A Third Anglo-American War

Definately a typical Jominian limited war rather than a Clauswitzian "total war" (which even WW1 wasn't really, being a larger rerun of the FPW where the French didn't fold faster than Superman on laundry day).
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okay, 'total war' was a bit much, but it was definitely the first war where the US had to raise large numbers of troops in a hurry... which led to the hodgepodge of weapons used... which goes a long way to explaining why the US troops were so much worse than the Brits for accuracy (conscripts plus worse weapons)...
 
US vulnerbility to blockage and gunpower supplies

67th Tigers

A quick question. Several people, of whom the best informed has been you I think, have mentioned that in a Anglo-American war during the civil war a British blockage would cut off supplies of gunpowder to the north and its position would be gravely weakened as a result.

In discussion on a naval site I'm a member of you get occasional AH scenarios and one occuring at the moment is about French intervention in favour of the south. I raised the subject of gunpowder in the event of a French blockage. Apart from the question of still getting supplies from Britain in this case, say via Canada, it was argued that the US actually had substantial potential supplies from natural caverns in the north. It was just that it was cheaper to import from British India.

I asked for some further information and received the following:

" It was stated in the book " Why the South Lost the Civil War" by Richard E. Beringer,Herman Hathaway,Archer Jones, and William N. Still Jr.. There are a couple of websites about this topic too. I'll get back with that later. Now the Union did import most of thiers HOWEVER the South produced quite a bit of thiers and could have produced much more but for lack on infrastructure to carry it out not that local supplies weren't availiable. The North imported much of thiers because it was just much cheaper & easier to do it. The US was worried for a long time about supplies from overseas getting cutooff so looked to these deposits as being strategically valuable.
In fact I think Mammoth Cave all by itself supplied the US in the War of 1812. It was also mined at one time in my small community and in the community right across the Ohio River in small caves behind the towns. It was also found to exist in large quantities in earlier colonies(other then the ones I mentioned earlier) in the NorthEast . The Eastern US (east of the Mississippi) had huge cave systems which were rich in saltpeter deposits though not really commercially feasible like those in India or Chile but were definately used when needed,i.e. by the whole country in War of 1812 & South in the ACW.
so in fact the US was as close to an autarchy as there was back then.

http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/links/links13.htm

http://www.hagley.org/library/exhibits/civilwartech/index.php?page=Home
"

Just wondering your views on this? If accurate it would make the north a significantly more difficult to defeat opponent. Or has the source underestimated some of the problems in using US supplies? [I realise that the 1812 conflict is no real comparison as forces and hence demand for powder were much smaller then].

Steve
 

67th Tigers

Banned
67th Tigers

A quick question. Several people, of whom the best informed has been you I think, have mentioned that in a Anglo-American war during the civil war a British blockage would cut off supplies of gunpowder to the north and its position would be gravely weakened as a result.

In discussion on a naval site I'm a member of you get occasional AH scenarios and one occuring at the moment is about French intervention in favour of the south. I raised the subject of gunpowder in the event of a French blockage. Apart from the question of still getting supplies from Britain in this case, say via Canada, it was argued that the US actually had substantial potential supplies from natural caverns in the north. It was just that it was cheaper to import from British India.

I asked for some further information and received the following:

" It was stated in the book " Why the South Lost the Civil War" by Richard E. Beringer,Herman Hathaway,Archer Jones, and William N. Still Jr.. There are a couple of websites about this topic too. I'll get back with that later. Now the Union did import most of thiers HOWEVER the South produced quite a bit of thiers and could have produced much more but for lack on infrastructure to carry it out not that local supplies weren't availiable. The North imported much of thiers because it was just much cheaper & easier to do it. The US was worried for a long time about supplies from overseas getting cutooff so looked to these deposits as being strategically valuable.
In fact I think Mammoth Cave all by itself supplied the US in the War of 1812. It was also mined at one time in my small community and in the community right across the Ohio River in small caves behind the towns. It was also found to exist in large quantities in earlier colonies(other then the ones I mentioned earlier) in the NorthEast . The Eastern US (east of the Mississippi) had huge cave systems which were rich in saltpeter deposits though not really commercially feasible like those in India or Chile but were definately used when needed,i.e. by the whole country in War of 1812 & South in the ACW.
so in fact the US was as close to an autarchy as there was back then.

http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/links/links13.htm

http://www.hagley.org/library/exhibits/civilwartech/index.php?page=Home
"

Just wondering your views on this? If accurate it would make the north a significantly more difficult to defeat opponent. Or has the source underestimated some of the problems in using US supplies? [I realise that the 1812 conflict is no real comparison as forces and hence demand for powder were much smaller then].

Steve

There are some excellent papers on this, but from what ISTR the CS managed to mine 20% of their requirement, captured more from the US and imported the rest.

The one that's on my hard drive is:

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Du Pont, Dahlgren, and the Civil War Nitre Shortage, Military Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 3. (Autumn, 1949), pp. 142-149.

It's a JSTOR scanned PDF, and the text dump doesn't recognise columns, hang on. I think I've attached it....
 

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uh, if you're going to look at goals in the war, you'd better take a closer look at what the British wanted:

complete control of the Great Lakes
an Indian buffer state in parts of OH and IL
cession of parts of Maine

Britain did not go into the War of 1812 with any of these as goals. The idea of an Indian buffer state in the Michigan and Indiana territories was a proposal brought to the conference at Ghent.

I agree with Earling. The War of 1812 was deliberately started by the United States. There were numerous reasons why people in the US wanted to go to war, but it was a war to increase territory. The offenses into Canada were to annex Canada--we made no bones about that at the time. Similarly, we annexed part of West Florida from Spain--marched in and took it in 1812 under the cover of the war with Britain.
 
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