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As far as strategy was concerned, Jomini didn't just dominate West Point study, it was all there was! Sylvanus Thayer was determined to transform West Point into a kind of American École Polytechnique. Dennis Hart Mahan turned the Jomini dial up to eleven.

South Carolina and Mississippi were African-American majority in 1860, so these seem at least possible to do something with. In other states, yes, it would be a lot harder....

Phil Sheridan, always the "hard war" man! But it's also fairly clear that the U.S. Army may not have gotten much return on its investment sending Sheridan as observer to the Franco-Prussian War. His conclusion: "Nowadays war is pretty much the same everywhere, and this one offered no marked...

Phil Sheridan would likely be passing out the party favors!

The irony of ironies: It happened despite Lee's wishes! Thinking about Appomattox in this context always brings me back to Jay Winik's April 1865. Winik is making argument that the United States really was reborn in the spring of 1865 at Appomattox, and Durham, and Citronelle, and, well...

For me the even bigger question would be: How would the American - Northern - people be changed by doing it, if they did do it? In the Boer War, these measures were perpetrated by a certain slice of the British Army, without the knowledge of the British public back home; and when awareness of...

This little side discussion has me thinking again of that terrific scene in Spielberg's Lincoln (2012) between Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens. "That's the untempered version of Reconstruction."

I do think the second factor was the important one - to the extent Sherman had an effect, I think it was localized to south Georgia and South Carolina. In the end, violence happens, I think, to the extent you incentivize it, even for a much beaten down population. Lee surrendered, and urged...

I was thinking more like the Boers; but the American Civil War was unique in some ways, and that could be the case here, too. If it happened, it would certainly also vary by region. A place like Missouri might be more fertile given that there was something like low level insurgency underway...

It's also a high risk avenue for making the Lost Cause continue on as a long-term insurgency, though.

Now that you mention it, it kinda did bother me; but the space parts of your narrative are so compelling and so well thought out that I didn't want to big down the thread with prods about it.

Love this timeline. But I share your concerns about this installment.

All this is true. And of course now we are moving into the era of reusable rockets. And some propellants are far less amenable to reuse of engines than others. There is a good reason methalox is so popular with rockets in development.

It seems most likely, though I would argue there is a little room for modest changes. 1. The Austrian occupation zones were not decided until July 1945, and they were mostly based on where the Allied armies had halted. If the German collapse in Italy and the West is quicker, it's not...

It's a good point.

I don't have time for a full response just now. But what I was referring to was Yamaguchi's strike force finding TF 16, not the scout planes. Because Tone's #4 plane was so far off in its location report, Hiryu's noon strike had no way of knowing just exactly whether Yorktown's group was what...

But that's the big "if." The other "if," is - that first "if" having been consummated - whether they actually find TF 16. Which in OTL, they never did. They provide a breakdown of what they assume Zuikaku brings to the engagement: Hence, in this counterfactual exercise we assume that also...

Right. Killed leading a suicidal charge on Schofield's entrenchments at the Battle of Franklin, November 1864.

Interesting. That would be a surprise to me, honestly, because the only thing I've ever read of him saying about Brown was pretty negative. It was in his controversial 1863 memorandum to his fellow general officers in the Army of Tennessee to immediately emancipate all slaves in the CSA: "The...