WI: CSA-USA Peaceful Reunion

[Dirk_Pitt]

I am an agnostic myself but there are a lot of Christians on this site. Is it appropriate to start the paragraph as you have?

1) France can conquer southern Alta-California with almost no troops. It has some troops in theatre and more in Asia it can use.
2) Britain can take all of all of the important bits of California (SF, Sacramento and the lower goldfields) with assets it had in theatre in 1862.
3) The majority of the population of California was foreign born and even more of it did not support the Union. It would be easy for the British to engineer a change in Govt and independence.




I think you have just started being unpleasant because you cannot align with by scenario. In fact your ranting is a bit hard to interpret but what I think you are saying is that the USA would not accept peace terms that included the loss of tariffs? If so I would suggest that what happens then is they all go back to war and the RN destroys whatever is left of the USA's economy. However ... I would expect that in most scenarios the loss of tariff protection to the USA's economy would be so disasterous that the USA would renage on the peace agreement after several years when most of the British feets had gone home hoping that the British would not be upset enough to go to war again. This might be the case or it might not. In the latter instance the RN burn the east coast again.

France in this point was having trouble with Mexico. Why would they go into California?

Your scenario makes very little sense.

 

[Danishbro]

Lets assume that, and lets not argue about how the CSA gets free, but the reunion and how it comes about and its effects on US History.

Assuming the two nations are not united by war, but by peace and the two nations both agreeing to reunite, will the USA respect Confederate history in the history books, and for the sake of sanity lets say slavery is extinguished in the South by 1870, with the reunion anytime after 1890.

How does this affect Americas economy, our history, our modern concept of the CSA and the South. The World Wars (if unification happens before them, though it can happen after). Another thing is that THE CSA IS NOT COLLAPSING!

Would Confederate citizens become instant American citizens, as natural born US citizens, or no? What is the legacy of the Confederacy in this world, seeing as they were there own nation and then agreed to join there cousins again?

EDIT: The two sides split peacefully.

​

I'll try my best to muster something out on this, mostly sticking to what you said without arguing. Okay, first a peaceful split... How about Lincoln dies of some unrelated thing (falls, flu, whatever) and his fictional ITTL Vice-President is more of a Buchanan type guy who blunders around a bit, but never starts an actually war (if you wanted this CSA to include Virginia and co. then just say he blunders a lot). Eventually this President, or less likely his successor, formally recognizes the CSA, perhaps with European pressure.

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As far a slavery goes I can't see it being extinguished in the 1870's, but maybe Richmond introduces legislation in the 70's that start gradual manumission in the 80's, maybe with the very last few slaves being freed in the 20's, and since the CS is on the right path, the rest of the world is less harsh on them. The equivalent of the civil-rights movement will probably be around the 1980's or so.

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Now since there was no war, neither side will think as negatively about the other as in OTL. In fact both sides will probably blame Abe's VP, and that'll be the end of the Republican Party. Since the confederacy has such a limited economy I can see it being more reliant on Europe than the US, and when the 1st Great War rolls around it's possible the CS will send troops to Europe before the North. In fact, maybe the US won't get involved at all, but since we want the North and South to peacefully reunite lets say the US eventually sends troops and Northern's and Southern's fight side-by-side. A few years later and there's another Great War, and once again the US and CS fight side-by-side to defend their European brethren.

​

Perhaps because of disunited American Allies, the Russians manage to have a stronger position after the war(The Iron Curtain is further west, a split Japan, maybe even something crazy like Turkey or Greece or North Italy) Regardless the Red Threat is even stronger in this world, and US and CS co-operation is send through the Cold-War to combat communism. Eventually they'll probably have some kind of open border-tariffs type agreement (similar to the EU).

​

Now sometime after the fall of communism the US-CS partnership decide to formally unite, perhaps to counter a stronger rising power like Brazil, India, EU, or China. I would image event would happen sometime around now, as in 2010-2020 era.

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As far as what the history books say of the CS, they'll just be considered the southern cousins to the south, who finally joined their northern brothers. The history books will probably largely blame Abe's incompetent successor, who'll go down as the worst American president

 

[frlmerrin]

France in this point was having trouble with Mexico. Why would they go into California?

Your scenario makes very little sense.

1) At the most likely time that a Trent war would kick-off (end Dec 1861) between the British and the Union, the French were not yet at Vera Cruz. Thus they are not having any trouble at all in Mexico.
2) France could vastly improve its chance of gaining a secure foot hold in Mexico if it traded military support for the British in the war against the Union in exchange for using British transport vessels to use as troop ships to the new world. Something it was denied for the Mexican intervention in OTL and one of, if not the main the reason it was not successful. As the French fleet of observation at New York (if nothing else) would be of huge value to the RN in the early days of the war such an offer could well be accepted.
3) With such an agreement in place French naval forces on the Mexican west coast including Naval infantry can move against Union forces at Fort Yuma via the Sea of Cortez and the Rio Colorado thus interdicting Union forces moving between California and the South West and effectively cutting the Mexican rebels of from supply and retreat in the USA. It also allows the French to control Pueblos San Diego and if the want Pueblo San Francisco too.
4) Forces at Yuma and Califronia can be reinforced from IndoChina at a later date.

As you can see it makes a great deal of sense.

 

[sloreck]

The problem with this POD is that if there is an ACW with a Confedeerate victory, the odds of a peaceful reconciliation are very, very slim absent the (forbidden) CSA collapse scenario. The McKinley Cantor book "If the South Had Won the Civil War" you have the CSA having Texas go its own way and the USA, CSA, Texas being allies in WWI & WWII and in late 50's early 60's reunification talks taking place in the face of the Soviet threat. (Here the CSA has Cuba in CSA-Spanish War and the Russians never sold Alaska to the USA). Interesting book, but pretty ASB as no real butterflies from CSA victory.

If you have a "peaceful" separation then you have to do away with Lincoln, and a Republican victory in 1860. If you do that, then at least in 1860 the south won't go so far as to secede. Sooner or later between the inevitable loss of the southern/slave state ability to block anything they want in the Senate & House as new states that are free or will be rapidly are admitted & greater numbers in free states occur, issues of tariffs, federal control/public works, as well as the key issue of the peculiar institution will rise up again. The question is when will this come to a head, and how many slave states of 1860 will have done away with slavery (like some border states) before this pot boils over.

BTW do not see economic reasons for any reunification. No matter what, the USA is going to be in better economic shape than the CSA absent ASB. Unless the CSA "begs" to come in to be saved economically and accepts any USA conditions, why would the USA absorb a "third world" economy.

 

[Johnrankins]

I asked a simple question germane to the discussion and you present me with a tautology. You define industrialisation in terms of itself! It was pointless and suggests that despite your statement to the contrary for you at least industrialisation is a very hard concept indeed? Would you like to have another go?

My reason for asking this question was neither that I was incapable of taking in the world ‘industrialisation’ unless you repeated it to me several times nor that I was setting you up to embarrass you over your inability to explain your assertions, rather it is that there are many different definitions of what constitutes industrialisation and that the one you appear to have chosen (which I infer based on your reference) may well not be a useful or appropriate tool for what you are using it for, that is discussing how industrialised the USA was in the 1860s.

You seemed to be incapable of knowing what the word meant.

By Kennedy I am assuming you mean The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy? This is a rather good revisionist history book. The way it looks at industrialisation is ideal for discussing the rise and fall of states over long periods, which is what the book is all about. However, because it covers all of the major powers of the world and more importantly covers a period of 500 years from 1500 to 2000 it does not provide a great deal of detail on any one particular country at any given point in time. It further obscures any detailed information because it makes use of data that has been collected and combined as indicies and percentages of various wholes. Most of the detail has been lost. It is a blunt and completely unsuitable instrument for looking at the relative capabilities of the USA, CSA and British Empire over a few short years in the 1860s. I fail to understand why some posters on this board slavishly refer to it when there are so many rich and far more detail sources of primary information easily to hand. For example the Statistical Abstracts of both Britain and the USA and many other primary documents such as national Almanacs for the period are widely available on the web.
So just because Kennedy say that the USA was the third industrial power using a compressed data set it does not mean it was third by other more appropriate measures of industrialisation that are actually relevant in this scenario.

Why? Because YOU say so? Who do you want me to use? Macpherson who put it at second?

You are also guilty of two logical fallacies in your reasoning. First and worse Kennedy never addressed the power and potential of a USA that had been separated from the CSA, possibly California and some other bits too maybe. He was looking at the whole USA in OTL which is a far more powerful and well funded nation than a rump USA. In short there is no justification for applying any of Kennedy’s data (well he didn’t actually collate it I understand) without heavily massaging it to account for the loss of the CSA, California and whatever else is lost in the scenario. Clearly you have not done this.

90% of the industrialization was in the North and there was no reason to suppose that the US would lose CA and even if it did CA was little more than a mining center back then. The manufacturing center was the Northeast and Midwest not the Southeast and the Far West. The South had cotton and tobacco, the far west had minerals and little else at the time.

Secondly, being the third industrial power becomes a complete irrelevance if you are at war with the first industrial power and the funds , production capacity and ability to commit war of that power are many times that of the third power.

Who has a lot of other things on its plate like an entire empire to take care of, adversaries in Europe to keep an eye on and the normal amount of domestic issues. Just as important 3,000 mile supply lines CAN'T be laughed off, particularly in those days. It took 50,000 men for England to win the French and Indian War and that was with substantial colonial help. How many would it need to conquer and hold the entire US over 100 years later? 300,000? 500,000? 600,000? It doesn't have the logistical capacity to ship, supply and man the number of vessels needed for the supply. Nor would the UK be willing to come even close to bankrupting itself for the CSA which is what it would take. The US isn't going to allow itself to forcibly rejoined to the British Empire without a hard fight and that is what allowing the British government to dictate ITS trade policy would mean.
It would become a colony in all but name.



You produced another list of thing the USA produced apparently as an argument that it was industrialised. Let us examine it.

Furniture – already mentioned nothing new to say.
Paper – already mentioned nothing new to say.

Railway equipment – yes it did. Locomotives we have already discussed.

Rolling stock it could not produce enough of until well after the civil war and USA built iron rails (a) were so poor they had a very short life and (b) they could not produce enough of so they brought a huge amount from Britain (c) by the end of the ACW OTL the British were mass producing far superior steel rails, no one wanted iron rails anymore and it was many years before USA production of steel rail hit its stride

Has it occurred to you that the economic situation of the US and UK were very different when it came to resources and labor and land? The US had lots of wood, lots of coal and lots of iron and labor shortages and tons of open land. The UK had little wood, a considerable amount of coal and iron and surplus labor and is tiny. Even with a rail net larger than the rest of the world combined the US at the time was already so rich and so large it needed to keep building rails for decades. By 1860 all the major cities were connected but a lot of the small town, farms, mines and logging camps had dirt trails and Macadamized roads for miles before they could get to the nearest train station. Under those circumstances it pays off to do so as quickly and as cheaply as possible. It is the old saying "You can have it fast and good but expensive. You can have it fast and cheap but poor and you can have it good and cheap but slow but you can't have all three. For the US it made sense to go the quick and cheap route, particularly with congress giving incentives for having it done quick. Even with that the US is so large it had to import rails to boot. It is like 19th century Europeans saying that US woodworking water powered equipment was wasteful of wood, which it was. However it was very efficient in labor. Where wood is plentiful and labor is scarce it makes sense to replace labor with wood.

Years after they had general steel production sorted out in the 1870s-80s. In other words most railway equipment is an import loss and there is no prospect of exporting anything to the CSA or anywhere else for that matter
Steel – well no basically.

Maybe slightly, it was making rails at a blinding speed. It might have had to slow down somewhat without imports.

due to lack of interest in funding production from the British capitalists and a lack of funds on the part of the USA capitalists. As the CSA is no less familiar with Bessemer technology than the USA (i.e. it is new technology) it is just as likely the CSA develops a steel industry too, perhaps more likely as it is ideally suited for production by slave labour.

What lack of funding by American capitalists, the US is rich. The "Rich American" was already a trope by then. The play seen by Lincoln during the assassination was My American Cousin in which the American Cousin in question solves the financial problems of the down and out aristocrats by writing a check.



Timber – already discussed.

Farm equipment – in OTL this industry was not significant for another 20-30 years after the ACW. The British are the centre of traction engine production and they were at the forefront of tractor production in the early years of 20th Century (they lost out to USA mass production in OTL between the wars). In this scenario however the USA farm equipment industry would probably be still-born as the major users – small free farmers are going to be much less affluent and the CSA’s farmers are likely to buy British because they are more

efficient and will undercut the USA’s manufacturers most of the time.

The McCormick Reaper was already invented and in heavy production by the ACW. The US could and did produce all the harvesting machines it needed. It didn't need to be the number one producer, it just needed to build enough for itself, which it did.

Mining equipment – no idea not a major industry I think but ‘at the bottom of every pit is a Cornish Jack’ and they may well all go home or at least to Canada or the CSA in the event of an Anglo-Union war.

So train someone else it isn't like mining is nuclear physics.



Telegraphs – these have very little capital outlay except for trans-Oceanic cables (which the British would of course control). The only major production item is the drawn, wound and wrapped cable. I would expect this to have been be made in Britain (probably in Salford) in OTL. I don’t know this however, so I would be most interested if you had any evidence to present to the contrary?

Guns – I assume you mean small arms? Union production in OTL was pitiful. Huge resources were thrown at increasing it but they did not manage to get the production values they needed until quite late in the ACW. One of the ways they managed to do this was by importing British machines and measurement technologies. After the war the CSA is not going to be buying small arms from the USA and the USA’s manufacturers will struggle to compete with the British manufacturers who will have increased production in the event of an Anglo-Union war (should that be the scenario). Incidentally does anyone know if they forged their own iron bars for the gun barrels or imported them?

The US was starting to produce huge numbers of small arms by late 1862 at the latest and the number was growing by the month.

Cannon – Nope. USA cannon were dross, either obsolete but effective like the Napoleons or unwieldy and created using unreliable cast iron technologies like the Dhalgrens, Parrotts and Ordinance rifles.

They were plentiful and needed to be no better when fighting the CSA. The US was naturally going for sheer numbers during the war as the CSA couldn't hope to compete. The Brits made better canon but certainly couldn't ship them in the kind of numbers the Union could crank out. You seem to forget the 3,000 mile line of supplies constantly here and that is BEFORE you hit hostile territory.


Newspapers – not exactly a major industry.
Clothing – You jest! Cloth and yarn came from Britain and was made up into clothing by garmentos in the USA. Boots and socks came from the Britain. All cloth - wools, cottons and even silks came via Britain. The amount of cloth actually made in the USA right up to the turn of the century was small.

Actually you are wrong here. The US didn't make as many clothes as GB but still made a good deal of it. Enough to supply itself.

Canned food – A middle class little luxury until the dawn of WWI.

Well now let us think. Once again you have fallen in to logically fallacy confusing the OTL USA with a post-CSA independence USA. This USA is clearly not self-sufficient in food.

The same US that increased food exports to GB during the war? A war in which food consumption would naturally go up due to war losses and more food needed for fighting. While at the same time the CSA had food riots EVERY winter while the UK had to import food from somewhere every year?

It might become so but it would be difficult and expensive. As a minimum it would not be self-sufficient in sugar and beef.

Sugar no, beef yes. It had no shortages of beef during the war, unlike the South which was short of everything.

Possibly hogs and if there has been an Anglo-Union war it is very unlikely

Pork would be no problem, it was no problem the entire war.

Newfoundland, the Maritimes and Canada East would permit USA fishing vessels to access most of the Grand Banks, combined with the loss of fishing grounds off the CSA coast it is highly likely they would need to import fish too!

During a British Blockade, yes, at least for seafish. Otherwise there is Cape Cod. There are also numerous lakes and rivers to catch fish from. The price of fish would go up but people would simply eat something else.

They have no spice production; they had none before the war. Coffee is not produced in the USA, neither was tea or cocoa.

None of which is required for life.

Raw materials? Even the OTL USA wasn’t self sufficient in raw materials. They had no Chile Nitrate and Guano to start with. Key woods such as mahogany, ebony, teak and lignum vitae – all vital engineering materials in the Victorian age needed to be imported, mostly from the British. Similarly lacquerers, shellacs, nacres and ivory are all needed and need to be imported. Even raw cotton now needs to be imported now. They had no steam coal on the west coast. In a few years time they will need rubber which is not grown domestically. I have already discussed steel and bar iron. Sulphur now needs to be imported and in less than 20 years so will oil. Tin and lead were imported during the ACW.

None of this will cause the US economy to collapse or even come close.

Manufactured goods, the USA even in OTL was not close to being self-sufficient. Steel and steel rails were vitally important. So too was hoop steel without it the primitive locomotive boilers and engines built in the USA could not even achieve the low pressures they did. Cloth and yard, cotton, wool and silk was imported on a large scale as already partially discussed. Boots and socks already discussed. Machine tools and metallurgical equipments were imported. Measurement tools were imported. The list is much longer but I am doing it from memory and this is all that come to mind.

A lot of imported goods can be and are made here right now and the same was true back then. Sometimes it is because they are somewhat better sometimes it was because it was somewhat cheaper. In any case nothing that will collapse an economy.

Regarding the assertion that export trade was only a tiny percentage of the USA’s GDP. I am not in possession of definitive evidence about this. On the face of it, the assertion would appear to be untrue. Simply think for a moment of the ante-bellum situation, how vast the British textile industry was and how much cotton, most of it from the South it consumed. What possible elements of the USA domestic economy could be regarded as being so large in their contribution to GDP that they would dwarf the export earnings of cotton?

It was around 10% of the US economy IIRC. The entire rest of the economy dwarfed cotton. It wasn't even the number one agricultural good, wheat, corn and hay were all worth more. It is just that stuff wasn't mostly export.



If we now consider the post-CSA independence situation, then cotton drops out of the picture but wheat is still a major export and with the loss of the CSA the domestic economy has contracted considerably. It still looks like exports are a significant part of GDP.

In the absence of any firm evidence of my own on the size of the contribution of exports to post-CSA independence USA’s GDP I would be delighted to review any arguments or evidence you have on the matter?

I’m not sure why you chose Illinois? New York would have been a more realistic distance as more USA troops were raised there in the ACW. The things that you are missing however is that whilst the distance between NY and California may be less than the distance from Britain and France to California certain other factors are more important.

Chicago is the most likely place they would gather the troops, it is the rail center of the country.

1) There were in 1862 only a few good routes from the east across the Great American Desert to the West Coast. From memory these were: The Oregon trail, the California trail and the various intermeshing southern trails.

So? You only need one.

2) In the early 1860s the land routes across the Great American Desert were difficult to traverse and dangerous. In 1857 a wagon train to the Oregon could expect a mortality rate of 2-5%.

Which is considerably less than the Union shrugged off during battles. Also the US Army is more likely to be organized than random settlers and thus have a lower mortality rate.

3) There was no railway across the Great American Desert during the ACW.

True enough but it was being built even during the war. If necessary it probably can be speeded up.

4) The Great American Desert was a real desert at that time. The Great Artesian Basin had not been found and tapped. Water was scarce.

True enough, but within the US Army's capabilities.

5) It took a long time to traverse these trails. The quickest way to get from the East Coast to California was by ship to Panama, across the trans-continental railway there and by ship up the coast of Mexico to California. The second quickest way was by ship all the way around the Horn at the base of South America. Land travel was much slower than the other two options. When Winfield-Scott was sent to Vancouver Island to treat with the British and attempt to stop the Pig War becoming a real war he went the quickest way he could by ships and via Panama.

Agreed, but even the UK didn't have an infinite number of ships.

6) A USA Company owned the trans-Continental railway in Panama. It was guarded by a regiment of US Army troops that remained loyal to the Union. In the event of an Anglo-Union war the Royal Navy would secure the railway in the British strategic interest.

Probably, so what?




7)

Thus to reinforce California all Union forces would have to cross the desert slowly. The British could move troops from the Caribbean to California much more quickly than the Union could move them overland. In fact if they want to the British could move troops from the home islands to California via Panama almost as quickly as the Union can move them across the desert.

Probably but the UK again does not have an infinite number of ships. US troops can just walk.

8) The British had assets in theatre to attack and occupy the key parts of California and so did the French. The British had further assets to call on in China, Australasia and further afield in India. The French had assets in China and Indo-China.

If they wanted to risk revolt or risk having another Great Power take them when there are few if any troops there, sure. In the real world however...

9) Due to the fragility of the water holes it would not be possible to move large numbers of soldiers across the trails to the west coast in one go. Columns of about 200 at most could be accommodated with several days between each column to allow the water hole to recover.

Or use oxen to transport water in barrels, make for rivers from time to time to refill.

10) As a rule of thumb it would take some 20,000 troops in the logistics train across the desert to deliver 10,000 troops to fight in California and keep them supplied.

Sound about right, how many troops and ships will it take to supply men 6,000 miles away even by sea?

11) For a USA that is waging war on both the CSA and the British Empire California is a low priority item. It will be below the war against the Confederates in the East, the British in the North, the defence of the Eastern coast, the war at sea and maybe even a lower priority still. Do you really think the USA’s Govt will find 30,000 troops to defend it? What will they sacrifice to find and supply those troops?

Probably the CSA. You are fighting the wrong argument. With GB the CSA can possibly win independence but that is a far cry from dissolving the country and returning as a British colony as you are proposing.


12) At the end of 1861/start of 1862 there were around 60 companies of Union troops of all types thinly spread over all of California and beyond. They were having major recruiting problems. About a third of the Companies were forming, untrained and in some cases had only a handful of troops in strength. The forts are chronically undermanned and under gunned.

Regarding railways the USA may have had more railway miles than anyone else but they were pretty poor low capacity, low reliability railways a point I may come back to in another post AND most importantly of all in this context they did not go to California!

The US needed mileage more than capacity. It is a big sparsely settled country even today.

Well actually when the Opium Wars ended Britain made provision in the treaty that the Chinese could not put tariffs on their goods without their agreement. You may very well say that China was not a Great Power at that time. I would have to agree but then I would point out that in 1862 neither was the USA certainly wouldn’t be a great power if it had just lost the CSA, California and been defeated by the British would it?

Actually it still would be. It would have retained around 90% of its industry. I would point out that China did wind up a virtual colony of GB which is why the US would refuse.

I would appreciate it if you could explain why you think the costs of imposing free trade on a defeated USA would cost British merchants more than they benefited. It is not obvious how this would come about.
You do realise that even if the British did not require that the USA embrace free trade as part of the peace terms and it continued to protect its industries with tariffs USA industries are still vulnerable to more efficient European industries? I would also point out that even in the presence of protective tariffs for the rump USA the CSA will make almost all of its purchases from Britain as the British can supply them cheaper even including the cost of transport. This will have a huge detrimental impact on the economy of the USA. It will also lead to industrial scale smuggling of British goods across the huge CSA-USA border to the further detriment of the USA economy

The US would seize all British owned property in the US including property owned by British companies and the British government and start selling them off. If smart the US government would point out the sale of British property ends when the war ends. GB made a huge amount of money off of US trade which would be broken not only by war but almost certain US trade restrictions. The US would hamper in any way it could all trade with GB. The London Exchange would crash due to all this.

 

[frlmerrin]

Very disappointed

Johnrankins,

Your reply to my last post is terribly messy, you have the quoting all to pot, it is ill thought out and you are repeating yourself again, both your 'facts' and your arguments you are even repeating your logical fallacies. I will leave it with you for a couple of days to sort out otherwise if it is your final product I shall just call it a day on our debate as it will really not be worth my effort replying.

G'night.

 

[Johnrankins]

Johnrankins,

Your reply to my last post is terribly messy, you have the quoting all to pot, it is ill thought out and you are repeating yourself again, both your 'facts' and your arguments you are even repeating your logical fallacies. I will leave it with you for a couple of days to sort out otherwise if it is your final product I shall just call it a day on our debate as it will really not be worth my effort replying.

G'night.

And you seem to think that GB is willing to destroy its economy, spend billions of pounds and probably hundreds of thousands of lives and risk its colonies all for the CSA and free trade. The US would be far more willing to spend money and lives for independence than the UK would be willing to spend to recolonize it.

 

[Fiver]

Issue 2 - Private funds. With whom will the USA's industrialists trade?

Only about 5% of the US economy was based on external trade.

If the CSA gained its independence via a British intervention then it is reasonable to conclude that (as part of the peace treaty) the British will stop the USA using tariffs to protect domestic industry.

This is some strange new definition of reasonable I was previously unfamiliar with. Britain would have to invade and occupy the entire US to impose that demand in the first place.

Note also that the USA will have to service a large war debt out of the above income even if the war ends mid-1862 as they went on a very big spending spree.

Note that the Confederacy had an equally large war debt. And inferior infrastucture, roughly 1/3 the population, notably less mineral wealth, virtually no shipping or banking industry, internal unrest, and larger portions of the working population dead, fled, or crippled.

So they are going to have huge problems with Government debt., not insurmountable problems but difficult ones to deal with that will severely limit growth (contraction is more likely) and will take at least 30 years to deal with

If the Union took 30 years to pay off their war debt, it would take the Confederacy two to three times as long.

 

[Fiver]

1) France can conquer southern Alta-California with almost no troops. It has some troops in theatre and more in Asia it can use.
2) Britain can take all of all of the important bits of California (SF, Sacramento and the lower goldfields) with assets it had in theatre in 1862.
3) The majority of the population of California was foreign born and even more of it did not support the Union. It would be easy for the British to engineer a change in Govt and independence.

1&2) I'd like to see your numbers.
3) The 1860 US Census shows nearly 2/3rds of of California's population was native born. Nearly 16,000 Californians served in the Union army . Only a few dozen served in the Confederate Army.

 

[Corbell Mark IV]

Yes, but political divisions tend to take on a life of their own after the original reason for the division is no longer relevant. E.g., the reason why Canada and the USA are separate countries is that Canada stayed loyal to the Empire during the Revolution. Now the British Empire is gone, but I don't see many people on either side of the border clamouring for unification.

They normally do.

Doesn't mean there can't be exceptions.

AND, having the primary cause fade away, would be a good reason for an exception.

And the lack of unification is just because the media suppresses all the real news....

 

[Fiver]

I'm just throwing it out there that if the Confederates gain their independance, they wouldn't abolish slavery by 1870. They would probably have slavery until probably around 1880.

If the Confederacy abolishes slavery as quickly as the Union did, then the border Confederate states should be nominal free states by the 1920s or 30s. Considering how essential slavery was to their economy, its firm support in their Constitution, the willingness to violent suppress abolitionism, and the fears of violent reprisal from the former slaves; I doubt things would move that fast.

 

[Corbell Mark IV]

I'm just throwing it out there that if the Confederates gain their independance, they wouldn't abolish slavery by 1870. They would probably have slavery until probably around 1880.

Oh, later than that. They seceded over the issue, there will be some serious emotional investment in the idea, even if the economic situation changes to undermine the institution.

The Boll Weevil and pressure from the British, IMO, would be those reasons.


Both would hit the Planter class hard, greatly weakening it.

I could even imagine a token "slavery" being preserved, perhaps for convicts? Or with very high taxes? But the institution still being legally in existence, while the British could be assured that, in practice formally slavery was dead.

Meanwhile the former slaves just happen to all "choose" to be sharecroppers on the same land that they used to work as slaves.

 

[Fiver]

I'll try my best to muster something out on this, mostly sticking to what you said without arguing. Okay, first a peaceful split... How about Lincoln dies of some unrelated thing (falls, flu, whatever) and his fictional ITTL Vice-President is more of a Buchanan type guy who blunders around a bit, but never starts an actually war (if you wanted this CSA to include Virginia and co. then just say he blunders a lot). Eventually this President, or less likely his successor, formally recognizes the CSA, perhaps with European pressure.

The actual war was started by Confederate leadership deciding that starting a war with a larger, more industrialized neighbor was a good idea. Jefferson Davis was not alone in this, all of the Confederate Cabinet save Secretary of State Toombs thought it was a good idea. Peaceful secession probably requires.
* Robert Toombs becomes President of the Confederacy
* Lincoln dies of something unrelated.
* Vice President Hamlin dies of something unrelated.
* President pro tempore of the Senate Foot dies of something unrelated.
* Speaker of the House of Representatives Pennington proves unequal to the task.
* South Carolina hotheads don't just decide to start shooting anyway.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

They normally do.

Doesn't mean there can't be exceptions.

AND, having the primary cause fade away, would be a good reason for an exception.

And the lack of unification is just because the media suppresses all the real news....

Can you think of any exceptions? Not saying there aren't any, it's just that I can't recall any off the top of my head.

 

[Johnrankins]

Only about 5% of the US economy was based on external trade.



This is some strange new definition of reasonable I was previously unfamiliar with. Britain would have to invade and occupy the entire US to impose that demand in the first place.



Note that the Confederacy had an equally large war debt. And inferior infrastucture, roughly 1/3 the population, notably less mineral wealth, virtually no shipping or banking industry, internal unrest, and larger portions of the working population dead, fled, or crippled.



If the Union took 30 years to pay off their war debt, it would take the Confederacy two to three times as long.

He also seems to think neither the British Treasury nor the upper classes who would be paying for it would be in the least bit worried about the soaring debt that would be needed to pay for it.