My apologies regarding this, I was completely wrong and withdraw in good order.
(Non T-191) Cliches to avoid in a CSA timeline?
- Thread starter YourWaifuForLaifu
- Start date
My apologies regarding this, I was completely wrong and withdraw in good order.
History Learner
Banned
The Second Battle of Bull Run also presents a golden opportunity.
After it became clear that the Army of the Potomac was moving to withdraw, Lee began to shift the Army of Northern Virginia to engage Pope's Army of Virginia that was gradually advancing on Richmond from the North. Lee decided upon a plan to turn Pope's right flank; by accomplishing this, the Confederates would prevent McClellan from offering support to Pope as well as cut the Federal line of resupply and their avenue of retreat. The flank attack would also have the element of surprise, thanks to the local mountains screening the Confederate movements. Before Lee could spring the trap, however, an adjutant Major of J.E.B Stuart's by the name of Norman R. Fitz Hugh was captured by a Union patrol with Lee's battle plans. Once Pope became aware of the danger, he pulled his army back to the Rappahannock and Lee lost his chance for a complete victory.
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Italy even in OTL come pretty close to develop nuclear weapon, but two factor come to block it:
1) first economic due to the need to rebuild the nation there were much more urgent thing to do
2) political...once the program (delivery system included) started Jugoslavia nuclear weapon project (aka the big reason Italy decided to have one) closed and the US pressed for Rome to sign the Non-proliferation Treaty
Regarding Spain and Portugal, they had become simple reactionary dictatorships trying to cozy up with the west...because except the URSS there were no other game in town, so they doesn't have really a choice and for the colonies well while Ethiopia will be a very sore point Eritrea can be retained as Libya (sorry, Lybia will be kept...point) while Somalia is a toss. Not even considering that having one of the big guys basically untouched mean a total different decolonization process.
Regarding the Balkans, well much depend on how the war end and what Rome due during this period to extend her influence, so there is strong possibility that Austria, Jugoslavia (or at least some part of it) and Greece will enter/re-enter the italian sphere of influence.
While i agree that a fascist Italy that remain neutral in WW2 will never be on par of the two superpower, neither will be a push-over and WW2 neutral Italy is a topic enough treated in this forum to have just to search for obtaining much more detailed explanation, even why such event will mean a very different ww2
Some consequences are cliques but still need to be adressed:
Mexico: a CSA victorious can give to the Empire of Mexico some more years, even if IMVHO it will end more or less like OTL...but at lest ITTL Nappy III will have a foreign policy victory (more or less).
Alaska: an USA defeated in the civil war and at least temporary on not good terms with the UK can decline to buy Alaska (a not so well appreciated decision on OTL in the immediate)
Cuba: both the USA and the CSA will want it...but they can find the situtation to hard as both will try to undermine each other and at the same time beat the Spanish.
Haway: maybe a stronger competition between UK and US to get them
For the rest of Europe the consequence will be seen much later, after all US politics was pretty isolationist (with exception on their backyard) and it was seen more as a place were emigrate and it was important for the grain export as the arrival of cheap american grain caused a severe economic depression in the agricolture sector
Mexico: a CSA victorious can give to the Empire of Mexico some more years, even if IMVHO it will end more or less like OTL...but at lest ITTL Nappy III will have a foreign policy victory (more or less).
Alaska: an USA defeated in the civil war and at least temporary on not good terms with the UK can decline to buy Alaska (a not so well appreciated decision on OTL in the immediate)
Cuba: both the USA and the CSA will want it...but they can find the situtation to hard as both will try to undermine each other and at the same time beat the Spanish.
Haway: maybe a stronger competition between UK and US to get them
For the rest of Europe the consequence will be seen much later, after all US politics was pretty isolationist (with exception on their backyard) and it was seen more as a place were emigrate and it was important for the grain export as the arrival of cheap american grain caused a severe economic depression in the agricolture sector
Murdered their own family? Is this "fight a war where some cousins and brothers where on the other side?" In that case, it's called war, and both sides had a level of mutual respect to say, the war is over, let's make the peace last and not see it as murder (mostly).
A war of reconquest would be much more politically unacceptable once the Confederacy was internationally recognized.
Finally, your post sounds very much like you are projecting the views of the early 21st century, mainly that the Confederates were irrdeemably evil by viewpoint of most of their contemporaries, onto the mindset of the mid 19th century.
Yes, the Confederates were evil. But probably not irredeemably so and by the standards of the 19th century, much less so than from our standpoint today.
Expecting 19th century people to act as if they have the mores of the early 21st century should be self evidently stupid, especially from people who enjoy history.
It is also probably an overreaction to loss cause drivel being dominant, and actions that happened after the war like Jim Crow and the KKK that would have played out differently had the Confederacy won and didn't feel culturally backed into a corner.
Hopefully, this too shall pass.
It's the 19th century, conquest and reconquest is perfectly politically acceptable. In fact, it was relatively normal for the period.
But so what? I'm not being obtuse. But the reality was that the Union had overwhelming advantages in both manpower and productivity. Couldn't they absorb a dozen disasters and simply keep going? It strikes me that the Confederacy was fighting a war of attrition, and that was the wrong strategy. Battles simply weren't going to win the war. So the Confederacy wins Bull Run? So what. They inflict casualties, and the Union simply regenerates. They take casualties, and they're whittled away. A successful Bull Run doesn't win the war.
I've never understood this argument that a successful Confederacy wouldn't have had the toxicity of Jim Crow and the KKK. Jim Crow and the KKK were the products of challenges to deeply ingrained racism and the economic and political needs to maintain a black underclass. They were constrained. The KKK was a thing because all of a sudden, it wasn't okay to murder blacks publicly. A successful Confederacy would have had no constraints and no limitations on its brutality to blacks. A successful Confederacy would have been a full throated psychopathic horror show, an unending orgy of violence, rape and torture against its captive black population. It would be so in the full confidence of having won the war, and seen its psychopathy justified. I don't see moderation there.
Seriously, this argument is tantamount to a child molester arguing that if only people had let him babysit the five year olds, he wouldn't have molested a ten year old.
I feel quite uncomfortable for continuing this off-topic discussion, but ok...
And don't you think this pression would be even more strong if Italy had been a fascist power trying to play something of an independent role.
And don't you think this pression would be even more strong if Italy had been a fascist power trying to play something of an independent role.
Saphroneth
Banned
I'm... honestly pretty sure it wouldn't be, because slaves were expensive.
Depends on the nature of the disaster. For example...
So the Confederacy wins Bull Run in the way described and Pope's Army of Virginia is functionally unable to take further part in the campaign or any future ones in 1862. That cuts forces available to campaign in Maryland or garrison Washington by more than 60,000, and that's equivalent to almost McClellan's field force at Antietam - thus meaning either Lee goes unmolested in September as he conducts his plans, he's got another easy win against a force too small to challenge him, or McClellan has to completely uncover Washington (something Halleck would never let him do).
It's a bad idea to argue from that the Civil War was not won decisively that it could not be won decisively. The destruction of the Army of Virginia would put Washington at risk because it would mean there were insufficient troops to both defend Washington and take the field.
You are aware that one of the principle advantages of the United States during the civil war was that we had bodies, yes? @Saphroneth
And don't you think that Rome can simply give them the middle finger? OTL Italy is an ally that doesn't really need a nuclear arsenal, expecially after the Nato sharing agreement...not allied fascist Italy is one of the big boys that had enough industrial power to have an independent nuclear power program and if all the pression had not worked for North Korea or Iran or Israel, India, Pakistan, i really doubt that will work here.
Saphroneth
Banned
Well, yeah, but what you didn't have at this time was available, trained manpower. Even OTL McClellan's field force at Antietam included something like 20% totally raw recruits from the training camps, including multiple regiments who never even fired their weapons (such as the Corn Exchange Regiment, who discovered in their first battle that none of the springs worked).
Troops do not spring from the aether and transferring forces west is a bit hard to do quickly in bulk, while Lee's army was pretty much all veterans who'd been in service for quite a long time.
(Ironically, when McClellan suggested training as many men as possible, so as to actually use that manpower advantage, he was rebuffed and they closed recruiting in early 1862...)
You're kidding right? Slaves have no civil rights at all, they have no human status. With slavery, you don't need Jim Crow, because black people slavery would be Jim Crow on crack? Voting rights? Nonexistent. No need for voting tests or means of disenfranchisement? There would be no need for separate water fountains for black people, because there would be no water fountains for black people at all, no schools, no property, no nothing. No possibility of any hope. Children would be sold from their mothers, women and children would be raped at will. Slaves would be literally worked to death over time. Slavery would be a hundred times worse than Jim Crow and segregation. And whenever slavery ended, it would be replaced by something only fifty times worse than Jim Crow.
As a system, slavery was not a peaceable one. Slavery operated on the basis of extreme and continuing violence. Even the enlightened 'Robert E. Lee' had slaves horsewhipped. Violence and the threat of violence was the only recourse of slavery. Every slave owner slept with a pistol under his pillow and in fear of a slave revolt, of which there were dozens if not hundreds, on a small scale through the south, and many more conspiracies. Violence was the only solution to slaves running away. Torture was the response to recalcitrant slaves. Hanging or mutilation was the only solution to rebellious slaves. Death was the fate of useless slaves.
Saphroneth
Banned
...why? A slave was worth a lot of money and worth being careful over.
It is important to avoid painting slavery as all of a piece - there are degrees of horrible. Certainly slaves used in towns or factories were differently handled than the ones on plantations because the environment was different.
All very true. But the Confederacy lacked the logistical capacity or the manpower to invade or conquer the north, and lacking that, time was available. Rack up bull runs, but the Confederacy could not decisively take the Union out of the war. Sooner or later, there would be another army, and another, and another. If the war had been spectacularly successful, they might have prolongued the war a few more years, and seen the south utterly decimated.
A slave isn't a piece of art to hang on the wall and appreciate in value. A slave is only worth something for their ability to work. So they get worked, eventually, they get worked to death, that's the whole point of slavery. The right and power to forcibly steal every last bit of value from a human.
How do you make sure that your slave works? By threatening them. By whipping them. By torturing them. By starving and denying food and water. By denying them any education, because reading and writing is a threat. By feeding them as little as possible. By giving them as little as possible. By crippling or mutilating them when they try and escape or conspire. By killing them when they resist. The value of a rebellious slave is zero.
Yes, there are degrees of horrible, and each degree is all of orders of magnitude more horrible than Jim Crow and the KKK rolled into one.
Saphroneth
Banned
Ban
That was definitely done. But equally, it is certain that not all slaves were treated this way because slavery was a complicated institution - for example, a slave who had been whipped in the past had a much lower value, and since the value of a healthy adult male slave was upwards of a thousand dollars in 1861 it's a very expensive thing to do.
This complexity to slavery is also why it was possible for the AoNV to use "negroes" in their logistics train, but not the armies in the West (as the nature of slavery there was different).
Honestly, it depends on your view. Really.
For someone who's strong-willed and prefers freedom, then yes, slavery is definitely worse. But for someone who's willing to accept a life of "getting along" (an experience not much different from most of human existence for most of history) the choice is between being largely safe from harm and fed sufficiently to do work (because a starved slave is unproductive, and you don't waste a thousand-dollar investment by saving a few dollars a year on food) or a hostile environment with uncertain work and food, where anyone black may just be lynched - no matter their attitude.
Yes, it's sickening. But it does us no good to assume that every slave holder was as evil as every other, as it denies nuance - and it denies the banality of evil.
To be a cliche, doesn't it need to be overused? I don't think I've see any Confederate independence timelines where the CSA becomes Haiti 2.0 or balkanizes. More often ATL Confederacies keep every state that seceded, plus at least one that didn't, while any problems from their massive public debt, hyperinflation, worn down infrastructure, and large amount of the labor force dead, crippled, or fled will magically disappear.
Haiti 2.0 is unlikely, but balkanization is much more probable. I expect that following the prewar pattern, some Confederate States will threaten to secede to get their own way. This could reach the point of actual secession attempts. A lot depends on how successfully the Confederate government can portray the Union as a boogeyman in order to frighten states into not risking secession from the Confederacy.