How badly could the US lose the war against CSA and UK?

[EnglishCanuck]

Since the post-secession Union would have a even higher german percentage than OTL US (in contrast to the Confederacy which was predominantly British settled) it is not unlikely that in such a scenario a revanchist, partially germanized Union would be allied with the CPs and the CSA with the Entente, with WWI producing a thousand mile long trench line across North America.

Let's not forget that there's 50 years between 1864 and 1914 (half a century, or almost a generation) where the world can radically change. Many of these threads tend to forget when people chime in saying "The US will ally with Germany" that in the 1860s there was no Germany, and its' unification under Prussia is not an event set in stone. The politics which lead to OTL's Entente and Central Powers forming are also not set in stone. Prussia/Russia might solidify an alliance putting the rest of Europe at odds with them, France and Britain might come to blows over empire in the late Victorian era and be mutually antagonistic, a divided USA may divide further or turn insular. There's way too much in play over 50 years for the world to look exactly as it did OTL in 1914.

And in truth, Turtledove already wrote those stories and they're pretty good.

 

[Belisarius II]

Let's not forget that there's 50 years between 1864 and 1914 (half a century, or almost a generation) where the world can radically change. Many of these threads tend to forget when people chime in saying "The US will ally with Germany" that in the 1860s there was no Germany, and its' unification under Prussia is not an event set in stone. The politics which lead to OTL's Entente and Central Powers forming are also not set in stone. Prussia/Russia might solidify an alliance putting the rest of Europe at odds with them, France and Britain might come to blows over empire in the late Victorian era and be mutually antagonistic, a divided USA may divide further or turn insular. There's way too much in play over 50 years for the world to look exactly as it did OTL in 1914.

And in truth, Turtledove already wrote those stories and they're pretty good.

True nothing is set in stone. However, the most likely outcome of the USA being smashed and crippled by Britain would be bitter hatred that would be paid in blood at the first opportunity. Whoever Britain was at war with the USA would side with them. The first priority would be reconquering the South. It would be intolerable for the USA to accept the CSA having a stranglehold over its economy. The U.S. could never accept a foreign power controlling the Mississippi River. After that screwing Britian would be the top foreign policy agenda item. It would take generations to get over that kind of bitter national memory. France didn't forget her 2 lost sisters imagine if they'd lost 1/3 of the country. Free Ireland! Canada is so nice in the Summertime.

 

[gladiator8085]

True nothing is set in stone. However, the most likely outcome of the USA being smashed and crippled by Britain would be bitter hatred that would be paid in blood at the first opportunity. Whoever Britain was at war with the USA would side with them. The first priority would be reconquering the South. It would be intolerable for the USA to accept the CSA having a stranglehold over its economy. The U.S. could never accept a foreign power controlling the Mississippi River. After that screwing Britian would be the top foreign policy agenda item. It would take generations to get over that kind of bitter national memory. France didn't forget her 2 lost sisters imagine if they'd lost 1/3 of the country. Free Ireland! Canada is so nice in the Summertime.

I agree. The USA would be out for blood against the CSA and the UK. Whether Germany would form in the same manner that it did in OTL is of course an open question, but some form of Germany was in the cards whether it is headed by Austria or Prussia is the question. Of course if it is headed by Austria then all that means is that the Austria-Hungarian Empire has another nationality under its umbrella so it might make a bigger bang when it falls apart.

 

[EnglishCanuck]

True nothing is set in stone. However, the most likely outcome of the USA being smashed and crippled by Britain would be bitter hatred that would be paid in blood at the first opportunity. Whoever Britain was at war with the USA would side with them. The first priority would be reconquering the South. It would be intolerable for the USA to accept the CSA having a stranglehold over its economy. The U.S. could never accept a foreign power controlling the Mississippi River. After that screwing Britian would be the top foreign policy agenda item. It would take generations to get over that kind of bitter national memory. France didn't forget her 2 lost sisters imagine if they'd lost 1/3 of the country. Free Ireland! Canada is so nice in the Summertime.

That's just vanishingly unlikely. Britain and France fought one another on and off for two decades between 1792 and 1814, Britain paying for and leading alliances against first the Revolutionary government in Paris and then Bonaparte's Empire, stripping France of vast amounts of territory and treasure. Not a generation later Britain allied with Bonapartist France to fight Imperial Russia in the Crimea, and astonishingly enough never went to war with France again after 1814. This was despite Britain and France spending much of the 18th century at one another's throats and Britain having expended enormous amounts of blood and treasure wrecking three French governments in less than a one hundred year period.

Put another way, the nascent United States delivered Britain one of it's most embarrassing strategic defeats by kicking them out of what became the United States in 1783. Thirty years later the two launched another war which was embarrassing for the United States and saw the national capital torched. They signed a peace in 1814 and then negotiated several treaties and never went to war again.

By your own logic, not only should France have sworn undying hatred against Britain, who let's not forget conquered enormous swathes of their empire across the 18th and 19th centuries while tormenting metropole France for nigh on twenty years between 1792 and 1815, but Britain should also have sworn undying hatred against the United States for stealing huge swathes of their North American empire and causing one of their greatest national embarrassments. That none of those things happened is a pretty telling example that nation states and peoples do not hold eternal grudges for revenge, and certainly not ones that last 50+ years beyond the point of reason.

There's a vast variety of reasons that this is also unlikely from the cultural to economic to the political, but the simple statement that "eternal revenge" is a bad policy goal ought to be enough to lay it to rest.

 

[EnglishCanuck]

I agree. The USA would be out for blood against the CSA and the UK. Whether Germany would form in the same manner that it did in OTL is of course an open question, but some form of Germany was in the cards whether it is headed by Austria or Prussia is the question. Of course if it is headed by Austria then all that means is that the Austria-Hungarian Empire has another nationality under its umbrella so it might make a bigger bang when it falls apart.

Here's the problem with that idea in just a small scenario. It's the 1880s, the Second French Empire has survived and continues to prop up the Second Mexican Empire, is mucking around with Latin America, and is a benefactor of the CSA. They go to war with Britain over dominance of the Caribbean. Is the US likely to jump into this war to screw over the British on the principle of being "out for blood"?

 

[Dagoth Ur]

That's just vanishingly unlikely. Britain and France fought one another on and off for two decades between 1792 and 1814, Britain paying for and leading alliances against first the Revolutionary government in Paris and then Bonaparte's Empire, stripping France of vast amounts of territory and treasure. Not a generation later Britain allied with Bonapartist France to fight Imperial Russia in the Crimea, and astonishingly enough never went to war with France again after 1814. This was despite Britain and France spending much of the 18th century at one another's throats and Britain having expended enormous amounts of blood and treasure wrecking three French governments in less than a one hundred year period.

Put another way, the nascent United States delivered Britain one of it's most embarrassing strategic defeats by kicking them out of what became the United States in 1783. Thirty years later the two launched another war which was embarrassing for the United States and saw the national capital torched. They signed a peace in 1814 and then negotiated several treaties and never went to war again.

By your own logic, not only should France have sworn undying hatred against Britain, who let's not forget conquered enormous swathes of their empire across the 18th and 19th centuries while tormenting metropole France for nigh on twenty years between 1792 and 1815, but Britain should also have sworn undying hatred against the United States for stealing huge swathes of their North American empire and causing one of their greatest national embarrassments. That none of those things happened is a pretty telling example that nation states and peoples do not hold eternal grudges for revenge, and certainly not ones that last 50+ years beyond the point of reason.

There's a vast variety of reasons that this is also unlikely from the cultural to economic to the political, but the simple statement that "eternal revenge" is a bad policy goal ought to be enough to lay it to rest.

Exactly, it may be people's hatred for the CSA and anything aiding it colors their analysis of what could happen. After some fairly short time USA people won't hate their two biggest trading partners and cultural brothers.

 

[MrHaakwood]

Exactly, it may be people's hatred for the CSA and anything aiding it colors their analysis of what could happen. After some fairly short time USA people won't hate their two biggest trading partners and cultural brothers.

Cultural brothers? You mean slavers and imperialists? Ripping the USA appart in the name of something evil? Doubt it!

 

[Dagoth Ur]

Cultural brothers? You mean slavers and imperialists? Ripping the USA appart in the name of something evil? Doubt it!

Case in point. A moral (which many northerners didn't care about) and economic difference which doesn't change overwhelmingly Protestant, Anglo and Scottish ancestry with a heritage of yeoman farmers, Parliamentary/congressional system, and limited central government power. The fact is mass disenfranchisement of blacks and slavery-in-all-but-name (sharecropping) became widespread after the civil war and not many people in the north cared about it. And just because you think slavery is evil doesn't mean northerners at the time did. Remember northerners were willing to bend over backward for decades before the civil war. As late as 1865, after war had been waged for four long bloody years, at the attempted Hampton Roads Peace Conference Lincoln and Seward reportedly offered some possibilities for compromise on the issue of slavery.

 

[Dagoth Ur]

Cultural brothers? You mean slavers and imperialists? Ripping the USA appart in the name of something evil? Doubt it!

And because I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of this before searching deeply, from Wikipedia:
"The Corwin Amendment, a less-encompassing constitutional amendment that was finally submitted by the Committee of Thirty-Three was passed by Congress, but it simply provided protection for slavery where it currently existed, something that Lincoln and most members of both parties already believed was a state right protected by the existing US Constitution."
According to this most US politicians at the time believed the states had a right to retain slavery. Most southerners were paranoid and also threw a hissy fit that most northerners didn't want slavery to spread to the federally owned territories. This led to them seceding, but NOT because of the states' rights to slavery, but mostly because of their paranoia and their desire to spread slavery as far as they could. In a timeline where the CSA and British defeat the north, but do not take much or any territory, I just can't imagine the north will magically develop some mindset that slavery is evil when they were perfectly fine with it existing, so long as it did not spread. Belief that that mindset will magically develop belongs in ASB.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

There's a vast variety of reasons that this is also unlikely from the cultural to economic to the political, but the simple statement that "eternal revenge" is a bad policy goal ought to be enough to lay it to rest.

From what I can tell, nations generally embrace revanchism if the loss of territory is perceived as humiliating. The Coalition deliberately avoided humiliating France after the Napoleonic Wars, and didn't take any territory which France had held on the eve of the Revolution, so relations with France quickly became normalised. Similarly, losing the American colonies didn't stop Britain being perceived, and perceiving itself, as a first-rate power, meaning that relations were normalised pretty quickly after the war.

Conversely, France's defeat during the Franco-Prussian War was seen as a humiliation -- before the war, France was seen as Europe's, and hence the world's, foremost military power; after the war, that accolade went to Germany. Or for a more contemporary example, the Russian invasion of the Ukraine is largely motivated by the sense of national humiliation many Russians feel about the fall of the Soviet Union and its aftermath.

Which is to say, I think that the Union's attitude post-war depends largely on how big a hit its reputation takes. If the Union is still treated as a great power (which is plausible; after all, the North had most of the country's population, and almost all its heavy industry, and was strong enough to make a powerful country even without the Confederate states), I expect its people would reconcile themselves to the loss of their southern territories; if it's treated as a second-rate power, you'd probably see a much stronger desire to fight again to try and wipe away the humiliation.

Exactly, it may be people's hatred for the CSA and anything aiding it colors their analysis of what could happen. After some fairly short time USA people won't hate their two biggest trading partners and cultural brothers.

That, and the belief many posters here have that the US is basically destined to reach more or less its current borders, meaning that any defeat is viewed as a mere temporary setback to be overcome a few years down the line.

 

[Dagoth Ur]

Which is to say, I think that the Union's attitude post-war depends largely on how big a hit its reputation takes. If the Union is still treated as a great power (which is plausible; after all, the North had most of the country's population, and almost all its heavy industry, and was strong enough to make a powerful country even without the Confederate states), I expect its people would reconcile themselves to the loss of their southern territories; if it's treated as a second-rate power, you'd probably see a much stronger desire to fight again to try and wipe away the humiliation.

To add, the north was so powerful that even with all the draft dodging and draft riots (another proof that many northerners did not care about slavery or even persecuting the war), it pretty handily defeated the CSA. It took four years but it was four years of pretty much constant advances at the strategic level. So with the CSA remaining independent I still think the USA will be quite powerful, as you say.

 

[Nenshou Yuuki]

Honestly I could see people in parliament pushing for more lenient terms for the Union just so they won't have to fight this war again 20 years from now and so there's a counterbalance against the confederates incase they try things in the future and against a Mexican empire if France is successful in installing Max on the throne.

Here's the problem with that idea in just a small scenario. It's the 1880s, the Second French Empire has survived and continues to prop up the Second Mexican Empire, is mucking around with Latin America, and is a benefactor of the CSA. They go to war with Britain over dominance of the Caribbean. Is the US likely to jump into this war to screw over the British on the principle of being "out for blood"?

Also just from butterflies, Bismarck's assassination is successful and now either Germany doesn't unify or it unifies under Austria, completely shaking up the latter half of the 19th century and preventing the fall of the French empire.

 

[MrHaakwood]

And because I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of this before searching deeply, from Wikipedia:
"The Corwin Amendment, a less-encompassing constitutional amendment that was finally submitted by the Committee of Thirty-Three was passed by Congress, but it simply provided protection for slavery where it currently existed, something that Lincoln and most members of both parties already believed was a state right protected by the existing US Constitution."
According to this most US politicians at the time believed the states had a right to retain slavery. Most southerners were paranoid and also threw a hissy fit that most northerners didn't want slavery to spread to the federally owned territories. This led to them seceding, but NOT because of the states' rights to slavery, but mostly because of their paranoia and their desire to spread slavery as far as they could. In a timeline where the CSA and British defeat the north, but do not take much or any territory, I just can't imagine the north will magically develop some mindset that slavery is evil when they were perfectly fine with it existing, so long as it did not spread. Belief that that mindset will magically develop belongs in ASB.

Funny! Because the first time I heard about the Corwin Amendment was yesterday. In one of Atun-Shei Films

 

[EnglishCanuck]

From what I can tell, nations generally embrace revanchism if the loss of territory is perceived as humiliating. The Coalition deliberately avoided humiliating France after the Napoleonic Wars, and didn't take any territory which France had held on the eve of the Revolution, so relations with France quickly became normalised. Similarly, losing the American colonies didn't stop Britain being perceived, and perceiving itself, as a first-rate power, meaning that relations were normalised pretty quickly after the war.

Conversely, France's defeat during the Franco-Prussian War was seen as a humiliation -- before the war, France was seen as Europe's, and hence the world's, foremost military power; after the war, that accolade went to Germany. Or for a more contemporary example, the Russian invasion of the Ukraine is largely motivated by the sense of national humiliation many Russians feel about the fall of the Soviet Union and its aftermath.

Which is to say, I think that the Union's attitude post-war depends largely on how big a hit its reputation takes. If the Union is still treated as a great power (which is plausible; after all, the North had most of the country's population, and almost all its heavy industry, and was strong enough to make a powerful country even without the Confederate states), I expect its people would reconcile themselves to the loss of their southern territories; if it's treated as a second-rate power, you'd probably see a much stronger desire to fight again to try and wipe away the humiliation.

The US sans the South (and with a British victory, probably a sizable chunk of northern Maine) would still be a great power, the premier power of North American most likely. It would, almost for certain, have less natural security than it enjoyed OTL but would otherwise still be powerful. I don't think they'd be treated as a second rate country. The biggest downside is that the Monroe Doctrine would be considered a dead letter, while a lot of prestige would be flushed down the drain as well. Though how much of that will be seen as self-inflicted vs foreign inflicted will be up for debate.

One of the other problems with revanchism in this scenario would also be that it was from a civil war and rebellion. With a political end to the war (in whatever form) then there's definitely a lot of soul searching and you'd be building a US identity from the 'bottom up' if the Republicans and Democrats don't survive the absolute maelstrom of the war itself. So long as the West is still being settled and the railroads are still being laid, I think there's only a small chance for some burning desire for revenge. It would probably take a second war or conflict to really ignite those passions.

 

[Belisarius II]

That's just vanishingly unlikely. Britain and France fought one another on and off for two decades between 1792 and 1814, Britain paying for and leading alliances against first the Revolutionary government in Paris and then Bonaparte's Empire, stripping France of vast amounts of territory and treasure. Not a generation later Britain allied with Bonapartist France to fight Imperial Russia in the Crimea, and astonishingly enough never went to war with France again after 1814. This was despite Britain and France spending much of the 18th century at one another's throats and Britain having expended enormous amounts of blood and treasure wrecking three French governments in less than a one hundred year period.

Put another way, the nascent United States delivered Britain one of it's most embarrassing strategic defeats by kicking them out of what became the United States in 1783. Thirty years later the two launched another war which was embarrassing for the United States and saw the national capital torched. They signed a peace in 1814 and then negotiated several treaties and never went to war again.

By your own logic, not only should France have sworn undying hatred against Britain, who let's not forget conquered enormous swathes of their empire across the 18th and 19th centuries while tormenting metropole France for nigh on twenty years between 1792 and 1815, but Britain should also have sworn undying hatred against the United States for stealing huge swathes of their North American empire and causing one of their greatest national embarrassments. That none of those things happened is a pretty telling example that nation states and peoples do not hold eternal grudges for revenge, and certainly not ones that last 50+ years beyond the point of reason.

There's a vast variety of reasons that this is also unlikely from the cultural to economic to the political, but the simple statement that "eternal revenge" is a bad policy goal ought to be enough to lay it to rest.

Your depiction of what happened between Britain & France in the 18th & 19th Centuries and comparing it to what happened in this TL is superficial at best. The wars of the 18th Century were colonial wars over Canada, sugar islands, and ports in India, not over the control over 1/3 of the French mainland. Do you think Britain would make nice if the French kicked the British out of Ireland or put a Jacobite King on the thrown of Scotland? Britain had given up all claims to the French Crown, or any territory in Metropolitain France. The Revolutionary, and Napoleonic wars added ideological elements to the issues of geopolitics, and the balance of power. Despite allying in the Crimean War there were ongoing fears of conflict at least till 1898, and even several times after that. Forging closer ties was never easy.

The outcome of the American Revolution did cause bitter feelings on both sides that lasted for over100 years. Americans feared British efforts to block national expansion, and Britons resented American Republicanism and territorial expansion. It's already been pointed out in this thread that a major reason for Britain wanting to smash the USA was the hostility of the British upper classes to Republicanism, and fear of rising American power. Intervening in the ACW, and forcing the USA to recognize the CSA, and give up territory to Canada would confirm all the fears, and resentments Americans had always felt toward Britain. To think that Americans would just get over it, and do the "logical" thing of building closer ties with the UK would be to deny human nature.

 

[Maeglin]

Britain would never ally with the CSA (of course not. The British public was rabidly anti-slavery). At most it would be a co-belligerent. And even then... Britain cares about its grain supply, and about the resources needed to defend Canada.

 

[spectrum]

As others had said, It’s difficult to actually draw the UK into the war as a co-belligerent with the confederates, and even if they joined in I expect it would be on a limited scale and with modest goals, and as such is likely to fully intervene with their massive industrial advantage (the Uk was responsible for almost 20% of total world industrial production compared to a combined USA/CSA total of 7% in 1860). With that in mind I could see a seperate peace with Britain, allowing the USA to finish off the CSA as in OTL.

If, however, the UK helps the Confederacy to win the civil war the rump US is in real trouble, if only for the fact that a precedent has been set…states can leave the union. Now I’m not saying that there will be a mass exodus and a break up of the remaining US, but the terms of the Federal/State power balance, the states have been enormously strengthened forcing in a much less centralised Federal government. Going forward this is going to seriously alter the future development of the USA, especially if the UK imposes reparations or decides to begin taking a more aggressive role in the Pacific.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

The outcome of the American Revolution did cause bitter feelings on both sides that lasted for over100 years. Americans feared British efforts to block national expansion, and Britons resented American Republicanism and territorial expansion. It's already been pointed out in this thread that a major reason for Britain wanting to smash the USA was the hostility of the British upper classes to Republicanism, and fear of rising American power. Intervening in the ACW, and forcing the USA to recognize the CSA, and give up territory to Canada would confirm all the fears, and resentments Americans had always felt toward Britain. To think that Americans would just get over it, and do the "logical" thing of building closer ties with the UK would be to deny human nature.

I don't know where this idea that Britain resented the USA comes from, but it's not true. Britain mostly just wanted peaceful relations with the USA so they could trade. If Britain really wanted to "smash the USA", as you put it, they'd have intervened to help the Confederacy from the get-go.

Britain would never ally with the CSA (of course not. The British public was rabidly anti-slavery). At most it would be a co-belligerent. And even then... Britain cares about its grain supply, and about the resources needed to defend Canada.

Nobody at the time, in either country, thought that a loss of American grain imports would cause trouble for Britain. King Grain isn't likely to help the Union cause any more than King Cotton helped the Confederates.

 

[Belisarius II]

Do you mean, economically, or like invade and conquer? Neither works and the latter is just a stupendously bad idea. The US shorn of the South can't corner the cotton market, the South produced 2/3rds of the global cotton crop cheaper than anyone else, you don't really get an edge on that without controlling the other third, which the US can't do.

Then on the geopolitical level, invading or brute forcing a Latin American country only a little while after William Walker was bumbling around doing the same thing would backfire spectacularly. Not only would those countries then probably band together or seek European protection, but it would wreck a lot of the American image as a counterweight to European expansion in the Americas. There could be nothing more disastrous than those countries looking to London and Paris rather than Washington for support in a situation where the US is less than secure in it's own heartland.



There's also the very real problem that who to blame for the war would be a real political nightmare in the aftermath. The worst case scenario I envision with the 1863 fall of Washington lands the ball squarely in Lincoln's hands which probably destroys the Republican Party outright, while a longer war where a separate peace is signed with Britain, and the Confederacy gets its independence after an 1864 electoral disaster is just as catastrophic because both the Democrats and the Republicans come away smelling of failure, which could cause some nasty schisms and new parties forming rather than the two party system that has enjoyed supremacy to this day.

More disturbing would be the power this gives to regionalism, with the Pacific coast in particular probably having memories (justly or unjustly) of being "abandoned" by the East Coast to the tender mercies of the British. Even with the railroad this regionalism might be exacerbated by a defeat, and the dreams of a Pacific Republic didn't die until 1860 OTL, and this could bring them trudging back from the grave with some disgruntled people thinking they're better off going it alone.

1863 is too late for the British to defeat the Union. Going to war at the beginning of 1862 is the time to take advantage of Union weakness. Taking Washington in 1863 is more a fantasy then a viable military plan. The RN can't just sail into Chesapeake Bay like it was 1814. Talking about the dream of a Pacific Republic is more of a dream of members on the board than people at the time.

 

[Infinite-Monkeys]

my suspicion is the British helping the CSA while possible wouldn't really be as a co-belligerent.

There were enough tensions I could see effectively a separate and simultaneous conflict of the USA v the British and the USA v the Confederacy, and then effectively an evolving awkward relationship of coordination between the two.

As for how badly the US could lose I think it's largely in the hands of the US. What would most likely happen in this scenario in part because they don't want to leave behind a bitter and angry USA is the British would kick the door in (which they could definitely do with the USA so distracted by the south) extract some quick but reasonable concessions (possibly some relatively uninhabited land out West plus and preferential tariff deals), and then withdraw.

Now it's possible the USA northern army is getting badly mauled by the British and more importantly a decent chunk of its navy sunk would then give the confederates what they needed to separately sue for peace and in that circumstance I doubt the British would be particularly sad and be much more willing to quickly recognise the Confederate government as legitimate.however at the same time it will also be entirely possible that despite this indirect help the sheer material advantage means the US still wins the war in the south and things largely progress as per OTL. in either case I don't think this leads to massive long-term hostility to the British there's just too many material connections between the two states that things would heal, not to mention I actually expect pretty quickly if there was an independent confederacy in this scenario the US and the British we working together due to opposition to slavery.

However the possibility for a harder loss would basically be if when those good terms were offered the Americans didn't accept and tried too hard to push the British back (this feels unlikely given how pragmatic Lincoln was but potentially with a different president? or perhaps some rogue military commanders on the ground), effectively thinsg like pushing for guerrilla warfare trying to strike into Canada in force etc, forcing the British to escalate more and more and in doing so lead to more of a alliance of convenience with the Confederates. This is not wise but it feels like it would be within the realm of possibility effectively where the US (especially given the US already messed up enough to get the British involved) keep failing diplomatically.

in this scenario I am fairly confident that the British and Confederates could win quite handily, there aren't other powers who would really want to get involved (if anything the more likely to act while Britain's distracted to try and deal with their own regional issues), at which point I suspect the British would try and present themselves as a magnanimous power trying to create a peaceful settlement (so still not effectively recognising the Confederacy is right given the slavery but still effectively enforcing their independence to attempt tow weaken the US in case of another war), the absolute worst case scenario would see the US continuing to be really stubborn in this process and the British trying to chip away further at the overall structure of the United States, it wouldn't be in keeping the Britain of the time to do this by trying to paint the map pink but I do wonder whether in a truly entrenched and bloody war which is in part around the right to secession, the British might be able to make an offer to some other states to avoid any reparations/painful tariffs and in doing so further fragment the union e.g. whether sufficient war exhaustion and a sufficiently good offer could see an independent New England under British protection.in this case you would presumably see a quite substantially angrier union and one much more hostile to British interests in the long term although at the same time if they've kept pushing this hard and lost that harshly they're not going to be the emerging superpower they were OTL and if they did join a one-to-one equivalent is presumably see the other regional powers e.g. Mexico and the Confederacy also end up taking an active role somewhat balancing out the practical impact

So in theory I'd say the US could lose a war incredibly badly it could see its economy shattered its military in ruins a powerful confederacy to the south, British client states set up in the North, and likely not in a position to be able to become the absolute dominant power in North America between a more confident/entrenched Britain, the Confederacy, and Mexico making the whole area much more disputed. However in practice this would require an American government that did not know when to fold about hand early on in the north to prioritise the south, and who kept further antagonising major powers which will possible does feel like it would need a completely different administration and a lot of bad luck.