Max CSA borders in peace treaty with USA?

Willingness has little to do with it. It would have to accept whatever terms it can get. The CSA would be in no position to push the US out of NO. If it wants it back it needs to make significant concessions elsewhere. What they would be I have no idea.

I'm of this opinion myself, needless to say. I'm just intrigued with the idea of looking at CSA scenario of the plausible, and not Moonlight and Magnolias and dashing gray uniforms. I think that the border is determinable by the land line of control, and the relative strength of any Unionist organization in the former rebel states. Tennessee, probably staying in the USA in such a situation. In Arkansas, Unionist sentiment is less strong, and in Louisiana, even less so. Thus, question marks.

Working out a plausible PoD to allow New Orleans to hold might be the start of a war-of-exhaustion scenario, though that'd be challenging with how vulnerable it would always be to naval attack, and being valuable enough to be worth constant efforts to capture.

New Orleans is hard to hold. It's so low, so close to the coast, so vulnerable to bombardment - once the forts are run, it falls. And the Union commander in question is David Farragut, never a shrinking violet or a man unwilling to fight (as men who've fought in bloody naval engagements before their voices have dropped are a special breed). On the other hand, it was famously recalcitrant.

I think, and I am now broadening to usertron's points, that to make a plausible scenario, we're pushing to the outer edges of what can be expected without giving a number of Union officers lobotomies or Confederate one's super serum.

A Realistic 191 I think Lee can have a more successful invasion of Maryland. Not Turtledove, but one where Lee moves with impunity and is not repulsed as in OTL. Lee riots around, leaves when he realizes he has no support, and McClellan stays back yammering for reinforcements as per usual. Materially, yes, Lee's invasion realistically will not do much. But this is much more damaging to the Northern psyche, and pushes back Emancipation and the hardening of that segment of Northern opinion.

Switches in Time Grant and Sherman are two of the great generals this country has produced, and were greater for their ability to coordinate and buttress each other's strengths. On the other hand, Grant drank when he was board and Sherman's mental health was fragile, especially when Grant was not around. It is easy to posit situations where they do not rise as high, or their stars do not come together.

Similarly, Albert Sydney Johnson doesn't have to catch a bullet at Shiloh. Now I'm not going to commit the sin of this board and turn A. S. Johnson into a Voltron with all the abilities of Lee, Forrest, Jackson, and Longstreet combined. But let's face it: he's certainly a better commander than Braxton Bragg, likely an improvement on Joseph Johnson.

Or George Thomas is not in the right place at the right time. Chickamauga is a disaster, and Grant and Sherman have to smash Johnson out of Chattanooga. Like the alternate Maryland above, this is not that materially different, it's just longer and more painful for the Union.

Metrics The election results of 1864 show a North that had rallied behind Lincoln. The exchange rate of the greenback to gold shows a Northern public that before that fall is a basket case. It's morale was such that even Lincoln briefly considered abandoning abolition as a warm aim (briefly), in the summer of 1864. Give it a few more bloody sieges, a few more Lee authored embarrassments, and less of a glorious record of Union triumph in the west, and it's easy to imagine this becoming dire.

So yes, the North can realistically screw up even more than OTL to the point where at some point in 1864, if Sherman or someone gets stuck in a protracted siege outside of Chattanooga or Atlanta, the North decides that it's had enough. But it takes a hell of a lot, and its a CSA that's probably not looking as it usually does in these timelines.
 
New Orleans is hard to hold. It's so low, so close to the coast, so vulnerable to bombardment - once the forts are run, it falls. And the Union commander in question is David Farragut, never a shrinking violet or a man unwilling to fight (as men who've fought in bloody naval engagements before their voices have dropped are a special breed). On the other hand, it was famously recalcitrant.

Indeed, as I noted it's just so very, very vulnerable. Who'd have replaced Farragut if something took him out, though? A mix of the replacement taking his time / not being willing to brave the forts, and then the forts being upgraded, could have held New Orleans for much longer.

The longer New Orleans holds, the longer the Confederacy can hold the Mississippi, and with that, hold the line in the west. A Confederacy that's still holding a stretch of the Mississippi during the 1964 elections would be an excellent start to the North just deciding it's not worth the price.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Farragut's division commanders included:

Indeed, as I noted it's just so very, very vulnerable. Who'd have replaced Farragut if something took him out, though? A mix of the replacement taking his time / not being willing to brave the forts, and then the forts being upgraded, could have held New Orleans for much longer. The longer New Orleans holds, the longer the Confederacy can hold the Mississippi, and with that, hold the line in the west. A Confederacy that's still holding a stretch of the Mississippi during the 1964 elections would be an excellent start to the North just deciding it's not worth the price.

Farragut's division commanders included:

1st (Pensacola, Mississippi, Cayuga, Oneida, Katahdin, Kineo, Wissahickon, Varuna) - Theodorus Bailey
3rd (Iroquois, Kennebec, Sciota, Pinola, Itasca, Winona) - Henry H. Bell
Mortar Flotilla - David D. Porter

His captains in the Center Division (Hartford, Brooklyn, Richmond) included Thomas T. Craven, Richard T. Wainwright, and James Alden;

These are not men who are going to blanch at taking command and completing the mission; they were all professionals, regulars, and veterans of decades of active service, and the USN ships had twice as many guns in aggregate than the rebel-manned forts and coastal vessels.

It's worth noting that all four of the major amphibious operations the US mounted in the winter of 1861-62 (Stringham's to Hatteras, DuPont's to Port Royal, Goldsborough's to Roanoke, and Farragut's to New Orleans) were completely successful, largely because of the professionalism of the USN.

So New Orleans was essentially forfeit as soon as the expedition was mounted; the only way the rebels could have provided any more troops - given the resources they had, historically - was to strip troops from Johnston's or Beauregard's commands.

Who had their own problems to deal with in the spring of 1862 - Grant, Buell, and Pope (and Foote), for example.;)

Best,
 

TFSmith121

Banned
True; Davis isn't quite the megalomaniac refusing to recognize

I'm really tempted to say 'the boundaries of Davis's cell at the mental asylum' but that's not quite fair.

True; Davis isn't quite the megalomaniac refusing to recognize reality as everything comes crashing down in 1865 that Hitler was in 1945, but you can see it from there...

Even though he fled the capital at the end, like Mussolini did from Salo, there's the sense he was still looking for somewhere to try and stand.

Not to get all Godwin, but there are some "final days" parallels beyond the spiffy uniforms.

Best,
 
Was there a time after American independence when the slave states(with 1860 criteria, so Newyork doesn´t count even when slavery was legal) had more population than free states?
 
Last edited:
Was there a time after American independence that the slaves states(with 1860 criteria, so Newyork doesn´t count even when slavery was legal) had more population than free states?

I think it depends on whether you are counting Slaves as 0, 3/5 or 1. Using the 1860 criteria (The northernmost slave states being DE, MD, VA, KY & MO) and looking at the first US Census, the Free States population including Slaves and Free Blacks was 1,968K , Slave State 1,925K. *However* this includes Vermont which had the Census work done after statehood in 1791 and which had a population of 85K, which means the count in 1790 had about 40K more in the 1860 slave states than in the free states. Note, this included almost 700K slaves, (about 40K in 1860 free states). (This is counting slaves as 1)
 
Last edited:
True; Davis isn't quite the megalomaniac refusing to recognize reality as everything comes crashing down in 1865 that Hitler was in 1945, but you can see it from there...

Even though he fled the capital at the end, like Mussolini did from Salo, there's the sense he was still looking for somewhere to try and stand.

Not to get all Godwin, but there are some "final days" parallels beyond the spiffy uniforms.

Best,

At least Davis didn't go this crazy Downfall and call all his generals cowards and traitors. BTW I read that Steiner was outnumbered at least ten to one by that point.
 
So it would appear that your point is that Brigham Young had the opportunity to try something. My point was that it would be out of character for him to do so, which the article you link to suggests by the simple fact that Brigham Young offered the Navoo Legion to federal service so quickly after the federal withdrawal.

The fact that Utah was still trying to obtain statehood during the civil war itself also affirms my opinion that if Brigham Young were to actively try something during a worse civil war, its goal would have been gaining statehood and therefor a voice in D.C.

Yet Utah was not part of the United States when the Mormons had settled it and he had already contemplated moving the Mormons into Mexico a few years earlier for the chance to escape the United States. Young is pragmatic, offering the Nauvoo Legion to the US is a way to stay on their good side. Clearly the US had concerns when military occupants moved in shortly thereafter. Should the British and perhaps the French step in with the opportunity for a truly independent Mormon nation I think he would consider outright independence as an alternative to dependence. If nothing else he could use the threat as leverage for far quicker if not immediate statehood.

First, before the Civil War people in America called many things 'wars' that didn't actually qualify as a War. The so called Utah war was one of them. Once the confusion was cleared up Brigham Young and the other members were actually quite happy to have the Union army in the territory: as the army made its final approach Brigham Young had one of his servants go to the towns that the army would be arriving in and told the store owners to double the price of everything.

I did not create designation, but nonetheless men under arms were shooting at men under arms and again Young was serious enough to consider having the Mormons burn down their towns fields with plans to move into Mexico thereafter.

...Europeans were aware of the Mormons as a people, most of the things that had heard came from Mormonism enemies. As a result awareness didn't actually translate into any kind of helpful empathy.

You might find some reading of interest published in 1860 that gave a more favorable view of the Mormon settlements...
 
The Civil War was an existential crisis for the US, and hence a total war.

Total wars are decided by demographic and economic strength. Quality can sometimes hold off quantity; quantity can often overcome quality.

A combatant that has both is always going to prevail over an opponent that has neither.

And the United States had both. The rebels did not...

Here's a nice summing up:

http://www.nps.gov/civilwar/facts.htm

Considering the correlation of forces between the US and the rebel states in 1861 and afterward, it was only going to end one way... the way it did historically.

Best,

Even Lincoln acknowledged that twelve or thirteen states would prove problematic for the Union to fight. Here I have them facing fourteen established states, which will alter the forces arrayed somewhat. Their borders just got a lot easier to defend too with the Ohio River now able to create an additional limiting factor for troop movement. A long war is still likely to see the Confederacy smashed even under these circumstances, but I'm talking about a fairly rapid peace in the presence of British and French involvement post-Trent affair with the wording of the letter in its original bellicosity. Recognition alone from London and Paris makes the Confederate fiscal situation a lot more stable which will have butterflies all its own.

I would agree that in the presence of an extended conflict the CSA is all but damned without Union acquiescence in terms of economics and bringing war materiel to bear. But in the early part of the conflict this was not yet apparent nor was it going to be for another 12-18 months. The 30,000 firearms from the armory in St Louis was a large fraction of those available to the US Army at the time, and if not in Union hands it just means more in Southern hands at a critical time frame. Also, a Southern military victory that could lead them into Washington DC is likely to negate the US even in total war footing, there are several scenarios where either through demoralization or military victory the Confederacy could win if the variation is at this stage of the war. And yes, there are an equal or greater number with and earlier Union victory. But the OP was asking for the max CSA borders in a peace treaty with the USA...
 

TFSmith121

Banned
A moment, please:

- snip- I did not create designation, but nonetheless men under arms were shooting at men under arms and again Young was serious enough to consider having the Mormons burn down their towns fields with plans to move into Mexico thereafter.

A moment, please:

When during the Mormon troubles in Utah in 1857-58 were the LDS and the US Army "shooting" at each other?

Here's a source from an organization that presumably should know:

http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/030/30-13-1/index.html

The chapter on Utah starts on page 194.

Best,
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Yeah, okay...

Even Lincoln acknowledged that twelve or thirteen states would prove problematic for the Union to fight. Here I have them facing fourteen established states, which will alter the forces arrayed somewhat. Their borders just got a lot easier to defend too with the Ohio River now able to create an additional limiting factor for troop movement. A long war is still likely to see the Confederacy smashed even under these circumstances, but I'm talking about a fairly rapid peace in the presence of British and French involvement post-Trent affair with the wording of the letter in its original bellicosity. Recognition alone from London and Paris makes the Confederate fiscal situation a lot more stable which will have butterflies all its own.

I would agree that in the presence of an extended conflict the CSA is all but damned without Union acquiescence in terms of economics and bringing war materiel to bear. But in the early part of the conflict this was not yet apparent nor was it going to be for another 12-18 months. The 30,000 firearms from the armory in St Louis was a large fraction of those available to the US Army at the time, and if not in Union hands it just means more in Southern hands at a critical time frame. Also, a Southern military victory that could lead them into Washington DC is likely to negate the US even in total war footing, there are several scenarios where either through demoralization or military victory the Confederacy could win if the variation is at this stage of the war. And yes, there are an equal or greater number with and earlier Union victory. But the OP was asking for the max CSA borders in a peace treaty with the USA...

Yeah, okay... you know thatv none of the umpteen "rebel victory" scenarios you just smushed together into some sort of butternut bouillabaise stands for more than a minute, if one actually looks at the military and political realities in play from 1861-65, right?

Best,
 
Top