Better prepared CSA?

[Anaxagoras]

To do that they'd have to reverse their policy of stopping cotton exports to run the price up and pressure European countries to support them. There doesn't seem to have been much, or any, realistic planning before the war, by either side.

Judah Benjamin did, in fact, push for the administration to buy as much cotton as they could, ship as much of it to Europe as they could before the blockade became serious, then use it as collateral for loans from British and French banks. Had they done so, rather than follow the self-defeating policy of boycotting cotton exports, they would have been in a much better spot as far as their government finances were concerned. Even had they followed such a policy, though, I doubt that they would have been interested in buying small numbers of advanced weapons, as opposed to larger numbers of Enfield and Springfield rifles.

 

[Saphroneth]

To do that they'd have to reverse their policy of stopping cotton exports to run the price up and pressure European countries to support them. There doesn't seem to have been much, or any, realistic planning before the war, by either side.

Of course they'd have to reverse their policy!

But... well, the thread title is "Better prepared CSA".
(One of the fascinating things about the ACW is that it's a really big war where neither side had a clue what they were doing for much of it - that makes it quite amenable to PoD.)

Judah Benjamin did, in fact, push for the administration to buy as much cotton as they could, ship as much of it to Europe as they could before the blockade became serious, then use it as collateral for loans from British and French banks. Had they done so, rather than follow the self-defeating policy of boycotting cotton exports, they would have been in a much better spot as far as their government finances were concerned. Even had they followed such a policy, though, I doubt that they would have been interested in buying small numbers of advanced weapons, as opposed to larger numbers of Enfield and Springfield rifles.

True. Though the Dreyse was actually older than the Enfield.

If they bought up all the Enfields they could find that would help, same for good artillery. A 40-lber breechloader will go about three feet into solid masonry and derange it considerably when it detonates, so masonry forts would be easy targets.

 

[Anaxagoras]

If they bought up all the Enfields they could find that would help, same for good artillery. A 40-lber breechloader will go about three feet into solid masonry and derange it considerably when it detonates, so masonry forts would be easy targets.

But the Confederacy was intending to remain on the strategic defensive, so artillery that would be effective against masonry forts wouldn't be high on their shopping list.

 

[Saphroneth]

But the Confederacy was intending to remain on the strategic defensive, so artillery that would be effective against masonry forts wouldn't be high on their shopping list.

Again, different preparations could mean better preparations. For example, the 40-lber would let them take Fort Monroe - honestly pretty easily, too - and that would give them full control of Hampton Roads.

 

[Anaxagoras]

Again, different preparations could mean better preparations. For example, the 40-lber would let them take Fort Monroe - honestly pretty easily, too - and that would give them full control of Hampton Roads.

But if the Union knows that Fort Monroe is in serious danger, they will respond accordingly. As with any alt-hist PODs involving one side in a war choosing to equip itself in some different way, we have to take into account the countermeasures that the other side will take in response.

 

[Saphroneth]

But if the Union knows that Fort Monroe is in serious danger, they will respond accordingly. As with any alt-hist PODs involving one side in a war choosing to equip itself in some different way, we have to take into account the countermeasures that the other side will take in response.

I know about that - but I think we often take it too far on this site, and simply refuse to consider a PoD rather than discussing reaction.

And, thinking about it with hindsight, I'm not sure what measures the Union could take that would mean they'd be able to mitigate the effect of this Confederate purchase. They might be able to pile up thousands of tonnes of earth against the walls to reduce the effect, but it won't stop those shells from degrading and taking Fort Monroe - and with that gone then the CSA has Hampton Roads, and it has guns with a long effective range against wooden ships.
(Perhaps they'd augment their land forts with earthworks instead of masonry construction, perhaps they'd evacuate Fort Monroe. But I can't see them keeping Fort Monroe when the dust settles.)

What develops then is a different ACW. It's not necessarily one which ends with a different result, perhaps - but it's one with a different beginning, and it's one where the Peninsular Campaign, say, is pretty much impossible.

 

[plenka]

Thank you for all your posts. But, I meant economic improvements, not just military technology. I was asking about having a POD in which somebody actually thinks about fighting a war and enables the CSA to pursue it. The main problem I keep running into is my inability to find production numbers for the CSA. I do not know how much raw materials, small arms, cannon, steam engines and the like they produced during the war, so if anyone could help me with that I would be grateful.

Even if we do not have any POD before 1861, could have CSA war effort be managed better? I like reading TLs based on ACW, but the stories rarely touch on these matters.

 

[cerebropetrologist]

if they managed to buy up about 22,000 Dreyse needleguns and 40 Krupp or Armstrong guns

Economic issues are beyond my ken, but I came across this letter while researching another thread and thought I'd share.

"It appeared I actually had but £10,000 with which to purchase arms... The letter of the secretary of the treasury... that my drafts on the CS Treasury would be honoured to the amount of $200,000 [£40,000] would... be of no value in a commercial transaction... After fully satisfying myself that small-arms that I was willing to send to the Confederacy were not to be had either in England or Belgium, I made inquiries at the London Armory Company for Enfield rifles to be manufactured by them... They have work on hand for this [British] Government which will require eighteen months to complete... In the matter of artillery, I have no money to purchase, and if I had it would be impossible to ship in British vessels. If I had the entire order of muskets and artillery ready for shipment I could arrange everything. It will be, however, for some time to come impossible to send any small lot of anything contraband of war.... I have in my possession detailed drawings of the Armstrong gun, which I shall copy and forward by the first opportunity."
Captain Caleb Hulse, CSA, May 21 1861 (War of the Rebellion Series IV vol 1 pp.343-6)

So you'd need more substantial PODs to arm the Confederacy well than just Hulse having a sense of urgency. I don't think you'd get the Dreyse, either: in 1861 the original models were all still in use, except the M1849 which had less than 4,000 produced in the first place. Plus the Prussians were all for cracking down on rebellions, even supposedly aristocratic ones.

 

[dmg86]

I have also read that their was a large cotton surplus in Europe in 1861 so I Don't know if that would have an impact on it's price.

 

[TRH]

I have also read that their was a large cotton surplus in Europe in 1861 so I Don't know if that would have an impact on it's price.

Even if there wasn't, selling a huge stockpile of cotton all in a rush would undermine the price all by itself.

 

[Jared]

Thank you for all your posts. But, I meant economic improvements, not just military technology. I was asking about having a POD in which somebody actually thinks about fighting a war and enables the CSA to pursue it. The main problem I keep running into is my inability to find production numbers for the CSA. I do not know how much raw materials, small arms, cannon, steam engines and the like they produced during the war, so if anyone could help me with that I would be grateful.

There's actually a relatively easy PoD which can more than double the CSA's heavy industrial capacity. It requires going back about 8-10 years before the ACW, but it's not the sort of change which would automatically butterfly away the ACW by doing so.

The CSA's biggest industrial problem in OTL, apart from the the blockade itself, was a perennial shortage of raw iron ore production. The most famous CSA industrial works, the Tredegar Iron Works, underwent a massive expansion during the ACW, with a much improved capacity for manufacturing steel and for making all sorts of things from steel. The CSA also made a very large expansion of ironworking at Selma, Alabama, which became their second-most valuable manufacturing site. (Particularly after the Cumberland Iron Works in Tennessee were captured).

The problem was that neither Tredegar nor Selma ever really operated at more than half of their capacity. The CSA was capable of building factories and finding skilled workers - that was not the problem. The problem was a shortage of raw iron ore; Tredegar got less than half of what it needed for most of the ACW. No number of skilled workers can help if they don't have the right raw materials to work with. The Rebs simply didn't have enough raw iron ore production anywhere, and that's not the sort of thing which can be built up overnight. Thanks to the blockade, they had no way of importing it either.

The reason for the South's lack of raw iron ore (pre-ACW) was not what might be thought, either. It had nothing to do with any CSA sense of being anti-industry (the idea that the South was anti-industry is much-overstated). What happened was that due to an unfortunate (from their point of view) confluence of timing, the CSA was pushing for independence at a time when their iron ore production was being quashed due to internal competition.

What happened in the USA (North and South) up until about the mid- to late 1840s was that most iron ore production was local, relatively small-scale, scattered across many sites in many states (New England, Upper South, Lower South, etc). All of this used charcoal for iron smelting. But then along came Pittsburgh, the use of anthracite coal, and blast furnaces. That was a more efficient process than the ones which went before it, and Pittsburgh iron put many of the local iron producers out of business... in both Northern and Southern states. In Virginia, for instance, iron production decreased between 1850 and 1860, at a time when the rest of its manufacturing was expanding. This was not just a Southern thing - New England iron ore production collapsed, too. Pittsburgh and a few neighbouring anthracite-using states took over most of the USA's iron production.

So where in 1840 or even 1850 you had a lot of small-scale iron producers in most states (North and South), by 1860 many of those were gone or in severe decline. And then, right at this confluence of timing, the ACW breaks out - and the CSA is starved of raw iron production, right when it needs it most.

So, how to change that? The answer is something I touched on in an old thread here. Getting the Birmingham, Alabama site up and running a couple of decades earlier.

Around 1850, there was a syndicate of rich planters and industrialists in Alabama who wanted to develop the Birmingham site. (Yes, pro-industrialisation planters and slaveowners did exist). They knew that the iron ore and other resources were there. What was needed was a relatively short extension of a couple of railroads to cross there, so that transportation could be decent. But the proposal was killed by small farmer opposition in the Alabama legislature, which more or less put things off for a decade. Then when a similar syndicate wanted to try again in the late 1850s, the buildup to the ACW killed the idea again. What with the ACW and all, Birmingham was not opened until 1871.

If the syndicate had been successful around 1850, by 1860 Birmingham would have been a major source of iron ore production, and sitting on the necessary railroads to bring it to where it was needed in Selma and/or Tredegar. (Or it might turn out to be better just to expand things in Birmingham, but either works). Presto, a CSA with more than double its manufacturing potential. Still vastly outweighed by the North, but the difference is not nearly as bad as it was in OTL...

 

[Saphroneth]

That sounds like it would be very useful, yes.


Fundamentally, it needs to be remembered that the CSA's aim was basically not to overwhelm and defeat the North so much as make itself too much effort to reconquer - much like, as the parallel I like to bring up, the US in the 1770s. This is also why they tried to bring in an equivalent of "France".
So a South with better iron manufacture gets better railway networks, more artillery, quite possibly radically better ironclads than the Union (even OTL Tredegar was the only 2" rolling mill in the Americas early in the ACW, and thick armour is far more effective than layers of thin armour) and just generally with more industry... means that it has more of a chance to thus make itself too much effort.

 

[Saphroneth]

Well, if they weren't capable of realistic planning, that suggests it wouldn't take a genius to get a pretty large improvement out of it.
Besides, I actually think Jefferson Davis was a fairly skilled leader.
Quite apart from anything else, he was a very effective Secretary of War - he was involved in the Gadsden Purchase, expanded the Army, increased pay, introduced general usage of rifles, and was responsible for the construction of the Washington Aqueduct and the Capitol. That's four years of pretty solid work.


You can say either that the CSA was chronically and horribly mismanaged, or you can say it was so inherently strategically impaired that it couldn't last much longer than it did OTL. Both together is essentially a contradiction.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

There's actually a relatively easy PoD which can more than double the CSA's heavy industrial capacity. It requires going back about 8-10 years before the ACW, but it's not the sort of change which would automatically butterfly away the ACW by doing so.

The CSA's biggest industrial problem in OTL, apart from the the blockade itself, was a perennial shortage of raw iron ore production. The most famous CSA industrial works, the Tredegar Iron Works, underwent a massive expansion during the ACW, with a much improved capacity for manufacturing steel and for making all sorts of things from steel. The CSA also made a very large expansion of ironworking at Selma, Alabama, which became their second-most valuable manufacturing site. (Particularly after the Cumberland Iron Works in Tennessee were captured).

The problem was that neither Tredegar nor Selma ever really operated at more than half of their capacity. The CSA was capable of building factories and finding skilled workers - that was not the problem. The problem was a shortage of raw iron ore; Tredegar got less than half of what it needed for most of the ACW. No number of skilled workers can help if they don't have the right raw materials to work with. The Rebs simply didn't have enough raw iron ore production anywhere, and that's not the sort of thing which can be built up overnight. Thanks to the blockade, they had no way of importing it either.

The reason for the South's lack of raw iron ore (pre-ACW) was not what might be thought, either. It had nothing to do with any CSA sense of being anti-industry (the idea that the South was anti-industry is much-overstated). What happened was that due to an unfortunate (from their point of view) confluence of timing, the CSA was pushing for independence at a time when their iron ore production was being quashed due to internal competition.

What happened in the USA (North and South) up until about the mid- to late 1840s was that most iron ore production was local, relatively small-scale, scattered across many sites in many states (New England, Upper South, Lower South, etc). All of this used charcoal for iron smelting. But then along came Pittsburgh, the use of anthracite coal, and blast furnaces. That was a more efficient process than the ones which went before it, and Pittsburgh iron put many of the local iron producers out of business... in both Northern and Southern states. In Virginia, for instance, iron production decreased between 1850 and 1860, at a time when the rest of its manufacturing was expanding. This was not just a Southern thing - New England iron ore production collapsed, too. Pittsburgh and a few neighbouring anthracite-using states took over most of the USA's iron production.

So where in 1840 or even 1850 you had a lot of small-scale iron producers in most states (North and South), by 1860 many of those were gone or in severe decline. And then, right at this confluence of timing, the ACW breaks out - and the CSA is starved of raw iron production, right when it needs it most.

So, how to change that? The answer is something I touched on in an old thread here. Getting the Birmingham, Alabama site up and running a couple of decades earlier.

Around 1850, there was a syndicate of rich planters and industrialists in Alabama who wanted to develop the Birmingham site. (Yes, pro-industrialisation planters and slaveowners did exist). They knew that the iron ore and other resources were there. What was needed was a relatively short extension of a couple of railroads to cross there, so that transportation could be decent. But the proposal was killed by small farmer opposition in the Alabama legislature, which more or less put things off for a decade. Then when a similar syndicate wanted to try again in the late 1850s, the buildup to the ACW killed the idea again. What with the ACW and all, Birmingham was not opened until 1871.

If the syndicate had been successful around 1850, by 1860 Birmingham would have been a major source of iron ore production, and sitting on the necessary railroads to bring it to where it was needed in Selma and/or Tredegar. (Or it might turn out to be better just to expand things in Birmingham, but either works). Presto, a CSA with more than double its manufacturing potential. Still vastly outweighed by the North, but the difference is not nearly as bad as it was in OTL...

Ooh, I like that. Seemingly quite a small POD, but one with potentially massive repercussions.

 

[TRH]

You can say either that the CSA was chronically and horribly mismanaged, or you can say it was so inherently strategically impaired that it couldn't last much longer than it did OTL. Both together is essentially a contradiction.

It reminds me of what the pro-Brit posters say in War of 1812 threads.

 

[TheYoungPretender]

Could they have produced the ammunition for such weapons?

A vital question - because it isn't just material. The South needs to produce munitions for these weapons, and move them quickly to where they need to go. These were there own nightmares, and somewhat inevitable when a region's transpiration network is there for resource extraction and not communication.

In particular, the Dreyse had difficulties with range - and with repair. The conventional thinking that it's lack of range would be crippling might dissuade the CSA from purchasing any; in addition, didn't the Prussian government basically monopolize production? They may have been a private concern, but they were hardly libertarians.

To do that they'd have to reverse their policy of stopping cotton exports to run the price up and pressure European countries to support them. There doesn't seem to have been much, or any, realistic planning before the war, by either side.

Vital point here - a threatened cotton famine was considered the South's trump card par excellence, and considered this by quite a few people at the time. If they are paying for whichever wonderwaffe we are postulating, something serious happened to change this thinking. And remember, this thought, of the utter necessity of Southern cotton to France and England even underwrote a fair amount of thinking as to why war would be impossible.

More in general, call it the high-level equilibrium trap. The society of the South worked very well for the planter elite, to the point where they described it as the beau idea of civilized life. And for getting the iron goods they wanted, getting them cheaply from Pittsburgh, for a notoriously debt ridden elite, is probably better than shelling out the cash to make them locally. (Other side of the coin though, Birmingham is nice linked to seaborne transportation. I think for Jared's idea there needs to be a reason, not involving prescience, that has such a group of Southern planters deciding it's worth the short term cost and pain. But that's certainly possible.

While I think that you can postulate some slave-industrialization (they were trying it OTL, after all) the South will still be on the reverse side of a wicked imbalance in miles of rail, industrial capacity, and population that no amount of gallantry and wonderwaffe can wave away.

 

[Reader347]

Ooh, I like that. Seemingly quite a small POD, but one with potentially massive repercussions.

They had a gunpowder shortage the whole war, too, so there's another project. They still would have lost with more industry, but the longer the war drags on the more manpower losses.

 

[Anaxagoras]

They had a gunpowder shortage the whole war, too, so there's another project.

Not really. The Augusta facility (which was never taken by the Federals) and smaller facilities produced sufficient gunpowder for their needs. There was never a single battle that the Confederates lost because they lacked enough gunpowder. Now, the quality of the gunpowder, especially in terms of artillery fuses, was a different story.

They still would have lost with more industry

Not necessarily. They could have won even IOTL, so having a larger foundation on which to build a war industry would obviously increase their chances further.

 

[GohanLSSJ2]

For shortages... Northrop must be removed from his OTL position.

 

[GohanLSSJ2]

Also... wouldn't there be a chance that either a Nullification Crisis gone awry or a different result for the Mexican-US War (either they lose/gain less territory or get more/all of Mexico. Both ways could inflame the debate regardless) could worsen the sectional crisis early on?