Not necessarily, in a British intervention context Maryland it is easily assaultable from the sea and hardly pro-Union as such.
Kentucky and Missouri the arguments are pretty much unchanged in a British intervention but you get a better armed Confederacy and a very poorly armed but larger Union army so things could change from OTL.
The British public is not going to tolerate a full-out war with the USA in order to defend the CSA, what with its 'peculiar institution'. And there is no way the British can hold anything on the North American mainland (except maybe Canada north of the Saint Lawrence) against the US by this point. Especially Maryland. There British supplies have to be shipped from across the Atlantic, while the US can pour in troops and men via one of the most developed rail networks in the world at that time. And if the British start reenacting the War of 1812, the US won't have to introduce a draft.
Enfield rifle musket, times have moved on.
That was a joke, meant to express how the North would react to Great Britain trying to balkanize it. Having the US recognize the CSA is one thing, having the US
give up territory it currently controls is another.
No it was a small industrial sector compared to Belgium or Prussia tiny compared to Britain.
At this point in time, everybody is tiny compared to Britain. But the US industrial sector is far larger than Prussia or Belgium. In 1860 it produced 2.5 times as much iron as
Russia (note Russia, not Prussia). Pennsylvania alone produces almost eighteen times more iron than the entire CSA. The US industrial sector produced 1.7 million rifles. I'd like to see Belgium do that, and make cannons, ironclads, trains, and ammunition as well.
Smaller than that but none the less large. In OTL it was growing by 200,000 a year in the 1860s by immigration alone. In a Trent war all this stops and it is unlikely to resume at anything like 1860 levels afterwards.
Why would immigration to the US stop? Most immigrants went to the North and West, not the South. Is Britain blowing up transport ships? And even without immigration, the US still has a large domestic market. They've got twenty seven million consumers at home.
This is silly, real politick not risk.
Are you saying that a USA that has a big, hostile neighbor to the south that had two European powers just try to take big pieces out of it isn't going to militarize to a far greater extent than OTL late 1800s USA?
Yes but not in unlimited quatities or even enough to cover the service of the war debt.
What war debt? The war lasted three years shorter than OTL. And Great Britain is not going to get involved in a long, drawn-out war with the USA, especially to protect slavery. The USA is not Zanzibar. It's not something that can be smacked down by a RN squadron and a couple of Her Majesty's battalions.
As you have not been able to show how the USA Govt could fund itself you should be thinking in terms of economic basket case like Germany after WWI or II (pre-Marshall plan) rather than sting a little.
A decade would be more than enough for the Confederacy to snaggle Britsh investment in rail, mines and factories and thus close the production gape with the moribund USA economy. Twenty or thirty years is much more realistic perhaps more. Remember the USA economy took over 30 years to recover from the relatively minor defeat in the War of 1812.
Eh, why? The US economy did just fine in OTL when the South had been completely, utterly wrecked, and during the war too I might add. Given that the US economy did not collapse when it was actively fighting the South strongly suggests it won't be a basket case with it being a neutral. The loss of cotton will hurt, but it's not going to gut the US. The US has not had its cities incinerated, its young men annihilated in trenches or scattered in graveyards across a continent. Any British army stupid enough to try will be up to its neck in blood, its own.
Like half the countries in Europe, not exactly shakey for an agricultural economy.
I will concede that for an agricultural economy, a CSA with good cotton markets is in good shape. But for a modern navy, an agricultural economy just doesn't cut it.
Infrastructure and secure bonds. The USA is now a poor investment and in Argentina the speak Spanish and it is a long way way. Australia even further.
Why is the US suddenly a poor investment? It's not going to collapse if the South becomes independent. And in a choice between investing in the US and CS, a British investor is going to pick the US. Why? Because then his rivals won't be able to say he works with slavers.
If cotton remains a valuable export long enough for the CSA to somehow develop Texas oil the CSA might be able to afford a 1914 Ottoman fleet, a couple of good ships built by somebody else with the rest being obsolete crap.
Bold statements for a future 50 years from 1865. How about some ballance sheets?
I will concede that they are bold. But a CSA that is exporting oil and cotton isn't an industrial power, it's the north American equivalent of Brazil at this time. To build and maintain a modern fleet, even by WW1 standards, requires an industrial power. And the CSA is unlikely to become one. Any industry that gets started will be swamped under by cheaper British (because they're certainly going to demand trade concessions from the CSA for the whole 'saving your lives' bit) or Yankee goods (good luck stopping smuggling along that border, especially since you also have to make sure slaves don't escape in the other direction).
It's not just a matter of money (and if British investors are the ones responsible for developing Texas oils, the profits are going to London anyway, not Richmond), but also a matter of having the technical expertise and equipment to support dreadnought battleships and actually useful submarines.
Lots of deepwater ports. Ship yards in that period need a foundry some forests and a shear hulk. It is not rocket science or indeed the cost of Apollo. In anycase why build at first? Buy British, copy British it worked for a lot of countries, Russia, Japan, the new Italy.
I should've been more clear. I was thinking of navies in the 1890s, 1900s, 1910s period, not 1860s. The CSA could, if cotton is still king, produce frigates, potentially ships of the line (although where would they get the sailors?). But battleships are another story entirely.
There are plenty of places to put them, but where is the CSA going to get the capital, the raw materials, and the experienced labor force to built and maintain shipyards capable of building advanced warships (by the time period's standards)? What's in it for the British to subsidize all this?
I will concede that I am responsible for moving the goal posts to 'could the CSA build battleships?'. They could maybe develop, say Mobile, so that it could produce destroyers and maybe an armored cruiser or two, but at this time, it's battleships that count.
As for copying British designs, yes the CSA could do that. But that still leaves the matter of developing shipyards large and advanced enough to replicate them. That's why I considered the CSN at its best to be like the Ottomans. Wealthy enough to afford some good foreign warships, but lacking the technological and industrial base to build copies.
Worked for the South Americans and Prussians.
I meant credible compared to a great power. One squadron of the Grand Fleet could take on the Chilean, Argentinian, and Brazilian fleets combined. I apologize for being unclear.
It's possible to build a decent second-rate fleet that way. But the CSA needs a lot more than a Brazilian or Ottoman level to be more than a speedbump to the USN.
In other words, no. The South is not funding and subsiding northern development, which is occurring because northern industry is quite capable of not only finding a market within the US, but producing shiploads of exports.
