ThePest179
Banned
As horrible as it already was, your goal, if you can accept it, is to make the American Civil War as bloody and awful as possible. Good luck.
And under the laws and traditions of the times, that is within the law...
Burn all the cities, liberate all the slaves, get all the Europeans involved.
The South does significantly better in the West (maybe have Grant killed and his army routed at Shiloh?), slowing the Union advance by essentially 6 months to a year.
With the war effort in much worse shape, McClellan wins in 1864, and signs a peace of exhaustion, recognizing the Confederacy (with KY, MO, WV, and TN all remaining in the Union). The North is exhausted after the war, and the South has seen much of the OTL devastation (although spared from e.g. Sherman's March). However, there remain large numbers of freed slaves and Unionists at arms in the South, who refuse to accept the Confederate victory. Unable to return to their homes (and frequently in fear of their lives), these elements take matters into their own hands.
The result is a nasty, prolonged guerrilla conflict, with frequent war crimes. African Americans especially are victimized, with unaccompanied blacks often hanged out of hand by Confederates who assume them to be guerrillas. The insurgency is supplied with weapons and equipment from sympathetic abolitionists and escaped slaves, taking advantage of the porous borders along the Appalachians to smuggle in arms and equipment. The Confederate government imposes increasingly draconian measures to deal with the rebellion, prompting the remaining rebels to more extreme acts, which in turn inspire even harsher crackdowns.
By the time the insurgency is finally crushed, much of the Southern economy is ruined. North-South relations are utterly poisonous, and the CSA has become essentially a police state. Any hint of anything that could remotely be considered as abolitionist tendencies is likely to lead to a lynching; many individuals will use this opportunity to settle old feuds. Many of the survivors of the Unionist bands (as well as some of the soldiers who spent years hunting them) have turned to organized crime.
What about British and French involvement in the Civil War, especially with a POD in which the United States is more "wanked" in both the Free and Slaver sections?
This might trigger the Russians to have a go at Constantinople?
The South does significantly better in the West (maybe have Grant killed and his army routed at Shiloh?), slowing the Union advance by essentially 6 months to a year.
Have the CSA adopt a defensive strategy. Pump out that fortification bonus.
One side or the other enlists "savage" Native American auxilliaries and sends them out to raid the other side's lines of communication?
Have the South lay siege on a Northern city.
Along with the escalations above make it a free way so that not only a more abolitionist North and pro slavery South you have a states rights West?