Saphroneth
Banned
Too bad, that's OTL. The first US Army breechloading artillery was the M1885, they built only a hundred of them (and the last regular army muzzle loader left service in 1892), and the NY National Guard (which, remember, was supposed to mobilize to being a proper army unit on short notice) was using smoothbore artillery in their artillery regiments in 1903.I'm rather skeptical that they still be using smoothbore and muzzle loaders after Franco Prussian wars shows how much of advantage breechloading rifled artillery is.
The only breechloading artillery of any kind the US had (aside from the odd conversion of their ACW guns not considered good enough to roll out across the board) were a couple of dozen Hotchkiss guns, which are on the borderline between field gun and machine gun and certainly no substitute for a proper artillery park.
This is actually the point I was trying to get across, that it's a general US trend to be outrageously behind Europe in army equipment. Heck, the Napoleon (12 pounder smoothbore) didn't make it to the US until the British were messing around with rifled breechloaders.
The CSA were the ones who imported Whitworth guns (the most accurate guns south of Canada by some margin) and used them to fairly good effect for counter-battery fire, while the US pretty much refused to buy foreign and felt that their artillery was the best there was. It looks like they simply were not aware of the world standard.I think the issue is that the CSA usually has worse financing and local heavy industry than the Union. So while the CSA may be able to get to the same quality as the Union; it doubtful it would be as uniform or as numerous due to less money, merchant marine, and industry to make their own artillery and shells.
If the CSA made a bulk buy of whatever was out there they might well end up with guns superior to the Parrott or Ordnance rifles in power and accuracy.
As for heavy industry, I'd be careful about that - Tregedar was really rather good, and the OTL US state of artillery production in the 1880s especially was utterly dire so it's not a very hard target. When the US tried to make a single modern heavy (12") gun around a rifled tube purchased from overseas, the South Boston Iron Works failed four times over the course of more than two years before the contract expired unfulfilled - and they were the best in the country.
Capability growth from a standing start is hard. In fact, if we assume for a moment that things suddenly kick off in 1888 (to pick a number out of the air) it's not likely the US would have a modern (or mostly modern) battleship in commission by 1892 - while the CS, purchasing a battleship from overseas, would get theirs in 1889 or 1890 based on contemporary construction speeds and it'd probably be better to boot. (This assumes the CS orders a ship from the builders. If they went with purchasing surplus they could get one in a month or two.)