If they will not meet us on the open sea (a Trent TL)

Saphroneth

Banned
so its over?
Not at all.
I'd planned to just do up to 30 June, much of it in outline (i.e. the stuff on the first page), but I've had a strong positive response so I'm continuing. I'm going to do up to the peace, a rough guess at a peace result given the situation at the time, and then a bit of postwar stuff. (Like the CSA now not protected by the shield of the North, and so on.)

Besides, I also want to show a Mallet Mortar Frigate...



If you mean for the Union, then - essentially - yes. If they made peace with the British right now they might be able to stabilize things (though even if they did, they've been set back literally years and would probably end up with a peace in early 1865 and an independent CSA) while letting the CSA go would let them focus enough men on the Canadian border to actually be a serious threat. The problem is that the Union's upper echelons have convinced themselves that the British must be working with the CSA - and as such think peace with one must mean peace with both.
There's always that feeling that you'll stabilize things, eke it out to a final victory - see the OTL CSA, which refused to negotiate even when Lincoln was willing to offer retention of slavery with reincorporation as late as 1864! - and that's a rather dangerous trap.
The Union right now is in a situation not a million miles off France in early 1871. They have the theoretical ability to still win the war, but the practical strategic situation is calamitous.
 
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Saphroneth

Banned
Okay, for the next couple of days...
Two Zodiacs will reach Detroit, and the US Army in the area will I think abandon Detroit in order to fall back on the more defensible Grand River (and hence Grand Rapids). This will trigger a general British advance in the area.
This I'm not sure of, but the Union has to do something retreat-shaped some time soon or they'll lose the entire army in Michigan - meaning there's literally nothing between the British and, say, Cincinnati, except marching time.
As it is I think there might be a highly embarassing withdrawal of troops from the US armies in Kentucky or Missouri to reinforce the Union in the north.

At the same time, a small contingent of British infantry and Canadian militia (with support from one Zodiac) attack Cleveland and cut the railroad. In combination with the Confederacy cutting the line through northern Virginia, this means that all supplies for the western theatre they're not manufacturing themselves have to go down a single rail line - through Pittsburgh.
This will of course cause bottlenecks, particularly with things like gunpowder and shells... and grain going the other way.
 
Very much enjoying this TL. Your research and your writing are first rate. Speaking of ships, might the government make use of the Great Eastern as a troop transport or for serious logistic support?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
At the moment it's the Union with cash problems. The CSA has the tide of victory, so their currency is nice and valuable - especially because they can sell all their cotton TTL.
 
At the moment it's the Union with cash problems. The CSA has the tide of victory, so their currency is nice and valuable - especially because they can sell all their cotton TTL.
They must have a good trade in rice too as the CSA was a major producer of Rice.
There is also Tobacco , sugar cane and Turpentine.


The Confederacy produced nearly all of the nation's rice which amounted to 225 million bushels.
https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/facts.htm
 
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7-8 May 1862

Saphroneth

Banned
7 May

The Superb, one of the few remaining unconverted sail liners of the Royal Navy, is taken into Chatham for modification. In addition to recieving an auxiliary engine, she will be stripped of many of her guns and converted to a mortar ship for the mammoth 36" Mallet's Mortar, a weapon capable of firing one-ton shells. She will also be supplied with compartments to carry replacement sections for the mortar (which is modular and can have broken parts swapped out for new).
Pisces and Capricorn reach the Detroit river and begin to sail up, with the gunboat Ripple going ahead. Ripple comes under fire from a Union battery on the shore, and returns fire - soon being assisted by the heavy rifles of Pisces firing at a range of 300 yards.
The battery is quickly neutralized, and the surviving gunners ride west - they were intended more as a delaying action than anything.

The Union Army of the Detroit is pulling back from the Canadian border, choosing to fall back into the western section of the Lower Peninsula in order to avoid being encircled and destroyed. Grand Rapids is considered far enough from the border that the British-Canadian attackers cannot easily reach it without setting up new logistics lines, and Blair sends sulfurous telegrams southeast demanding reinforcement. (One of the phrases he uses is "due to the great peril of the region in a military sense compared to the inactivity elsewhere", a deliberate twisting of the words used to get him to give up troops two weeks ago.)

Unfortunately for him, there are relatively few options. Taking troops from the Army of the Potomac is simply impossible due to the Confederate presence in Maryland and DC, Kentucky barely has the troops to keep Johnston in check, and removing troops facing the British in the Northeast is considered unacceptably risky. (The Niagara frontier has already suffered a serious reverse and has no surplus troops to give, the army near the St Lawrence was raided for troops only a few days ago and there are worries that a further drawdown on the eastern coast would cause other mayors and governors to contemplate Wood's hinted-at plan.)
As such, the reinforcements Blair demands are to be taken from Missouri - the one area things seem reasonably under control. 20,000 troops are detached from this army and begin the laborious process of railing north.


8 May
The Great Eastern undocks from Pembroke, modified for war service. She now mounts twenty 8" shell guns and a dozen 110-lber Armstrong guns along her sides, with strengthening to assist her frame in taking the recoil of these weapons, and has been outfitted to carry military stores.
In this configuration, she can carry three battalions complete with stores, artillery and ammunition, along with large quantities of supplies. Her first run will be to take replacments across to Canada, carrying three thousand troops plus 9,000 tons of supplies at an average passage speed of 14 knots.
The reason for her radical up-arming is that she is considered to be too valuable a target for commerce raiders to go unprotected.

A raiding force (three British battalions and 5,000 Canadian militia, ferried in lakes shipping and supported by the Scorpio) attacks Cleveland, Ohio. The raid sinks those local armed ships which do not flee, overwhelms the few defending troops (a couple of thousand infantry, poorly armed), destroys or captures the ships undergoing conversion into armed vessels, and troops destroy the railroads for several miles around Cleveland in both directions.
When combined with Confederate advances in Maryland, this in fact limits the entirety of the rail traffic to the western Union to one rail line passing through Pittsburgh. Logistic bottlenecks result, making it even harder for the Union to manage their limited resources.
At about the same time, Pennefather discovers the American withdrawal from the Detroit. He begins making preparations for a general advance, leaving around one third of his force to garrison the river line - capturing Detroit will be very prestigous, and as it is an important industrial city will have deleterious effects on the Union.


A small skirmish takes place some miles outside San Francisco between Union infantry (effectively mounted infantry due to their use of horses to get around) and a platoon of Gurkhas. The Gurkha infantry are using the Brunswick rifle, not the Enfield (this is deliberate policy after the Indian Mutiny; less reliable troops are given the .656 smoothbore, though none of those are in the California expedition) and deliver a terrifying Kukri charge which routs the Union platoon.
 
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Saphroneth

Banned
Incidentally, the first OTL warship larger than the TTL sort-of-warship Great Eastern actually seems to have been a dreadnought battlecruiser - the Great Eastern displaced 32,000 tons, and the first British warship of OTL that was larger was the HMS Tiger.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
I think, really, once Detriot is taken the Writing really is on the wall.
As it is they do have Pittsburgh untouched by the war - along with substantial manufacturing elsewhere. But yes, it's hard to find a great US industrial city apart from Pittsburgh in this period which is neither vulnerable to Great Lakes shipping nor vulnerable to seaborne assault.
The question really is at what point the Union manages to put together the understanding that - yes, it's time for a peace. It's a little hard to tell who in Congress would be more willing to accept peace versus continue war and what would make them change their mind, but as of now I'm fairly sure the war won't continue much past July. (And the peace is likely to involve more territory being returned to the Union rather than by the Union.)
 

Ryan

Donor
I can't wait to see the American diplomats response when they realize that not only did the British basically just want an apology, but that they also didn't give a shit about what happens to the confederacy.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
I can't wait to see the American diplomats response when they realize that not only did the British basically just want an apology, but that they also didn't give a shit about what happens to the confederacy.
Yes, though it may at first be obscured because of how diplomacy works. The British will start with extravagant demands (e.g. St Lawrence corridor, the US section of the Niagara isthmus, Michigan, Maine, the British version of Oregon Country...) and then let them be whittled down to an acceptable settlement, while the CSA will start with extravagant demands and then slowly decide internally that they don't really need to absorb so many anti-slavery Northerners.

That said, the border line between US and CS is... indeterminate. I'm not sure where the border's going to go, though the Union may be faced with a rather stark set of choices. The most southerly I could see an eastern seaboard dividing line going is the Rappahanock, for example, while the most northerly route would be along the Mason-Dixon Line and lead to the relocation of the US capital. (Other options include the Potomac and a partition of Maryland, both of which would probably make DC untenable as a capital.)
 
Yes, though it may at first be obscured because of how diplomacy works. The British will start with extravagant demands (e.g. St Lawrence corridor, the US section of the Niagara isthmus, Michigan, Maine, the British version of Oregon Country...) and then let them be whittled down to an acceptable settlement, while the CSA will start with extravagant demands and then slowly decide internally that they don't really need to absorb so many anti-slavery Northerners.

That said, the border line between US and CS is... indeterminate. I'm not sure where the border's going to go, though the Union may be faced with a rather stark set of choices. The most southerly I could see an eastern seaboard dividing line going is the Rappahanock, for example, while the most northerly route would be along the Mason-Dixon Line and lead to the relocation of the US capital. (Other options include the Potomac and a partition of Maryland, both of which would probably make DC untenable as a capital.)

I wonder would the British demands include free slaves in the Union?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
One thing they're not going to alter is a demand for the Right of Search on Union vessels. This is the kind of thing that Palmerston will continue the war over if it's a sticking point.
He has plans for it.
 
One thing they're not going to alter is a demand for the Right of Search on Union vessels. This is the kind of thing that Palmerston will continue the war over if it's a sticking point.
He has plans for it.

Help me out here. Why's it so important? Just what are Palmerston's plans?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Help me out here. Why's it so important? Just what are Palmerston's plans?
This is something of a spoiler.
Palmerston in OTL once got the Right of Search from Portugal, then quietly told the Royal Navy to treat Brazilian ships as Portugese. He'd be doing the same here, arguing that since the Right was granted by the Union while the Confederacy was still part of the United States, it therefore applied to them as well.
Thus, the South end up unable to sustain the slave trade - and the boarding disputes thus resulting may well cause significant tension...
 
This is something of a spoiler.
Palmerston in OTL once got the Right of Search from Portugal, then quietly told the Royal Navy to treat Brazilian ships as Portugese. He'd be doing the same here, arguing that since the Right was granted by the Union while the Confederacy was still part of the United States, it therefore applied to them as well.
Thus, the South end up unable to sustain the slave trade - and the boarding disputes thus resulting may well cause significant tension...

But the slave trade was banned by the Confederate Constitution.
Article I Section 9(1)
The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country, other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.[15]

You seem pretty well informed, so I'm sure you know that already. Since any international slavers would be violating US, British, and CS law, why would this cause so much tension?
 
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