1860s Army Comparison

[robcraufurd]

Section 2f: Maine

Unfortunately for Maine, situated on the front line of any potential conflict between the US and Britain, its weapon situation was no better than its southern neighbours. In fact, the failure of Maine to properly equip its troops was already being noted before the Trent was boarded: in September 1861, the state governor wrote to the federal government announcing that although the Eighth Maine was about to march ‘I have no arms, and can get none for it. Will you provide, and where?’[72] This dependence on the benevolence of government quickly grated: like most other states, Maine found that government arms were ‘so unsatisfactory on account of their imperfections and inefficiency’ that they had to go to the European market.[73]

In 1861, Maine purchased 1,960 Enfield rifles from London, which armed the 10th and 13th Regiments; 1,000 Windsor rifles from Massachusetts, which went to the 7th; and armed the 1st with its store of Springfield rifles. The remaining regiments were armed by the government, predominantly with muskets (2nd-6th Regiments) or Enfield and Austrian rifles (11th, 12th and 14th regiments).[74] 1862 saw little improvement in this picture: the regiments armed in 1862 received 3,591 Enfield rifles, 1,735 .71 French rifles, 825 foreign .71 muskets, 2,620 converted .61 muskets, and 900 Springfield rifles.[75] Foreign rifles represented 55% of the weapons distributed that year, and foreign weapons 63%.

The capacity of Maine’s own stores to replace this was limited. Their 1861 purchases had been hypothecated to existing regiments, leaving 381 weapons in arsenals, 688 in possession of companies and individuals, 22 in the adjutant-general’s office, and 1,547 in the possession of disbanded companies.[76] However, as those 1,547 weapons were never to be seen again, they should be discounted from calculations.[77]Furthermore, the quality of the weapons which could be found (as should be expected) was extremely poor. Maine’s arsenals included 161 ‘musketoons’, 54 ‘old English muskets (Trophies),’ and 1 broken musket.[78] The weapons assigned to companies were being ‘kept in constant use… for drill and instruction… Not less than fifteen hundred State muskets have been used in this manner, to an extent that has rendered them almost worthless. It is impossible to secure any proper care of arms, from recruits totally unaccustomed to their use”.[79] This undoubtedly contributed to the fact that the adjutant-general reported that ‘The performance of no duty the present year, by our enrolled or uniformed militia, as such, has come to my knowledge officially.’[80] Even by pressing elderly and unserviceable weapons into the hands of troops, therefore, Maine would have been able to raise 5,082 troops fewer than it did historically.

[72] I. Washburn Jr, Governor of Maine, to Hon. Simon Cameron, Secretary of War, 14 September 1861: War of the rebellion series 3 vol. 1 pp. 675-6 [link]
[73]Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Maine, for the year ending December 31 1861, p.50 [link]
[74]ME AG 1861 report, exhibit 4 p.7 [link]
[75]Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Maine, for the year ending December 31 1862, appendix G, exhibit no. 4, pp.8ff [link]
[76]ME AG 1861 report, appendix H table 23 p.45 [link]
[77]ME AG 1862 report, appendix H table 11 p.7 [link]
[78]ME AG 1861 report, appendix H table 17 p.32 [link]
[79]ME AG 1861 report, p.49 [link]
[80]ME AG 1862 report, p.152 [link]

Section 2g: Wisconsin

Although only the 1862 report for Wisconsin provides usable information, some cross-referencing with mustering in dates can allow this report to be classified into 1861 (with the last regiment being the 13th Wisconsin, mustering in on 17 October 1861) and 1862 (with the 14th Wisconsin mustering in on 30 January 1862).[81] As regiments did not receive their arms on mustering in, this undoubtedly understates the effect of a blockade; nevertheless, it provides the best proxy for making the calculation and can be excused as erring on the side of caution. Most 1861 troops received Springfield rifles (3,140, or 24%); the remainder received a mix of rifles and smoothbores (22% domestic, 7% foreign), Austrian rifles (16%) or Dresden rifles (16%), and domestic smoothbores (15%).[82]

In 1862, the effect of foreign purchases began to be seen. Only 5% received Springfields, and 9% smoothbores. Instead, 20% received Austrian rifles, 28% Dresden rifles, 33% Enfields (including one regiment with one company of Springfields and nine Enfields), and 5% Prussian muskets. To compensate for this, at the start of 1862 Wisconsin had in store 115 rifled muskets, 40 sword bayonet rifles, 518 M1855 ‘brass mounted rifles’, and fewer than 600 weapons in the camps of rendezvous- ‘in a most wretched condition; most of them spoiled, no doubt.’[83] Assuming that the adjutant general was over-pessimistic about the state of the weapons, and granting him the upper limit of his estimate of weapons available, Wisconsin would have fallen more than fifteen thousand weapons short of its 1862 mobilisation.

[81] “13th Wisconsin Infantry History,” Wisconsin Family History [link]; “14th Wisconsin Infantry History,” Wisconsin Family History [link]
[82][Wisconsin] Adjutant General’s Report for the year ending December 31, 1862, appendix D, p.228 [link]
[83]Annual Report of the Adjutant General for the State of Wisconsin for the year 1861, p.83 [link]

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[robcraufurd]

Section 2h: Summary

Summarising the above statistics clearly shows that the picture at the national level is consistent with the picture at the state level. In the event of a Trent war, these seven states alone would have fallen short of their arms requirements for 1862 by almost 165,000 weapons- 25,000 more than the total of all weapons produced domestically by both private firms and the Springfield armoury to June 1862.

State;Total weapons issued in 1862;Foreign weapons issued in 1862;Arsenal and militia weapons in January 1862;Net surplus/(deficit);As percent of weapons issued;
New York;152,540;77,143;14,370;(62,773);(41.2%);
Ohio;100,061;86,553;20,956;(65,597);(65.6%);
Massachusetts;25,131;13,324;6,956;(6,368);(25.3%);
Iowa;19,614;19,014;10,276;(8,738);(44.5%);
New Jersey;11,862;9,072;9,630;558;4.7%;
Maine;9,671;6,151;1,069;(5,082);(52.6%);
Wisconsin;20,148;16,375;1,273;(15,102);(75.0%)
Total;339,027;227,632;64,530;(163,102);(48.1%)

As the model used to calculate the deficit incorporates the emptying of the State arsenals, the only place from which this shortfall could be made good would be the Federal arsenals. Unfortunately, detailed records no longer exist from the point at which a Trent War would have broken out to show us what was in store. The earliest record that exists dates from 30 June 1862, almost a year after the last call for volunteers, seven months after the December 1861 instruction that no further regiments should be raised, and three months after the recruiting offices were closed down.[84] This interim period had allowed stores of weapons to build up once more: the annual return listed 335,896 weapons as being held.[85]

However, like the weapons in state arsenals, these were often the worst available to the Union. Commissioners complained that ‘tens of thousands of the refuse arms of Europe are at this moment in our arsenals, and thousands more still to arrive, not one of which will outlast a single campaign,’ while Ripley himself commented at the start of June 1862 that ‘the number now on hand of good rifled arms, both American and foreign, for issue to troops in service is about 94,000.’[86] If the Union were forced to increase its troop requirements following the outbreak of war with Britain, this precarious margin of safety would be swallowed up filling the deficit of the seven states listed above.

Conclusions:

Looking at armaments distributed at the state level confirms the picture at the federal level, of domestic smoothbores succeeded by foreign rifles.
The Union’s reserves of weapons were dwarfed by its purchases overseas, and weapons in store were often unsuitable for issue.
It is probable that, had the Union been severed from the European arms market, it would have struggled to maintain its historical troop deployment levels even with poor quality weapons.

[84] L Thomas, Adjutant General, General Order No. 105, 3 December 1861: War of the rebellion, series 3 vol. 1 p. 418 [link]; L Thomas, Adjutant General, General Order No. 33, 3 April 1862: War of the rebellion, series 3 vol. 2 pp.2-3 [link]
[85] James W. Ripley to Hon. E.M. Stanton, 21 November 1862: War of the rebellion, series 3 vol. 2 p.858 [link]
[86] J Holt and Robert Dale Owen (commissioners) to Hon E.M. Stanton, 1 July 1862: War of the rebellion, series 3 vol. 2 p.191 [link]; James W. Ripley to Hon. E.M. Stanton, 7 June 1862: War of the rebellion, series 3 vol. 2 p.113 [link]

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[robcraufurd]

Section 3: Completeness of evidence

To establish the completeness of the calculations above, we must consider how representative the states examined are. On a numerical basis, the two most accessible statistics are the total number of Union regiments raised by these states during the war, and the number of three-year volunteer regiments each state was called on to provide by President Lincoln in his request of 7 July 1862. These are as follows:

State;1862 quota;Total regiments raised;
New York;28;194;
Ohio;17;197;
Massachusetts;12;62;
Iowa;5;48;
New Jersey;5;40;
Maine;5;32;
Wisconsin;5;53;
Total calculated;77;626;
All states total;150;1462;
Calculated as proportion;51.3%;42.8%

The calculation, therefore, appears a reasonably strong sampling of the overall Union war effort. However, there are further states for which no calculation was possible but where the historian can find indicative comments about their ability to provide for themselves in the event of separation from the European market. In Illinois:

commissioners were appointed who visited eastern cities, in the summer of 1861, to negotiate a purchase of arms contemplated by that law. The extreme high price at which arms were then held in the market, as well as an urgent request from the General Government to States to withdraw from the market and prevent competition, induced the commissioners to make no further effort to purchase. During the present summer, I am informed, another effort was made to purchase arms for twenty regiments of infantry, but without success. They, however, purchased, in 1861, 999 Enfield rifles…[87]​

Similarly, Indiana made several ‘ineffectual efforts to increase the State’s armament’ in America: there were simply no weapons to buy, and so they headed to Europe.[88] On the outbreak of war, Kansas reported not only that they were ‘entirely unarmed’,’ but ‘too poor to buy such arms as are necessary for our defence.’[89] When the federal government ordered state agents out of the arms market, Pennsylvania reported that they had made no independent purchases. At the end of 1861, to make ends meet it was hurriedly repairing broken weapons and calling in arms from its volunteer militia companies, which ‘have nearly disappeared within the last nine months’.[90] Both New Hampshire and West Virginia were forced to purchase weapons from Massachusetts; it seems unlikely that they would have chosen to do this if there had been a large supply of weapons in the market, particularly as the arms provided were 960 M1841 rifles to the former and 2,000 altered muskets to the latter.[91]

None of these states provide evidence of a large supply of weapons not already considered. Nor, indeed, does the Union Navy. In most cases, the Navy requisitioned its weapons from the army; in others, they competed with them for the limited supply of guns available. For instance, the Navy’s order of 700 Spencer carbines in July 1861 meant that no weapons were delivered to the army until after the completion of the contract in December 1862.[92] Their only significant independent order for weapons was a July 1861 contract for 10,000 .70 M1858 Plymouth rifles from Whitney, but it took until February 1863 to receive 100 rifles; by December 1863, only 5,300 had been delivered.[93]

Indeed, the government made it clear that there was no additional source of weapons available: ‘Not a gun more could be purchased if all the Governors were in the market and the price doubled.’[94] This was not because the government was overly restrictive on the quality of guns it would buy. As we have already seen, it was prepared to tolerate both the inferior American rifles of P.S. Justice and vast numbers of mediocre European guns purchased in the first years of the war. Nor was the latter a giant ploy to corner the European arms market: when Marcellus Hartley attempted to do this after his appointment in July 1862, he was sternly rebuked by the government for his actions.[95] If these sub-standard weapons were bought only to keep them out of the hands of the Confederacy, why did so many end up in the hands of Union troops?

The only state which suggests any strength to the domestic US arms industry is Connecticut. State authorities were able to buy weapons from both Colt and Whitney, with the latter delivering 6,000 rifles ordered on 27 June 1861 by 27 July 1862.[96] However, though at first glance Connecticut’s rifles appear to be ‘American’, in fact many were as dependent on access to the European market as were crates of Enfields in factory grease. In order to produce his weapons, Colt contracted for 20,000 ‘American pattern’ barrels, locks and mountings in London; he ultimately accepted 5,370 barrels, but later sold 4,060 to Whitney.[97] Whitney also sought to independently contract for 15,000 musket barrels in order to fulfil his orders.[98] This practice, however, was not limited to these two manufacturers; John P. Moore’s ‘American rifles, Long Enfield pattern’ were made using barrels from Liege.[99]

We will never know the true figure of how many of the weapons manufactured in the US were made with British parts, but some indicative figures can be found. In 1862, Liverpool recorded £15,887 worth of ‘parts of fire-arms’ as having been shipped to the United States.[100] The cost of an Enfield barrel at the time was 6s 6d: therefore, though the figure most likely includes locks and triggers, it is possible that these purchases represent as many as 48,883 barrels sent from a single British port in a year.[101] Yet this figure grew, not diminished: in the first two and a half months of 1863, Laird reported that at least 23,870 gun-barrels were sent from Britain to America.[102] Subsequently, another MP listed the deliveries per day:

on the 25th [March], 870 bundles of gun-barrels, and 4 tons 16 cwt. of rifle-barrels… on the 30th, 341 bundles of gun-barrels; on the same day, another shipment of 433 bundles; on the 1st of April, 8,100 bundles; on the 9th of April, 17 tons 12 cwt. of gun-barrels, and on the same day 4 tons 3 cwt…. on the 13th, 36 tons 11 cwt. of gun barrels; on the 16th, 150 bundles of gun-barrels[103]​

All of these figures undoubtedly understate the case, as there was extensive disguising of the nature of goods being shipped to the Union. Furthermore, this takes no account of the quantity of raw iron sold to the US to be converted into barrels there. Since the 1840s, British innovation had enabled exports of iron and steel to slowly muscle the domestic American products out of markets which required a high-quality, uniform product – from axe-bits to gun barrels.[104] Whitney had adopted crucible steel made by Sanderson of Sheffield for its gun barrels in the early 1840s, and urged the Ordnance Board to do the same.[105] In the 1850s, Remington was manufacturing barrels from English iron.[106] Most damningly, the Springfield Armoury – the only government armoury remaining to the North, responsible for 89% of the modern weapons manufactured to 30 June 1862 – obtained its iron from England.[107]

Although much more publicity is given to the adoption of American machinery by the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield, the Springfield Armoury had been envious of British barrel-manufacturing techniques long before the British commission made their inspection. In America, barrels were formed and welded under a trip hammer, a laborious process which produced barrels which frequently failed under proof, while British barrels welded by rolling were quicker to produce and more reliable.[108] Attempts to roll-weld barrels using American machinery and iron failed: it was only in 1858, when the Springfield Armoury bought an English rolling mill, 50 tons of English iron and a Birmingham operative by the name of William Onions to supervise the work, that the Armoury successfully rolled its first barrels.[109] Onions remained the only trained barrel-roller at Springfield until the outbreak of the Civil War, when necessity led to the importation of four more machines and the training of other workers in the art. But English iron was as important as English machines to this roll-welding technique: only the iron produced by a single English firm was sufficiently homogeneous, contained the right quantity of phosphorous, and possessed a ‘fine, uniform distribution of slag particles’ with ‘relatively low liquidus temperature’.[110] As a biography of one of the leading American industrialists makes clear:

no first-class gun-metal was available in the United States. The supply of such metal had to be imported at high cost from Europe. A little came from Scandinavia, but most of it from Great Britain… during months when the British attitude became more and more alarming, the United States remained dependent on Marshall & Mills. The British ironmasters had the formula; the Americas did not.[111]​

Put simply, at the time of the Trent Affair the United States could not produce a modern musket without British assistance. This is why the statistics for gun-barrel exports are so high in early 1863: after Union industry had tooled up to produce locks and stocks, it still needed British barrels. It was only after Hewitt travelled to Staffordshire on a personal project of industrial espionage, pleading with off-the-clock Marshall and Mills workmen in a local pub to give him the secret of making their iron, that the United States was capable of producing its own gun-barrels.[112] At the end of 1863, Edwin Stanton proclaimed proudly:

Among the arts thus improved is the manufacture of wrought-iron, now rivalling the finest qualities of the iron of Sweden, Norway, and England… This country until the present year has relied upon those countries for material to make gun-barrels, bridle bits, car-wheel tires, and other articles requiring iron of finest quality[113]​

Not only did Stanton disguise how this improvement had come about, but his confident statement disguised the significant flaws Trenton iron possessed. By February 1864, Springfield was complaining about the uneven quality of the new product; Remington ‘found inspection losses on contract barrels so great as to make it necessary either to abandon this iron or ask that the inspection be made less rigorous.’[114] Even after Trenton began to produce iron, British exports remained significant. They were almost the sole source of steel for gun barrels, as well as producing the majority of files required to finish domestic guns.[115]

A Trent War would have given the Union two choices. Its first choice would have been to let its arms factories fall silent while it attempted to stumble upon the secret of marking Marshall iron. However, as the complaints of 1864 show, even stealing the secret from Britain proved to be no panacea. Its second choice would have been to scrap all its expensively acquired barrel-rolling machinery and revert to trip-hammers, a decision which would have meant a temporary stoppage of business for the Springfield Armoury and probably a permanent one for several private manufacturers who had invested heavily in plant and machinery. However, trip-hammering would have produced an inferior product, dramatically reducing the number of barrels which passed proof, and in turn increasing the cost and decreasing the quantity of Springfields available. More critically, it was the shortage and poor quality of domestic iron used for trip-hammered barrels that had persuaded the government to move towards roll-welding in the first place.[116] If the supply had been inadequate pre-war, it was hardly likely to be sufficient to meet the Union’s threefold new challenge: fighting an additional foe in Britain, as well as a better-armed Confederacy, while simultaneously stepping-up domestic production to replace a sizeable proportion of the European imports on which it historically relied.

While at first glance this dependence on Britain for raw materials as well as finished weapons might be assumed to put the final nail in the coffin of American economic autarky, within the realm of alternate history we must be at least a little charitable. In the same way as we have assumed that the Union would find some way of restoring function to broken and antiquated shoulder arms, therefore, we will assume that they will find some way of making iron strong enough to forge into gun-barrels, in sufficiently large quantities to maintain the level of domestic production they recorded historically.

[87]Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Illinois, vol. 1 (1861-96), p.23 [link]
[88]Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana, vol. 1 pp.428-435 [link]
[89] C. Robinson, Governor of Kansas, to Simon Cameron secretary of war, 25 April 1861: War of the Rebellion series 3 vol. 1 p.112 [link]
[90] AG Curtin, governor of Pennsylvania, to Simon Cameron, secretary of war, 26 November 1861: War of the Rebellion series 3 vol 1 p. 678 [link]; Annual Report of the [Pennsylvania] Adjutant General… for the year 1861, pp.8-9 [link]
[91]MA MO 1861 report, schedule K, pp. 15-16 [link]
[92] Davis, Arming the Union p.92
[93] John D. McAulay, Civil War Small Arms of the US Navy and Marine Corps (Lincoln RI, 1999) pp.65-6, 89-90, 107-109; see also the breakdown of weapons held as at 1 December 1866 on pp.158-160 for a graphic illustration of the navy’s relative ability to procure modern weapons during the Civil War.
[94] P.H. Watson, assistant secretary of war, to OP Morton, governor of Indiana, 5 September, 1862: War of the Rebellion, series 3 vol. 2 pp.515-6 [link]
[95] Davis, Arming the Union pp. 57-8
[96] Moller, American Military Shoulder Arms 376 [link]
[97] F.H. Morse, American consul in London, to William H. Seward, secretary of state, 19 July 1861: War of the Rebellion, series 3 vol. 1 pp.445-6 [link]; Moller, American Military Shoulder Arms 280 [link]
[98] Moller, American Military Shoulder Arms 376.8 [link]
[99] Moller, American Military Shoulder Arms 340.1
[100] ‘Account of guns and other munitions of war shipped from the port of Liverpool to America during the years 1861 and 1862, showing the quantity, description, value, and port of destination,’ Parliamentary Papers 1864 (176)
[101] 'Returns of the weight and cost of metals used in making guns during the years 1860-1, 1861-2, and 1862-3; of the number and cost of guns produced, in labour, materials, and incidental expenses; of the same for the Small Arms Department, and the number and cost of the rifles turned out annually; of the weight and cost of lead used in manufacturing bullets; the number and weight produced, etc.' Parliamentary Papers 1864 (397) p.4
[102] Mr John Laird, HC Deb 27 March 1863 vol 170 c69 [link]
[103] Mr Thomas Horsfall, HC Deb 24 April 1863 vol 170 c708 [link]
[104] Robert B. Gordon, ‘Materials for Manufacturing: The Response of the Connecticut Iron Industry to Technological Change and Limited Resources,’ Technology and Culture vol. 24 no. 4 (October 1983), pp. 613, 618-9; Geoffrey Tweedale, Sheffield Steel and America: A Century of Commercial and Technological Interdependence 1830-1930 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 7-9
[105] C.C. Cooper, R.B. Gordon and H.V. Merrick, 'Archaeological Evidence of Metallurgical Innovation at the Eli Whitney Armory,' IA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology vol. 8, No. 1 (1982), p.8
[106] H. J. Swinney, ‘The Remington Story,’ Legacy- Annals of Herkimer County vol. 2 issue 4 (1987) [link]
[107] Robert B. Gordon, American Iron 1607-1900 (Baltimore, 2001), pp. 173, 206, 266 [link]
[108] 'Norwich Armory,' Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, March 1864 [link]
[109] Robert B. Gordon, ‘English Iron for American Arms: Laboratory Evidence on the iron used at the Springfield Armory in 1860,’ Historical Metallurgy vol. 17 no.2 (1983) p.92
[110] Gordon, ‘English Iron’ p.97
[111] Allan Nevins, Abram S. Hewitt, with some account of Peter Cooper (New York, 1967), pp. 196-9; Lee, ‘Army of the Potomac’ p. 23
[112] Nevins, Hewitt pp.209-210
[113] Report of Edwin M. Stanton, 5 December 1863: War of the Rebellion, series 3 vol.3 p.1134 [link]
[114] Felicia Johnson Deyrup, Arms makers of the Connecticut Valley: A regional study of the economic development of the small arms industry, 1798-1870, (Northampton MA, 1948) pp.191-2
[115] Devrup, Arms Makers pp. 142-3, 192
[116] Gordon, ‘English Iron’ p.91; Gordon, American Iron p.206

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[robcraufurd]

Section 3a: Projections

Though the evidence is necessarily imperfect, we now have a reasonably broad coverage of the States of the Union in both indicative and calculated results: so far, we have seen nothing which might lead us to conclude that the calculated results are unrepresentative of the wider Union.

State;1862 quota;Total regiments raised;
Illinois;9;149;
Indiana;9;140;
Kansas;0;17;
Pennsylvania;21;215;
New Hampshire;2;18;
West Virginia;0;17;
Connecticut;5;30;
Total indicative;46;586;
Total calculated;77;626;
All states total;150;1462;
Calculated and indicative as proportion;82%;83%;

As such, let us project the overall Union deficit for 1862 on the basis of all regiments raised during the war, using our seven calculated states as a benchmark.

State;Deficit;Total arms issued;Regiments;
New York;152,540;(62,773);194;
Ohio;100,061;(65,597);197;
Massachusetts;25,131;(6,368);62;
Iowa;19,614;(8,738);48;
New Jersey;11,862;558;40;
Maine;9,671;(5,082);32;
Wisconsin;20,148;(15,102);53;
Total calculated;339,027;(163,102);626
All states total;;;1462;

Scaling the number of arms issued up by 1462/626 gives us a total issuance of 791,785 weapons, which appears reasonable in the light of overall Union recruitment during 1862. To represent the range of possibilities, we will present five scenarios. These are:

• That our seven states were the only ones to issue foreign weapons, and that the remainder were wholly met from domestic arms supplies
• That no domestic weapons were issued to the remaining states
• That the remaining states performed proportionately as well as the best-performing calculated state, New Jersey (which would have had an arms surplus of 5%)
• That the remaining states performed proportionately as poorly as the worse-performing calculated state, Wisconsin (with a 75% deficit)
• That the remaining states performed, on average, as well as the average of our seven calculated states.

Scenario

Calculated;Projected;Total surplus/(deficit)
Fully domestic;(163,102);0;(163,102);
Fully foreign;(163,102);(452,758);(615,860);
Best case;(163,102);21,298;(141,804);
Worst case;(163,102);(339,366);(502,468)
Average;(163,102);(217,817);(380,919);

This suggests that, at best, the Union would have had to reduce its troop deployments substantially over the course of 1862. The remaining troops would have been poorly equipped: the more fortunate having muskets altered to percussion, the least fortunate toting Brown Bess muskets more than half a century old. Moreover, domestic weapons were slow to come on-stream, but European weapons were flowing into the Union in quantity at the point at which a Trent war would have broken out. As such, any pain would have been front-loaded: by the time the Union could contemplate an increase in its strength sufficient to get to grips with either of the two enemies opposing it, the Confederates in the South and the British in Canada would have had the perfect opportunity to consolidate their positions.

Conclusions:

There is no evidence for alternate sources of weapons beyond those already considered.
Average projections suggest a shortfall of almost 400,000 weapons over the course of 1862, with possible shortfall scenarios ranging between 140,000 and 616,000 weapons.
Even weapons produced in the United States were dependent on the UK for the strategic raw materials with which they were made.

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[robcraufurd]

Final conclusions

Undoubtedly there will be objections, nationalistic or otherwise, towards this analysis. The Royal Navy’s blockade would never have been absolute, though the incomplete Union blockade managed to sever the Confederacy’s arms supplies fairly effectively. The British commercial classes, we are told, sympathised with the Confederacy and faced minimal punishment in the event their trading with the South was detected; however, it is still possible that some might have been prevailed upon to risk treason proceedings by trading with the enemy and sell weapons to the Union. Though Britain had the largest ocean-going merchant fleet, there might have been European merchants prepared to risk both capture in the Royal Navy blockade and diplomatic fallout from offending a European Great Power. However, one would expect the Confederacy to present a lower probability of capture and smaller potential diplomatic fallout both historically and in this speculative scenario. This, in turn, suggests that most European merchants would be too risk-averse to trade with a blockaded Union, and the majority of intrepid merchants would prefer to sell to the Confederacy.

Despite these objections, in their varying degrees of merit, the overall picture which this analysis presents is undeniable. Severed from its European markets, the Union of December 1861 simply lacked the industrial capacity to fight and prosecute two wars at the same time.

Putting together this hitherto scattered evidence provides a much clearer picture of why the Washington cabinet decided to stand down, other than the fact that they were in the wrong. Armchair analysts may believe that the run on the banks could have be stemmed, that limitless amounts of weapons could be conjured up to replace imports, that American ingenuity would suddenly solve the problem of making iron fit for gun-barrels, that Lincoln could seize on war-winning generals in ways that historically eluded him for so long and fulfil the long-held American ambition of driving the British out of Canada while simultaneously winning the war against the Confederacy. Lincoln thought otherwise; that he did so is to his credit, not his detriment.

The Union of January 1862 was not the Union of April 1865, any more than the Britain of 1862 was the Britain of 1854. It was impressive that in order to preserve the Union, the Northern government and people built war industries on a global scale. It was equally impressive that they took the hitherto unthinkable step of freeing the slaves, as Britain had urged them to do all along. But we do a grave disservice to those who fought for the Union, who sacrificed their preconceptions as readily as they risked their lives, if we do not recognise how far they came during the war.

The Trent War would have been a mistake, resulting from misunderstandings on both sides. The British believed the US was deliberately courting war as means of extracting itself from an unwinnable war in the South, while the Union seems to have underestimated British insistence on adherence to the international customs of blockade and their wholehearted protection of political refugees.[117] Equally, any war might have had disastrous results for all involved. Despite this, it is no more distasteful than the many other unpalatable scenarios which alternate history calls us to deal with: the facts must still be looked at dispassionately. Britain was unquestionably prepared to go to war over this insult to her honour; and, as the evidence shows, she would have had a far better prospect of winning the war than has traditionally been acknowledged.

[117] That the boarding was concluded to be a deliberate insult, a conclusion drawn from reports of the widespread popular endorsement of the violation by the Union, is not sufficiently recognised: Campbell, English Public Opinion pp. 65-76

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[Saphroneth]

My thanks for posting that on this site - it makes it much more accessible without my potentially breaking a rule. Thanks, @robcraufurd.

 

[Thoresby]

Thank you @robcraufurd. Very impressive summation.

 

[robcraufurd]

As to bounty men...it may come down to what we mean by the term.

Well, "bounty volunteers" probably means "people who have joined for the bounties which the Federal government have been paying for almost two years, instead from the patriotism which the author believes should have motivated them".

The first link talks about the 1863 specifically

No, it doesn't:
The Conscription Act that passed Congress on March 3, 1863, is often cited as "the first draft in the North" or words to that effect... this ignores the fact that the drive to draft in the North began less than three months after the Confederate conscription act, that in at least five states in the North an extensive draft took place in the fall of 1862, and that all the Northern volunteers in that season signed up under threat of being drafted.

and discusses the militia being drafted for 90 days service.

No, it doesn't:
Of the total of 600,000 men requested from the North in the two call-ups of July and August 1862, about 508,000 eventually volunteered. Most of these (421,465) were three-year enlistees, some of them originally drafted, and the remaining 86,360 or (by another official count) 87,588 were 9-month militia, drafted or otherwise.

None of those troops were in the Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg

Four questions. Firstly, drafted men were encouraged to convert to three years service and/or merged into existing regiments:
Ohio drafted 12,200, of which (as of Dec. 13) 2,900 had been discharged "for various causes," 4,800 had subsequently enlisted themselves in existing three-year regiments or found substitutes for them, 1,900 had failed to respond and 2,400 been sent to the field.
As such: how can you categorically state as fact that 'none of those troops were in the Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg' unless either you or Bruce Catton have traced each of their service records to confirm where they ended up? Secondly, why is it implausible that a Canadian surgeon, aware that there had been a draft in Northern states in late 1862, would believe rightly or wrongly that there were conscripts on the field at Fredericksburg? Thirdly, why does it make it better that the failings on the battlefield which an observer ascribed to men pressed into service unwillingly were actually those of suppposed volunteers? Fourthly, if the letter is from a campaign in June 1864 as you believe, how did it get into a newspaper from January 1863?

The Official history link you cited goes to an interesting book, but the page makes no mention... so where is what you are discussing?

Forgetful as ever. Here's what you said:

there were no conscripts in the Union Army before mid 1863 (the whole point of the New York City riot was about conscription),

And here's what the official history states:
the organisation to resist the draft in Schuylkill, Luzerne, and Carbon Counties is very formidable. There are several thousands in arms, and the people who will not join have been driven from the county. They will not permit the drafted men, who are willing, to leave, and yesterday forced them to get out of the cars (AG Curtin, Governor of Pennsylvania, 23 October 1862)

In other words, there were conscripts in the Union army before mid-1863, and there was armed resistance to the imposition of conscription before mid-1863: it's just you weren't aware of either of them.

My thanks for posting that on this site

Very impressive summation.

You're very kind- the point of it was to bow out with something a bit above the ordinary. And, to be perfectly frank, the conversation above is reminding me why I bowed out in the first place- so I'm cutting it off here.

 

[Thoresby]

You're very kind- the point of it was to bow out with something a bit above the ordinary. And, to be perfectly frank, the conversation above is reminding me why I bowed out in the first place- so I'm cutting it off here.

Well I hope you don't because I have a few questions to ask you. Specifically while the Union was clearly very short on small arms what was it's artillery situation. While later in the war they were churning out high quality pieces was that the case at the time of the Trent Incident. Secondly not knowing much about the geography of Civil War arms manufacturing how many of the key facilities, especially the ones in Conneticut were a.) known to British Intelligance and b.) with in easy raiding range of the coast? Finally in your opinion how well could the rest of Europe have made up for British imports if the Britain had decided to place an arms embargo on the US over Trent but not gone to war?

 

[Saphroneth]

Secondly not knowing much about the geography of Civil War arms manufacturing how many of the key facilities, especially the ones in Conneticut were a.) known to British Intelligance and b.) with in easy raiding range of the coast?

Fortunately this one at least is somewhat answerable via the Milne Papers.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...t in the State of New Hampshire, has"&f=false

Is a link which has partial data; below is the section on Springfield armoury:

New London town stands on the west side of the river Thames, at about
3 miles from its outlet, and has a population of 10,500; it employs
40,000 tons of shipping, and the fisheries, and especially the whale
fishery, occupy a great number of people. There is a depth of 26 feet
water up to abreast the town, with a 3 feet side of tide; the channel
is about 600 yards wide, and is never obstructed by ice.

The harbour is defended by two forts, Trumbull and Griswold. Fort
Trumbull stands on the west or New London side, on a rockey peninsula
extending into the harbour about one mile below the town. Fort
Griswold is opposite teh city near Groton Hill, on a commanding
eminence; but it is, or was lately, out of repair.

It was in this harbour that the frigate United States, Com. Decatur,
with the Macedonian and the Hornet, were blockaded by the Ramilles,
74, Sir Thomas Hardy, from the summer of 1813 to the close of the war
in 1815. The Ramilles laid at anchor in Fisher Sound, about two miles
from the entrance of the harbour, and where good anchorage will always
be found for blockading vessels.

Newhaven is a large manufacturing town of 40,000 inhabitants, on the
west bank of the small river Mill, at about 4 miles from its outlet
into the sound. Its trade in shipping is small as it has a bar
harbour, and a vessel of 12 feet draft only can go up to the town at
tide time. At low water a gunboat of 12 feet draft could not go nearer
than two and a half miles.

Page 5

A few miles above the town are Hassard's gunpowder mills, which, with
Wilmington on the Delaware, are the two chief powder mills in the
Federal States. Boats can go up the river to the mills. The only
defence at Newhaven is Fort Hale; it is an earthwork, and not strong.

Springfield, the great United States arsenal for the manufacture of
arms, lies about 50 miles inland north of Newhaven, on the east bank
of the Connecticut river; its sea outlet is either by rail to Newhaven
or by water to Saybrook. When visited by Colonel Eardley Wilmot, R.A.,
in November 1861, the Federals were making 1,400 Enfield rifles a
week.

They certainly know where Springfield Armoury is, and they know that it's reachable by water via Saybrook. I think the Federals could stop the British taking it if they really tried, but they would have to put the effort in (which means, likely, several thousand troops and artillery to match).

Hassard's is in trouble due to gunboats, but I've never been able to be sure whether Wilmington's vulnerable. My instinct is that it's as vulnerable as Springfield -you can stop the British taking the mills out, but you have to put in considerable effort to be sure.

 

[Thoresby]

Fortunately this one at least is somewhat answerable via the Milne Papers.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SRiNCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA535&lpg=PA535&dq="PORTSMOUTH,+the+only+port+in+the+State+of+New+Hampshire,+has"&source=bl&ots=BRwtgoWwhS&sig=8Sl7q1ODOM-sBxWS21Rd5UPAML4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj8087fseDOAhXCiRoKHczgDoYQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q="PORTSMOUTH, the only port in the State of New Hampshire, has"&f=false

Is a link which has partial data; below is the section on Springfield armoury:





They certainly know where Springfield Armoury is, and they know that it's reachable by water via Saybrook. I think the Federals could stop the British taking it if they really tried, but they would have to put the effort in (which means, likely, several thousand troops and artillery to match).

Hassard's is in trouble due to gunboats, but I've never been able to be sure whether Wilmington's vulnerable. My instinct is that it's as vulnerable as Springfield -you can stop the British taking the mills out, but you have to put in considerable effort to be sure.

So unless I'm wildly mistaken taking Hassard's out would cut the Union's military capability by at least a third for quite a while* and all it would take would be to get past one earthwork fort, something the Royal Navy had spent centuries perfecting. Because presumably while New Haven could be fortified and have an army based there in order to prevent such a raid it would take time to recongise the vulnerability and then establish and station a force. So if Britain wanted to launch a "first strike" timed to be shortly after the delivery of a declaration of war (over the Trent Affair) they could deliver a fairly crippling one. If they thought of it.


*I've never seen a large 19th century powder mill but I imagine that they are a.) easy to destory (no need to bring your own explosives) and b.) difficult to rebuld.

 

[Art]

So robcraufurd, you are saying that in the event of a Trent war, that there would not be enough modern rifles without the imports from Europe, even though both the federal and state governments had been purchasing arms in Europe since April and the Trent affair did not happen until November, and hostilities would probably not occur until March of the following year?

 

[galveston bay]

Well, "bounty volunteers" probably means "people who have joined for the bounties which the Federal government have been paying for almost two years, instead from the patriotism which the author believes should have motivated them". .

I will ignore your snark and stick to the point

The thing to remember about the Union Forces of the Civil War is that they are several different armies. First there are the States forces consisting of unorganized and organized militia. American tradition going back to early colonial days is that you can indeed be drafted to serve in the militia, as it encompasses literally every able bodied man. During the Revolution and War of 1812, militia frequently did refuse to operate outside of their local area or even state (such as the militia refusing to invade Canada because it was outside of their state in 1812). Which is why for the Seminole Wars and after (1830s and after) volunteers were recruited for service and often were drawn from militia, sometimes as whole units.

Some states, like Pennsylvania, had state forces that were a step up from that (a modern analogy would be to consider the militia the State Guard, found in a large number of states even now, while the more organized forces were National Guard). They had better training, weapons and organization, and the Pennsylvania Reserve regiments indeed ended up being considered as good as the Volunteers of the National Army.

You could be drafted for State service, but not Federal service until 1863.

The Army of the Potomac, and indeed all of the Union field armies, consisted of Volunteers and Regulars (not many of them of course). The volunteers were raised for Federal service by the States. There were bounties, but that is a regular feature of American military service going back to the Revolution and for that matter the French and Indian Wars. Typically it was land in the earlier period (a certain number of acres, the amount varies). A Canadian surgeon may or may not have known that. The US military even now provides something very similar to a bounty. Its called an enlistment bonus and you get it for completion in payments for completing part of your enlistment contract, with the final amount when you complete your full enlistment. This is not unpatriotic or patriotic, it is simply how the US Military has worked from even before it was a US military.

The National Army, as I mentioned, was made up of volunteers and regulars. We will ignore the Regulars as they are few in number and even smaller in proportion. The overwhelming bulk of the Union field armies 1862-63 were Volunteer regiments raised by the states who enlisted under 1 or 3 year terms of enlistment. The interesting thing, according to Bruce Catton and others, is that a great many of the 90 day and 9 month militia and 1 year volunteers signed up again for 3 year enlistments. Again, no conscripts are in the Army of the Potomac nor were any at Fredericksburg nor was any militia, conscripted or not.

As always when looking at an eyewitness account it is important to consider the context of it, whether the observer had all of the information and the motives and bias of the observer. Which is why historians, as well as police and other law enforcement, take eyewitness accounts with a grain of salt and look for as many as they can to get a good picture of the event.

So yes, I believe your Canadian surgeon is a very flawed witness. One other thing, a 90 or even 9 month militia man stops being a conscript when he volunteers for service in a 3 year regiment.

Yes there were some cantankerous militia regiments, for that matter some even went on strike (they didn't consider it mutiny, the Army disagreed of course). But that is not important to the point that they weren't at Fredericksburg anyway.

with that said time for me to go to other things before once again this turns into a snarky war of words with occasional insults sprinkled in

all I ask of is that readers check sources ..... for an outstanding look at the Army of the Potomac the trilogy on that army by Bruce Catton that won a Pulitzer Prize is a classic and also an excellent read. "Mr Lincolns Army" is the first of the trilogy

 

[Saphroneth]

So robcraufurd, you are saying that in the event of a Trent war, that there would not be enough modern rifles without the imports from Europe, even though both the federal and state governments had been purchasing arms in Europe since April and the Trent affair did not happen until November, and hostilities would probably not occur until March of the following year?

As it happens, yes, that's what he's saying - for two reasons.

The first is that the Union did not have enough modern rifles OTL until after Gettysburg - it had to make do with substandard muskets, old rifles and the like even in its front line armies.
The second is the understandable suppositions that:
1) The Federal government did not hold back hundreds of thousands of modern rifles for months after obtaining them, despite the States screaming for rifles and rhe Army of the Potomac being not in a fit state to take the field.
2) The British would establish a blockade as well as an arms embargo promptly on getting news their ultimatum had been rejected (news they would get around 10 Jan.) because that's what ultimatum means.

Put them together (federal government has no weapons to give in December 1861, issues hundreds of thousands of European shoulder arms between Dec 1861 and June 1862, therefore the European weapons arrived after Dec 1861 and would be blocked by the blockade) and you end up with a vast arms shortage on the part of the US government.

The reason it seems odd given that it was April that they started looking is, essentially, the time taken to get purchases approved and weapons manufactured and delivered. Most European countries don't have $7,500,000 of rifles just lying around surplus.

Furthermore, at the time of the Trent crisis, vast quantities of the weapons ordered by the Union and recorded in the June 1862 report were still waiting to be despatched. The Liverpool customs office, for instance, reported that the number of rifles and muskets shipped to American ports leapt from 16,097 in 1861 to 196,053 in 1862.

(note the more-than-tenfold increase.)

 

[RodentRevolution]

I've never seen a large 19th century powder mill but I imagine that they are a.) easy to destroy (no need to bring your own explosives) and b.) difficult to rebuld.

I am not sure that blowing up a Powder Mill is the best way to stop its operations for an extended time, it was after all an occupational hazard. However if you could actually get troops to the site for long enough you ought to be able to cart away various items of specialised equipment like the sieves and presses and perhaps dump the mill stones in a nearby river which would certainly interrupt things for at least a bit.

 

[Saphroneth]

I am not sure that blowing up a Powder Mill is the best way to stop its operations for an extended time, it was after all an occupational hazard. However if you could actually get troops to the site for long enough you ought to be able to cart away various items of specialised equipment like the sieves and presses and perhaps dump the mill stones in a nearby river which would certainly interrupt things for at least a bit.

I haven't found any good examples of how long an exploded powder mill was shut down by having exploded - the Eleutherian mills (DuPont's place) didn't blow up in the Civil War, so that's no help.
That said, blowing up a few hundred barrels of gunpowder and rendering a powder mill unavailable for a few months could have a critical impact on the war because the British were also the main nitrate suppliers! (They stopped something like a year's supply from being shipped until Trent was good and over - AFAICT the Federal government would, with historical rates of use and no DuPont shipment due to Trent, run out of "spare" powder sometime in July-August and thence have to withdraw already-disbursed powder from magazines if another place needed it more. Every ton blown up that wasn't expended OTL brings that a little closer.)

 

[Spengler]

I love how now we're having powder mills magically blowing up. Anything to hold the scales down.

 

[Moglwi]

I love how now we're having powder mills magically blowing up. Anything to hold the scales down.

I belive that the powder mills are only magical blowing up if you mean a expiation of Royal Marines blowing them up as it is vulnerable to attack by running up the river. Or are you suggesting that the UK could not do this sort of attack?

 

[Art]

And when since the Napoleonic Wars have Royal Marines sent raiding parties 20-30 miles inland to attack a vital military target, insuring that the militia will hunt them down. And I doubt a raid could do much permanent damage without it taking hours.

 

[RodentRevolution]

And when since the Napoleonic Wars have Royal Marines sent raiding parties 20-30 miles inland to attack a vital military target, insuring that the militia will hunt them down. And I doubt a raid could do much permanent damage without it taking hours.

The problem that you do not seem to grasp is that installations being discussed were located on a navigable river. This is actually a fairly common thing as before the invention of railways water transport was by far the most efficient means of moving goods around and often the only way to make any large scale industrial project viable, even today water transport is sought after when selecting sites for development.

So providing they can force the river's defences then yes the Royal Marines do have a history of landing in force...often in company with detachments of armed sailors and hitting targets of strategic significance. The happy hours dismantling/demolishing the the target facility could then be spent hunting down any militia who had the misfortune to turn up and attract the attention of the Royal Marines.