Civil War starts earlier

So the idea of living off the land will develop faster.

Living off the land will only take you so far, and only at certain times of the year. Even Sherman didn't do it very much...basically between Atlanta and Savannah, during the prime harvest season, after which he was supported by secure supply lines by sea. And ammunition and replacement soldiers don't grow on trees.

Successful war will almost certainly mean less war weariness. Equally, assuming 1852 is broadly similar to 1863, less cause for it.

Assuming it is a successful war, and not a festering ulcer.

Surprised no one is looking at how many people are eliminated from the officers ranks by making things ten years sooner - that's a big deal for anyone under their mid-30s as of the historical war.

That will have some impact, obviously. But then again, there's probably a lot of little known people who were too young to serve in the Mexican War and too old or ill or dead to serve in the Civil War who can fight in this one.
 
That must be why the Duke of Wellington did so poorly in the Peninsular War, and finally was crushed at Waterloo. And why Andrew Jackson lost at New Orleans. Defensive generals were decidedly at the disadvantage. :rolleyes:

That is why Napoleon got to Moscow, where neither Kaiser Wilhelm nor Adolf Hitler's armies proved able to get beyond sight of it, and that was only Hitler's armies what did that. Jackson benefited from the British commander deciding on headlong charges, a tactic that in no era of war tends to work very well.

Assuming the Southern leadership plays Scott's game and accepts battle on Scott's terms, that may be, albeit not anywhere near as certain as you make it out to be.

But the lack of a significant railroad network actually frees the Confederacy to use George Washington's strategy from the Revolutionary War. Not being tied down to defend vital railroad networks, the Southern forces can refuse battle when it is disadvantageous, drawing the Union army ever deeper into the South and away from its own supply lines while getting closer to their own. Much of the South, even in 1861, was still virtually in a wilderness state. Much more of it will be that way in 1850. You might well see Scott taken down in a "Battle of Saratoga" type campaign where the Southerners lure him in and nip at his supply lines until he's worn down and forced to surrender.

Well, IOTL they decided to gamble on offensive war when they didn't need to and lost because of it. Where ITTL, against Scott, it's vanishingly unlikely they could win a Chancellorsville, and a Fredericksburg is their best-case scenario. And you mean the South that IOTL was just as hopped up on the Napoleon cult will decide to adopt a strategy proposed IOTL and with a much better chance of success will adopt it at that point after Winfield Scott had conquered Mexico two years earlier? One word: Bullshit.

And a lot of good it did Napoleon, too. He lost his army and barely escaped with his life.

As for Alexander, if Napoleon had had the strategic depth that the South would have had in 1850, Alexander would have ended up as bad off as Nappy was after the Russian debacle. But France was too small an arena for that type of campaign.

The strategic depth that Jefferson Davis wanted IOTL to exploit for a defensive campaign but which was squandered IOTL *after* the Crimean War on wasteful offensive battles against the much more numerous North? Why is the South so intent on a defensive war that doesn't work well ITTL more than they were when it would have IOTL?


See above.

Yes, the South adopts a strategy that would require them to have Maxim Guns and their leaders to have personality transplants, while the Northern armies are entirely incapable of counting to 21 without dropping their drawers. :rolleyes:

Which makes secession and war more likely, not less.

Which means that ITTL the North will also be winning much more decisive victories earlier on, leading to a vastly different political scenario than IOTL.

In the scenario I proposed, the Compromise of 1850 was defeated. The Fugitive Slave Act was part of that compromise. And the South was not demanding a Fugitive Slave Act at that time. They were demanding access to the Territories. The Fugitive Slave Act was something Clay and Webster offered and the South accepted accepted as a substitute for what they really wanted.

Er......actually they *were* demanding Fugitive Slave Laws before that time and they didn't discover overnight objections to the Liberty Laws of the North. :rolleyes:
 
Living off the land will only take you so far, and only at certain times of the year. Even Sherman didn't do it very much...basically between Atlanta and Savannah, during the prime harvest season, after which he was supported by secure supply lines by sea. And ammunition and replacement soldiers don't grow on trees.

Actually Curtis did that first, in 1862, to defeat a larger Confederate army. Grant did that second at Vicksburg, which helped him defeat two Confederate armies with superior force. Sherman did that as much to show Jefferson Davis's state was a hollow thing that once the shell was cracked there was nothing behind it as anything else. He also did that in the Carolinas, and was pretty much unstoppable at any point by the Confederates when he did that, with armies much more dependent on larger supply stores than any 1850s armies were.

Assuming it is a successful war, and not a festering ulcer.

Well, with Winfield Scott able to direct the war instead of General "20,000 men are 2,000,000 men and I need 15,000,000 men to defeat them", and winning that war's going to be very different than the OTL war where Minie rifles made the North's job much harder.

That will have some impact, obviously. But then again, there's probably a lot of little known people who were too young to serve in the Mexican War and too old or ill or dead to serve in the Civil War who can fight in this one.

And Captain Grant is a regular army soldier with a record of heroism in the Mexican War, before being tarred with a record for drunkenness, and similar enough to the President that as with Lincoln he may attract favor from on high, *and* freed up for more Vicksburgs and Donelsons, not Overland Campaigns. While Jackson as for reasons already stated is more likely to fight for the Blue than the Gray, which means Jackson may beat Lee......:cool:
 
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