Outcome of Britain declaring war on the US during the ACW

67th Tigers

Banned
This sounds like a lot of free troops for a state which doesn't exactly have an overly large military for the territory that its trying to defend (In general, not in a British-American War).

Where are your sources on the locations of these troops?

The Army Lists.

You misunderstand the nature of the British military. In 1861 the British could field, including their reservists, 1 million men. There are 290,000 "auxiliary troops" (i.e. volunteers, militia and yeomanry) available in the British Isles to conduct home defence. The regular army is almost entirely available for offensive tasks abroad. By December 1854 only four line infantry battalions were left in the UK, all of whom had just returned from overseas and had to recruit back upto strength. In 1855 all of those finally deployed to either the Crimea directly or relieved another unit which went forward to the Crimea.

In 1862 there were 65 regular infantry battalions at home or in theatre (minus some for home defence duties already counted below, and excluding the Royal Canadian Regt), 13 in the Mediterranean garrisons, and 2 of the 5 in South Africa can be withdrawn. That equates to 80 infantry battalions (ca. 99,000 officers and men at war establishment), far more than HMG proposed using (although several of these will be on rotations and so not really available). On peace establishment the British Army only held logistics for the deployment of 5 Army Corps (60 infantry battalions, 15 cavalry regiments, 30 artillery batteries, 10 horse artillery batteries &c.) at home. A Corps had a peacetime establishment of 16,000 R&F, so 5 Corps = 80,000 which is precisely the number HMG committed to Canada.

There are another 74 battalions (57 in the Eastern colonies, 3 in China, 3 in South Africa, 6 in New Zealand and 4 Guards battalions needed at home, excluding 9 European battalions of the HEIC which were formally incorporated into the Army in Feb '62) that would not be sent to Canada (although ca. 8 battalions would be pulled from India as the British component of an expeditionary Corps against California).

The artillery at home, the Med and in theatre has 10 horse batteries (60x 9 pdr Armstrong rifled guns), 40 field batteries (240x 12 pdr Armstrong rifled guns) and 80 garrison batteries, which may provide siege batteries (4x 40 pdr Armstrong guns) for a battering train and man fortifications. There are 20 horse, 39 field and 31 garrison batteries in India (largely still with smoothbore ordnance). To provide a 5 Corps army would take all the horse and 3/4ths the field artillery available.

The cavalry has 20 regiments at home and 11 in India. It would take 3/4ths the available regiments to provide 5 cavalry brigades for 5 Army Corps.

There are 6 Corps logistics units (Military Train battalions). 1 is deployed to the East (in 1860 supporting the expeditionary Corps to China, by 1862 they've partially redeployed to NZ). 5 are at home to support a 5 Corps overseas expeditionary force.

Of the 36 RE field companies, 32 are available at home, in the Med, SA or in theatre. 15 are required to make up the engineer complement of the expeditionary force. There is only one Corps bridging train on fixed establishment, but plans were to simply equip another 4 by converting 4 field companies.

Asking as someone without anything more precise than that the extra-European theater is where Britain generally preferred to station its regiments.

It is if this becomes a major land war - and having a hundred thousand men in Canada (referring to the regulars) sounds like a major deployment for a state that only has 347,000 total - counting the navy - in 1860.

and?

Deploying the bulk of ones disposable force to the theatre of operations does not seem odd to me.

Doable or not, either the US is a bigger or threat or the British are planning something other than defending Canada and waiting for the blockade to work.

They worked on the worst case scenario, that the US would immediately make peace with the CS and put 300,000 men against Canada. With hindsight that's not likely.

And there's no other source at all? Or is this just the easiest source?

Not without several years of lead up. The Richmond manure pits finally produced a massive supply.... in summer 1865 when it no longer was worth a damn.
 
I never said anything about good guys or bad guys. The USA was however undoubtedly the aggressor and the UK the defender; quite contrary to what many Americans seem to think (the standard view seems to be Britain randomly decided to try and undo the revolution- wtf?)

Impressment was an excuse. A cassus beli. The true aim of the war was the 'liberation' of Canada.
Impressment really wasn't as simple as 'lets go enslave some Americans!'- they were looking for British sailors hiding out on American ships, not Americans. Things got complicated with Americans deciding to give out citizenship to sailors who defected; in essense it could be seen that they were 'stealing' British manpower.
Things got even more confusing with there being little clear and obvious way to tell apart an American and a Brit. Some Americans were accidentally impressed- however this was illegal under British law and apparently most of these people were released upon legal appeal.

As to whether it was slavery or not....not really. It was conscription.
I agree the line between conscription and slavery is very small. Its why I oppose conscription. But most people don't agree with me. Conscription was practiced in the UK and USA until very recent times, it still is used elsewhere in the world.

*sigh* This thread is now hopelessly hijacked. I didn't start this, but I'm as guilty as any of participating in it.:eek:
 
*sigh* This thread is now hopelessly hijacked. I didn't start this, but I'm as guilty as any of participating in it.:eek:

Makes me unsure if I should respond to your posts or 67th Tigers's first or neither. Since the War of 1812 interests me more than the idea that the US was totally and utterly screwed by the British and that the British could send most of their military forces to NA without any trouble and never mind the fact the empire is already held with minimal forces...

Briefly, Rookiehistorian answered on slavery vs. impressment well enough for me.

I have read about British impressment - and as a closing note on that, Leopard-Chesapeake is a pretty shameful thing to do by the British.

I should have been clearer on the crew issue - did the British place a high value on large crews, or were they just short of manpower for a large fleet?
 
*sigh* This thread is now hopelessly hijacked. I didn't start this, but I'm as guilty as any of participating in it.:eek:

Which is why I said it's done and over with. If you and Tyr and anyone else want to discuss, a new thread for said discussion can be opened up.

Granted, I have no actual power or authority to say that, but its better than continuing to hijack the thread.

I'm personally still waiting for comments on what I've mentioned of France's possible intervention.
 
As I've mentioned before the size and quality of the British army is not even a concern as breaking the blockade of the CSA, imposing one on the Union and ensuring the CSA has what it needs to wage war should more than suffice to hand the CSA the win.

Some forces to reinforce Canada make sense but why send British troops to die in a war whose outcome is already seen as a foregone conclusion?
 
As I've mentioned before the size and quality of the British army is not even a concern as breaking the blockade of the CSA, imposing one on the Union and ensuring the CSA has what it needs to wage war should more than suffice to hand the CSA the win.

Some forces to reinforce Canada make sense but why send British troops to die in a war whose outcome is already seen as a foregone conclusion?

So the British decide to be extravagantly generous to the Confederacy, why again?

Using them to beat up the US so as to save British lives makes sense of a sort, I suppose.
 
Inflammatory Rhetoric

There have been some quite incendary posts on equating impressment with slavery posted above and the fact that more Americans were impressed into the Royal Navy than serving with the United States Navy.

The RN had approx 50 - 1 ship ratio in this period. The US merchant marine needed sailors and paid far higher wages to get them, many of these sailors were RN deserters.

Many who claimed to be Americans were not Americans at all (see page 17 linked below) as determined by US law, additionally the RN did investigate such claims and did release those proven to be American. (I cede that there were certainly wrongly impressed men in the RN)

With the fact that at that time Slavery was widespread and legal in the United States of America at that time can we please discuss the issue without the atagonistic langauge.


Latimer, Jon (2007). 1812: War with America. Cambridge: Belknap Press. Page 17
 

67th Tigers

Banned
So the British decide to be extravagantly generous to the Confederacy, why again?

Using them to beat up the US so as to save British lives makes sense of a sort, I suppose.

It's a very simple application of the British way of war.... get others to do as much of the fighting as possible.
 
Elfwine, once the British are in the war the obvious goal is for Great Britain and associates to win but if the war can be won without excessive British casualties...
 
Well, there's also the issue of how much the British want the Confederacy to win and how much they're willing to give financially for that, which is why I'm wondering.

It would not be very British (referring to Imperial policy, not individual Britons) to give free money away.
 
Conscription of foreigners is slavery by another name.
And no, the true aim was not the liberation of Canada, except in the minds of the most rabidly nationalist canadians.

Except its not conscription of foreigners. Its conscription of Brits. They were actively told to be careful not to conscript real Americans by accident.
As I said whether conscription is slavery or not is a very iffy question.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
Well, there's also the issue of how much the British want the Confederacy to win and how much they're willing to give financially for that, which is why I'm wondering.

It would not be very British (referring to Imperial policy, not individual Britons) to give free money away.

Well, in 1814 HMG were giving away more in direct subsidy to Prussia (£27m*) than it spent on the entire War of 1812 (£25m). They were financing other states as well, both with specie and free goods (mainly military equipment and gunpowder).

The Crimean war cost HM £110m (deducting the normal expenditure of £16m pa we'd estimate an extra £62m, or £20m pa, this spending excludes India, which was paid for by the HEIC/Government of India). For just over doubling the expenditure HMG was able to sustain a 120,000 man expeditionary force in the field (some of which were foreign troops paid for by HMG), subsidise the Ottomans and mount a major naval rearmament. The Crimean was not a major war for the British, it was a large scale naval affair with an expeditionary force operating against Russian naval bases. The comparison to a war with the US in 1862 or so holds true, except the bulk of the land forces are needed to defend Canada and the Maritimes.

The CS spent £213m on the war (figures from EH.net in constant 1860 dollars converted to pounds at $4.85 = £1), a little over £50m pa. The US spent £475m (a little under $120m pa). As you can see these were very expensive wars. The US was spending vast quantities of floated debt, something it could do as long as they were winning. They got comparatively little for the money, for example Springfield produced the M1861 Rifle Musket at $20 each, whilst Enfield produced the P1853 for £2 each (about $10). Pay of a British private was, in dollars $7.3 vs $13 in the Union Army. A British coastal ironclad (Aetna class or equivalent) cost £60,000, whilst a smaller and less powerful US Passiac class Monitor cost over £100,000. The mature war economy of the UK could simply make war cheaper than the improvised war industries of the US.

But to the point. It would not take much money to transform the situation. The UK can give the CS 500 modern breachloading rifled artillery pieces with ammunition for £1m. 500,000 stand of rifle-muskets for £1m. A fleet of ironclad warships to outmatch the Union Navy would cost another £1m. What's more the Confederacy will likely be willing to pay for the stuff in cotton bonds. HMG can make the war partially self-funding.



* Remember, these are specie pounds, their value did not alter for hundreds of years.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
* Remember, these are specie pounds, their value did not alter for hundreds of years.
This is actually false, there were phases of inflation and deflation from the middle ages to the modern era, and species' value itself varied tremendously; again you seem to live in a complete fantasy. For one, the price of bread nearly tripled through the napoleonic wars, and there was nearly 4x inflation throughout Europe in the 16th century thanks to Spanish gold.

Also, the Crimean war was fought with France, Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire not being bankrolled by Britain.

Finally: comparing the cost of the war of 1812 to the American Civil War is disingenuous, the union of the civil war had 5 times the population of the United States of the war of 1812, and the 1812 united states were almost purely agrarian.
 
In a CSA Wins, With British Help TL, are there plausible paths for a later war with the UK and the USA on one side against the CSA on the other, perhaps in a WWI analogue? For some reason that tickles my funnybone.
 
In a CSA Wins, With British Help TL, are there plausible paths for a later war with the UK and the USA on one side against the CSA on the other, perhaps in a WWI analogue? For some reason that tickles my funnybone.

I think so, but it would probably take a reason to care about the Kaiser (or whoever) on our side for our own reasons.

Using "our" as an American.

The first question is why the CSA has moved away from the British into the other alliance (whatever it may be).
 
I think so, but it would probably take a reason to care about the Kaiser (or whoever) on our side for our own reasons.

Using "our" as an American.

The first question is why the CSA has moved away from the British into the other alliance (whatever it may be).

On the balance though, it seems a lot more likely that the US would turn hostile to the UK, and would probably see the next great power war as a chance to get some payback. Revanchist nationalism is quite chic in this period, after all.

The CSA would almost certainly stick the UK like glue; it is all too aware of the fact that without a European ally it can't stand up to the US, and the British are the only nation with enough power projection to stand a chance of fighting the US in its own backyard. Going hostile to the US and the UK would be an act of utter national suicide.
 
Did I mention anything about deserters? In the abstract is one thing, but what about the concrete? Specifically, Americans who were born in the US, had papers, and had those papers thrown in their faces?

"The law of Britain and most other countries defined nationality by birth, but the United States permitted nationality to be gained by a period of residence. There were therefore many people who were British in the eyes of English law and American in the eyes of United States law. This would have been a substantial difficulty in any circumstances, but it was componded by the refusal of Jeffferson and Madison to issue any official citizenship documents. Their position was that all persons aboard American ships were to be regarded as US citizens without further evidence. This claim, unsustainable in US or any other law, was designed to make negotiations inmpossible. Behind it lay the advice of Albert Gallatin, the long-serving Secretary of the Treasury, who calculated that 9,000 men, half the seamen in American deep-sea merchant ships, were British subjects. The prosperity of the US economy (and the revenues of the US government, which came largely from Customs) depended on them. Since no agreement could possibly keep acknowledged British subjects in foreign service against their sovereign's wishes, it was necessary to avoid an agreement. When two American diplomats actually reached one with the friendly Whig govenment in 1807, Jefferson refused to send it to Congress for fear it might pass.

In the absense of official documents, US consuls issued unofficial ones which were often respected, but left numerous occasions of dispute. Even the most scrupulous consuls had to depend on unverifiable declarations for their evidence of citizenship, and by no means all were scrupulous in a business which earned large fees."

NAM Rodger, "The Command of the Ocean" (2006) pp565-6
 
Ah, but would the British wish to persist with the alliance with the CSA, even assuming there was such an alliance and not simply an effort of convenience during this one war?

There are indeed many reasons that the British might eventually choose to conclude that the USA was simply a better associate than the CSA, the eventual fate of slavery in the CSA being only one minor factor.

I once read an amusing article where Germany and the US join forces following a CSA victory with the US officer corps receiving valuable training from Germany...until that sad day that, based on the German teaching, the US begins to conclude that US interests will be better served by turning to the UK...
 
In a CSA Wins, With British Help TL, are there plausible paths for a later war with the UK and the USA on one side against the CSA on the other, perhaps in a WWI analogue? For some reason that tickles my funnybone.

Very plausible. Suppose for a moment that Davis, or more likely James Mason inferring that he has the authority, makes a behind the scene promise to begin gradual emancipation following Confederate independence. (There is something like this in Conroy's book, 1862) Then once the war concludes and the US is forced to recognize the Confederacy, Davis uses a sacrificial lamb in the Confederate Congress (probably an ex-Whig from a border state) to introduce an Emancipation Bill and corresponding Amendment. It never even makes it out of committee and Davis informs the British Minister in Richmond that there is nothing he can do. Lord Russell's government collapses and is replaced by a government far more disposed to be friendly to the Union.

Embarrassed by the continuation of slavery in the Confederacy, especially after the US ended slavery without compensation by way of an Amendment in July of 1865; Britain's relations with the Confederacy continued to deteriorate. Over the next decade British trade with the US increased to such a degree that by America's bicentennial Anglo-American trade surpassed the level of Anglo-Confederate trade. Unfortunately America's bicentennial also brought a bout of nationalism and imperialism. The 1877 war scare only abated with the Treaty of Bermuda, which gave the US Hawaii, the Samoan Islands, returned the northern portion of Maine, expanded Liberia, recognized the Union's protectorates over Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In return the US renewed the reciprocity treaty with with Canada and agreed to mediation concerning old Civil War claims, the Alaska boundary dispute and US/British disputes in Japan.

Three years later it was joint Anglo-American pressure that brought an end to the Cuban Revolt and established that island as an independent republic to the great anger of the Confederate government. Over the next ten years the Philippines and Puerto Rico both gained their independence with it being guaranteed by a joint British-American declaration in return for basing rights. By the start of the Great War Union-British relations were such that once Britain declared war on France, Russia, Austria and Spain the US quickly became Britain's primary source of war material and loans. Hoping to capitalize on Britain's preoccupation, the Confederacy invaded Cuba thus ensuring that the Great War would spread to the Western Hemisphere.

Benjamin
 
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