Did the Confederate States Really Have a Chance?

[Anaxagoras]

Buy it with what?

Money.

Ship it with what?

Ships.

 

[Elfwine]

Money.



Ships.

Money it doesn't have and ships it doesn't have either.

 

[Anaxagoras]

Money it doesn't have and ships it doesn't have either.

They had a sufficient amount of both to bring in tens of thousands of rifles from Europe, not to mention vast amounts of saltpeter, artillery, and other sorts of supplies.

 

[Wolfpaw]

They had a sufficient amount of both to bring in tens of thousands of rifles from Europe, not to mention vast amounts of saltpeter, artillery, and other sorts of supplies.

Which we all know was enough to win them the war. And it's totally not like a bunch of matériel had been diverted to the South pre-Sumter by a treacherous Secretary of War, or a bunch of stuff had been ransacked from Federal armories upon secession.

It needs more guns, it needs more ships. It had money for neither, and an increase one way will reduce the other.

People also forget that most of the Confederacy's "wealth" was tied up in land and slaves, which are solidly illiquid.

 

[Elfwine]

They had a sufficient amount of both to bring in tens of thousands of rifles from Europe, not to mention vast amounts of saltpeter, artillery, and other sorts of supplies.

But not much in the way of either was available to the Confederate government at the start.

 

[amphibulous]

They had a sufficient amount of both to bring in tens of thousands of rifles from Europe, not to mention vast amounts of saltpeter, artillery, and other sorts of supplies.

Rifles are very dense cargo - you need to ship something like 20 ships crammed with cotton bales to pay for one full of rifles.

And what makes you think that the CSA brought in "vast" amounts of saltpetre by ship? They certainly had to import it, but they were always desperately short of it, and most of it came by land from Mexico:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America

I suppose cotton could have been exported via Mexico, but did the transport links for a bulk cargo exist? I doubt it.

 

[Wolfpaw]

President Douglas then dies in 1861, leaving former Georgia Governor Herschel Johnson as PotUS; with the national rift over Slavery intensifying, Johnson winds up provoking the Civil War with a northern secession--and this is then defeated.

Two things.

First, Stephen Douglas died of typhoid fever which he caught while campaigning for the War Effort and Mr. Lincoln in the border states. In any scenario where he is elected president, this most likely is not the case.'

Second, why would the North seceded when the Republicans stand a solid chance of sweeping the 1864 elections, especially since Douglas' popular sovereignty is going to flop and do nothing but continue bleeding the West.

 

[Anaxagoras]

But not much in the way of either was available to the Confederate government at the start.

Perhaps, but the blockade was virtually nonexistent at that time as well. And any cotton they would have been able to get to England would have been helpful. Certainly, it would have been a much better policy than the self-imposed cotton embargo they implemented IOTL.

 

[Elfwine]

Perhaps, but the blockade was virtually nonexistent at that time as well. And any cotton they would have been able to get to England would have been helpful. Certainly, it would have been a much better policy than the self-imposed cotton embargo they implemented IOTL.

1 being infinitely higher than nothing doesn't mean that it would be enough to matter.

The main thing that I think is an issue - let's say they get (just for figurings sake) a hundred thousand bales of cotton.

They need rifles and saltpeter and so on now, not a "hopefully the market won't be glutted" reserve.

 

[Anaxagoras]

1 being infinitely higher than nothing doesn't mean that it would be enough to matter.

The main thing that I think is an issue - let's say they get (just for figurings sake) a hundred thousand bales of cotton.

They need rifles and saltpeter and so on now, not a "hopefully the market won't be glutted" reserve.

It's not about using the cotton to purchase arms directly so much as using the cotton to back up Confederate government bonds. IOTL, the biggest loan the Confederates were able to issue was put out by the French firm of Emile Erlanger and Co. in early 1863. It was successful (to a degree) because it was backed up by Confederate cotton, so even if the Confederate government was unable to pay the dividend the bonds themselves could be redeemed in cotton. Unfortunately for the South, this only really mattered if the bondholder could physically lay his hands on the cotton and the increasingly effective Union blockade made this more difficult as the war went on. After Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the bonds lost value quickly because it became increasingly apparent that the Confederates would not be able to pay dividends AND it was very difficult to redeem the bonds in cotton.

Now, if the Confederates had built up a large supply of cotton in England early in the war, as Judah Benjamin suggested, the issuance of cotton-backed bonds would have been even more successful than it was IOTL because bondholders would have been able to obtain the cotton without worrying about the Union blockade. Therefore the bonds would have been seen as less risky and more British, French and Dutch banks would have invested in them. Not only would this have reduced inflation in the Confederacy (which is what really killed the country) but it would also have given larger numbers of stakeholders in Europe an interest in the Confederacy's victory and therefore strengthened the pro-Confederate lobby in European capitals.

Having a large stockpile of cotton in Europe in the early days of the war might also have persuaded bigger banks than Erlanger to get into the business of Confederate bonds. If a more powerful bank (i.e. Barings or the Rothschilds) had seen these bonds as an investment worth the risk, the entire diplomatic situation of the Confederacy might have changed.

 

[Elfwine]

It's not about using the cotton to purchase arms directly so much as using the cotton to back up Confederate government bonds.

Which still doesn't address the issue that the Confederacy needs stuff now, and every dollar spent on cotton for future bonds that it may or may not be able to get is a dollar not available for stuff.

And inflation did less to kill the Confederacy than losing battles. No amount of good credit is going to make up for not being able to raise armies and find generals capable of holding the Mississippi and Tennessee.

I'm not saying inflation wasn't painful, but it got out of control the more the Confederacy failed, not vice-versa: http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/ConfederateInflation.asp

 

[Anaxagoras]

And inflation did less to kill the Confederacy than losing battles. No amount of good credit is going to make up for not being able to raise armies and find generals capable of holding the Mississippi and Tennessee.

On the contrary, having good credit is critical if you want to raise armies. Not to mention arming and equipping them, and maintaining morale on the home front.

 

[Elfwine]

On the contrary, having good credit is critical if you want to raise armies. Not to mention arming and equipping them, and maintaining morale on the home front.

The CSA managed to raise, from a white population of 5.5 million, nearly a million men. There isn't the manpower supply to raise more.

And arming and equipping them with what?

No, really, the blockade is keeping it from substantially increasing the amount it got OTL from overseas.


No amount of credit is going to save New Orleans, for instance.

 

[Blue Max]

Two things.

First, Stephen Douglas died of typhoid fever which he caught while campaigning for the War Effort and Mr. Lincoln in the border states. In any scenario where he is elected president, this most likely is not the case.'

Second, why would the North seceded when the Republicans stand a solid chance of sweeping the 1864 elections, especially since Douglas' popular sovereignty is going to flop and do nothing but continue bleeding the West.

Hmm...

If Douglas lives the idea of the North Seceding makes no sense, I agree. I was thinking that Douglas' VP (a Southron Governor) becomes President--and decides to openly slavery in spite of what the North wants, though this is a stretch.

If the South gets the Presidency in 1860, and opts to push a radical pro-slavery package because they no longer care about what anyone else wants, wouldn't the North consider secession?

If Douglas lives, yeah, the GOP stand to win in 1864, the South will surely secede at that point, and stand even less of a chance.

 

[Elfwine]

Hmm...

If Douglas lives the idea of the North Seceding makes no sense, I agree. I was thinking that Douglas' VP (a Southron Governor) becomes President--and decides to openly slavery in spite of what the North wants, though this is a stretch.

If the South gets the Presidency in 1860, and opts to push a radical pro-slavery package because they no longer care about what anyone else wants, wouldn't the North consider secession?

No. Because the North still has congress to block the President - he can't pass laws, only they can.

 

[Anaxagoras]

No amount of credit is going to save New Orleans, for instance.

Of course not. But that's not the point I am trying to make. The point I am trying to make is that if the Confederacy had adopted Judah Benjamin's proposal to build up a large supply of cotton in England at the outset of the war it would have greatly aided the Confederacy's overall financial situation and that this would have made a Confederate victory more likely than it was IOTL.

Are you suggesting that the runaway inflation which the Confederacy experienced IOTL had no impact on the course of the war? Because that's pretty absurd, if you ask me.

 

[amphibulous]

Getting foreign recognition is the easiest way for the South to win

Yes - the Union would just have stopped fighting and gone home if the CSA had got recognition!

..Even the lunatics who ran the CSA didn't think that recognition itself would change anything; they just saw it as a step towards (impossible) intervention.

 

[Elfwine]

Of course not. But that's not the point I am trying to make. The point I am trying to make is that if the Confederacy had adopted Judah Benjamin's proposal to build up a large supply of cotton in England at the outset of the war it would have greatly aided the Confederacy's overall financial situation and that this would have made a Confederate victory more likely than it was IOTL.

Are you suggesting that the runaway inflation which the Confederacy experienced IOTL had no impact on the course of the war? Because that's pretty absurd, if you ask me.

I'm suggesting that the inflation rates only became completely ridiculous when the CSA's chances of winning (such as they were) were already miniscule.

The failure of Confederate arms did more to weaken the Confederacy than inflation that only reached extreme levels after it's lost in the West (defining "the West" as west of Middle Tennessee, because "the East" meaning "Virginia and Virginia alone" is a pet peeve of mine).

I'm not saying it was irrelevant to have high inflation - but the Army of Northern Virginia fought and won with inflation at at six to 1 paper to gold (Chancellorsville), and the AoT lost with it at half that (Stone's River). Or to pick a reverse of the usual trend - the ANV lost Gettysburg (8 to 1) and the AoT + reinforcements won Chickamauga (15 to 1).

Obviously the argument can be made that the ANV received the lion's share of equipment, but many of its cannons and rifles came from Union arsenals, so to speak. The AoT's failure there rests on its shoulders.

That's the problem. If it was primarily or even nearly equally inflation, both Rebel armies should be crippled by it, but we see the ANV equipped from captures at the same point the 44th (?) Mississippi is going into battle with sticks.

 

[amphibulous]

Are you suggesting that the runaway inflation which the Confederacy experienced IOTL had no impact on the course of the war? Because that's pretty absurd, if you ask me.

Firstly, that's a complete distortion of what Elfwine said.

Secondly,no imaginable amount of cotton would have meaningfully reduced inflation in the CSA: prices went up almost 100 fold by the end of the war while incomes fell around 40%. To counteract these factors the CSA would have had to shipped many years of output to the UK and sold it for gold to be used at home - and all the cotton would have had to have been sold for full price. In reality a glut like that would have sent cotton prices through the floor; that much cotton didn't exist; and the CSA didn't have access to a fraction of the needed amount of shipping.

So what your argument amounts to is "If the CSA had sold a rather small amount of cotton, then they would have had a little more gold, which would have reduced their need to finance the war through printing money by a minute amount, minusculely reducing inflation - AND THEN THEY WOULD HAVE WON AND THE WORLD WOULD DRINK MINT JULEPS FOREVERRRRR!!!!"

I can only say "That's pretty absurd to me."

 

[Elfwine]

Now that's a pretty unfair distortion of Anaxagoras's argument on that last bit.