army rifles to Juarez in 1865.)

The new western railroads were already being planned and proposed to knit the coasts together and keep the CSA from taking Colorado, Montana, California, Arizona, Utah, etc. so without an open war, those projects likely get advanced 3-10 years ahead of OTL-particularly the Union Pacific, Central Pacific, Kansas Pacific, and Northern Pacific railroads which draw off much of the available financial capital and workforce who'd have otherwise been soldiers.
 
Price of Cotton drops the British had a years stock pile of cotton. When no war start the cotton get sold off dropping the price for cotton for the next year or 2.
Price of slaves in the south drops along with the price of cotton.
Possible banking failures in the south.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
It's sort of like Nazi Germany (without going Godwin) in that

Thank you to all.

To sum up, everybody was looking for a good fight (even in the north) and therefore Lincoln could have fired the first (real, not metaphorical) shot without negative fallouts, right?

Seems to me that finding way to make slavocrats assume a cunning, machiavellian and far sighted strategy is a veritable mission impossible.


It's sort of like Nazi Germany (without going Godwin) in that expecting the rebellion without the fireaters is sort of like Nazi Germany without the Nazis...

Best,
 
The POD

Charleston militia/citizen are more "nelsonian" and, in the short opportunity window between secession declaration and Major Anderson redeployment, take control of the almost finished but ungarrisoned Fort Sumter. Major Anderson can do nothing but destroy Fort Moultrie facilities and retreat north. Fort Sumter becomes just another name in the list of federal facilities commandeered by the confederates in the immediate aftermath of the secession.

Lincoln tries hard the talk strategy but the secessionists have no reason to seriously discuss anything; by June 1861 talks peter out.

Lincoln does not "talk". Emissaries from the South approached Lincoln in Washington authorized only to settle such adminstrative questions that would follow acceptance of secession. Lincoln refused to meet any such emissaries.

What does happen - Lincoln reinforces Fort Pickens in Florida, and stations Navy ships offshore. Unlike Fort Sumter, Fort Pickens is right on the ocean, and the CSA cannot interfere with its communications. The only land approach is along a long, narrow, sandspit between the ocean and Pensacola Bay. The water approach is about a mile and a half across the Bay, exposed to the fort's guns and attack by Union warships.

The CSA cannot take Fort Pickens immediately, when it is weak, nor later when it is stronger. It is unlikely that Davis would order the attempt, knowing it to be futile.

So there is a stand-off.

There is also an ongoing stand-off in the Virginia secession convention. Until the shooting starts, it's unlikely there will be a majority for secession.

Lincoln has to steer between the Scylla of provoking Upper South secession by acting against the CSA, and the Charybdis of tacitly authorizing Upper South secession by not acting against the CSA.

Fairly soon he has to Do Things, such as appoint U.S. Marshals, Judges, District Attorneys, Postmasters, and customs Collectors for the slave states. These appointments will be ignored in the Deep South, but will have effect in the Upper South and Border states; people there will begin to realize that Lincoln is not an abolition fiend.

Davis may decide he has to provoke an incident. Or some Fire-Eaters in n Upper South state may do so. OTL there was a Fire-Eater plot to seize the Norfolk Navy Yard. If that goes off, it may backfire, discrediting secessionism.

Meanwhile, the secessionist impulse ebbs. If the crisis is strung out long enough, Kentucky and I think maybe Tennessee will back way off from secession. Kentucky elected a Unionist legislature in 1861; Tennessee had a Unionist governor coming in.

Lincoln will eventually have to assert Federal power in the "CSA"; perhaps by posting ships off the ports to collect tariffs.

That or Davis will lose his head and make a major assault on Fort Pickens.

One difficulty for the Union is that Lincoln only has a small number of regulars available, and it would be very problematic to call up state militia for reinforcements. But the CSA can call up and use militia in great numbers. IIRC, Beauregard had more troops at Charleston for the bombardment of Fort Sumter than there were U.S. regulars in the whole country.
 
Thank you to all.

To sum up, everybody was looking for a good fight (even in the north) and therefore Lincoln could have fired the first (real, not metaphorical) shot without negative fallouts, right?

Seems to me that finding way to make slavocrats assume a cunning, machiavellian and far sighted strategy is a veritable mission impossible.

There's a certain tone deafness to the Southern elite in this period. As much as this generations Lost Causers try to turn Lincoln and the North as stand ins for a talk radio equivalent Federal Gubbament, at the time it was the South, through the fugitive Slave Acts and the Dred Scot, that were viewed as the over-powerful tyrants by large sections of the North. They'd spent the last few years, OTL, trampling all over the Northern states when it came to different free state laws, and now they were going to dictate who was okay to be President? No.

On the Southern side, well, if the North hadn't really done anything for the previous 20 years of the South running wild on the Federal level, why would the North do anything now? They were confident the North would fold, so if its not Sumter, it's somewhere else.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
YAQW; it's an interesting thought, though:

So time is actually working against the Confederacy? this alone will push the southerners to act in some way or another; since they are more trigger happy than Lincoln, there is no question that they will fire first.

The sad tune you are hearing is the funeral march for my hypothesized do-nothing southern strategy :D.

Lots of thanks to the contributors to this thread.

P.S.: lesson learned: any alternate timeline in which the Confederacy wins (for some definition of win) must work notwithstanding confederates actions, not because of them :rolleyes: (like TFSmith121 stated).

YAQW; it's an interesting thought, though: a revolutionary movement that adopts a Fabian political strategy...even Gandhi and Congress doesn't really fit.

Best,
 
Within the North there was three or four blocks of opinion concerning the secession. New England along with their areas of settlement wanted to attack and destroy the aristocratic society of the south, they were foaming at the bit and were ready to be the engine of the North. The west coast largely supported them. New York City and New Jersey didn't want anything to do with the war, to the extent that they supported the south more than the north, at least before Ft. Sumter. The more frontier areas were very mixed, they weren't sure whether they truly wanted to get involved. Pennsylvania and Ohio were sure they wanted to stay out of it. Virginia was hinging on whether to go to the confederacy or not. Maryland and Delaware were already settled by Pennsylvanians to ever support the south, but good portions might have gone that direction. Ft. Sumter unified all these different group and gave the government the support of the people. I could see a fragmentation of the U.S. in this scenario. A New York City State- not including Upper New York, a Republic of the Yankees, A Pennsylvanian Dominion, The Mountain Republic and the Confederacy.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Um, no.

Within the North there was three or four blocks of opinion concerning the secession. New England along with their areas of settlement wanted to attack and destroy the aristocratic society of the south, they were foaming at the bit and were ready to be the engine of the North. The west coast largely supported them. New York City and New Jersey didn't want anything to do with the war, to the extent that they supported the south more than the north, at least before Ft. Sumter. The more frontier areas were very mixed, they weren't sure whether they truly wanted to get involved. Pennsylvania and Ohio were sure they wanted to stay out of it. Virginia was hinging on whether to go to the confederacy or not. Maryland and Delaware were already settled by Pennsylvanians to ever support the south, but good portions might have gone that direction. Ft. Sumter unified all these different group and gave the government the support of the people. I could see a fragmentation of the U.S. in this scenario. A New York City State- not including Upper New York, a Republic of the Yankees, A Pennsylvanian Dominion, The Mountain Republic and the Confederacy.

Um, no.

There's no Gallup in 1861, but given the vote totals Lincoln received, the breakdown of Republican and War Democrat governors, and the response to both the initial 1861 call for 75,000 short-term enlistments, the 1861 call for 500,000 long-term enlistments, and the 1862 call for 300,000 long-term enlistments, suggesting anything akin to "fragmentation" beyond the upper and lower south slave-holding states is pretty close to ASB...

One doesn't get almost a million men coming forward as volunteers (including the USN) in the space of 15 months in a country that is going to "fragment"...

Here's the 1860 election map:

1860.jpg


Best,
 
If the idea is that the fighting portion of the Civil War is delayed, it just means the Union does better once the fighting does start.

Lincoln was inaugurated on March 16, 1861. Fort Sumter was fired upon on April 12, barely one month later. Lincoln did not have much time to do anything.

When does the provocation come that ignites the war? Until that happens, we have the Upper South staying in the Union - VA, NC, TN, and AR. Lincoln appoints good unionists in Federal positions in those states - probably a mix of ex-Whigs and strong unionist Democrats. He makes a strong effort organizing the Unionists in the slaveholding states to make sure they don't secede. He also organizes the army and navy to be able to move quickly once open fighting begins. Lincoln also begins working on ways to support the southern Unionists still in the Confederacy, particularly in Texas, and northern Alabama.

Time at peace strengthens Lincoln's hands. It doesn't weaken them.

Therefore, by the time the war actually begins, we likely have:

1) The Border States are less problematic and more solidy pro-Union.

2) Strong possibility one or more of the Upper South states do not secede.

3) Quicker response by the Union Army to secure unionist areas of those areas of the Upper South that do secede. Northern Arkansas and Eastern Tennessee might be held by the Union for most of the conflict.

4) Quicker implementation of a blockade and conquest of the lower Mississippi River and New Orleans. Might also mean quicker conquest of Virginia before the state can organize its militia. A quick march by troops to Richmond would overturn a lot of apple carts, even if the size is not very large.

Lincoln won't have to do things ad hoc for the first year. He'll have a plan and be organized. War will be shortened.

Of course, this assumes the delay in provocations is fairly long - about a year, at least six months. The shorter time Lincoln has to prepare, the more it'll be like IOTL.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
It's the end of democratic governance?

Apart from the risk of southerners closing the Mississippi navigation making the Middle West practically land locked, why didn't the northerners simply say to the southerners "Good riddance and be careful that the door does not kick your sorry ass" :confused:?

If the Union can be sundered and the Republic destroyed because a single faction loses a (4-way!) election, than what's next?

There was - rightly, I think - a lot of concern that allowing the secessionists to withdraw was simply an inviation to anarchy; Bleeding Kansas writ large.

The US had the examples of Latin America and Europe in the previous two centuries; no one thought balkanization would lead to political stability, economic progress, and peace based on the realities they had observed, especially the smaller Latin American states becoming playthings for European ambition (as witness Mexico and the Dominican Republic in the very decade of the Civil War).

For a lot of Americans, north and south (and west) the war to save the Union was a necessary conflict to keep the Founder's creation alive; don't forget how close to the Revolutionary generation the Civil War generation was - the Sectional Crisis had been created in the south by (literally) the sons of the Revolutionary generation, and their grandsons fought the war.

Unionists saw secession not at an honorable revolution but as an illegitimate rebellion, one that threatened American liberty and freedom - and the slave power was seen as the heart of that threat, and which allowed - however imperfectly and after delay - the average Unionist to see abolition was part of a common struggle against the "chivalry", as they so often described themselves...

Union soldiers believed they were fighting to preserve what the Revolution and the previous 80-odd years of struggle at home and across the continent had created; an enduring nation, to be preseved at all costs, so that (yes, indeed) "that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth."

Considering how unique the democratic processes of the prior 80 years of American government had been, however flawed, they were right.

Best,
 
There is a point I still miss.

The northerners wanted high tariffs...
This is a canard. Many Southerners favored protective tariffs. In 1844, Henry Clay, the most prominent advocate of protective tariffs, got 48.5% of the popular vote in the slave states; 47.5% in future "Confederate" states.
the Homestead Act, railways to the west,

Everyone wanted a railroad to the Pacific. The dispute was which route it would follow: southern, central, or northern. The Gadsden Purchase was engineered by Jefferson Davis (then Sec of War) to provide a better right-of-way for the southern route. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was pushed by Stephen Douglas in return for Southern support for a central route instead of a southern route.

One day, the southerns are so helpful to go away slamming the door.

Apart from the risk of southerners closing the Mississippi navigation making the Middle West practically land locked, why didn't the northerners simply say to the southerners "Good riddance and be careful that the door does not kick your sorry ass" :confused:?

Loss of half the nation is a very serious issue. Then there are all the Americans living in those states who deny secession. Is the U.S. to allow millions of its citizens to be forcibly subjected to another government?

Then there is the question of what states secede. If the U.S. concedes the secession of the Deep South, it is almost certain that the Upper South will also declare secession. In the reduced U.S., anti-slavery and abolitionist views will dominate, and an emancipation amendment could easily pass. Then the remaining slave states declare secession too. That leaves Washington cut off from the rest of the U.S. The only communication between the Northeast and Middle West (then called the Northwest) would be the narrow neck between OTL West Virginia and Lake Erie.

And the Confederacy was not scrupulous about the Territories. There were many slaveholders among the "Five Civilized Tribes" in the Indian Territory, and the CSA tried to seize New Mexico and Arizona.
 
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