I think we've gone over why a war probably would not have arisen out of the Trent affair, but let's say it did. How does the war play out?
The Trent War
- Thread starter Snowstalker
- Start date
Snake Featherston
Banned
USA loses in two years with a streak of luck equivalent to that possessed by Nazi Germany in WWII, a year and a half at the most realistic, six months in the worst case scenario. While fighting the Confederacy across a region the size of European Russia, it cannot take on and win a war against the British Empire at the exact same time. Britain is too economically powerful to it to defeat even without the US Civil War at this point.
It won't go down immediately, I mean Josiah Gorgas did far more with less than the USA has at this point, but the very severity and length of the war will make it a painful defeat for the United States. It's a situation where failure is the only option.
It won't go down immediately, I mean Josiah Gorgas did far more with less than the USA has at this point, but the very severity and length of the war will make it a painful defeat for the United States. It's a situation where failure is the only option.
Mark 4 Morrel Barrel
Banned
Sealions
Pre-1900 Trent War
Post 1900 Well Sealion of course
Future Histroy Tea Party takes over AMERIKA nukes the entire fuc*ing world for shits and giggles commits genocide against all nonChristians becauuse dont Christians do that and then blwo themselves up
ASB-Not really any Sealions- oh wait no there the Reverse Sealios now and their realitives.
Anyway trent war equals Britswin. If your looking for a more fair fight beween the US and UK during the Civil War might I suggest Peter Tsouras very well written Britannia's Fist from Civil war to World War. And its Sequel Rainbow of Blood
Pre-1900 Trent War
Post 1900 Well Sealion of course
Future Histroy Tea Party takes over AMERIKA nukes the entire fuc*ing world for shits and giggles commits genocide against all nonChristians becauuse dont Christians do that and then blwo themselves up
ASB-Not really any Sealions- oh wait no there the Reverse Sealios now and their realitives.
Anyway trent war equals Britswin. If your looking for a more fair fight beween the US and UK during the Civil War might I suggest Peter Tsouras very well written Britannia's Fist from Civil war to World War. And its Sequel Rainbow of Blood
The Union may not be screwed
- It would Unite the North even more support and long term volunteers enlist
- Lincoln might be given a freer hand to select generals, he may not need all of the political generals.
- Emancipation Proclemation givn sooner, early 1862
- USA is able to mobalise resources faster since it is closer to the theatres of action
I would like to see one more POD occur. That is Nathaniel Lyon is not killed at Wilson's Creek. The Union still loses the battle but Lyon is able to halt the Confederates in SW Missouri as Union forces are built up. I would like to use Lyon for a campaign in Ontario.
Overall strategy differs some:
- The blockade is scaled back some to protect North
- New Orleans is still on, given a greater push to capture before British naval presence is felt.
- Less aggressive in the East, more to protect Washington and Northern Sheandoah valley. Troop strength is used to defend Maine and New York as well. Peninsular cmpaign is called off.
- Lyon sets up a base in Toledo to train the new recruits from Wis, Mich, Ohio, and PA. Uses some regiments from East to aid in training.
- Grants campaign on the rivers in Kentucky and Tennessee is the same
- Grant is left in charge of both Buell and his own army after Shiloh
- Grant captures Corinth in short turn and foce Beurgard's surrender.
- Grant then captures Jackson, Miss and Vicksburg
This open things up in the West along with the capture of New Orleans
While Grant is on the river campaign, Lyon begins his campaign in Ontario. He captures Windsor and then makes an end around to cut off and isolate the lower portion of the Province.
Grant then turns East to capture Chattanooga
Sherman is split of off Grants force to capture Mobile
Lyon turns east as well after securing the Great Lakes and focusses on the St. Lawrence to capture Montreal.
The CSA is victorious in the Sheandoah Valley and use that to invade Maryland. They are tharted at Sharpsburg,
The Union is like a steam roller with Grant and Lyon.
- It would Unite the North even more support and long term volunteers enlist
- Lincoln might be given a freer hand to select generals, he may not need all of the political generals.
- Emancipation Proclemation givn sooner, early 1862
- USA is able to mobalise resources faster since it is closer to the theatres of action
I would like to see one more POD occur. That is Nathaniel Lyon is not killed at Wilson's Creek. The Union still loses the battle but Lyon is able to halt the Confederates in SW Missouri as Union forces are built up. I would like to use Lyon for a campaign in Ontario.
Overall strategy differs some:
- The blockade is scaled back some to protect North
- New Orleans is still on, given a greater push to capture before British naval presence is felt.
- Less aggressive in the East, more to protect Washington and Northern Sheandoah valley. Troop strength is used to defend Maine and New York as well. Peninsular cmpaign is called off.
- Lyon sets up a base in Toledo to train the new recruits from Wis, Mich, Ohio, and PA. Uses some regiments from East to aid in training.
- Grants campaign on the rivers in Kentucky and Tennessee is the same
- Grant is left in charge of both Buell and his own army after Shiloh
- Grant captures Corinth in short turn and foce Beurgard's surrender.
- Grant then captures Jackson, Miss and Vicksburg
This open things up in the West along with the capture of New Orleans
While Grant is on the river campaign, Lyon begins his campaign in Ontario. He captures Windsor and then makes an end around to cut off and isolate the lower portion of the Province.
Grant then turns East to capture Chattanooga
Sherman is split of off Grants force to capture Mobile
Lyon turns east as well after securing the Great Lakes and focusses on the St. Lawrence to capture Montreal.
The CSA is victorious in the Sheandoah Valley and use that to invade Maryland. They are tharted at Sharpsburg,
The Union is like a steam roller with Grant and Lyon.
this discussion has been done on here many times, and it generally boils down to the fact that the RN can blockade the US into submission pretty much at will. Regardless of what happens on land.
Snake Featherston
Banned
And of course by recognizing the Confederacy the Union's already lost before it starts even shooting anyone.....
.
More volunteers do not bigger armies make, at least not by themselves. To build armies, you need weapons. And to get weapons, you need money. Both of those commodities are going to be in very short supply in any Trent War scenario.
1) In OTL, Union finances depended heavily on three sources...first, tariff revenue; second, a steady flow of gold and silver out of the Western mines, and third, foreign loans, primarily from Britain. All three of these are going to essentially dry up if a Trent War breaks out.
In OTL, the South paid something like 80% of the tariff revenue which was collected by the Federal Government. The CSA won't be forwarding those revenues to the Feds anymore. And the British blockade will destroy the trade which generates tariff revenues. So they won't be collecting much else there, either.
The British blockade will effectively cut off the flow of gold and silver into federal coffers. If the British occupy Northern California...which they were very likely to do, and there would have been precious little the Union could have done to prevent it...that will doubly screw the Union's ability to get specie from the Western mines. There is no transcontinental railway at this time, and no real prospect of constructing one in the middle of a war. Lincoln called Western gold and silver the "lifeblood of the Union," and for good reason. Without it, the Union financial situation basically dies.
If Britain is at war with the Union, it certainly won't be loaning the Union money to prosecute the war. And it will use whatever influence it has to make sure nobody else does, either. About the only realistic source for loans outside Britain would be Russia, and Russia was broke.
2) The Union heavily depended on imported weaponry right up into 1863 in the East, and even later in the West, in OTL. Northern industry eventually came to produce nearly everything the Union army needed, but it took while to get to that point. The Western armies, in particular, were still using large numbers of European imports, many of them smoothbores, until just prior to the Atlanta Campaign! If the flow of imports is cut off...as it will be, once the Brits put in the blockade...then we can figure the Union might mobilize, for a Trent War scenario, perhaps half, or maybe even two-thirds, of the number of men it did in OTL during 1861-1863.
This is to leave aside the issue of how the Union is going to make gunpowder for any length of time. It got almost all of its niter from Britain.
Snake Featherston
Banned
Josiah Gorgas did miracles with less available to use than Meiggs would have had in the same situation. No Union troops would be beaten for lack of munitions any more than Confederate forces were OTL.
Were the deposits in Mammoth Caves totally gone? I mean, if the Union could hold Kentucky, they had at least one location.
Unless I'm totally wrong, in which case I'll shut up.
Unless I'm totally wrong, in which case I'll shut up.
Rogue Shadows
Banned
Also, an alternative did exist - smokeless powder - though it wasn't safe yet. Still, a desperate nation might make a few innovations...
67th Tigers
Banned
Guncotton is a non-starter.
Where does the US obtain sulfuric and nitric acid from?
Not really.
The fact is the Confederate army was probably about half the size it could have been during 1861 and 1862, the only period in the war where they had a relatively good chance of winning, because it couldn't arm the volunteers and had to turn thousands of them away.
And the way the Confederacy finally solved that problem was by culling battlefields for weapons dropped by dead or wounded Union soldiers. That's not a technique the Union is going to find particularly useful.
Finally, the Confederacy was able to get loans in Britain to pay for its buildup. The Union won't, because it will be at war with Britain in this scenario.
EDIT: As for the gunpowder issue which I see is what you were actually replying to, yes, the Confederacy did work wonders. But they imported hundreds of thousands of pounds of powder and niter from Britain during the war, getting it through the blockade. A British blockade of the North will be much more effective right from the get-go than the Union blockade of the South was, which was only really effective after the Union had over 3 years to build up it's navy, and more importantly, had captured most of the important harbors of the South. And the niter caves the South depended on for much of its niter were in the southern mountains. There aren't many of those up north.
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Aside from that, guncotton was so unstable and dangerous that NOBODY was using it as a propellant in the 1860s. It stayed out of use until somebody finally figured out how to stabilize it in the 1880s.
Where did Josiah Gorgas?
How much guncotton did the Confederacy use during the war, Snake? Exactly none.
Rogue Shadows
Banned
Because they had almost no industry to do anything with it. The USA had considerably more industry and ability.
And making safe smokeless powder some time in the 1860s is simply a matter of making a few breakthrus a little earlier - none of the technology involved has to advance to any great extent.
Certainly it wouldn't be the greatest technological leap in history. If the Union were pressed hard enough, you could think of it as essentially a steampunk version of the Manhattan Project.
True. But the fact that NOBODY was using it certainly played a role in that decision as well.
Which is why nobody did it in OTL until the 1880s.
Depending on a lucky break to save your ass is not sound national policy. Unfortunately, the Union didn't have any handwavium mines. Rogue Shadows
Banned
Nobody was using it because nobody had a pressing need to. The Great Powers had the ability to supply their own gunpowder, no other industrializing nations with the capacity to advance smokeless powder got into a fight with them long enough to get this "Manhattan Project" going.
Which is why nobody did it in OTL until the 1880s.
No, it's not. But the Confederacy was depending on just that OTL, so I think we have there proof that governments *will* do that.