AHC: have the Antebellum U.S. lose a war

samcster94

Banned
My challenge is for the U.S., before 1861, to lose a war at some point. The U.S. spirit would be very different if this happened. Bonus points if it is not the war of 1812 and double bonus points if the British aren't said power.
 
Wank Mexico, deny Manifest Destiny, keep Adam-Onis border. But that's too obvious/bias...

If an alternative is wanted, then what are the chances for them to loose the Barbary Wars...?
 
Well, the War of 1812 was perhaps not a defeat for the US but came close to being one, in that while the US ultimately destroyed the Confederacy of Tecumseh and ended impressment of sailors, the designs of the radical hawk faction, who wanted annexation of Canada, never came to pass.

So I suppose you get a war of 1812 where Tecumseh's faction is still alive and kicking afterwards and the US has to pay indemnities, or rather, human labour, as tribute upon defeat, not to mention perhaps some territorial losses in Maine and Michigan.

Or, rather, the US and France end up fighting in the Quasi-War with an invasion of French Louisiana that goes badly and the US has to pay indemnities afterwards.
 
My challenge is for the U.S., before 1861, to lose a war at some point. The U.S. spirit would be very different if this happened. Bonus points if it is not the war of 1812 and double bonus points if the British aren't said power.

An interesting but obscure PoD would be the Venezuelan Crisis of 1902-'03, which could lead to a war with the United States opposed by Britain, Germany and Italy. At this point the US Army is tiny and the Royal Navy by itself can squash the US Navy like a bug, even withough help from the German navy. The question then is whether the Anglo-German-Italian alliance can reinforce Canada and other British possessions at risk quicker than the Americans can raise an army to invade them with. Being faced with the world's largest navy and the world's most professional arm, there definitely is potential for an American defeat.

Another possibility it the Venezuelan crisis of 1895, pitting the United States against Great Britain as well, though this time in a one on one confrontation. The unquestionable advantage of the Royal Navy remains, though the British Army too is quite small. That makes this a close run thing. Britain will be able to impose its designs on the Caribbean, but at the risk of losing (pieces of) Canada.
 
General Fiebre Amarilla leads Mexico to victory over the U.S.

Maybe General Gorgojo can outfit an expedition north as well...

An interesting but obscure PoD would be the Venezuelan Crisis of 1902-'03, which could lead to a war with the United States opposed by Britain, Germany and Italy. At this point the US Army is tiny and the Royal Navy by itself can squash the US Navy like a bug, even withough help from the German navy. The question then is whether the Anglo-German-Italian alliance can reinforce Canada and other British possessions at risk quicker than the Americans can raise an army to invade them with. Being faced with the world's largest navy and the world's most professional arm, there definitely is potential for an American defeat.

Another possibility it the Venezuelan crisis of 1895, pitting the United States against Great Britain as well, though this time in a one on one confrontation. The unquestionable advantage of the Royal Navy remains, though the British Army too is quite small.

It needs to be pre-ACW, so those are out of the question.
 
Perhaps Spain defends its colony in Luisiana and creates a lasting border on the Mississippi River seperating Luisiana from the US? Or at least, Spain asserts control temporarily over the Basse Louisiane and sets a tone of Spanish control from San Luis to Nueva Orleans.
 
Perhaps Spain defends its colony in Luisiana and creates a lasting border on the Mississippi River seperating Luisiana from the US? Or at least, Spain asserts control temporarily over the Basse Louisiane and sets a tone of Spanish control from San Luis to Nueva Orleans.

Wouldn't that first need for Spain not give Luisiana back to France? But I suppose if it can do that and avoid being conquered by Napoleon....
 
My challenge is for the U.S., before 1861, to lose a war at some point. The U.S. spirit would be very different if this happened. Bonus points if it is not the war of 1812 and double bonus points if the British aren't said power.

Instead of "bonus points" you should have ruled out the War of 1812 altogether in order to avoid the endless "The US *did* lose the war!" arguments.

Anyway, maybe under the Anglophobe Lewis Cass as president after 1844, the US goes to war with both Great Britain (over Oregon) *and* Mexico? (No double points for that, of course.) "In 1844 Cass' campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination would combine expansionism with Anglophobia on both the Oregon and Texas issues. On Texas, Cass appealed for southern support by echoing the Calhoun argument that the British were out to undermine slavery in Texas, and raised the specter of a "servile war": "What more favorable position could be taken for the occupation of English black troops, and for letting them loose upon our southern states, than is afforded by Texas?" As for Oregon, Cass sent a message to an "Oregon Convention" chaired by Richard Johnson in Cincinnati urging the US government to extend its jurisdiction to 54' 40": "I would take and hold possession of the territory, come what might" and "would not waste time in fruitless diplomatic discussions" with the British: "Let us keep our own, and keep it with a strong hand, if need be." Of course one could say that this was just campaign rhetoric but as Senator from Michigan, Cass would continue to take a hard line on Oregon after 1844..." https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/72fJkCTvRco/jwl0XeGpOEcJ
 
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The Quasi War is the obvious one. Have William Pitt fall from power a couple of years early so that Britain makes peaces with France while the QW is still ongoing and there is a lot of potential for the war to get a lot less quasi. If the French ships being blockaded by the RN get released for example they'll sweep the fledgling USN from the seas, allowing Napoleon to pressure the Spanish into letting him land an army at New Orleans with a view to threatening the southern states (I suspect this will be harder than it looks on a map, but that applies to both sides) by an advance along the gulf coast and up into Georgia...
 
*War of 1812
*Earlier Civil War (South Carolina Secession)
*Mexican-American War becomes international
*1837 or 1858 US-Canada war
*Earlier Spanish-American War over Cuba
 
Of course, jokingly saying that the Vietnamese are the only ones able to hand America a significant defeat is actually insulting to them because..... reasons.

The Vietnam War was a strategic defeat for the US, largely because of geopolitical considerations and unpopularity at home significantly limiting what it can do in the region. The US Armed Forces performed superbly well in conditions where they could utilize their technological superiority and their expertise in Western-style conventional warfare. "America lost to Vietnamese farmers" is a reductionist statement that severely underestimates not just one but both sides of the Vietnam War, and provides a fairly misleading picture of how it actually went--it's as ridiculous as saying that "The British Empire lost in the ARW to a colonial backwater." For the purposes of keeping the thread on-topic, that's all I will say on the subject matter.

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Anyway, you can have an earlier Civil War after a Nullification Crisis-gone-awry that would have split the nation in two thirty years early, or balkanize it into a bunch of squabbling nations after the deterioration of Federal authority. Easy pickings for Europeans to reinstate their influence in North America, and the subsequent anarchy in the continent will provide many a war lost for the nations birth from the United States.
 
The Vietnam War was a strategic defeat for the US, largely because of geopolitical considerations and unpopularity at home significantly limiting what it can do in the region. The US Armed Forces performed superbly well in conditions where they could utilize their technological superiority and their expertise in Western-style conventional warfare. "America lost to Vietnamese farmers" is a reductionist statement that severely underestimates not just one but both sides of the Vietnam War, and provides a fairly misleading picture of how it actually went--it's as ridiculous as saying that "The British Empire lost in the ARW to a colonial backwater." For the purposes of keeping the thread on-topic, that's all I will say on the subject matter.

That reminds me of a fairly well known anecdote from the Paris peace talks. An American general and a Vietnamese general were talking on the fringes of the main negotiations and the American general made pretty much exactly the same point you're making here - technical superiority, never losing a pitched battle, and so on. The Vietnamese general's reply? "That's true, but it's also irrelevant."

Clausewitz defined war as the art of imposing your will on an enemy through violence, by that standard there was only one winner in Vietnam. Agreed though that ascribing it to "Vietnamese farmers" is a hopelessly inaccurate if romantic stereotype, it was the regular military of North Vietnam that won the war.
 
The Vietnam War was a strategic defeat for the US, largely because of geopolitical considerations and unpopularity at home significantly limiting what it can do in the region. The US Armed Forces performed superbly well in conditions where they could utilize their technological superiority and their expertise in Western-style conventional warfare. "America lost to Vietnamese farmers" is a reductionist statement that severely underestimates not just one but both sides of the Vietnam War, and provides a fairly misleading picture of how it actually went--it's as ridiculous as saying that "The British Empire lost in the ARW to a colonial backwater." For the purposes of keeping the thread on-topic, that's all I will say on the subject matter.

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Anyway, you can have an earlier Civil War after a Nullification Crisis-gone-awry that would have split the nation in two thirty years early, or balkanize it into a bunch of squabbling nations after the deterioration of Federal authority. Easy pickings for Europeans to reinstate their influence in North America, and the subsequent anarchy in the continent will provide many a war lost for the nations birth from the United States.

It's almost as if i was making a joke and not a serious statement about military history lol didn't think i'd need to say this again.
 
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