DBWI: What if the Confederacy had not won the Battle of Gettysburg?

Oweno

Banned
Now we all no that the Confederacy won the War after that decisive blow and Beuregards Capture of Saint Louis, but what if by some Miracle the Union had won Gettysburg ? Would the Southrons be able to regroup and win the war still or would they be doomed ?
 
they only won because the damn Brits and French gave them recognition after the battle, and interfered with their fleets. There was a lot of hatred in the US for those European meddlers after that. Hmm... immediate consequences... I suppose it would have been a severe blow to the Confederacy, what with Lee being beaten and Vicksburg falling damn near simultaneously. Hard to say if the CSA could ever have rebounded after that.
Long term consequences.... I suppose the reunited US might have gone on to be a real world class power, instead of becoming such an insular place as it is today. Sure, we have real global economic power, but politically and diplomatically, we're a backwater. The US might even have gotten involved in some of the great wars that spread across Europe, although I hope we would have stayed out of all those colonial wars that happened when all the European empires shredded themselves so violently. The US would certainly never have built the huge fleets it operates on both oceans now; originally, the idea was to become so powerful on the seas that Europe could never interfere with us again, although that turned out to be rather pointless, as Europe simply never bothered with America much after the ACW....
 

Oweno

Banned
As a US Citizen I think the United States would have taken back the South and fully re-admitted the States. But Re-admittance of the States would be hard work with all the Guerilla War fare that was sure to happen. Also would Maximillian and his Empire survive, without French and CS backing?
 
Maximillian was doomed either way. His only lifeline was through the presence of French troops, who were recalled anyway after the Franco-Prussian War. A Union victory only means Napoleon's troops would have been chased out even earlier. I remember General Diaz's immortal words at Maximillian's execution in 1871, "the Mexicans shall have no king unless that king is himself Mexican!".
 

Oweno

Banned
Maximillian was doomed either way. His only lifeline was through the presence of French troops, who were recalled anyway after the Franco-Prussian War. A Union victory only means Napoleon's troops would have been chased out even earlier. I remember General Diaz's immortal words at Maximillian's execution in 1871, "the Mexicans shall have no king unless that king is himself Mexican!".

ooc: This is a Double Backwards What if.
 
The miracles were all on the Confederate side:
  1. Lee running the insane gamble of staking everything on the Pennsylvania campaign, stripping everything he could from other theaters so that he could fight Meade even-up
  2. The campaign actually succeeding (not the battle - that was a typical Lee/Jackson/Longstreet/Stuart masterpiece) with the ANV coming out with minimal casualties and even a little ahead on supplies
  3. Lincoln's stroke coming hard on the heels of the loss at Gettysburg, leaving the government effectively headless for a week or so
On paper, the CSA should never have won that war, but every now and then a lightweight slips in a knockout punch...
 
It's not like Lee's gambit didn't cost the CSA; by effectively leaving the West defensless, was it any surprise that the USA controlled the entire Western Theatre by the end, leaving the CSA dangling from (East) Mississippi to the Atlantic by the time of the treaty, without Tennessee to boot? Without New Orleans or the Mississippi River under their command, the heart of their transportation network, the Confederate Economy was screwed up six ways to Sunday. They might not be the poorest nation in North America, but then again it's hard to be worse than the results of Mesoization (ooc: TTL Balkanization).
 
The pacification of the Southron cause in 1863, would have done much to prevent the great amount of misery on the North American continent. Just think about the considerable cost of the military occupation of the CSA, and the loss of American identity applied to the Confederates during the Great War in 1914-1918. The guerilla warfare campaigns that lasted roughly until 1945 also served to create greater animosity in the American people. Although the Peace of Appomatox, withdrawing the federal troops from the Southron cities starting in 1963 certainly relieved tensions, but the terrorist campaigns of the "State Right's Movement" served to create a Second Occupation in 1992-1995.

While I am certainly glad that the United States has forced the enactment of the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th Amendments in the Southron states, I am curious to see what the fate of African-Americans in the South would have been in a country reunified 50 years early....
 
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