Confederate Expansion

If the CSA holds, which of these places does it annex?


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good analogy

except the North is more likely to prosper than the South in that scenario

I can respect wanting to preserve tradition and all, but the CS would be the laughing stock of the Americas. If the US continues its progress and industrialization, it will overtake the CS, and will have the upper hand in most of the conflicts that they go into.

btw, something that always bugged me... in How Few Remain, why does the US get totally pwned by the CS? I know that they didn't do so well in that history's war of secession, but they had some competent commanders like Grant and Sherman (yeah the big names, but it's true!). Turtledove takes the US incompetence up to 11, making them borderline retarded. I mean, if they couldn't beat the Confederates, then how come they were able to pull off a victory against the British of all people. It just seemed like he was pulling it out of his ass to have an excuse to put TR and Custer together. Actually, it would have been more interesting if Mark Twain was there as a war correspondant.

Basically Turtledove nerfed the USA. I mean really, Rosecrans only screwed up all of once in the US Civil War, the rest of his record was quite good. And in fact they not only had those two, they also had George Thomas, who is completely glossed over. I keep wondering what happened to Thomas as IATL he'd be one of the only successful US officers, but he'd also be Southern born.....Mill Springs alone should make him a Confederate Benedict Arnold type.

Not to mention the weird bit where Grant, despite his record in that ATL being an entirely unbroken string of successes and the only general on either side in the War of Secession to capture an enemy army goes into obscurity where Rosecrans, who while distinguished in success never had an independent command becomes General-in-chief. :eek:
 
Originally Posted by King Midas
No, it's the equivalent of Japan fighting a second Pacific War after having won in 1945.

That's a really good comparison to the point I'm trying to make here. The loser of the last war, a war by all analysis it should have won, IMO will be reluctant to try for a rematch: And if war did break out again, the USA's (in both examples) morale would be weak and brittle. The simple presumption that "We're bigger so we will win this one" wasn't true in the last case, why should it be now?

See that's not entirely an accurate comparison. A better one would be India-Pakistan or Russia-Baltic States. The USA would still very much consider a CS government illegitimate, and if the CSA wins independence with foreign backing the USA will simply and rightly see its national security as being endangered. There'd be far fewer scruples about a strictly organized draft in that case.

Because a hostile new state formed by secessionists and allied with foreign powers whose contempt of the US is only greater than it was before would very much lead to a more militarized United States. Turtledove did get that right, he just forgot that it would apply equally before Round II as opposed to after it. And given any CSA will be as stable as Mexico under the Porofiriato at best..........that in itself would be a major reason to have a much larger army of the sort the South would not be able to match.

Thanks for the expansion. :D
 
"Colorado" in the early 1860's meant pro-Southern/Confederate southern California.

No, Colorado meant "Colorado Territory". The place that would become the state of Colorado. The place Confederate forces were marching towards when they were stopped at Glorietta Pass by the Colorado Territorial Militia. (Also the New Mexico Territorial Militia and regular US Army forces.)

The Confederates also wanted to invade and conquer southern California, but it was not Colorado. And southern California wasn't pro-Confederate enough to fight for the CSA.

Without a few strange decisions early in the war it could easily have ended up occupied by the CSA, and it would be something the CSA wanted

What strange decisions?

And considering the terrain and their lack of supplies, the CSA would have been lucky to make it into Colorado Territory, let alone take it. Taking the state of California, in whole or in part, would have been a logistical nightmare with virtually no chance of success.

(or they'd knock over a few northern Mexican states and annex them to get access to the Pacific, the south in the Union had mounted filibustering invasions of northern Mexico, Cuba and Nicaragua in the 1850's)

The CSA was singularly unsuccessful in persuading or intimidating northern Mexico into joining it in OTL. They were highly unsuccessful at invading and holding anything in OTL. Invasion of Mexico would put the CSA at war with both France's puppet government under Maximillian and the Union-endorsed Juaristas.

In OTL, southern filbustering did as well as it managed because most of the US didn't care about the filibusters. The US government spent far more time and effort trying to stop the Fenians than they ever did trying to stop the filibusters. William Walker, the most successful filibuster of OTL had to rescued by the US Navy. When Walker went back for another round, the British, who were not fond of filbusters, handed him over to the locals who put him up against the wall and shot him.

Of course being put up against the wall and shot was the typical fate of filibusters who could not escape. Being a Fenian was a lot safer and had about the same chances of success.

Apart from this we have the usual strange notion that an extremely rich and modern nation (the Confederacy) is immediately going to turn into a basketcase without Washington, ignoring the fact that the south had none of these problems when in Union with the northern states. That magic "+2 for being ruled from Washington" in play?

The CSA was not extremely rich and modern. In 1860 the states that would form the CSA had 1/12th of the total industry, 1/10th the total hard currency, and less than 1/3rd of the total population.

And that's before they started the ACW. It is anything from strange to note that in actual history the southern states' existing problems were made worse and several new problems were created because they chose to violently end their union with the northern states. Before secession the south didn't have runaway inflation or bread riots or a rail network on the verge of collapse or massive war debts or a larger and stronger hostile neighbor or major sections of their work force dead, crippled, run off, or taking up arms against them.

Of course, this had been pointed out to you repeatedly and you have repeatedly ignored the facts.
 
No, Colorado meant "Colorado Territory". The place that would become the state of Colorado. The place Confederate forces were marching towards when they were stopped at Glorietta Pass by the Colorado Territorial Militia. (Also the New Mexico Territorial Militia and regular US Army forces.)

The Confederates also wanted to invade and conquer southern California, but it was not Colorado. And southern California wasn't pro-Confederate enough to fight for the CSA.



What strange decisions?

And considering the terrain and their lack of supplies, the CSA would have been lucky to make it into Colorado Territory, let alone take it. Taking the state of California, in whole or in part, would have been a logistical nightmare with virtually no chance of success.



The CSA was singularly unsuccessful in persuading or intimidating northern Mexico into joining it in OTL. They were highly unsuccessful at invading and holding anything in OTL. Invasion of Mexico would put the CSA at war with both France's puppet government under Maximillian and the Union-endorsed Juaristas.

In OTL, southern filbustering did as well as it managed because most of the US didn't care about the filibusters. The US government spent far more time and effort trying to stop the Fenians than they ever did trying to stop the filibusters. William Walker, the most successful filibuster of OTL had to rescued by the US Navy. When Walker went back for another round, the British, who were not fond of filbusters, handed him over to the locals who put him up against the wall and shot him.

Of course being put up against the wall and shot was the typical fate of filibusters who could not escape. Being a Fenian was a lot safer and had about the same chances of success.



The CSA was not extremely rich and modern. In 1860 the states that would form the CSA had 1/12th of the total industry, 1/10th the total hard currency, and less than 1/3rd of the total population.

And that's before they started the ACW. It is anything from strange to note that in actual history the southern states' existing problems were made worse and several new problems were created because they chose to violently end their union with the northern states. Before secession the south didn't have runaway inflation or bread riots or a rail network on the verge of collapse or massive war debts or a larger and stronger hostile neighbor or major sections of their work force dead, crippled, run off, or taking up arms against them.

Of course, this had been pointed out to you repeatedly and you have repeatedly ignored the facts.

I for one have not ignored your arguments. You are quite correct in that the CSA would have to do some SERIOUS economic building-up in order to achieve anything even approaching the USA
 

Are you saying that upon secession the CSA became the world's 4th largest economy? Certainly you must mean 1861 and not 2011, for while the states that composed the CSA might very well together be, if they were an independent nation, the 4th largest economy in the world, that does not mean that the CSA, had it acheived full independence from the USA, would necessarily be the 4th largest economy in the world today.
 
That says more about how dirt poor people and nations were back then then it says about Confederate strength.

Agreed. If you were to apply 2011 standards on the CSA, conceivably, they would have enough capital to fund military expeditions to add south California, the northern Mexican states and Cuba. From there, who knows how far they could've gone...
 
Agreed. If you were to apply 2011 standards on the CSA, conceivably, they would have enough capital to fund military expeditions to add south California, the northern Mexican states and Cuba. From there, who knows how far they could've gone...

In OTL, the CSA didn't have enough capital to add acquire any of that. Their attempt at conquering New Mexico was so "successful' that by July of 1862, the CSA government of what they called Arizona Territory had retreated into Texas.

The 1860 Census shows the states that would form the CSA had only 9.6% of the total US capital that was invested in industry. That's less than Pennsylvania or Massachusetts or New York.
 
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Agreed. If you were to apply 2011 standards on the CSA, conceivably, they would have enough capital to fund military expeditions to add south California, the northern Mexican states and Cuba. From there, who knows how far they could've gone...

Which is why Colonel Chivington kicked their asses at Glorietta Pass, eh? :rolleyes:
 
In OTL, the CSA didn't have enough capital to add acquire any of that. Their attempt at conquering New Mexico was so "successful' that by July of 1862, the CSA government of what they called Arizona Territory had retreated into Texas.

Perhaps because the CSA had even less troops to spare for the western front than the USA did. Say what you want about supposed Union incompetence, they had the muscle to get things done on the side.
 
Not only had Confederate forces retreated to Texas but they laid waste to much of western Texas, particularly wells and other sources of water, to prevent further Union pursuit and effectively neutralizing the area for the war and crippled any future CSA claims on Arizona and New Mexico.


Since Spain is economically, industrially, militarily and in population superior to the CSA where does this fantasy of the CSA taking Cuba keep coming from? If you want to have a scenario where the CSA suffers a humiliating defeat with heavy losses in the early 1870s...
 
Since Spain is economically, industrially, militarily and in population superior to the CSA where does this fantasy of the CSA taking Cuba keep coming from? If you want to have a scenario where the CSA suffers a humiliating defeat with heavy losses in the early 1870s...

Then TL-191 might have been a little more interesting. Instead of just having The Confederate Wanks of America bitch-slap the United Retards of America, we should have seen something else. The CSA, in all their cockiness after winning the war of secession, try to take on Spain, and gain Cuba, and get their asses handed to them. Forced to accept a humiliating defeat, they perhaps come to the realization that they aren't the huge superpower they think they are, and perhaps take a look at themselves and start to worry when they finally realize how the world is leaving them behind in their nostalgic times and moving twoards progress. That would have been more interesting to read.
 
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