TL-191: What Should Blaine Have Done?

[SilverPhoenix]

It seemed to me that in order to get a decent series of books out, Turtledove had to force Blaine to be so foolish as to provoke the Second Mexican War without being prepared for it. The book kind of handwaves it as it is an example of Blaine being rash and foolhardy.

What would a smarter Blaine in that timeline have done? The Republicans got back the presidency and Congress by running on an anti-Confederate platform after Tilden removed the stars from the flag? He has to make some show of strength or nationalistic fervor whipping for political reasons, but has to be smart enough not to cause a war that would get the British and French involved. Could he have pushed a big military buildup and/or a purchase of Baja, or did the US need another crisis in a generation to rethink its military and the French wouldn't allow selling of Baja?

 

[Tiro]

All that was required for Mister Blaine to become the US President who whipped the Confederacy was for some fire-eater like Wade Hampton III to get into the Grey House; under those circumstances the USA has a far better chance of maintaining the moral high ground and seeing the Confederate Army risk themselves in offensive operations likely to be slaughterous (and not to their benefit). In all honesty had President Longstreet not been Blaine's opponent it is difficult to see how the Confederate States would have been able to execute a Foreign Relations triumph of such an order that the British & French became willing to seriously invest in the South.

Failing an absence of President Longstreet, then Mr Blaine might have been wise to lean on the Empire of Mexico; rather than attempting to buy Sonora and Chihuahua (much less Baja!) for the United States, he might have been still wiser to invest a little money in Mexico, looking to wean Maximilian's heirs away from the Confederate States (although he might have had some difficulty framing that move in a fashion suitable for public consumption).

 

[bguy]

It seemed to me that in order to get a decent series of books out, Turtledove had to force Blaine to be so foolish as to provoke the Second Mexican War without being prepared for it. The book kind of handwaves it as it is an example of Blaine being rash and foolhardy.

The thing is even with the poor state of the U.S. military at the start of the Blaine Administration, the U.S. probably would have won the Second Mexican War if not for two events that were so improbable that there wasn't any way Blaine could have ever reasonably anticipated them. Specifically:

1) That the Confederate States would voluntarily give up slavery and
2) That Britain and France would enter the war despite no provocation from the U.S.

So its hard to have a Blaine who was elected on a promise of taking a hardline against the Confederates do anything different, because objectively there isn't any reason for him to believe his policy won't work. His base assumptions (that the Confederates will never voluntarily give up slavery, and that Britain and France will never go to war to help defend a slave power) are both eminently reasonable, and without British and French support, the U.S. should be able to defeat the Confederates.

What would a smarter Blaine in that timeline have done? The Republicans got back the presidency and Congress by running on an anti-Confederate platform after Tilden removed the stars from the flag? He has to make some show of strength or nationalistic fervor whipping for political reasons, but has to be smart enough not to cause a war that would get the British and French involved. Could he have pushed a big military buildup and/or a purchase of Baja, or did the US need another crisis in a generation to rethink its military and the French wouldn't allow selling of Baja?

Well if we assume Blaine somehow realizes that going to war is a bad idea, here are some alternative options.

1) Purchase Baja (and/or outbid the Confederates for Sonora or Chihuahua). This is probably the best option, but I suspect you are correct and the French will pressure Maximilian not to sell any Mexican territory to the United States;
2) Initiate a U.S. military build up;
3) Seek a military alliance with Haiti and place US forces there;
4) Place tariffs on Confederate exports like cotton and tobacco. This will hurt the U.S. economy (especially since the Confederates will likely respond with retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods), but it will certainly damage the Confederate economy;
5) Announce that the U.S. will henceforth welcome escaped slaves;
6) Authorize U.S. troops to pursue Native American raiders into Confederate territory;
7) Covertly encourage a slave revolt within the Confederate States;
8) Covertly encourage a coup to overthrow Emperor Maximilian.

 

[CT23]

What tactically could the US have done better in the Second Mexican War?

 

[m0585]

What tactically could the US have done better in the Second Mexican War?

Continued to fight perhaps? The only real setback the U.S. had faced were some raids by the French and British Fleets, and the British occupying the northern half of Maine (which didn't happen until the end of the war). None of these, in of themselves, lost the U.S. the war. It was almost like the U.S. lost heart once they experienced the brutal fighting in Louisville To some degree, this was set up by Turtledove that way because then we would get a U.S. that would embrace the Remembrance attitude and set us up for the next three books.

Anyway, to answer the question, if the U.S. had committed it's resources and resolve to the war then they would have beaten the Confederacy. It comes down to numbers and the U.S. simply had more. The British and French aren't going to be able to get adequate forces in place for major offensives for months. In that time frame the U.S. should have been able to at least overrun Kentucky and northern Virginia. Yes Louisville was a meat grinder, but there are other places to attack in Kentucky (Paducah being one of them) I don't think the U.S. would aim for outright conquest of the CSA, but there would definitely be some border adjustments, reparations, and of course the U.S. not allowing the CS to purchase Sonora and Chihuahua.

 

[SilverPhoenix]

It has been a while since I read the book, but I remember most of the characters in the book early on saying that it was incredibly foolish for the US to declare war and chalked it up to hubris on Blaine's part. Blaine may not have anticipated that the French and British would do more than lodge formal diplomatic protests, but he does know that the CSA won last time with better generals despite being short of manpower and material and that the US military had been neglected during the interim time.

In addition, there was a lack of a good casus belli to justify the war. The first Mexican War was controversial and seen as to expand slavery, but Manifest Destiny and the relative walkover Mexico was in the war kind of downplayed that. Here there is the realpolitik concern about not wanting the Confederacy to be strengthened and have a transcontinental railroad, but would a country rally to fight a war for that? It really does make the US look like a bully picking on another country. Now when the French and British intervened and looked to be invading, then the US populace should have patriotically rallied, but that would be subject for another post. Though one would have to wonder if the US loses its nerve and folds because of the economy and needing military supplies from Europe to begin with as many commenters have said about OTL Civil War and why a Trent War would be tougher than US manpower steamroll. But if the US was dependent on European trade, then they would know the UK would be friendly to the Confederacy and could put economic pressure on the US.

I agree with bguy's sentiments above. Ramping up Native raids in Texas to retaliate for those in Kansas would be good. Allowing escaped slaves to have asylum in the US and perhaps even tacitly encouraging Northern based John Brown wannabes to secretly cross into the CSA to liberate slaves would also be a good policy to weaken/enrage the CSA and not look too bad to European opinion which would be anti-slavery. Tarrifs on Southern goods would probably go up with little complaint while building revenue. The USA could maybe even encourage investments in other areas that could grow cotton, or try to pit British Empire cotton against Southern cotton with those tarrifs. Maybe in the newly purchased territories of Sonora and Chihuahua, the US could encourage pro-Mexican separatism too and make it hard for the CSA to pacify it. There are many ways a Blaine Administration could probably drive the CSA crazy without a war that would bring the British and French in, or provoke the CSA into attacking first. Longstreet knew that the CSA had to be smart enough to avoid firing the first shot, so who knows how many humiliations he will allow it to endure without being politically forced to act.

Thoughts?

 

[Dave Howery]

I've always agreed with the OP... I thought the reason behind the war was pretty unlikely. Still, it did set up the rest of the series, which I enjoyed a lot, so I don't gripe too much...

 

[bguy]

It has been a while since I read the book, but I remember most of the characters in the book early on saying that it was incredibly foolish for the US to declare war and chalked it up to hubris on Blaine's part. Blaine may not have anticipated that the French and British would do more than lodge formal diplomatic protests, but he does know that the CSA won last time with better generals despite being short of manpower and material and that the US military had been neglected during the interim time.

US population and industrial strength would almost certainly have been growing at a faster rate than the CS though. As such the US should have been stronger vis a vis the Confederates in the 1880s than they were in the 1860s, so it wasn't unreasonable for Blaine to believe the US could defeat the Confederates in a one on one war.

In addition, there was a lack of a good casus belli to justify the war. The first Mexican War was controversial and seen as to expand slavery, but Manifest Destiny and the relative walkover Mexico was in the war kind of downplayed that. Here there is the realpolitik concern about not wanting the Confederacy to be strengthened and have a transcontinental railroad, but would a country rally to fight a war for that? It really does make the US look like a bully picking on another country.

Agreed with this. The US justification for war was rather lacking. Of course the British and French justifications for entering the war were even more questionable. (Or in the case of the British outright insane since as described below Britain going to war with the U.S. in the 1880s basically means 1/3 of the British population starves.)

Now when the French and British intervened and looked to be invading, then the US populace should have patriotically rallied, but that would be subject for another post. Though one would have to wonder if the US loses its nerve and folds because of the economy and needing military supplies from Europe to begin with as many commenters have said about OTL Civil War and why a Trent War would be tougher than US manpower steamroll. But if the US was dependent on European trade, then they would know the UK would be friendly to the Confederacy and could put economic pressure on the US.

Except that the US could also put extreme economic pressure on Britain as OTL at least the British were very dependent on US grain imports in the early 1880s.

Per the Institute of Economics at the University of Copenhagen, 62.8% of the British population was dependent on foreign wheat imports in the 1880s. (This was compared to just 34.8% of the British population being dependent on food imports in the 1860s).

http://www.economics.ku.dk/research/publications/wp/2004/0428.pdf

And more to the point, the UK's biggest source for wheat in the early 1880s was by far the United States. Per Michael Atkins, The International Grain Trade, Second Edition, pg. 18

for the period of time from 1878-1882, the UK's annual average of wheat imports from the Untied States was 1,753,000 tons. During that same period the UK's annual average of wheat imports from Russia, Germany, Canada, India, Australia, and Argentina combined was 1,026,000 tons.

So if 62.8% of the British population is dependent on foreign wheat imports, and the UK is getting more than half its wheat imports from the United States, blockading the American coast quickly equals massive food riots in every British city.

(Nor do I think it likely that the British are importing substantially less from the US in TL-191 than they did in OTL at this period. Remember the U.S. from 1865 to 1881 was ruled by non-threatening soft line Democrats, so there really wouldn't have been any reason for the British to develop alternative sources of grain supplies . (Especially since the only nation at that time that could have likely provided enough grain to take the place of American grain exports would have been the Russians, and the last thing Victoria Era Britain would want is to be dependent on Russia for its food supply.)

So really all Blaine had to do was keep his nerve and wait for the 1/3 of the British population that is now starving to rise up in rebellion.

 

[Tiro]

When it comes to starting a War no pretext is too absurd, for which you may witness the Assassination of an Austrian Archduke … or the murder of a Pig.

 

[Tiro]

So really all Blaine had to do was keep his nerve and wait for the 1/3 of the British population that is now starving to rise up in rebellion.

Also avoid Disasters so that he can keep the Democrats from screaming "He's just another Lincoln!"

 

[SilverPhoenix]

If I remember correctly, upon the start of hostilities the CSA started shelling Washington DC. The German attache notes that it looked like DC was completely unprepared for it despite the US starting the war. He sees the CSA artillery hit the War Department building and wryly wonders if the USA war effort is better without a War Department. To me that implies that, even without anticipating that France and Britain would intervene, the US went into war without any plan or preparation whatsoever. Later into the book at Samuel Clemens newspaper, they joke about how the only US "victory" is the capturing of Pocahontas, Arkansas and then later joke that it was lost pretty fast too. If they really thought it was about US willpower and not US ability to prosecute the war, they wouldn't have been able to persuade Blaine to surrender when he didn't want to initially after the battle in Montana.

That is why I think Turtledove was screwing the US and wanking the CSA on purpose to set up his American Front series. And if Blaine knew that the US was so weak and still suffering from War-Between-the-States malaise/syndrome, there are probably better options he could have done than to declare war without even being barely ready. So a smart Blaine knows he can't declare war without preparing more for it first, but what could be politically possible for him since he can't please his base by allowing the purchase to go without some sort of fight. We have some good ideas above, and some questions about how a more realistic TL-191 wouldn't be able to economically let that happen.

Any more ideas?

 

[bguy]

If I remember correctly, upon the start of hostilities the CSA started shelling Washington DC. The German attache notes that it looked like DC was completely unprepared for it despite the US starting the war. He sees the CSA artillery hit the War Department building and wryly wonders if the USA war effort is better without a War Department. To me that implies that, even without anticipating that France and Britain would intervene, the US went into war without any plan or preparation whatsoever. Later into the book at Samuel Clemens newspaper, they joke about how the only US "victory" is the capturing of Pocahontas, Arkansas and then later joke that it was lost pretty fast too.

Sure, but that doesn't mean the US wasn't capable of eventually building an army and defeating the Confederates. (OTL the American Army wasn't ready for war at the start of the Civil War or either of the World Wars either).

If they really thought it was about US willpower and not US ability to prosecute the war, they wouldn't have been able to persuade Blaine to surrender when he didn't want to initially after the battle in Montana.

But by that point the U.S. was fighting not just the Confederates but also the British and French. And (assuming the British have found some way around their dependency on American grain exports), the U.S. in the 1880s doesn't have the ability to prosecute a war against all three of those nations at once. But just because the U.S. can't defeat the Confederates, Britain, and France together, doesn't mean it wouldn't have been able to defeat the Confederates in a one on one fight.

That is why I think Turtledove was screwing the US and wanking the CSA on purpose to set up his American Front series. And if Blaine knew that the US was so weak and still suffering from War-Between-the-States malaise/syndrome, there are probably better options he could have done than to declare war without even being barely ready. So a smart Blaine knows he can't declare war without preparing more for it first, but what could be politically possible for him since he can't please his base by allowing the purchase to go without some sort of fight. We have some good ideas above, and some questions about how a more realistic TL-191 wouldn't be able to economically let that happen.

Again though, its not unreasonable for Blaine to believe that the superior US industry and population would enable the US to eventually defeat the Confederates in a one on one fight. Blaine's mistake was in not realizing that Britain and France would enter the war, and that was a reasonable mistake because (even putting aside the fact that Britain is essentially starving itself if it blockades the American coast), there was no reason for Blaine to believe that the British and French would go to war to defend a slave power and even less reason for him to believe that the South would voluntarily give up its slaves just so it can purchase Chihuahua and Sonora.

 

[Tiro]

Out of curiosity, do you think the twenty years between 1861 and 1881 would alter the strategies & tactics employed in a War Between the States?

Who do you think would be the defining characters (Generals and Politicians) on both sides?

Do you think that the US would try to reabsorb the Confederacy or would Blaine settle for making the South his *****?

 

[CT23]

Wouldn't it have been better for the US to try to encircle Louisville rather than drive straight in? I believe Dowling said in one of the later books that that would have been a better strategy.

 

[SilverPhoenix]

If we accept the premise that Blaine would not have anticipated that the French and British would intervene in the war, and that he assumed that the US advantage in men and material would eventually prevail over a steep learning curve against the CSA, what could he have done differently during the war? Turtledove doesn't give us many details in order to advance his Great War plotline. We know that Blaine is persuaded with some difficulty to end the war and doom his political and his political party's future despite the victory in Montana. That implies more than a lack of nerve on the USA's part but a deeper understanding that the war is unwinnable. Unfortunately we can't tell with the book as to whether the USA started appropriating all the funds necessary to do a full buildup once the war started or when the UK and France intervened.

So...... let's come up with a good POD within TL-191 that Blaine could have done after the war was started, that is something he can do and rather something dictated by outside events. So we can't assume that the Battle of Louisville goes any better and gives him the leverage to proceed more. It has to be something he can do. If he can lean on the army to not be as dumb in planning the battle and they will listen, then that is something.

For me, it is still wanting to avoid a repeat of the first War Between the States debacle at all costs. The USA has to look tough without going into a war unprepared, even if the math say it should prevail in the end. I would lean on Mexico to sell Baja too and play up hypocrisy if they won't sell Baja but will the other two states. After all Baja is now an exclave. I would also ramp up native raids and slave liberation raids. If a war is to come, make it so that the CSA declares first. That way if the UK and France intervene, it can be spun more so as other countries invading without cause rather than helping a country the US attacked first.

If it is after war has been declared, I would have pushed for the mobilization as much as would be possible for a 1880s time frame. Even if I didn't know the UK and France would intervene, I wouldn't want to take any chances of another defeat like the last war. I would want to make numbers and quantity of industrialized material count.

For war goals, in addition to stopping the purchase of Sonora and Chihuahua, I would want to reclaim Kentucky. Destroying the natives in Sequoyah would be a major goal to prevent more raids, or maybe taking Sequoyah itself too. One thing I am surprised about in the Great War part of TL-191 is not taking the VA part of the Delmarva peninsula for limiting the naval ability of VA. That would seem to be a key objective too. Unless the CSA folded like a house of cards, I don't think the USA would be able to reconquer and reintegrate the CSA. Maybe at best they could make Texas and Cuba go independent too.

 

[Dave Howery]

am I the only one who thought that the proposed CSA transcontinental railroad was kind of a crappy one? The main problem being that it ends on the Gulf of California, requiring ships to go all the way around Baja to get out into the open ocean... realistically, Blaine would have laughed and pointed this out to the world, but that wouldn't have set up the Great Wars...

 

[bguy]

am I the only one who thought that the proposed CSA transcontinental railroad was kind of a crappy one? The main problem being that it ends on the Gulf of California, requiring ships to go all the way around Baja to get out into the open ocean... realistically, Blaine would have laughed and pointed this out to the world, but that wouldn't have set up the Great Wars...

It would also have been an incredibly expensive railroad to build (having to cross desert and mountain terrain that is thick with Apaches). And since the Confederates don't have much in the way of Pacific trade, I don't see how the railroad would ever hope to pay for itself. The entire project seems like a gigantic white elephant.

 

[Tiro]

Now that's an interesting interpretation of this particular element of President Longstreet's policy; in fact I tend to agree that the challenges of building a Southern Transcontinental Railroad would be an uphill struggle (not least against the individual States and the Confederate constitution) and this is a way of showing that even Great Presidents can't always think through ALL the technical details.

Having said that if nothing else such a Transcontinental Railroad DOES open up some possible options for the Confederate States on a Strategic level (if nothing else it allows them to counter the United States by launching "spoiler" attacks, raids really, wherever US defences are thinnest): I'd also like to point out that while Sonoran ports make relatively poor commercial entrepôts for Asian ventures, they are much more useful for trading with the Pacific coast of Central and South America, as well as a useful MILITARY port (although more for Commerce Raiding and Coastal Bombardment than anything else).

One cannot help but suspect that the fact that acquiring Sonora and Chihuahua allows the CSA to exert pressure all along the Northern frontier of Mexico (with Baja California effectively held Hostage in isolation) might well have entered into President Longstreet's thinking (especially since the Confederacy can theoretically project power down Mexico's pacific coast by Sea).

 

[wilji1090]

Remove the Drakaitis that the USA briefly came down with?

In all seriousness, the big issue with the first book is that even if the Union had no desire to reignite conflict, the fact that Lincoln's successors all the way to Blaine did nothing to fortify their borders. Like I know that it's unrealistic to expect something like a wall, but military fortifications should've been feasible at the least.

Really, like someone mentioned, if Wade Hampton had gotten into power then it's very likely that Mexico would be more willing to sell their territory to the USA in the face of such a firebrand. This would likely anger Hampton to doing something stupid which would lead the British and the French to (albeit reluctantly) give some form of aid to the USA or at the very least turn a blind eye to the events in North America. Now whether Blaine would simply tweak the Confederacy's nose by withdrawing and allowing the status quo antebellum remain the same save for any purchases of Mexican territory? I can't see that happening sadly. But it'd be interesting if Blaine chose to try and humiliate the CSA in such a way. Of course, would Schlieffen move to lobby a Teuto-American alliance? I'm not sure.

 

[threadnecromancer]

US population and industrial strength would almost certainly have been growing at a faster rate than the CS though. As such the US should have been stronger vis a vis the Confederates in the 1880s than they were in the 1860s, so it wasn't unreasonable for Blaine to believe the US could defeat the Confederates in a one on one war.



Agreed with this. The US justification for war was rather lacking. Of course the British and French justifications for entering the war were even more questionable. (Or in the case of the British outright insane since as described below Britain going to war with the U.S. in the 1880s basically means 1/3 of the British population starves.)




Except that the US could also put extreme economic pressure on Britain as OTL at least the British were very dependent on US grain imports in the early 1880s.

Per the Institute of Economics at the University of Copenhagen, 62.8% of the British population was dependent on foreign wheat imports in the 1880s. (This was compared to just 34.8% of the British population being dependent on food imports in the 1860s).

http://www.economics.ku.dk/research/publications/wp/2004/0428.pdf

And more to the point, the UK's biggest source for wheat in the early 1880s was by far the United States. Per Michael Atkins, The International Grain Trade, Second Edition, pg. 18

for the period of time from 1878-1882, the UK's annual average of wheat imports from the Untied States was 1,753,000 tons. During that same period the UK's annual average of wheat imports from Russia, Germany, Canada, India, Australia, and Argentina combined was 1,026,000 tons.

So if 62.8% of the British population is dependent on foreign wheat imports, and the UK is getting more than half its wheat imports from the United States, blockading the American coast quickly equals massive food riots in every British city.

(Nor do I think it likely that the British are importing substantially less from the US in TL-191 than they did in OTL at this period. Remember the U.S. from 1865 to 1881 was ruled by non-threatening soft line Democrats, so there really wouldn't have been any reason for the British to develop alternative sources of grain supplies . (Especially since the only nation at that time that could have likely provided enough grain to take the place of American grain exports would have been the Russians, and the last thing Victoria Era Britain would want is to be dependent on Russia for its food supply.)

So really all Blaine had to do was keep his nerve and wait for the 1/3 of the British population that is now starving to rise up in rebellion.

I really do think the only way to make TL 191 plausible would have been to have a Trent affair war. But I suspect Turtledove didn't want to compete with Harrison's execrable novel on the subject.

Given what Turtledove seems to present, where Britain doesn't actually go to war with the US in the 1860s, it is difficult seeing why the British government would take the measures it would have to to ensure that they could fight the US.

But then I'm still uncertain how the CSA could really industrialize like HT suggests without West Virginia.