Confederate Independence – A Modest Proposal
There have been a lot of ‘what happens after Confederate Independence’ threads hereabouts of late. Unfortunately none of them have been particularly well conducted or informative which is a bit sad as it is a very interesting subject. Four things seem to occur regularly which really stifles the debate.
1) Most posters are fairly partisan for either the Union or the CSA. They usually trot out the same arguments that they have used many times before. Nothing wrong with that but when someone dares to question their interpretation or even the data behind the facts they respond extremely defensively. A very common response is to try and say the same thing in several different ways. I am never quite sure if this is a tacit assumption that the person who has disagreed with them is too stupid to have understood what they wrote the first few times or it is simply that they have no evidence other than what they have already presented.
2) Some of the posters on this issue are extremely partisan for either one side or the other. When someone proposes a time-line or idea which does not meet their preconceptions they start posting ‘ASB’ or ‘This cannot happen’ when they get really cross they write ‘THIS CANNOT HAPPEN’ because capital letters are much more likely to win an argument. Things start spiralling downwards after that and the chants of ‘ASB, ASB, ASB’ begin to sound like ‘burn the witch, burn the witch’.
3) Someone goes into melt down and has a spectacular hissy fit.
4) The OP never defines in sufficient detail how the CSA gains its independence and nobody ever, ever answers the OP’s question properly after the fourth or fifth post.
It seems clear to me that (some of) the denizens of this board are incapable of having a rational debate about the subject. This, as I say, is sad as I find the topic very interesting.
Anyhoo I had a think about what to do to fix the situation and I had an idea. It is a plan of almost Baldrickian cunning and should eliminate all of the problems above if people play by the rules.
I propose we play a game. In a new thread I will post a narrative of how the CSA gains its independence starting with a very clear single POD. The narrative will also explain what territory the CSA ends up with at the end of the war and some idea of both its resources and those of the USA. The narrative will be no more than 800 words and more than 400.
I have two such narratives we could use. One narrative is for Confederate independence in 1864/5 as a result of a negotiated peace and the other for Confederate independence in 1862 as a result of a war between the Union France and Britain over the Trent Affair. I am inclined to use the former.
Rule 1 no player/participant may comment on the narrative in any way whatsoever positive or negative in the game thread. One comment post of no more than 500 words may be posted in this thread.
Rule 2 each person that signs up to the game must post a time-line or description of how they see the CSA and the USA developing in the 30 years after the end of the ACW based on the narrative of how Confederate independence was achieved. Things you might want to include are economic, social and infrastructure development, international relations, government and wars. The time-lines should not be shorter than 200 words and not more than 1500. Players MUST spend equal wordage on the development of the CSA and the USA.
Rule 3 once you have posted your time-line and NOT BEFORE you may make ONE comment post on EACH of the other time-lines that have been posted. It should be no more than 300 words.
Rule 4 you may not respond to any comments on your own time-line.
As you can see it is not a debate, we can’t seem to manage that but this game does allow us to see each other’s visions of how the CSA would evolve from a common starting point.
If you are interested in playing this then please post your interest and agreement to abide by the rules in this thread. If I can get at least eight volunteers that want to participate I shall post the kick-off narrative on Thursday evening London time. If I can’t get enough players this thread will sink without a trace.