King Gorilla
OK, I can buy that. I've probably been influenced by TLs which have the US fighting to the bitter end, refusing to accept anything but a basically impossible victory. In that case then, other than the independence of the CSA, in whatever borders develop, there are highly unlikely to be any other border changes.
The other factor that makes for a quick end would probably be money. In the event of a clash with Britain the US government would quickly lose two of it's staples, tariffs on imports and gold from the west. At the same time as it's demands for revenue explode. Hence I think, barring something very extreme there would be a quick peace agreed.
It's only if there was somehow a long and bitter conflict that you might see major border changes and while not totally impossible it's pretty unlikely.
Steve
The problem is that Britain is not going up against say, the Boers or Tsar Nicholas I here. It's willingly going to war for a society most of its masses hate.
Snake
Lets get a few facts straight:
a) The US had cities on the Pacific coast?
They as you and other posters said, were small and unable to support themselves economically.
Unlike most other posters I'm not arguing the California point, I'm arguing by what logistical standard the British are going to accomplish 67th Tigers' Draka-level wank.
b) No one is talking about trans-ocean raids. [Or are you suggesting the US will sneak forces past the British blockade to assualt Liverpool say, using their inherent super-human status to avoid the problems of numbers, logistics, technology etc. Britain not only is the largest naval, industrial, financial and economic power of this period but also the largest empire remember? This includes bases from which it could operate against the US forces and positions.
You're talking about Britain raising a million-man army, shipping it into Canada and attacking a USA overland. This is not 1940, by the time they've raised and equipped that army the USA will be ready and waiting for it. Again, this is not Shaka Zulu they're up against. It's another *industrial* state.
c) Invented "modern army-navy tactics"? Any evidence for this? Examples? The US struggled against a heavily outclassed south for 4 years before it finally wore it down. Sheer weight of numbers against a poorly led and often rather shambolic nation.
It figures. You've evidently never studied Burnside's campaigns along the Carolina coast, which is why he was picked to command the Army of the Potomac. You're also unaware that at Forts Henry and Donelson, New Orleans, and the Vicksburg Campaign the Union won those battles by co-ordinating infantry and river gunboats. You also seem unaware that in the 1860s, before the Franco-Prussian War showed what modern technology could really do, the Union organized, raised, equipped and supplied one of the largest industrial armies of the eras and shipped armies this size across a region the size of European Russia. This, I might note, while Britain struggled mightily against a bunch of Africans with oxhide shields and spears.
d) I presume the colony you're referring to as indefensible is Canada? It would be difficult against a sneak attack, if the US somehow built up a large and properly equipped army without giving any warning. Against a reinforced Canada a US army still struggling to develop and already heavily engaged in the south it's a no contest.
Britain isn't going to organize, equip, and supply an army before the USA can counter it.
e) The CSA wasn't liked by many in Britain. So? Soviet Russia, or the US for that matter in some cases, wasn't trusted by many Brits in WWII but we still allied with them. This presumes that the two powers end up in a formal alliance. May not occur at all. For some reason the US has decided on a path that gives war with Britain and the fact it's fighting someone else at the same time is pretty irrelevant. As you say nationalism is a powerful factor at the time but you should remember this applies to Britain as well as the US. A US attack on British interest will cause anger and especially if this is followed up by attacks on British Canada.
The elite loved it. The masses, especially once starvation set it? The British elite will be forced to choose between grapeshot or democracy. Either way they lose.
f) You're description of the CSA seems to be mainly driven by you're own desires. It was in many ways unpleasant, poorly led and heavily outclassed. However, despite all this you're super state took 4 years of bitter fighting to wear it down.
Not really. It took only two. The Confederacy's strategic mistakes gave the Union access to the heartland from the first stages of the war. Once the USA finally cut off the entire Mississippi the war of armies was small-scale, while guerrilla conflict was "the Confederacy" for most of the region, except Texas where the Confederacy was represented by lynching. East of the Mississippi the Confederacy lost control of most of Tennessee from 1862 onward, never reclaimed it in a year's fighting, and lost Georgia in a half-year.
In Virginia CS authority survived only by terror and in the end only in the Army of Northern Virginia. It took four years of bitter fighting to destroy Confederate armies. It took much less to destroy the Confederate
state.
g) Nothing is invincible. That includes an arrogant upstart group that decides to fight outside it's weight bracket. Going up against an enemy it can't hurt while engaged in a civil war itself.
Yes, now how did the British do against those upstart Japanese in WWII?
Apart from the fact the US is not one of the largest military powers at the time who the hell is talking of invading it? [By that I mean large scale occupations of vast populated areas].
All Britain needs to do is blockade, secure Canada, pick off isolated regions like the west coast, enable supplies to reach the south [it doesn't even need any formal recognition or support of the south, just ending the blockade]. Possibly if their determined enough send the ironclads in to stomp a few fortresses and threaten coastal settlements. Then just wait until the US population has had enough and gets rid of the idiots responsible for getting them into such a mess. It can invade as things fall apart if necessary but probably has no great need to.
Steve
Presumably while no European powers end up supporting the Union and assuming that Britain can mobilize sufficient forces to secure Canadian population centers before the USA can mobilize forces to counter it. This is so uncannily like the US view of how the war in Iraq and Afghanistan would have gone. 10 years later......
Why do you bring states' rights into this? Do you think that secession was because of states' rights or something? Surely not!
No, it was started by a group of slaveholders keen on butchery and violence to sustain themselves fully aware they had no popular legitimacy.
And is it obvious? The agricultural west was part of the coalition and was happy with homesteading and subsidies, the agricultural plantation south was going to be hit with tariffs and finance western subsidies. Why would Kentucky and Missouri secede if it was going to benefit from the tariffs?
Missouri had the longest and most bitter guerrilla fighting of the Civil War, including such charming representatives of the Confederacy as Quantrill and Jesse James. Kentucky was invaded by the Confederacy and like most border states was bitterly divided during and after the war.
Are you seriously trying to say that politicians are honest? Coupled with your straightforward buy of the Jenkins' ear i must say that you come as truly impressively unspoiled person. I envy the bubble you live in
The 1860s were full of Chamberlains who assumed honesty and good faith on the part of their counterparts. Unlike Chamberlain they did deal with others to whom such things were actually important.
Seriously, what i said. It wouldn't be first war where cited reasons have nothing to do with real ones. Hardly any war propaganda is honest about its causes. Oh, and i was stupid - the obvious reason why tariffs aren't mentioned as cause of secession is (also) because that would be blatantly unconstitutional. Tariffs were clearly federal prerogative.
The problem with this is that the Nullification Crisis shows how much the Tariff really could motivate people in the South.
Oh my. So the honourable British have gone to 8 years long war to avenge one guys ear. Truly impressive. I guess Spanish-American war happenned because certain ship blew up, too? Are you serious, because i find it hard to believe anyone would be so naive. And you don't make that impression in other threads, so i am inclined to believe you are in fact doing the same thing southerners (and everyone else): drumming up red herrings that happen to help pursue your real goals
Nice, personal insults. No, the Spanish-American War had nothing to do with the sinking of the Maine. You're bringing up two red herrings which are known to be false-flags. WWI and the US Civil War were more straightforward conflicts by comparison.
I'm simply baffled by your description of causes of WW I
Have you anything to refute the process from the Black Hand's assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the Kaiser's Blank Check, and the feuding between the Austro-Hungarian leadership delaying release of the ultimatum until they gave one that could not be answered, secured a diplomatic victory, rejected it, drawing in Russia bent on preventing another geopolitical embarrasment to itself which draws in Germany, which demands right of transit through Belgium and invades Luxemburg and Belgium, sparking Britain's entry and Austria-Hungary declares war on Russia
five days later?
Hm. Sloppy wording on my part. I'll put it simpler. I claim that slavery was not the cause of secession.
But you keep admitting that the pockets of Confederate support were strongest where slavery was strongest and Unionist support where slavery was weakest without drawing the obvious conclusion.
People keep telling me that war was about slavery.
Non sequitor much?
(TBH, in the Union war goals slavery was side issue, not to mention actual emancipation of the blacks. Lincoln was racist, after all
)
It was for the South. The North wanted re-union until the slaves forced it to realize that was going to happen whether it wanted that to be the case or not.
Heh. Abolitionist rhetoric aside, end of slavery in the south was not on the agenda of the president, the republicans, and vast majority of the northerners, and was not going to be in foreseeable future. Unless by privileges you mean the effective turning of the north into slave states with Dred Scott and FSA. That's very possible, but it's not like the south didn't give up everything related to slavery outside the south by seceding. Thus, it can't logically be the cause of secession.
It was on the agenda of the slaves, however, which is why the North's hand was forced.
Heh. Two years, right? It took Lincoln two years to issue emancipation proclamation? Are you trying to tell me that he was still hoping in 1863 to win Virginia back pedacefully?
Seriously, lack of emancipation was more about making the war NOT about slavery, as it wasn't issue northerners wanted to fight for. (and the border states too, but Union ones and not Confederate)
Neither side in 1861 could afford an emphasis on slavery. Lincoln didn't want a 15-state Confederacy, Davis couldn't afford to antagonize Southern Unionists at that point.
You asked me why i think majority of unionist were in the southern slave-free areas. I answered that. I have no idea why you list where secession was late or that the decision to secede was far from popular and democratic (didn't i already state that it was the establishment that made the decision?
)
Because the rationale for it as per the 20 Slave Law (where rich Northerners were more likely to fight, rich Southerners spent the entire war in the plantation home) answers your question.
Because it was not key motivation.
It does not make any sense to secede to protect something that is not in danger (slavery). While it makes perfect sense to secede to protect something that was under imminent threat and seceding takes care of it (low tariffs).
Slavery was in increasing danger. Abolitionist sentiment had never been entirely repressed and violence by whites and blacks directed at the Peculiar Institution was on the rise. Blacks certainly believed slaveholder rhetoric about Lincoln, their actions showing that fueled the paranoia itself, creating the very feedback loop of OTL.
Slavery is incidental to this. It is the economy structure that is underlying cause behind southerners desire for low tariffs, and not slavery.
South voted overhermingly pro-low tariffs after slavery was abolished, and tariffs votes continued to be the most sectional votes in USA history for next 100 years after the abolition of slavery.
And the economic structure in the South was based on slavery.
In short, you confuse corellation with causation. Slavery and plantation economy positivey feedback each other, but it was the later that caused the sectional differences in tariff prefernces, not the earlier.
Had south, by some ASB grace, been using slaves mostly in industry there would be no secession (as we know it), there wouldn't be even any strife, and abolitionists would thought as un-american loonies in the north, too.
And it was cotton slavery that forced the secession, something that the secessionists themselves outright admitted.
True, as with Obama Lincoln was more moderate than small part of his supporters. And Obama was not going to push healthcare bill that the Democratic left would preferred, and Lincoln wasn't going to push abolition that the minority of his supporters cared about. Tariffs, on the other hand, was a thing that carried him to the white house, and was the thing he mentioned in every speech, and he made clear he was going to use federal troops if South Carolina was going to pull the same stunt as it tried 30 years ago. Clearly, tariffs were mere side issue
Again, there's a reason that the states that seceded were extremely dependent on slavery, and a reason that the secessionists were all of them major slaveholding landowners.
Anyway, so you admit that the slavery wasn't in danger, right? Do you think southern leaders were completely out of touch with reality, then?
Buying into their own propaganda, not out of touch of reality. In 1860 slaves were cheering the election of Lincoln and the promised freedom. After John Brown the South's slaveholders saw in Lincoln's election the future of slavery, though not what it was at the time, and chose discretion as the better part of valor.
I am afraid you are right, and the really decent people were even rarer.
Although i am afraid i do not agree completely. Abolitionism was strongest among puritans in New England, and not in the industrializing middle states.
Yes, and slavery's defenders had its own apologists. Both the North and the South had preacher generals, Oliver O. Howard and Leonidas Polk. Polk very strongly believed the Bible's own words about slavery, Howard by contrast went on to head the Freedman's Bureau after the war.
Thanks for adressing the question. Well, at least half of it.
I am afraid, though, that the claim that secession helps pursuing fugitive slaves because confederate army gets fighting experience is almost unreal. Nothing stopped southerners from organizing hunting parties already and enforcing the sort of border control that would be aimed at fugites? Shame about gunning fugitive slaves would be a factor in Massachussets - maybe - but not in Dixieland.
However that's now an international border and doing this would trigger Civil War, Round II.
Ah well. The argument about fugitive slaves is interesting, but doesn't hold to scrutiny. First, fugitive slaves were economically insignificant number, and never real problem, second, why did the states where it would be biggest problem - border states - secede last?
Because Unionists both had a majority of the population and unlike in the Deep South made it stick the first time, but it was a very conditional Unionism. Men like Parson Brownlow and Andrew Johnson were rather rare in the South.
That would be ridiculous. In 1940s, Royal Navy was incomparably weaker than in 1860s.
Incorrect, in terms of what it had to do it was fairly good at it. After all, at that point only one of the Axis had a real navy, the Italians, and the British made the Italian navy a non-entity.
As a proportion of global combat power, yes.
In 1940 the RN was arguably first amongst equals (or second). In 1860 it is an unchallenged superpower that has more major combatants than the rest of the world combined, and then the same again.
By 1941 the IJN began to inflict on it a string of defeats and the war thereafter was entirely USN v. IJN.
Dilvish
Why would any country fight when it's attacked?
Britain won't have started this conflict but you can be pretty certain it will end it.
It terms of condition after a long war, if the US decides on that approach you can say some things about Britain.
a) It won't be blockaded and starved of supplies or funds. Have seen it's merchant fleet and foreign and coastal trade destroyed
b) It won't have had any of it's settlements or industrial regions ravaged by war.
c) It won't have seen mass armies of poorly trained militia, often with minimal weaponry thrown against well equipped regular forces.
d) It won't have seen its government overthrown by the population in desperate to end a war that benefits no one and has destroyed the country.
Steve
A) Nor would it be dependent on food imports where like in 1940 Britain still is, and like the South Britain had a lot more willingness to have cotton brought in than to bother with food crops.
B) So the British are magicking enough troops to invade New England, the most densely populated part of the United States?
C) That's not the North of the US Civil War, in this case you're expecting us to believe that the North, which was more than able to defeat the supposedly superior Confederacy you and 67th Tigers say existed is going to fold immediately to the same Britain that had a tendency to be curbstomped by people with oxhide shields and spears?
Nobody's saying the USA would win. But this is much more difficult than the Zulu or Boer Wars, and definitely moreso than the Mahdi Revolt. Which, BTW, that grand man of the Taiping Rebellion presided over one of the major 19th Century British ground defeats in.
D) So you're assuming the USA is as fragile as the Confederacy?