Could the CSA defeat Mexico.

Six words: Garibaldi's Mexican army marches on Houston.

There is, of course, a freed slave division, a Haitian contingent and an international brigade, including Coronel Federico Engels. Why do we never have cool AH? Come on? Why has nobody bothered to write this? No, let's just wank on about slightly different borders of Canada and PEI joining the continental congress. Well, no. I WANT MEXICO'S JUSTIFIED REVENGE, FEATURING GARIBALDI, ENGELS AND JOAQUIN MURIETA WHO IS A REAL PERSON.

Is that too much to ask?

Why don´t thrown to the mix and an international Brigade of "Voluntarios por la hermanadad Latinoamericana y libertad de los pueblos" to the Mix? is specially likely if the war is before 1890, hell in this age the Papacy and the popes were explicitly against slavery so a war by a Slavery state against a "Free" state with the intention to extend the Slavery, not that is necessary the case but propaganda is a powerful tool, will bring a official condemnation from the Pope, and even a Papal bull
 
Without a timeline to critique all of this boils down to navel gazing.

Let's say for a moment that I were to write a timeline in which the CSA invades Mexico (I won't). In this world Bismarck might say, "A special Providence takes care of fools, drunkards, and the Confederate States."

While I would try to keep things logical (people wouldn't automatically do things they are not prone to IRL), the CSA might have caught some amazing breaks and the US might have been considered cursed by the gods. For instance, it would have been Grant dying at Shiloh instead of Johnston. The mental issues that we now understand Sherman to have suffered from would have overcome him, rendering him unfit for command. And despite how cliched it has become (Thanks again, Turtledove), that pesky order 191 doesn't go missing and McClellan's caution costs him the battle... or something along those lines. Lincoln would have kept trying to find a general who could defeat Lee, and heck, just for gits and shiggles, a bullet from a sentry narrowly misses Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville. The above are all vagaries of war and could have broke either way.

My point is that Alt history is what the one writing makes of it. Sure, the POD (apart from an ISOT or some other ASB handwaivium) needs to be plausible. The thing about butterflies that we tend to forget is that subsequent events after the POD only need to make sense given the previous divergence. It really doesn't have to make any sort of sense to the original timeline IF it coherently follows on the previous divergence.

If I were writing a TL of CSA invasion, I would find a way to neuter outside intervention, unless the goal of the TL was outside intervention. If I were writing this TL, I would also include a POV that showed the horrors of slavery, probably through the lens of a slave revolt. The point is to show the reader that all isn't well in the story and that while the South may have won their first big fight, there's a larger one on the horizon.

Honestly, if I were writing any CSA victory timeline, there are several things I would want to focus on, first would be to explore more fully Southern views on the role of government in civic life. Many positions the south took at the state and local level tended toward a statist view of things. Sure, they were rabidly anti-federalist, but that's not the same thing as being anti-statist. I'd also explore the tension between those who understood the need to industrialize with those who didn't. Readers would be surprised to learn that there were plenty of folks in the south who understood the dangers of an economy built upon a single export. And lastly, I'd explore how slavery devalued labor and cheapened humanity.
 
In OTL the American South was expansionistic, before, during, and after the Civil War. Balance of free states versus slave states was not their only reason for supporting expansion. The Confederacy would still believe in Manifest Destiny. The Confederacy would still want new lands for their growing population. They would still want new land to replace land worn out by soil exhaustion. Controlling northern Mexico will still be seen as necessary for a route to the Pacific. Controlling Central America will still be seen as necessary for control of trans-ithmus traffic. Controlling Cuba will still be seen as necessary protect trade in the Caribbean. Victory in the Civil War will be seen as vindicating belief in Confederate racial and military superiority, which is likely to increase Confederate expansionism. Why would an independent Confederacy be less expansionist than in OTL?

Its less a matter of inclination and more one of capability; Pre-Civil War, the Southern interests in the country not only diden't have any security concerns (The Atlantic Moat securing them from Europe as well as being part of The United States, which meant that even if their filibustering expeditions went belly up they always had a safe haven to fall back into and fresh sources of supply and recruits), but could as part of a broader national effort tap into the finacial, human capital, and industrial resources of the North and West to strengthen proper war efforts/threats that could extract concessions to help expand their domain. Once they broke away from the Union, however, they not only lose that well of extra resources, but have to maintain the strength at home to keep potential Union aggression at bay, secure the nation from potential European interferance, and (to some extent) hedge against localized slave/pro-Unionist (PanAmericanist?) insurgency. All of that results in them having dramatically lower power projection in, say, 1870 relative to Mexico than they enjoyed during the Mexican-American war.
 
While the south had a fair bit of railroad mileage, it was in multiple gauges and not connected, primarily from inland agricultural areas to ports. To have useful rail connection between the heart of the CSA and its industrial base and Texas you need to rationalize the gauging across several states (all jealous of their rights) and build thousands of miles of new rail systems. Essentially all military goods except beef are going to have to be sent to Texas from east of the Mississippi unless you are positing a CSA attack after 1900, and even then the industry in Texas is limited. In any CSA wins TL the CSA is going to be highly dependent on European friends as a market for their only products (cotton and tobacco) and for a long time as the source for manufactured goods, to say nothing of a continuing counterbalance against the USA. This begs the question why invade Mexico, if Maximillian is still there and a French ally, this only pisses off one of the CSA's friends.

IMHO if the CSA wants to expand, there are other more vulnerable and less "protected" targets in Central America. With the exception of Cuba, still owned by Spain, and Brazil, too big and too far away, any territory the CSA seizes has already abolished chattel slavery (yes peonage still exists) and so their system will need to be imposed causing all sorts of problems...

Oh and another thing, while the "capital" the slaves represented on paper was a lot of money, in reality that "money" as a useful as if it had been sealed 100 feet underground encased in concrete. Even before the ACW slaves could only be sold, and the capital then freed up for other uses like industrialization, in the south. In an independent CSA, shifting your investment from slaves to a factory meant selling within a very restricted market - like survivors on a desert island trading coconuts back and forth. Outside of the capital that slaves represented, the south at the time of the ACW had very little capital that could be used for more conventional investments, whether land purchase, factories, etc.
 
Extremely odd claim to make given the Confederacy did in fact hold large swathes of said territory during the course of the conflict. The PoD for how the Confederacy won has also been left open, so to assume this is impossible simply has no merit; a Trent Affair War would've seen the Confederacy take all the border states, for example.

Yes yes, we know you think the CSA would have invaded and conquered those states.

Yes because this is alternate history. If the Confederacy had taken more territory and had more of its young men not perish during the course of the conflict, having a much larger population than IOTL is blatantly obvious.

You can't just say "well its alternate history" as a handwave for whatever ludicrous claim is being made. Population growth happens for a reason. There were 360,000 deaths on the Confederate side in the Civil War. So, to get the extra 20 million people that you seem to expect that means those 360,000 people must have 55 extra descendants each. I hope I don't have to explain why that is silly.

Sure, but not enough to justify the lack of a railway preventing Confederate battle field success in Northern Mexico. I also find it amusing this is held as a disadvantage to the Confederacy but not to Mexico, which is lacking in railways in general.

Mexico isn't the one doing the invading. Lack of infrastructure is most relevant to the side that's on the offensive. While it will inconvenience Mexico they will be fighting on their own territory and will have shorter lines of supply and communication. And also not have to worry about being attacked on another front.

An odd claim to make given the very title has Birmingham in it and the first paragraph has it said twice. However, here is another source:

Doesn't matter what the title was. Its not about Birmingham. At all. Sure it gets mentioned, and I acknowledged that. But it barely gets talked about. The source is almost entirely about a Bibb County operation. The author might have intended to talk about Birmingham, but if so he failed miserably. Your second source also doesn't back up your claims, specifically noting that the initial venture that became Birmingham was organized in 1870.
 
Yes yes, we know you think the CSA would have invaded and conquered those states.

The sarcasm is odd, given Lee invaded Maryland twice, the Confederacy retained large portions of West Virginia, invaded Kentucky twice and fought in Missouri throughout 1861. It's also extremely telling you had to resort to sarcasm instead of giving a proper retort; play the ball.

You can't just say "well its alternate history" as a handwave for whatever ludicrous claim is being made. Population growth happens for a reason. There were 360,000 deaths on the Confederate side in the Civil War. So, to get the extra 20 million people that you seem to expect that means those 360,000 people must have 55 extra descendants each. I hope I don't have to explain why that is silly.

It's very telling you have to distort what I said, which was that the Confederate population could be from 30 Million to 40 Million, not definitely double as you're claiming and its obvious why you're doing that. First and foremost, the 11 States of the Confederacy was essentially 20 Million people in 1900. Adding the border states along with the 1.3 Million Southern Whites who left the South by 1900 brings that population to just shy of 30 Million. Average fertility rates for Whites in the United States was around 5 to 4 children from what I can tell, so by 1900 you've added 2-4 million more Southerners. This isn't touching upon the Great Migration and other demographic factors.

Mexico isn't the one doing the invading. Lack of infrastructure is most relevant to the side that's on the offensive. While it will inconvenience Mexico they will be fighting on their own territory and will have shorter lines of supply and communication. And also not have to worry about being attacked on another front.

And we saw how well that worked out for both sides in 1846-1848.

Doesn't matter what the title was. Its not about Birmingham. At all. Sure it gets mentioned, and I acknowledged that. But it barely gets talked about. The source is almost entirely about a Bibb County operation. The author might have intended to talk about Birmingham, but if so he failed miserably. Your second source also doesn't back up your claims, specifically noting that the initial venture that became Birmingham was organized in 1870.

It's amusing to claim it has nothing to do with Birmingham when you concede its in the title and gets repeatedly mentioned; quite clearly he talks about multiple things in the same timeframe. I'm also confused by your claim the second source doesn't back up my claims at all when it notes exploration of resources and railway building to access them was underway after the Civil War. Quite frankly, you're not debating at all but using strawman.
 
The sarcasm is odd, given Lee invaded Maryland twice, the Confederacy retained large portions of West Virginia, invaded Kentucky twice and fought in Missouri throughout 1861. It's also extremely telling you had to resort to sarcasm instead of giving a proper retort; play the ball.

Yes, Lee failed to invade the north twice. Both times losing badly. And yes they were driven out of Kentucky repeatedly with no shot at holding it. Neither of those point to any way of holding them.

It's very telling you have to distort what I said, which was that the Confederate population could be from 30 Million to 40 Million, not definitely double as you're claiming and its obvious why you're doing that. First and foremost, the 11 States of the Confederacy was essentially 20 Million people in 1900. Adding the border states along with the 1.3 Million Southern Whites who left the South by 1900 brings that population to just shy of 30 Million. Average fertility rates for Whites in the United States was around 5 to 4 children from what I can tell, so by 1900 you've added 2-4 million more Southerners. This isn't touching upon the Great Migration and other demographic factors.

You said 30-40 million, meaning so far as you are concerned 40 million is a legitimate possibility. Which means that so far as you are concerned its possible for the CSA to have half the population of the OTL 1900 United States DESPITE other areas of the country always being more heavily populated. And the Great MIgration started in 1916. Why are you even brining it up. If you wanted to think it comes early it involved people LEAVING the south. Meaning the population would logically be smaller is something similiar occurred.

And we saw how well that worked out for both sides in 1846-1848.

Irrelevant. The US in the Mexican American War had a lot of difficulty invading northern Mexico. It was the landing at Vera Cruz which sealed American victory. And again, the US didn't have to worry about any hostile neighbors intervening back home.

It's amusing to claim it has nothing to do with Birmingham when you concede its in the title and gets repeatedly mentioned; quite clearly he talks about multiple things in the same timeframe. I'm also confused by your claim the second source doesn't back up my claims at all when it notes exploration of resources and railway building to access them was underway after the Civil War. Quite frankly, you're not debating at all but using strawman.

The link you posted talks a whole lot about a single ironworks in Bibb County. In fact every single paragraph after the first one is related to that. It mentions Birmingham twice, both in the initial paragraph. First it says: “No place on earth, other than the Birmingham District,” writes historian W. David Lewis, “contained within a thirty-mile radius all three raw materials required for iron production.” Then a couple sentences later it says this: They brashly named the state’s emerging industrial center Birmingham, after Britain’s main industrial hub."

That's it. That is all the mention that Birmingham gets. If the text was about Birmingham it would have TALKED about Birmingham. It didn't.

No information whatsoever is given that backs up your 1867 claim. 1867 meanwhile appears exactly once in the text, specifically here: In an 1867 letter to a colleague, he writes “there is a disposition to use our iron at St. Louis and also at New Orleans,” but that “this will be checked by the very high rates of freight charged from here to Selma.” That is the only mention of that year in the text whatsoever.

Your second source meanwhile says the following about Birmingham's origins: "Recognizing the area's potential, a group of investors and promoters of the North and South Railroad (which later became the Louisville & Nashville Railroad) met with banker Josiah Morris in Montgomery on December 18, 1870, and organized the Elyton Land Company for the purpose of building a new city in Jefferson County. The company met again in January 1871, and chose as its president James R. Powell, who had recently returned from Birmingham, England's iron and steel center, and suggested that the new Alabama industrial center be given the same name."

Huh, again no mention whatsoever backing up your claims about Birmingham development in 1867, and certainly not any mention of the 1850s. These sources don't back up your claims at all, which let's remember was:


No support for this in either source. And going back farther:

It would, as OTL trends advocated. Planters were moving to industrialize Birmingham as early as 1850, and were stopped by the efforts of the Yeomen farmers; this would become a much reduced issue in the aftermath of the Civil War and it shows in that Birmingham began to develop in earnest in 1867/1868.

Again, no support in either source.
 
Yes, as immigrants as % of the population averaged 5% in the South, with North Carolina having the lowest rate in the nation at less than 1%. Also, I do not see how this would be an issue, as the same pull factors that did draw immigrants to the South would be unchanged; the Homestead Act had no effect on the South.

Your source says that immigrants were less than 5% of the population of the South. That's still a big increase from the 1860 Census, where about 1 in 40 people from the Confederate states was an immigrant. Much of the difference is because of a pull factor you ignore – immigrants largely avoided states where slavery was legal.

Depends upon the exact borders of this Confederacy; adding Kentucky, West Virginia, and Oklahoma gets you to just shy of 25 Million. 1.3 Million White Southerners who left the South in the decades up to 1900 probably also wouldn't be doing so here, and you have to assume a changed demographic picture on the whole given likely reduced war losses.

Adding Kentucky, West Virginia, and Oklahoma gets you just shy of 23 million. Still that’s much better math than your initial claim of 30 to 40 million.

So how does the Confederacy get West Virginia? Robert E Lee, arguably the Confederacy’s best general, couldn’t take West Virginia from William Rosecrans, a second-string Union general.

How does the Confederacy get Kentucky? Braxton Brag was the most successful Confederate commander in that theatre – he sometimes held Union territory for a few weeks before logistics forced him to retreat.

So far you haven’t given any reason why the 1.3 million whites who left OTLs South wouldn’t leave in a Confederacy wins TL And 10% of the draft age white men from Confederate States served in the Union Army. They won’t be returning to the Confederacy and we can expect their families to leave, costing the Confederates 500,000 to 600,000 people. Then there’s the southern Unionists who didn’t join the Union Army. If only 1 in 4 of them leave, that will cost the Confederacy another 300,000 people. About 500,000 slaves fled to the Union during the war – they won’t be going back to the Confederacy. And when the remaining slaves realize that Union Armies won’t be coming to free them, large numbers will probably try to flee or revolt. Add in the punitive response from Southern whites and that could easily be another 100,000 population lost to the Confederacy.

Except population is not the sum total of military success, hence why everyone has moved away from human wave tactics.

The only person even implying that population was the sum total of military success was yourself, when you made the wildly inaccurate claim that “1900 IOTL the former States of the Confederacy had shot up to around 30-40 million to around 10 Million Mexicans”.


Your source refers to the entire South, but not all of the South joined the Confederacy.

Question was one of industrialization and it would come as a hell of shock to Zachary Taylor he needed a railroad, same for Winfield Scott.

Zachary Taylor also wasn’t facing machine guns and barbed wire, which might just complicate a 1900 Confederate invasion of Mexico. Zachary Taylor also didn’t take Mexico City.

Winfield Scott did take Mexico City, but he was a better offensive commander than anybody the Confederacy produced. Scott also had a navy backing him for transport and fire support. The Confederacy could build a real navy by 1900. But if they’re facing the French Navy, they’ll get slaughtered.

Industrial capacity is an advantage, but that didn’t give Custer the win at the Little Bighorn. The Mexicans would be fighting on home ground with vastly shorter lines of supply. And the Confederacy was always poor at logistics.
 

Thanks for the source, which clearly disproves your original claim that "Planters were moving to industrialize Birmingham as early as 185"'.

Which is false; Calhoun's Pro-Slavery faction was the main opponent of the All Mexican movement. This wasn't all, however:

Calhoun was a main opponent of Mexican annexation, but pro-slavery men generally supported the Mexican-American War. Calhoun was an enthusiastic supporter of annexing Texas, as were most pro-slavery men. Most pro-slavery men also supported annexing Cuba, William Walker's seizure of Nicaragua, and the actions of the other filibusters.

And the Confederacy was expansonistc during the Civil War, with their attempts to annex the northern Mexican states.
 
What do the southerners do with any new Mexican territory once they conquer it. Sure they can impose slavery but what next, there are an awful of of Mexicans who are "browner" than many of the slaves in the CSA -will they be enslaved under the one drop of blood concept. Will the average Mexican in the street be assisting the Confedrados in the patrols against runaway slaves? Will the new masters expropriate the Haciendas and lands of the wealthy landowners, because if they don't there simply is not a lot of good agricultural land in Northern Mexico that is empty and waiting for exploitation. Do this and now you have not only alinenated the "brown" part of the Mexican population but also the "whitest" and wealthiest inhabitants. The issues both the Mexican governments and the US Army had with folks like Pancho Villa will look like a Sunday picnic.
 
Yes because this is alternate history. If the Confederacy had taken more territory and had more of its young men not perish during the course of the conflict, having a much larger population than IOTL is blatantly obvious.

For the Confederacy to have a population of 30 million in 1900 they would have to annex Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia.

For the Confederacy to have a population of almost 40 million in 1900 they would also have annex Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, and Wyoming.

An odd claim to make given the very title has Birmingham in it and the first paragraph has it said twice. However, here is another source:

I already posted that source to prove your initial claim that "Planters were moving to industrialize Birmingham as early as 1850" was false.
 
If I were writing a TL of CSA invasion, I would find a way to neuter outside intervention, unless the goal of the TL was outside intervention.

And if I were writing a TL with a CSA invasion of Mexico, I would include or not include foreign intervention based on whether other nations would think that intervention was in their national interest, not some arbitrary goal for the TL.
 
And if I were writing a TL with a CSA invasion of Mexico, I would include or not include foreign intervention based on whether other nations would think that intervention was in their national interest, not some arbitrary goal for the TL.
Every action in a timeline is arbitrary to some degree or another. When we write TLs all actions are filtered through the prism of the writer. I might posit a position that I think reflects the national interests of a nation, but for me to claim it's not an arbitrary position based upon my own interpretation of history, is senseless. I've read plenty of timelines where I'm sure the author thought the action made sense to his/her world, but to me, as a reader, they were insanely silly, designed to fit the writer's notions. In the context of writing a TL, there's nothing inherently wrong with it. But to presume a TL will simply reflect the will of the nations interacting in the timeline is absurd, as though a writer doesn't bring the lens of their own perspective to the TL.
 
What do the southerners do with any new Mexican territory once they conquer it. Sure they can impose slavery but what next, there are an awful of of Mexicans who are "browner" than many of the slaves in the CSA -will they be enslaved under the one drop of blood concept. Will the average Mexican in the street be assisting the Confedrados in the patrols against runaway slaves? Will the new masters expropriate the Haciendas and lands of the wealthy landowners, because if they don't there simply is not a lot of good agricultural land in Northern Mexico that is empty and waiting for exploitation. Do this and now you have not only alinenated the "brown" part of the Mexican population but also the "whitest" and wealthiest inhabitants. The issues both the Mexican governments and the US Army had with folks like Pancho Villa will look like a Sunday picnic.

DoD suggested that the rich Mexicans would become "honorary whites" and that peons would become... well, a new category between slaves and free whites.
 
DoD suggested that the rich Mexicans would become "honorary whites" and that peons would become... well, a new category between slaves and free whites.

I imagine your peons would be considered essentially Native Americans, which could very easily be justified by a look at their admixture; most mestizo would have a great deal of Indian ancestory even if they've been acculturated, while the wealthier (given how little social mobility there had been in Mexico up to that point) are far more likely to have a noticeably large proportion of verifiably Spainish-descended folks in their bloodlines. I could see the Dixons adopting a perspective something along the lines of... the name escapes me, but the complex hierarchy of racial mixes the Spainish colonial society created.
 
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