Is the US destined to go to war with an Independent CSA

I have provided plenty of evidence and specific examples. I have yet to see this reciprocated. But once again: the CSA is built on an exceptionally poor foundation for democracy, the rise of a military dictatorship actually resolves several gordian knots of CS democracy, and a military dictatorship in the particular context of an independent Confederacy is *less*, not *more* likely to attack the United States.

Relax, Mr. Featherston. Your position as one of the forum's best ACW experts (for those who post as often as you do) is unassailable. Your venom so regularly directed at the Confederacy is hardly something to be criticized, as it is against a nauseating slavocracy. Particularly when you exalt the memory of the Southern Unionists, whose story so often goes untold, sad to say.:(

And say what you will about MAlexMatt, but he is no 67th Tigers! MAM will debate, not pontificate. Offer ideas, not engage in one way lectures. Discuss, not issue proclamations. If it seems he gets easily upset (God knows I'm guilty of that, often enough:(:(:eek::eek:), just remember that you DO have the stronger moral, ethical, and historical position.

To MAlexMatt, I say, just give things time. You may just surprise yourself and find that maybe SF isn't completely wet after all.:)
 
Yes, and like in OTL the military will actually lead the way in racial equality. Integration will occur way earlier and much press will be made out of any victory of black soldiers over the Confederate troops.

Benjamin

Hah! Now that is how TL-191 should have been!

But I do see a more militarized and an earlier integrated US something that would emerge from an independent South. It would be a very interesting America that would come about.
 
Yes, and like in OTL the military will actually lead the way in racial equality. Integration will occur way earlier and much press will be made out of any victory of black soldiers over the Confederate troops.

Benjamin


I agree. It think SF has it exactly right. If nothing else it will be more radical in racial equality just to spite the Confederacy!! Some people here seem to forget the fact that people hold grudges and often for a very long time.
 
I agree. It think SF has it exactly right. If nothing else it will be more radical in racial equality just to spite the Confederacy!! Some people here seem to forget the fact that people hold grudges and often for a very long time.

Talk about holding grudges. You could expect a border becoming ever more fortified as slave-catchers go north to catch runaways, or any Free Blacks they can get their hands on! Its not like they are going to feel beholden to US law. And even by Southern standards the "Long-range Slave Patrollers", full time mercenaries who did nothing else, were considered the absolute bottom of Southern society, even below slave traders and pimps.:mad: Due to their penchant for mutilation of their victims, if nothing else. Southern slaveholders felt this way not out of sympathy for the Blacks, but because it lowered the value of the slaves, costing the South $$$.

A question for one and all: Could, in these circumstances, a slave catcher caught up north provoke sympathy down South upon his (their) being lynched?:confused:

Yes? No?

It might seem the height of arrogance, but such arrogance was hardly in short supply in the Confederacy. Triumphant, that arrogance could be magnified tenfold. The question is not a small one, as I could easily see a Hatfield McCoy War begin that would expand into a general conflict.

Opinions?
 
I agree. It think SF has it exactly right. If nothing else it will be more radical in racial equality just to spite the Confederacy!! Some people here seem to forget the fact that people hold grudges and often for a very long time.

Especially after long brutal wars where a lot of people die.These grudges are also important in Democratic systems because they then influence policy signifigantly.
 
Especially after long brutal wars where a lot of people die.These grudges are also important in Democratic systems because they then influence policy signifigantly.

Agreed, a dictatorship can downplay any grudges if it suits their interests. Elected officials who try doing that tend to lose to those who don't downplay it.
 
I concur that we saw an excellent review of the CSA position earlier in this thread by Benjamin though I would like to offer a different viewpoint on achievement of CSA independence.

There is a chance if the CSA can hold its ground by 1862 that some Copperheads realize there would be much greater chance of foreign intervention is the war continues, especially if Lee can smash the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of (random location). Bragg can hold Kentucky for some time under the wrong or right circumstances, and I could see a CSA of the original 11 states plus KY and IT. That is about the best you're going to get out of the war situation IMO. The USA will resent the departure or so many state but as time goes by the generation of the war will dissipate and the newer generations will accept the division as fact. New Orleans will have to become a free port almost for the sake of peace while other free ports could quickly emerge - Galveston TX, Mobile AL, Savannah GA, and Charleston SC come to mind most quickly. But if here is no glorious war of reunification/reconquest by 1885 I do not think it would happen unless part of a larger alliance system, one which North America might ultimately avoid. Heck, they might even profit from an early World War just by acting as sympathetic suppliers while laughing as Europe rips itself to pieces.

BTW, has anyone done a thread or asked why the M1819 Hall rifle could not be studied and improved by the CSA? It would give them a weaker breechloader, should rifling be introduced with Minie balls it might be interesting to see what the Union response would be to CSA troops firing 8-10+ rounds/minute...
 
Has anyone done a thread or asked why the M1819 Hall rifle could not be studied and improved by the CSA? It would give them a weaker breechloader, should rifling be introduced with Minie balls it might be interesting to see what the Union response would be to CSA troops firing 8-10+ rounds/minute...

It might be interesting to see what the Confederate response would be to US troops firing 60-70+ rounds/minute...:eek: All it takes is the firing of a certain hyper-conservative ordnance general and finally allowing the deployment of the Gatling Gun.:eek:
 
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Flubber

Banned
New Orleans will have to become a free port almost for the sake of peace while other free ports could quickly emerge - Galveston TX, Mobile AL, Savannah GA, and Charleston SC come to mind most quickly.


The idea of New Orleans becoming a "free port" and transhipment of Union goods down the Mississippi being allowed is wholly plausible because the Mississippi happens to physically connect the Union Mid-West to the Gulf. The idea that the other ports you listed would become free ports for Union shipments is nonsense.

No physical connection like that enjoyed by New Orleans exists between Galveston, Mobile, Savannah, Charleston, and Union territory and no pre-war internal trade routes even remotely resembling the size, length, and scope of the the Ohio-Mississippi routes ever involved those ports.
 

Perkeo

Banned
This webside http://www.filibustercartoons.com/CSA.htm really provides a knock-out argument on the claim that the secession was about states' rights rather than slavery by just comparing the two constitutions, showing that most of the changes actually TAKE AWAY states' rights and the most substantial change are securing the 'right' of property in slaves and some economic clauses. Only the preamble refers to the sovereignity of the states.
 
Talk about holding grudges. You could expect a border becoming ever more fortified as slave-catchers go north to catch runaways, or any Free Blacks they can get their hands on! Its not like they are going to feel beholden to US law. And even by Southern standards the "Long-range Slave Patrollers", full time mercenaries who did nothing else, were considered the absolute bottom of Southern society, even below slave traders and pimps.:mad: Due to their penchant for mutilation of their victims, if nothing else. Southern slaveholders felt this way not out of sympathy for the Blacks, but because it lowered the value of the slaves, costing the South $$$.

A question for one and all: Could, in these circumstances, a slave catcher caught up north provoke sympathy down South upon his (their) being lynched?:confused:

Yes? No?

It might seem the height of arrogance, but such arrogance was hardly in short supply in the Confederacy. Triumphant, that arrogance could be magnified tenfold. The question is not a small one, as I could easily see a Hatfield McCoy War begin that would expand into a general conflict.

Opinions?

There were several incidents in OTL where slave catchers became near martyrs. In 1851 Edward Gorsuch was killed while trying to recover an escaped slave in Christina, Pennsylvania. During the war slave trader Nathaniel Gordon became a celebrity in the South and the only American ever executed for the crime of slave trading. It wouldn't take much to have a reverse John Brown situation.

Border War: Fighting Over Slavery Before the Civil War by Stanley Harrold is an excellent overview of incidents like the one you have in mind.

Benjamin
 
I concur that we saw an excellent review of the CSA position earlier in this thread by Benjamin though I would like to offer a different viewpoint on achievement of CSA independence.

There is a chance if the CSA can hold its ground by 1862 that some Copperheads realize there would be much greater chance of foreign intervention is the war continues, especially if Lee can smash the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of (random location). Bragg can hold Kentucky for some time under the wrong or right circumstances, and I could see a CSA of the original 11 states plus KY and IT. That is about the best you're going to get out of the war situation IMO. The USA will resent the departure or so many state but as time goes by the generation of the war will dissipate and the newer generations will accept the division as fact. New Orleans will have to become a free port almost for the sake of peace while other free ports could quickly emerge - Galveston TX, Mobile AL, Savannah GA, and Charleston SC come to mind most quickly. But if here is no glorious war of reunification/reconquest by 1885 I do not think it would happen unless part of a larger alliance system, one which North America might ultimately avoid. Heck, they might even profit from an early World War just by acting as sympathetic suppliers while laughing as Europe rips itself to pieces.

BTW, has anyone done a thread or asked why the M1819 Hall rifle could not be studied and improved by the CSA? It would give them a weaker breechloader, should rifling be introduced with Minie balls it might be interesting to see what the Union response would be to CSA troops firing 8-10+ rounds/minute...

Lee is unable to smash the AoTP at any point in the war. Even at its worst leadership it was an army too formidable to destroy, and its cohesion during a string of defeats indicates the degree to which "If Lee does X then victory is assured" PODs are illusions. Bragg has two chances to win a truly decisive victory, Chickamauga and Perryville. If Longstreet's forces arrive in full strength on the second day of Chickamauga instead of in driblets then the Army of the Cumberland will be smashed far worse than IOTL, bad enough to dramatically worsen the Union dilemma at Chattanooga. Bragg's best chance is Perryville, where the Army of the Ohio was trying to boot out Buell, had had one of its generals (Jeff Davis) shoot another (Bull Nelson), had a complete falling out in generals and rank and file with their respect of and willingness to obey the orders of Buell, with a great deal of newly inexperienced combat troops, and thus had had a complete collapse of cohesion and discipline.

That could make Perryville a Civil War version of the Battle of Kiev: a great triumph for CS arms that is a thousand times due to the completely abysmal situation in its Union opposite number than any direct action taken by Bragg himself. It's possible in this situation that Braxton Bragg against *that* period of the Army of the Ohio/Cumberland's history might pull off a tactical victory just as Perryville was IOTL. Even then that won't let him stay in Kentucky, not when he's over-supplied with ammunition (which might, depending, actually play a major role in the victory in this ATL Perryville) and as almost always in the history of the Army of Tennessee vastly under-supplied with food. Lee's army really was a bunch of starving ragamuffins but compared to the Army of Tennessee was diving into food the way Scrooge McDuck does into money. :rolleyes::(
 
SF makes a very good case that an independent CSA would be constrained by its economic system and ideology minimizing any possibility of change. Also, as I understand, landowning elites have traditionally been against expansionism. The landowning Confucian elite opposed Cheng Ho's and later proposals of exploration in Africa in Ming China.Rome may be an exception, I don't know.

SF did mention though that the CSA wasn't a "nation". There was a tremendous amount of instability. The Confederate system would become increasingly brittle.

Many ATL scenarios see a later Texas succession. I don't know how likely this would be but if it occurs it would weaken the CSA internationally and perhaps internally as well.

The CSA would presumably be hard hit by the availability of cheap cotton from Egypt and India.They may be hard hit by the "Long depression" from roughly 1870-1890. In OTL there was severe labor unrest in the US. This would spill over into the CSA, although of course the Confederacy would have a much smaller urban working class.

Could there be an earlier Populist movement developing in the Confederacy?

I've thought for a while that there may be some sort of revolution in an independent CSA sometime in the late 1870s/1880s.A system somewhat like apartheid South Africa might emerge, with a "socialism" for poor whites.There was a largely successful attempts by the founders of South African apartheid to appeal to poor whites. One of the main architects of apartheid, Malan originally expressed sympathy for the Bolshevik Revolution.An early (extremely opportunistic)slogan of the South African CP was (as bizarre as it sounds) "Workers of the world unite for a white South Africa".

I could imagine, after years of unrest in the small industrialized areas, tensions including guerrilla warfare in regions which were not enthusiastic about succession, and the collapse of the plantation economy, an attempt to resolve the social contradictions of the CSA by creating an apartheid style "corporate state" with some resemblance to models in Argentina, Italy and perhaps South Africa. Its debatable how successful this would be.
 
SF makes a very good case that an independent CSA would be constrained by its economic system and ideology minimizing any possibility of change. Also, as I understand, landowning elites have traditionally been against expansionism. The landowning Confucian elite opposed Cheng Ho's and later proposals of exploration in Africa in Ming China.Rome may be an exception, I don't know.

The problem is the CSA needs to be expansionist inorder to maintain itself. Cotton/tobacco monoculture is very hard on the soil. In order to maintain production, one has to keep on acquiring new land to cultivate. Whats more, the planter class was an aristocracy. While the first son is liable to inherit the estate and title, whats to be done with the second and third sons? Westward expansion is the solution to these problems.
 
The problem is the CSA needs to be expansionist inorder to maintain itself. Cotton/tobacco monoculture is very hard on the soil. In order to maintain production, one has to keep on acquiring new land to cultivate. Whats more, the planter class was an aristocracy. While the first son is liable to inherit the estate and title, whats to be done with the second and third sons? Westward expansion is the solution to these problems.

Expansion where and at whose expense? The CSA doesn't really *have* much area to expand to without either a renewed war with the United States or a war with Mexico it might very well lose.
 
Expansion where and at whose expense? The CSA doesn't really *have* much area to expand to without either a renewed war with the United States or a war with Mexico it might very well lose.

Exactly.

Arkansas and Texas are the last frontiers for the slave economy. Once the land has been bought up and parceled into plantations (and subsistence farms for those who fail) the safety valve is shut off. Thankfully the confederacy's fire-eaters were somewhat delusional believing that imperialist expansion into the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America was both possible and inevitable. Should such a war occur, the CSA is likely to suffer from an extremely bloody nose.
 
The CSA is not going to be able to produce any breechloading rifles, simply no industry. In fact the CSA is going to be similar (at least for some significant time) to thrid world countries OTL as far as weapons go. They had minimal ability to produce powder, developed at great effort during the war, and NO ability to produce any significant amount of rifles and no cannon. Their only viable ironclad, the Merrimac/Virginia, was only functional because the CSA had managed to rebuild the engines already on the Merrimac when it was burned by the Union Navy when the Norfolk Navy Yard had to be abandoned - the CSA had zero industrial capacity to produce locomotives let alone marine steam engines.

The significance of this is that the only way the CSA builds has anything more than a commerce raiding navy is with lots of ships purchased from UK/France. They won't be able to afford many, and if they attempt any filibustering in the Caribbean or Central America neither the UK nor France will appreciate it - end of CS Navy. Also, in the case of an independent CSA backed by the UK expect the Union to maintain and modernize its navy, which was allowed to decay after OTL CW until the 1890s. BTW when marine engineering advances to the steel ships of the 1880s/1890s the CSA will be even worse off than in the 1860s in terms of manufacturing ability.

If the CSA does not expand in to Central America, where do they go? Northern Mexico (ignoring international complications) is not fertile - you have go a good ways to get to good plantation land. Attacking the USA to grab arable land=suicide.
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
Relax, Mr. Featherston. Your position as one of the forum's best ACW experts

OK, I had to come back for this:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

HAHAH

*breathe breathe breathe*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAhAHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAhAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

HAHAHAhA

*wheeeeeze*

HAHAHA

HAHAHA


HA

HA

h...

Snake has yet to list a single number of any type. You would think he'd never heard the word 'statistics' before. He has built up a funny little narrative grounded in NO actual evidence except for broad generalizations about the history of the period and you people seem to be intent on pretending that makes him an expert.

This is absolutely sick. Are you people 12? Have you finished high school yet?

I would abandon this topic, but it seems like future discussions about the Civil War period are going to be colored by the outcome here so I just want to get this absolutely, positively straight: Snake does not know a damned thing about the Civil War. I'd be willing to be he hasn't graduated college yet, let alone received a degree in the field like some of the people I've seen him argue against.

I may dislike 67th Tiger, I may KNOW he has a habit of being dishonest, of fudging numbers and outright mis-citing them.

But at least he has had numbers to fudge. He's ten times the Civil War 'expert' Snake could ever be. I would take his word over Snake's any day, even though I would 90% sure he was lying.

This whole thing is one, big, fat joke. Pretending you're being reasonable is not rationality. Logic, reason, the actual discipline of history, is based in evidence a little more nuanced and deep than just asserting that somebody said something somewhere. Like I said earlier, talk is cheap. I want numbers. I want evidence that there would be the votes to deprive millions of men of their hard won votes a decade or more after they won them, especially after they've fought a war for their independence and freedom.

Truth is everything that Snake believes about the Civil War, about the contemporary North and South, smells, no, reeks of bullshit he believes because he buys into the variant of the Just World fallacy known as Whiggish history: Evil people only ever do evil things, in a very incompetent ways, and history always shits on them from great heights. Everything in our history was an inevitable, glorious path towards building what we have today. Blah blah blah etc etc jesus christ do I really have to do this.

Read a fucking book.
 
Thing is, Matt, that I really *don't* believe the North is all that good. I think that the Confederacy was treasonous and led by political dunderheads and military incompetents, and fighting for an evil cause, yes. This is not the same as thinking Abraham Lincoln and company were saints. In fact my actual view of Grant is that he's only that good because everyone else on both sides were actually rather shit in terms of waging wars. The evidence I keep providing and that keeps getting ignored is right there in front of you in terms of how the Confederacy handled voting, in terms of speeches from leaders of the Confederacy, in terms of the very newness of universal manhood suffrage for white men in Confederate states. I would provide it, but as it would not be listened to it would be throwing good money after bad.

No citations would ever be listened to, they would all be dismissed. The CSA reverting universal manhood suffrage is not in itself evil, or at least not the most evil aspect of CS political society. It would simply be a reflection of CS society as it existed at the time.

Edit-You think I believe in the Just World theory?

......

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FlatWhat
 
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