Challenge: Longest possilbe US civil war

  • Thread starter Deleted member 67076
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Deleted member 67076

Ok, so how long, drawn out and straining could the American Civil war go, with a POD of say, 1840? Could we get a decade long war, and/or sporadic guerrilla fighting for longer?
 
Ok, so how long, drawn out and straining could the American Civil war go, with a POD of say, 1840? Could we get a decade long war, and/or sporadic guerrilla fighting for longer?

Well, you had low-level fighting between the Redeemers and the Republicans lasting as late as the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 (when white paramilitaries aided by soldiers returning from the Spanish-American War seized control of the city government from the democratically-elected biracial government). And of course lynchings and what not lasted longer. I suppose you could increase that level of violence, and have Federal troops take more of a hand in suppressing it for longer. Maybe if you did it right, some later historians could consider it as part of the Civil War.

The actual, battle-lines army vs. army phase of the Civil War doesn't seem like it could last much longer; the South was running out of steam, and a scenario where the Confederates do a lot better risks becoming one in which Lincoln loses in 1864 and McClellan comes in, which either leads to a negotiated peace or a continued war as OTL, with at most only a few months delay.
 
If you had the Union unable to maintain an effective blockade of the Confederacy and perhaps long breaks in fighting such as prolonged negotiations or truces, you might get another two or three years out of the conflict. Further fracturing of the Union government such as an attempted military coup or a real Northwest Conspiracy sapping military strength would stretch things out.

An early defeat of the Confederate government might lead to an ongoing low-intensity conflict with repeated large-scale flare ups that might go on for a decade...
 
After the main CSA armies are beaten the union distributes land of the plantation to the former slaves for free and same with all are business in the south.
South goes in to a long term guerilla war.
 

Dorozhand

Banned
After the main CSA armies are beaten the union distributes land of the plantation to the former slaves for free and same with all are business in the south.
South goes in to a long term guerilla war.

That would have been awesome. If, instead of compensating the "owners" for their lost "property", the Union actually liberated the slaves both politically and economically, and actually enforced reconstruction, the South might be a much better place today.
 

Dialga

Banned
How long might the ACW lasted had the South decided to go into a guerrilla phase (which IMHO would have been terrible for the South both in the short and the long run)?
 
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