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

[Saphroneth]

I was looking into the Wivern and Scorpion (TTL purchased in a way not very different to OTL) and saw this:

The naval architect Edward James Reed wrote: "the turret-ship 'Wivern', belonging to the Royal Navy, has a low free-board (about 4 feet), and is very lightly armoured, while her armament is also very light. Yet on one occasion her behaviour at sea was so bad that she had to be brought head to wind in order to prevent her shipping large, and, of course, dangerous, quantities of water, the extreme angle of roll rising to 27 degrees each way

That section about having to bring her head to wind sounds a lot like how the Monitors had to similarly ride out the waves when they ran into gales - and the turrets of Wivern were 10" thick on the face, with a 5.5" plate all around and a 4.5" plate on the face (all backed) while she was armed with four 9" RML guns. This makes her actually better armed and armoured than most of the Monitors, though her belt (at 4.5" main and 2" ends) is somewhat weaker.

These vessels - which Reed considered to be not particularly good, recall - are actually quite comparable to late-model twin turret Monitors, and they're able to sail across the sea too (as well as having higher freeboard than the Monitors) while using tripod masts to reduce the firing arc interference with the turrets. Bit of a case of "Other side of the pond".

 

[galveston bay]

While true that it was said, nevertheless Monarch was a ship capable of firing on the broadside and was probably more capable than was believed at the time (as axial fire was considered desirable, which is now thought to be largely an error - this is the basis of Reed's complaint). SNIP because the reader doesn't have to look very far for this lengthy post.. its literally right up the page.

I have yet to see you praise or address even neutrally any non British warship so your bias too is pretty clear (and I have been watching your posts for years now). Bottom line, there were no successful turreted ironclad battleships in the near future in your timeline realistically and the single one built in 1869 counts more as a successful prototype than an actual class of warships for operations. (those came in 1871 and were a revolution in the same way that ironclads were in the early 1860s). My standard is whether the ship design in question meets the mission requirements it was designed for. Some of the monitors did, some woefully did not. Some of the British ironclads did, and again, some woefully did not. At least casualties were lighter when the Americans failed.

The point is that the Monitor type ship (which really is a glorified armored gunboat) is more than capable of making operations hazardous for close blockading vessels if they conduct a sudden sortie, which the British realistically would not be able to predict.

As to forts we have had this argument before and there is no point in doing it again. You keep overlooking naval mines for starters. If the British couldn't do it with far more powerful warships in the Dardenelles in 1915 why do you think they could in the mid 19th Century? Minesweepers aren't generally armored just for starters). You cite Mobile Bay and New Orleans, I cite Charleston and Drewrys Bluff, and we both cite various Crimean War incidents, while others cite Chinese forts and Alexandria. We will never know of course but I think history indicates that even the successes required very careful planning and the right conditions that are sometimes very unique to the successes cited.

You said that the Monitors could not fight in open water in any kind of chop. I actually didn't disagree with you. My only point is that they were capable of operating and transiting open ocean and only one, the prototype, was actually lost in heavy weather. The history is there for anyone to look

I even said bluntly what the Monitors were for. You simply want to argue apples to oranges. Different ships with different missions. The USN never built a frigate or battleship type ironclad until the Texas and Maine much later in the century. The New Ironsides was basically an armored sloop of war.

But then in history they didn't need battleships or armored frigates and the big steam frigates were useless in enforcing the blockade as it was actually practiced vs the fictional one in your story.

But really my post was to clarify something another individual posted when he assumed that the Monitors were for defense. They weren't. They were wartime expedients that served basically as armored gunboats to deal with the ironclads the Confederacy built which also had the useful mission should it have been needed, of providing a strong inshore force that in cooperation with minefields and shore batteries would have made the Union major ports pretty strong bastions that only a high risk, full scale naval assault would have a chance of taking on, and even then, unless the British land an army with it, they can't do more than what a heavy bombing raid would have done in World War II. Cities are rebuilt routinely, particularly prior to the 20th Century when they burned down with an almost depressing routine (look up the history of Great Fires in American cities sometime, its an eye opener. The Great Chicago Fire wasn't remotely unique).

You still haven't addressed the fact that a monitor went round the Horn (so to speak, actually Straits of Magellen, which is only marginally less stormy) to San Francisco. For that matter, 2 Passaic class monitors managed to somehow get to Peru in a pre Panama Canal era (where they were scuttled when Peru lost the War of the Pacific to Chile). They are hardly death traps at sea.

As to the American broadside ironclads I mentioned. I specifically stated they would likely be a starting point and indeed they had serious flaws. Note the US Navy for the most part had a pretty good track record (other than the Stevens Battery which is an obvious case of throwing good money after bad in hopes of any kind of result) of cancelling or moving on from design failure. So eventually, in a world were the RN is a dangerous potential enemy and has been all too recently, they are going to build a useful design and build a number of them. As we only have historical examples it is difficult to say what that would be, but there is no reason to assume that they wouldn't be all that much different from the eventual RN turreted battleship.

The short term effects of the lost war in this timeline will fade, and eventually the Union will be just as rich as it was in OTL. Why? Because the building blocks are all there... vast resources (practically unlimited in European terms), considerable capital, a strong appetite for and history of innovation and invention, and lots and lots of basically free land. Even without the South, which in OTL was literally reduced to poverty that lasted until the 2nd World War and in this one, based on what your timeline has happening post war, is probably fated for that again (nearly half of the actual investment capital of the South was invested in humans as property. Unless it is somehow replaced, catastrophe will happen when slavery goes away)

 

[galveston bay]

Reed was pretty happy with her, all things considered: 'It is very satisfactory indeed to find that the Admiralty turret-ship "Monarch"... has proved a fast, steady and formidable ship, and assuredly I shall not decry those real merits which I have laboured hard to secure to her'. (from Our Ironclad Ships) He certainly thought they were better than their transatlantic rivals:

'If the reader will examine the section of the "Kalamazoo," on page 35, he will see that even the strongest of all the American monitors bears no real comparison with our own later vessels, even as regards the uniform thickness of its armour; while a reference to page 44 will convince him that the "Dictator," which has been exhibited to us in terrorem so very often, is, after all, a feeble construction, its armour disappearing almost immediately beneath the water's surface, so that every passage of a wave must expose its unarmoured part to shot and shell.' (same source)

they weren't that seaworthy as they were never actually completed (to be blunt)

and I see you guys are still cherry picking my posts... I said very specifically what the Monitors were built for and what they were not build for. But feel free to beat a dead horse. Especially Cereb who as I recall doesn't even see my posts unless he took me off ignore and thus has no actual idea what I said but is acting only on inference from what Saraph said.

As stated, the monitors were not designed to refight Trafalgar or fight an early Jutland. The British ironclads were. Different missions mean different design criteria and of course different costs.

 

[galveston bay]

I think the problem here is that you are quoting the designer who did not want to place a full set of rigging on his vessel and equating his dissatisfaction with this as the same as sinking in any moderate sea state.

The Monarch's "problems" severely restricted the utility of the turret concept. The monitors problems resulted in it sinking.

There was some unhappiness of their inability to fire directly forward or astern seems to be major point more than rigging. Although as power plant efficiencies (and reliability too for that matter) were not particularly awesome in this era, sail power actually did markedly extend range. Which is why rigged ships still hang around well into the 1880s, particularly for gunboats and cruiser type ships which spend long periods of time away from a major base.

Also, how many monitors were lost at sea? Only one. The Prototype. Another (a second generation) was lost in an storm while in an anchorage due to crew failure. That is all, out of 23 built. Still a pretty good track record for a ship designed for coastal operations. As noted above, 2 of those second generation monitors somehow made it to Peru to fight in the War in the Pacific. Without knowing the details, I suppose it is possible they were disassembled and shipped to Peru (like the the USN did for the Camanche) but that is an unknown, at least that I have been able to find (I confess my knowledge of Latin American navies is less than I would wish but I don't read Spanish well enough to read their histories and I read Portuguese not at all). It is just as likely they simply steamed to Peru after purchase. Feel free to research it and determine an answer.

 

[Saphroneth]

The point is that the Monitor type ship (which really is a glorified armored gunboat) is more than capable of making operations hazardous for close blockading vessels if they conduct a sudden sortie, which the British realistically would not be able to predict.

Well, the Monitor type ship is not really capable of making a sudden sortie unless the blockaders are lying very close to the enemy port - their maximum speed is quite slow and deteriorates rapidly in heavy sea.

You keep overlooking naval mines for starters. If the British couldn't do it with far more powerful warships in the Dardenelles in 1915 why do you think they could in the mid 19th Century?

No, I don't keep overlooking naval mines. I'm looking at the capabilities of mines and attempting to assess when they could be made a capable opposition. For starters, the British swept mines in the Crimean War at quite a high rate and since then they've had years to come up with how to handle it.
Of course, at the Dardanelles they were opposed by heavy breech-loading and quick-firing naval guns, as well as fast minelayers which could quickly move out and lay mines in areas previously swept, and were dealing with hertz-horn contact mines. Against the Union or the Confederacy they're dealing with single-string command mines using a power cable that leads back to the shore and which is operated from a bunker (mines which at New York have been invented, manufactured and implaced so fast I considered it a major concession to the US that they were there at all - a comparable rate would have had the US unable to get up the James River at any time in 1862), and the opposition is guns which are either very slow firing or mostly too small to quickly sink the minesweeping vessels. Nevertheless the minesweepers in the Charleston case are largely lost or rendered unable to be effectively used. (In the NY case they were not swept, they had just stopped working - the British hadn't realized they existed until the first string of mines blew up and holed Warrior right forward.)

I feel I should ask if you've read the TL.

Minefields are not a magic wand, nor are they actually very effective OTL - there's a reason why after three years of development the Confederate mines at Mobile Bay were unable to stop the US ironclads (shallow draft as they were) from sailing straight through with moderate casualties. The US mines at New York TTL have had less than 10% the development time.

. You cite Mobile Bay and New Orleans, I cite Charleston and Drewrys Bluff

I've also cited Charleston. Drewry's Bluff is also worth looking at as it shows the Monitors unable to elevate their guns enough to perform shore bombardment (one of their primary design roles, unless I misunderstand you)

The short term effects of the lost war in this timeline will fade, and eventually the Union will be just as rich as it was in OTL.

Frankly this seems impossible. The US gained a substantial amount of money OTL from cotton export and from the various other natural resources of what is now the Confederacy, not least a large fraction of US oil, as well as the productivity of the southern half of the US. Your position is that the states of the TTL Confederacy were historically at best zero contributors to US wealth!

As stated, the monitors were not designed to refight Trafalgar or fight an early Jutland. The British ironclads were. Different missions mean different design criteria and of course different costs.

This is a distinct generalization. Some British ironclads (Crimean types, for example) were built for what the Monitors were built for.

You said that the Monitors could not fight in open water in any kind of chop. I actually didn't disagree with you. My only point is that they were capable of operating and transiting open ocean and only one, the prototype, was actually lost in heavy weather. The history is there for anyone to look

The subsidiary point I was making was also that those monitors which did make oceanic transits either happened to not run into much heavy weather or only did so for a short period of time - whereas the British ironclad turret ship lost was lost cruising in a gale.

Monitor types are capable of transiting ocean, at some considerable risk depending on the class. (The Miantonomoh needed a tow for about a third of her journey.) They are not by any means as capable of this as almost any British ironclad.

I have yet to see you praise or address even neutrally any non British warship so your bias too is pretty clear (and I have been watching your posts for years now).

That's because I tend to talk about the bad ones or talk during periods when the non-British navy in question was not as experienced as the British Navy - the British in the years leading up to 1860, for example, have built about a hundred ships of force, the US have built about six. Of these one power is highly experienced, the other is not and is making it up as it goes along.
The other side of things, of course, is that generally speaking it seems as though the British ships are often not nearly so well known. Everyone's heard of Monitor, but Terror doesn't even have a wikipedia article despite being a more capable warship in all respects I am aware of.

 

[galveston bay]

Frankly this seems impossible. The US gained a substantial amount of money OTL from cotton export and from the various other natural resources of what is now the Confederacy, not least a large fraction of US oil, as well as the productivity of the southern half of the US. Your position is that the states of the TTL Confederacy were historically at best zero contributors to US wealth!

f.

This is where I think you significantly lack an understanding of the economic history of the United States. The oil industry was in Pennsylvania until the 20th Century, with the major oil discoveries (and development of the same) in southern California and Texas being at the start of the 20th Century, and Louisiana later still. Offshore isn't until mid 20th Century.

The only people who got rich off the Cotton exports in the South were the oligarchy that ran (and still to a significant extent runs it) the South. The bulk of the capital investment was in the slaves, the rest mostly in land, and a simple look at Union vs Confederate economic statistics would confirm that. While the per capita wealth of the South was very significant indeed, its concentration was far more so. Less than 10% had the overwhelming majority of the wealth and they weren't investing in Union steel mills or railroads. Their money was locked up in investments in their region.

So no, to be blunt, the South was not contributing to the overall well being of the United States in terms of capital or productivity. As the United States had growth that would within 60 years result in a nation twice as rich in absolute terms (much less in industrial power) than the British Empire, in spite of basically wrecking the entire South and letting it remain wrecked economically for two generations, I think the facts speak for themselves. Even the cities damaged by the Trent War in your fictional story have not moved, nor have the economic and geographical conditions that made New York City (as our example) one of the great cities of the world changed. There is still massive amounts of gold in the Black Hills of Dakota, the Silver Mines of Nevada are still in US hands, there are still huge amounts of timber to cut in Minnesota... the list goes on and on. The US Bill of Rights remains in effect, and the Homestead Act was passed before the Trent War even occurred. The US will still remain a destination of first choice for most Europeans who historically immigrated for those reasons. The Union will thus continue to grow at a rate that is staggering, even with the all to frequent depressions that make the Crash of 2008 look like a minor hiccup.

Simply put, unless you hand wave or America Screw to fit your preconceptions and desires, the historical pattern is likely to remain true.

The interesting question that we don't know as students of history is what the South could have contributed if it hadn't seen roughly half of its wealth literally get up and walk away when they were freed. But we know what happened when that did happen. For example, what would have happened if the US Congress and then the Confederate Government had agreed to Lincoln's proposal for a buy out?

 

[galveston bay]

No, I don't keep overlooking naval mines. I'm looking at the capabilities of mines and attempting to assess when they could be made a capable opposition. For starters, the British swept mines in the Crimean War at quite a high rate and since then they've had years to come up with how to handle it.
Of course, at the Dardanelles they were opposed by heavy breech-loading and quick-firing naval guns, as well as fast minelayers which could quickly move out and lay mines in areas previously swept, and were dealing with hertz-horn contact mines. Against the Union or the Confederacy they're dealing with single-string command mines using a power cable that leads back to the shore and which is operated from a bunker (mines which at New York have been invented, manufactured and implaced so fast I considered it a major concession to the US that they were there at all - a comparable rate would have had the US unable to get up the James River at any time in 1862), and the opposition is guns which are either very slow firing or mostly too small to quickly sink the minesweeping vessels. Nevertheless the minesweepers in the Charleston case are largely lost or rendered unable to be effectively used. (In the NY case they were not swept, they had just stopped working - the British hadn't realized they existed until the first string of mines blew up and holed Warrior right forward.)

I feel I should ask if you've read the TL.

Minefields are not a magic wand, nor are they actually very effective OTL - there's a reason why after three years of development the Confederate mines at Mobile Bay were unable to stop the US ironclads (shallow draft as they were) from sailing straight through with moderate casualties. The US mines at New York TTL have had less than 10% the development time. f.

actually the RN couldn't silence the mobile field artillery that was shelling the converted fishing trawlers the RN was trying to sweep the mines with in 1915. The RN blasted the old 19th Century forts into wreckage on day one. It didn't solve the issue.

As to mines, many, indeed most, were contact mines, not command detonated in their early use. The technology of electrical cables from shore to a mine was in its infancy, something the USS New Ironsides was lucky to encounter in the 1st Battle of Charleston in OTL. They (contact mines) worked well enough to sink a number of USN warships in the Civil War however, including some ironclads.

Yes I have read your time line. My opinion remains unchanged. You remain aware of my opinion and that too is unchanged. No need to rehash that discussion. Write your story. I feel the need to occasionally over an opinion that differs from you and the usual suspects who always leap to attack whenever criticism is offered (and not just to me). This is an open forum, not an echo chamber as Calbear put it so clearly some pages back.

As to Mobile Bay... the fact is most of the mines failed because they were primitive devices that lacked sufficient waterproofing because the primitive Confederate industrial base lacked the means to provide the needed quality control to ensure that they would last longer. One certainly worked just fine (as the Tecumseh can attest) but most did not. The fact that any worked seems more a miracle considering the Confederate issues with quality manufacturing.

 

[Saphroneth]

actually the RN couldn't silence the mobile field artillery that was shelling the converted fishing trawlers the RN was trying to sweep the mines with in 1915.

Mobile artillery meaning, presumably, quick-firing guns firing shells at a rate of as much as twenty a minute (in other words, guns with a hydropneumatic recuperator). Nothing remotely comparable is possessed by either the US or the CS in the Trent War, with their main field guns firing rounds of about the same weight but with at least six times less rate of fire, much less accuracy, less power due to the different shell filling (when not firing shot, that is) and considerably shorter range.

The idea the RN could not sweep mines right through from 1861 to 1915 seems contraindicated by how they did it in the Crimean War and regularly practiced after that date.

As to Mobile Bay... the fact is most of the mines failed because they were primitive devices that lacked sufficient waterproofing because the primitive Confederate industrial base lacked the means to provide the needed quality control to ensure that they would last longer.

And this, but with rushed construction in the mix, is why the mines at NY mostly did not function. The US is not immune to the problems brought about by very rapid industrial production- the Casco class is just one example, but I can also cite the rifles produced by P.S.Justice (which were generally agreed to be very bad) or the fact that the Confederacy started with 50-lb keg mines (the same type the US has used most recently) before discovering by experiment that this was unable to do much damage to enemy ships. (TTL the US does not have time to make this discovery, and it uses keg mines.)

The thing which most astonishes me about this is that I've repeatedly been clear that I don't happen to think it very likely the US could deploy a full minefield on that scale at all in that timeframe (thus that having it there is actually a major hand on the scale in favour of the US - especially as they had no such plans to protect NY or other locations in OTL (or, rather, if they did I've never seen any suggestion of it)) and you're complaining that they didn't get it absolutely right first time (when it took the Confederates literal years to get this right - heck, as many of the Confederate experiments of the early days were in England then the British know rather more about mines than the Union does!).

As for contact mines versus triggered mines, the first ship lost to a mine in the Civil War was the Cairo (sunk at the very end of 1862 to a triggered mine). If you could furnish the first example of a confirmed contact mine being used (by both Union and Confederacy) I would be grateful.

So no, to be blunt, the South was not contributing to the overall well being of the United States in terms of capital or productivity.

That seems impossible on the face of it, as if nothing else the South did get taxed! (And was an internal market, where it could otherwise have purchased from the UK and thus reduced the profits of those northern factories - the US used high tariff barriers on manufacturing imports to grow their own industry OTL.)
Norfolk Naval Yard (Virginia) also built the Texas and the Raleigh, both significant ships in the modernization of the US Navy.

For example, what would have happened if the US Congress and then the Confederate Government had agreed to Lincoln's proposal for a buy out?

Is that the TTL proposal? You don't seem to understand it if so - Lincoln was considering an offer to buy out the slaves of the Union TTL.
If it's an OTL proposal, the OTL proposal seems frankly absurdly impossible - it would mean transferring a substantial fraction of the wealth of the North into the pockets of the South, and both South and North have strong reasons to object to it.

Yes I have read your time line. My opinion remains unchanged.

Well, the reason I ask is because on more than one occasion you seem to be asking why I did something I didn't or asking why I didn't do something I did.



ED: to explain why I mention fast Turkish minelayers - OTL at the Dardanelles the event which decided the battle was a new minefield laid by the Nusret over the night of the 8th, in an area that had previously been considered clear. This led to a breakdown in will to continue, though significant improvements in the ability to minesweep had taken place (notably that the crews of the minesweepers had been replaced, bringing them from civilian-crewed to military-crewed and thus rectifying the defect that the civilian crews were unwilling to take their ships under a fire which was not very materially dangerous; note that the crew of the minesweeping gunboats in the Charleston attack TTL were military sailors to begin with.)

 

[Saphroneth]

9 September

A meeting takes place, in which the Mayor of Charleston reluctantly agrees to apologize in all particulars for the mistreatment of the British ships in the recent incidents and in which the prosecution of those involved is agreed to. The Confederate government undertakes to rebuild Charleston's defences, and of course to furnish the full asisstance of the Confederate navy in any future incident (subject to that incident not falling foul of the now-passed Foreign Relations Act).

11 September

The HMS Great Eastern leaves Charleston, having unloaded most of the remaining military supplies to replenish those expended by the RN squadron and the ground force. It has instead been loaded with thousands upon thousands of former slaves, not just men but women and children as well.
The Great Eastern's destination in the short term is Halifax, from whence the newly-emancipated slaves will be able to travel where there are places for them. This shipment largely clears the last of those within the British perimeter, though this is mainly because a substantial fraction of the slaves in or near Charleston were moved elsewhere before the British secured control.


14 September

Lenthall produces a sketch design for a deep-draft ironclad along the “Defence type” lines as requested by Congress. His design notes that the armament is subject to change, but currently is listed as 30 8” Parrott rifles, and has a 4.5” armour belt amidships and on the battery (tapering to 2” at the ends).
This design is essentially an armour clad version of the Niagara of a few years previous in gross hull form, which has made the design process much simpler, though the shift to iron construction Lenthall has noted as “potentially problematic” but one he declares should be fully considered.



15 September

Asked to clarify on the matter of armament, Lenthall suggests alternate configurations for the deep-draft ironclad's armament. Without making major changes to other factors, he notes that he could mount:

30 8” rifles
20 of the newly designed 10” rifles
8 15” smoothbores
4 20” smoothbores
Or some combination thereof.
He is requested to increase the armour to at least 6” amidships and 3” at the ends, though he warns this will cut roughly 20% off the armament weight.

16 September

The Royal Naval squadron and their infantry battalions begin withdrawing from Charleston. Progress is slowed partly by how some few thousand additional slaves have crossed into the British region in the hopes of being emancipated.

17 September

Lenthall's design is asked to be modified further to allow for better cruising radius – she should be able to cross the Atlantic under steam if need be. The ends are reduced back to 2” and the battery to 5.5”, and he is asked for a 2:1 ratio of 8” guns to 10” guns.

20 September

Lenthall delivers his paper design, asking somewhat sarcastically if this is the final revision. He is told it is for now, and asked to produce some more detailed plans.

The paper ship is a somewhat more full-bodied version of the Niagara with a slightly greater length, fitted with 3 10” rifles and 8 8” rifles on each broadside along with a pair of 10” pivot rifles fore and aft. She has 5.5” armour on the belt and battery, with a 2” belt protection along the ends, and has a top speed under steam of 12 knots.
The primary downside of the design is that it makes certain assumptions about US shipbuilding capability, particularly about the ability to produce 5.5” single thickness plate – though in a pinch it is considered possible to produce the required protection by using 4.5” discard plate from the Royal Navy and adding a 1” layer midway through the timber backing. This would impair protection compared to a full 5.5” plate, but would at least reduce damage from a Palliser shell or the like.

She is noted to be superior in every way to HMS Defence. (The Warrior is carefully not mentioned, as the comparison here is more murky.)

 

[galveston bay]

If it's an OTL proposal, the OTL proposal seems frankly absurdly impossible - it would mean transferring a substantial fraction of the wealth of the North into the pockets of the South, and both South and North have strong reasons to object to it.

It was an OTL proposal... he pointed out that the cost in dollars would be far cheaper than what was being spent in lives and dollars to fight the war. Congress was not willing to consider it. But it would be a fascinating POD sometime

In regards to American economic history, I suggest Howard Zinn (Peoples History of the United States) and any general survey textbook covering the Civil War, Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. There are reasons that the United States became an economic giant and you are missing those reasons.

The actual proposal is here

https://www.sethkaller.com/item/1346-Lincoln’s-Compensated-Emancipation-Proposal&from=6

 

[Derek Pullem]

In regards to American economic history, I suggest Howard Zinn (Peoples History of the United States) and any general survey textbook covering the Civil War, Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. There are reasons that the United States became an economic giant and you are missing those reasons.

Yes I have read Zinn and anyone who thinks he is an economic historian is more than a little bizarre!!!!!

 

[Saphroneth]

In regards to American economic history, I suggest Howard Zinn (Peoples History of the United States) and any general survey textbook covering the Civil War, Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. There are reasons that the United States became an economic giant and you are missing those reasons.

Well, I'm more assuming that the US benefitted at least somewhat from states including Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Southern California, as well as the exclusive control of the Mississippi River, the lack of an economy-proportionate expenditure on the armed forces, and loss of things like cotton production.

In 1870 OTL, the US produced 4.3 million bales of cotton (of which 3.1 million was exported). The total value of this was, at 440 lbs per bale and 24 cents per lb (in NY), approximately $454 million - and it's effectively all being exported TTL from the south, indeed the US is having to import the 1.2 million bales of cotton its own factories use from the Confederacy.
Even if all of the money this cotton is generating is going into the pockets of the planters OTL (which is unlikely - there's a reason there's a NY dock price for the cotton and it's because of middlemen!) then unless the planters just get ridiculously rich and never spend any of the money on anything they're still spending it in the US OTL and thus buying US goods. Every stage of transaction (when the cotton is sold, when it's exported, when the planters and their workers buy things) also involves economic activity taking place, which means the US can materially directly benefit from taxation.

I certainly agree the US is going to end up rich - what I contest is your assertion that the US will end up

just as rich as it was in OTL.

 

[galveston bay]

Yes I have read Zinn and anyone who thinks he is an economic historian is more than a little bizarre!!!!!

He addresses the social aspects of American history, which includes the history of labor, which is of course a basic tenet of economics. Did you read "A Peoples History of the United States" or one of his more specialized works?

I am going to guess, aside from possibly an elective course in college, most British students have about as much American history as American students have of Canadian History, which is to say, damn little.

We get a lot of British history in our High School World History classes, or at least for people my age we used to. I knew more about Oliver Cromwell and Richard I than I do about a number of American 19th Century Presidents by the time I finished high school.

 

[galveston bay]

Well, I'm more assuming that the US benefitted at least somewhat from states including Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Southern California, as well as the exclusive control of the Mississippi River, the lack of an economy-proportionate expenditure on the armed forces, and loss of things like cotton production.

In 1870 OTL, the US produced 4.3 million bales of cotton (of which 3.1 million was exported). The total value of this was, at 440 lbs per bale and 24 cents per lb (in NY), approximately $454 million - and it's effectively all being exported TTL from the south, indeed the US is having to import the 1.2 million bales of cotton its own factories use from the Confederacy.
Even if all of the money this cotton is generating is going into the pockets of the planters OTL (which is unlikely - there's a reason there's a NY dock price for the cotton and it's because of middlemen!) then unless the planters just get ridiculously rich and never spend any of the money on anything they're still spending it in the US OTL and thus buying US goods. Every stage of transaction (when the cotton is sold, when it's exported, when the planters and their workers buy things) also involves economic activity taking place, which means the US can materially directly benefit from taxation.

I certainly agree the US is going to end up rich - what I contest is your assertion that the US will end up

of course you are...but the simple fact is, the primary engine for growth of American industry Post Civil War had little to do with cotton. There were literally unlimited natural resources in the area that in your timeline the US still controls. While New Mexico and Arizona in OTL did have a lot of mining, it was relatively small compared to the Rocky Mountain States, as well as Utah. The only really important resource that your Confederacy has is oil, and that doesn't even see significant explanation until the late 1890s. The US has all the coal, iron ore, gold, silver, lead, and for that matter oil it needs to fuel its historical development because those were the areas that were historically developed. The immigration is highly unlikely to change unless the US adopts permanent conscription (which it didn't even adopt as a temporary measure in your story), as the Homestead Act was a central tenet of the GOP platform. Plus of course there is the whole freedom of religion issue, which was a huge draw for European immigrants.

As to the South, based on where your timeline is now, you are already weakening the underpinnings of slavery, and thus the price of slaves thus creating losses in the capital value of that investment.

As I recall, the South spent more on goods from Britain than it did from the North, hence the whole point of their fierce objections to Antebellum attempts to raise tariffs. Postwar the GOP controlled Congress long enough to get high tariffs passed and those remained in effect until World War II (indeed got higher). So in OTL, the South was buying some from the North, money that may or may not be spent there in your story.

The other question is did the historical cotton shortage (caused by the Union blockade and the 1861 voluntary Confederate embargo) have the same effect in expanding production in Egypt and India as it did in OTL? That has butterfly effects in both of those British colonies as well as of course in the South

Curious to see how you address that.

Did you or your compatriots here study the economic history of the United States at any point? Because if you didn't, you should read up on it.

 

[Derek Pullem]

He addresses the social aspects of American history, which includes the history of labor, which is of course a basic tenet of economics. Did you read "A Peoples History of the United States" or one of his more specialized works?

I am going to guess, aside from possibly an elective course in college, most British students have about as much American history as American students have of Canadian History, which is to say, damn little.

We get a lot of British history in our High School World History classes, or at least for people my age we used to. I knew more about Oliver Cromwell and Richard I than I do about a number of American 19th Century Presidents by the time I finished high school.

But we are not talking about British students we are talking about your recommendation to read Zinn as a economic historian which he patiently isn't.

To say discussing the history of labour is sufficient to qualify as a reference for economic history is like saying just studying Union strategy in the East is sufficient to understand the whole war

 

[galveston bay]

But we are not talking about British students we are talking about your recommendation to read Zinn as a economic historian which he patiently isn't.

To say discussing the history of labour is sufficient to qualify as a reference for economic history is like saying just studying Union strategy in the East is sufficient to understand the whole war

Actually his work on the history of labor is pretty important and was groundbreaking. For general economics you can start with any American History basic textbook. There are bound to be some online.

Here are some as a matter of fact

http://www.ushistory.org/textbooks.htm

 

[edgeworthy]

It was an OTL proposal... he pointed out that the cost in dollars would be far cheaper than what was being spent in lives and dollars to fight the war. Congress was not willing to consider it. But it would be a fascinating POD sometime

In regards to American economic history, I suggest Howard Zinn (Peoples History of the United States) and any general survey textbook covering the Civil War, Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. There are reasons that the United States became an economic giant and you are missing those reasons.

The actual proposal is here

https://www.sethkaller.com/item/1346-Lincoln’s-Compensated-Emancipation-Proposal&from=6

Very roughly the cost of Emancipating all of the Slaves in the continental United States (All 3.9 Million of them), using the Scheme laid out above, would be at least 1.2 BILLION USD, in 1860's Dollars. Or approximately half the Union's Military budget for 1861-65.

That's still one hell of a lot and it is easy to imagine a great many people objecting to such an outlay. Some who do not want to pay the taxes it would require and its much easier to justify an increased Federal Budget when fighting a war. Some out of plain self-interest and racism, why should they be paying to free a bunch of lazy n*ggers? And some Abolitionists who will object to even the very concept of rewarding slave-owners. There are reasons the plan failed.

And this even assumes that the Southern Slave-Owners would accept the scheme. To them slavery was not just about economics it was the basis for their whole social system. Emancipation was akin to chaos, and would lead to massacres in the streets, their daughters being raped by their rioting Field hands and the complete collapse of Christian Civilisation. They took it about as seriously, and with all the same rationality, as 1950's America took the "Red Under the Beds".

Also they would have wanted something close to the actual value at Auction for their property, and would have dragged it through the legal system, all the way to the Supreme Court, for years.
The average amount for a Slave, for insurance purposes ... yes they were insured and used as collateral for loans and sold in bankruptcy settlements, and at auction, was over $700, or more. This includes women and children, seen as a long term investment, and a Prime Field-Hand could easily sell for twice that, slave workers with a valuable skill could go for $1750.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Slave_Auction
https://southernspaces.org/2010/une...hs-ten-broeck-race-course-and-1859-slave-sale
http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/...lave-sale-in-georgia-history-the-weeping-time
(And the above example was a Bankruptcy Sale where the creditors were just trying to recover the minimum they could)

So a Compensated Emancipation Scheme could easily cost over 2.8 Billion USD, or significantly more than the North's entire military expenditure for the Civil War.

There are issues!

 

[galveston bay]

Very roughly the cost of Emancipating all of the Slaves in the continental United States (All 3.9 Million of them), using the Scheme laid out above, would be at least 1.2 BILLION USD, in 1860's Dollars. Or approximately half the Union's Military budget for 1861-65.

That's still one hell of a lot and it is easy to imagine a great many people objecting to such an outlay. Some who do not want to pay the taxes it would require and its much easier to justify an increased Federal Budget when fighting a war. Some out of plain self-interest and racism, why should they be paying to free a bunch of lazy n*ggers? And some Abolitionists who will object to even the very concept of rewarding slave-owners. There are reasons the plan failed.

And this even assumes that the Southern Slave-Owners would accept the scheme. To them slavery was not just about economics it was the basis for their whole social system. Emancipation was akin to chaos, and would lead to massacres in the streets, their daughters being raped by their rioting Field hands and the complete collapse of Christian Civilisation. They took it about as seriously, and with all the same rationality, as 1950's America took the "Red Under the Beds".

Also they would have wanted something close to the actual value at Auction for their property, and would have dragged it through the legal system, all the way to the Supreme Court, for years.
The average amount for a Slave, for insurance purposes ... yes they were insured and used as collateral for loans and sold in bankruptcy settlements, and at auction, was over $700, or more. This includes women and children, seen as a long term investment, and a Prime Field-Hand could easily sell for twice that, slave workers with a valuable skill could go for $1750.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Slave_Auction
https://southernspaces.org/2010/une...hs-ten-broeck-race-course-and-1859-slave-sale
http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/...lave-sale-in-georgia-history-the-weeping-time
(And the above example was a Bankruptcy Sale where the creditors were just trying to recover the minimum they could)

So a Compensated Emancipation Scheme could easily cost over 2.8 Billion USD, or significantly more than the North's entire military expenditure for the Civil War.

There are issues!

yes there were, although I think the biggest issue is a lot of Northerners were very much interested in punishing the South by that point in the war

But it was a serious proposal and it did actually occur.

But in the link the price was set at $400 each. No negotiations and no bargaining. (the price then dropped to $300).

Which would have been a huge transfer in terms of wealth but Lincoln thought it was the cheaper solution. Not to mention all the blood that was going to be spilled as the war continued (on both sides, and remember he thought that both sides were Americans and thus it was his job to minimize the deaths if he could). Certainly it was more than slave owners ended up getting (nothing)

Lincoln suggested that the slaves of the border states (MO, KY, MD, DE, plus DC), around 460,000, at the price of $400, worked out to be $173 million, or as he put it, 87 days of combat as the budget was running in 1862 when suggested. Multiply that to include all of the slaves, and it is still cheaper in money than the actual war cost, and certainly much less destructive in terms of deaths and destroyed property.

But of course it didn't happen

read the link closely, it covers the details

https://www.sethkaller.com/item/1346-Lincoln’s-Compensated-Emancipation-Proposal&from=6

 

[Saphroneth]

Excerpts from a talk by John "Jackie" Fisher, on "the Great Gun":



"...a mere two years hence, we were hearing a great deal of talk about the shot-proof ship, based upon our own belief in the great strength of armour fitted to the sides of the new armoured frigates. This talk was based upon how the guns fitted to our ships of 1861 were not so different from the guns of our ships of 1841, but already there were more and better guns being produced by Armstrong and other gun-makers. Now we have the Somerset gun coming into service, which may pierce the Warrior, but it is already to be superseded by the sixty-four pounder rifled muzzle loader; but this is to be superseded in turn by a new and better gun before it has even reached all the ships that could carry it.
For this is the lesson of the age of the ironclad: that the development of the great gun was stymied only by a lack of need for improvement, and that now that a need is found then guns shall improve faster and faster...


...the value of iron is not to make a ship invulnerable but to make it less vulnerable - in addition to the Martin's Shell, then a few inches of iron will keep out common shell; enough inches will keep out the Palliser shell for any gun one cares to name. This means that a gun must be more powerful, or closer, to make an impression, and that it cannot make the same impression that was once made; nevertheless there will always be a gun that can damage your ship under the right conditions. I do not mean this to diminish the value of armour in any sense, of course - a whole enemy fleet with not a gun that may pierce your armour can be compelled to withdraw, or destroyed with ease; an enemy designer may be compelled to replace a dozen thirty-two-pounders firing shell with a single Somerset gun firing bolts, and then his ship has become far less effective a combatant against the smaller ships...


...in mounting any great gun, care must be taken to give the most command possible. By command I mean not just the position of the gun upon the ship but where it may fire - if a gun may not hit below the waterline, or even below the armoured belt for some of the ships with a shallow belt, then it has a far lesser chance of letting in water to sink an enemy vessel; if a gun is hard to aim owing to a difficult system of training, then the few shots a great gun allows may be wasted for no effect purely by this difficulty...


...the ideal ship would be one which has armour and guns better than an opponent, and speed sufficient to hold open the range, so that it may pick a distance at which its own guns are effective and the guns of the enemy are ineffective. I do not think such a ship is practical as a target for a designer, because the advances in gun and armour would shortly put it upon the other end of the comparison, but instead I think it is an ideal that should inform design for guns, for armour and for ships. A gun should be as powerful and accurate as possible at as long a range as possible, and the whole design of an armoured vessel must be such that it may resist damage not simply in the armoured belt but throughout the ship. I speak of measures such as the hiding of engines and magazines below the level of the waterline, and of the double bottom and subdivision built into the Warrior - but also of others, such as removing protetion from a less vital space so that the areas of the ship vital to fighting her are preserved...



...the ram will never be a weapon of the same immediacy as the great gun. The ram has the great flaw that the enemy must see it coming and be able to dodge aside, or even to turn and catch the foe in their own side; the ability to steer and steam at a speed similar to the enemy vessel is quite protection enough in most cases. The great gun's bolt or shell travels at such a speed that no ship may possibly match it - now or, I would venture to say, the future - and may reach out so far compared to the ram as to not be in the same class at all...



...what would I say was the battleship of the future? I would say that the power of guns will increase, the number of guns will reduce, the armour will thicken and the size may increase, but that there will be no single battleship or even any single type that remains a front line ship of battle for very long; that is, until or unless the advancement of guns reaches a point where they may pierce through whatever thickness of armour can feasibly be floated at any range which a hit can be scored. Once this day has come, then the design of the battleships will stabilize - armoured very heavily over their vital parts and not at all otherwise, with great guns to pierce the vitals of the enemy and perhaps smaller guns to strike where their enemy cannot armour. As to their form or size, I cannot speculate."

 

[Colonel Troutstrangler]

He addresses the social aspects of American history, which includes the history of labor, which is of course a basic tenet of economics. Did you read "A Peoples History of the United States" or one of his more specialized works?

I am going to guess, aside from possibly an elective course in college, most British students have about as much American history as American students have of Canadian History, which is to say, damn little.

We get a lot of British history in our High School World History classes, or at least for people my age we used to. I knew more about Oliver Cromwell and Richard I than I do about a number of American 19th Century Presidents by the time I finished high school.

American history? Did they have some? Must've missed that in my high school in Lancashire! Apparently they started at the Revolution - did nothing more until they claimed they won the Second World War single handed!
That is right - isn't it?