Plausibility Check of Timeline-191 (aka Southern Victory)

[DanMcCollum]

I'd honestly say that an earlier Civil War in the 1850s would help the South since it would cut down on the North's 1860s advantages a bit such as fewer railroads, no transcontinental telegraph system, none of the acts that expanded the latter's economy and output and no ironclads for the blockade, granted there is still disparities in population and industry though not to the extent seen in the latter decade. As Skallagrim, the sooner you begin the Civil War the better for the South.

If you were to have a POD of an early 1850s Civil War for instance involving Henry Clay dying of tuberculosis two years early on January 21, 1850 before he could create the Compromise of 1850 and Texas sending it's militia to seize Santa Fe and half of New Mexico (it almost happened by the way and it was planned by the state in OTL before the Compromise of 1850 existed) only to be fired upon by the United States then you would get the South to secede and form the Confederate States of America much earlier with not only the states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee and the aforementioned Texas but also the border states of Kentucky and Missouri. I have an entire timeline called Arrival of the Crisis which is a work in progress by the way on Google Docs and for those interested I can share it with anyone (EnglishCanuck has a copy of it).

The research involved in creating this timeline are these books:
* America's Great Debate by Fergus M. Bordewich
* On the Brink of Civil War by John C. Waugh
* Prologue to Conflict by Holman Hamilton
* Texas, New Mexico and the Compromise of 1850 by Mark Joseph Steigmeier
* The Taylor-Neighbors Struggle Over the Upper Rio Grande by the Texas State Historical Association
* The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party by Philip Holt
* The Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson

Okay, that sounds really interesting, to say the least!

 

[EnglishCanuck]

I was mainly stressing the importance of Kentucky economically.

Ah that makes sense. I was just highlighting that in TL-191 Bragg 'invades and conquers Kentucky' is about the only reason we ever get for Kentucky being in the Confederacy.

 

[Ficboy]

Ah that makes sense. I was just highlighting that in TL-191 Bragg 'invades and conquers Kentucky' is about the only reason we ever get for Kentucky being in the Confederacy.

Kentucky would be the Confederacy's most important state besides Virginia. Not only is Kentucky near the United States but it also is home to Louisville a thriving riverfront city that has a sizable white Southern majority as well as Blacks both free and slave, Irish and German immigrants not to mention a slave market with ties to the Lower South (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas).

 

[EnglishCanuck]

The USA has also been remarkably accepting of Jews by Western standards throughout its history--because, and this is the important part, there was no social or political reason to hate them. Hate the Irish? They're immigrating in and doing lots of cheap labor, people who do that are always scapegoats. Hate the Natives? They're on our lebensraum, purge them like nits and lice like Chivington says. Hate Catholics? New England is heavily Protestant and several states were founded by rabidly Protestant-fundamentalist religious groups. Blacks? The South's economy depends on their enslavement.

These patterns of thought are irrational and evil, of course, but there are reasons why they exist.

Black people are suddenly no longer an enslaved minority in part of the country, but an enslaved minority in the hated national enemy. There just aren't that many of them up north anymore, and abolitionism has become a powerful political force, which seems to have just been proven right by the counter-radicalism of the slavocrats.

There is every reason to make black people a favored class for TL-191's Union.

To make some important highlights: The Irish were implacable foes of the British, but did that get the Irish pushed into 'favored class' after either the Revolution or the War of 1812? No, instead the old 'Yankee' and Anglo-Protestant disdain for Irish Catholics bled through for literal centuries to the point that Irish stereotypes are considered a punchline to this day. There were literal "Irish Need Not Apply" signs across the US in many places and Irish people were used as disposable labor, infamously in New York. Heck, the 1863 Draft Riots were just as much about Irish workers targeting and killing black workers who they saw as competition for their jobs. That's one group which would be pretty quick to squash any attempt at lionizing black people.

Italians had a similar problem in US history, being seen as part of the 'dangerous classes' who were criminals and Catholics and ended up discriminated against by the population in many places.

Even if you cast aside the whole semi-class structure which was built around where immigrants came from and what religion they had, black people had the same trouble as Natives and the Chinese in that they just didn't look white and that same racism would be pretty evidently applied against them whether there was an independent Confederacy or not. Them just looking different is going to be enough for people to glance sideways at them or treat them as less than themselves. If they're being enslaved in the CSA? Well that's an abstract moral problem sure, but will the average American worker really care about that if he's being squashed for wages and rent troubles similar to what he had to deal with in OTL's Gilded Age? The answer is pretty much no.

But that's also the problem with the CSA being seen as the 'implacable enemy' by the American population. How do you teach generations of immigrants who have no skin in the game to hate the CSA? Will the Germans, Poles. Swedes, Irish and others who stream across the Atlantic to settle the Great Plains really see the Confederate States as an existential threat absent something which makes them see it as one? Will the people of California look East and worry about a Confederate army crossing the desert and attacking them? Is the Old Northwest going to look south and be worried about Confederates marching on Chicago or Detroit? Probably not. The US is expanding too much to manage to get the average American to hold on to the CSA as an implacable enemy unless the CSA does something to entrench that ideology.

I've no doubt that you could get that kind of 'implacable enemy' attitude in New England, but people from Michigan, Illinois and Indiana might find themselves seeing that as a 'dumb New England attitude' if the only example of a Confederate they have is some trader from across the Ohio River or oft glimpsed but rarely interacted with border guards. And as I've said, out West that would be harder when there's no Confederates around for hundreds and hundreds of miles!

 

[PGSBHurricane]

Ah that makes sense. I was just highlighting that in TL-191 Bragg 'invades and conquers Kentucky' is about the only reason we ever get for Kentucky being in the Confederacy.

Considering Kentucky was conquered I don't think they would've been all too happy considering it was the Confederacy, and not the Union, who violated its neutrality. Something that I think could've gone differently is by not having the CSA go after Chihuahua and Sonora but OTL New Mexico and Arizona. While the Union would be seemingly aggressive against it, Kentucky wanting to rejoin the Union could lead to an exchange between the countries instead of the Second Mexican War. Also, Kentucky heavily associated its economy with states like Ohio and Indiana at the time so I don't think it would be too much of a stretch.

 

[EnglishCanuck]

Considering Kentucky was conquered I don't think they would've been all too happy considering it was the Confederacy, and not the Union, who violated its neutrality. Something that I think could've gone differently is by not having the CSA go after Chihuahua and Sonora but OTL New Mexico and Arizona. While the Union would be seemingly aggressive against it, Kentucky wanting to rejoin the Union could lead to an exchange between the countries instead of the Second Mexican War. Also, Kentucky heavily associated its economy with states like Ohio and Indiana at the time so I don't think it would be too much of a stretch.

See, I think Turtledove had to do certain things to get the plot he wanted (hence the Second Mexican War) which lead to semi-weird situations which are largely for a narrative, rather than plausibility, issue. An attempt by Kentucky to rejoin the Union would be far more plausible and understandable from a plot perspective IMO.

 

[Worffan101]

To make some important highlights: The Irish were implacable foes of the British, but did that get the Irish pushed into 'favored class' after either the Revolution or the War of 1812? No, instead the old 'Yankee' and Anglo-Protestant disdain for Irish Catholics bled through for literal centuries to the point that Irish stereotypes are considered a punchline to this day. There were literal "Irish Need Not Apply" signs across the US in many places and Irish people were used as disposable labor, infamously in New York. Heck, the 1863 Draft Riots were just as much about Irish workers targeting and killing black workers who they saw as competition for their jobs. That's one group which would be pretty quick to squash any attempt at lionizing black people.

Italians had a similar problem in US history, being seen as part of the 'dangerous classes' who were criminals and Catholics and ended up discriminated against by the population in many places.

Even if you cast aside the whole semi-class structure which was built around where immigrants came from and what religion they had, black people had the same trouble as Natives and the Chinese in that they just didn't look white and that same racism would be pretty evidently applied against them whether there was an independent Confederacy or not. Them just looking different is going to be enough for people to glance sideways at them or treat them as less than themselves. If they're being enslaved in the CSA? Well that's an abstract moral problem sure, but will the average American worker really care about that if he's being squashed for wages and rent troubles similar to what he had to deal with in OTL's Gilded Age? The answer is pretty much no.

But that's also the problem with the CSA being seen as the 'implacable enemy' by the American population. How do you teach generations of immigrants who have no skin in the game to hate the CSA? Will the Germans, Poles. Swedes, Irish and others who stream across the Atlantic to settle the Great Plains really see the Confederate States as an existential threat absent something which makes them see it as one? Will the people of California look East and worry about a Confederate army crossing the desert and attacking them? Is the Old Northwest going to look south and be worried about Confederates marching on Chicago or Detroit? Probably not. The US is expanding too much to manage to get the average American to hold on to the CSA as an implacable enemy unless the CSA does something to entrench that ideology.

I've no doubt that you could get that kind of 'implacable enemy' attitude in New England, but people from Michigan, Illinois and Indiana might find themselves seeing that as a 'dumb New England attitude' if the only example of a Confederate they have is some trader from across the Ohio River or oft glimpsed but rarely interacted with border guards. And as I've said, out West that would be harder when there's no Confederates around for hundreds and hundreds of miles!

I think that we'll have to agree to disagree here, as I'm not convinced by your argument here.

 

[Ficboy]

Let's be honest here: Published alternate history tends to have various degrees of plausibility since it's entertainment and fun that rules over historical accuracy. Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory is no exception as it co-opts 19th century-20th century European politics into a North America setting hence Freedom Party, Jake Featherston and Population Reduction = Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust, it also helps that he was the son of Romanian Jewish immigrants that fled to the United States to escape violent pogroms.

On AlternateHistory.com, we aren't bound by this stuff and we can make our timelines as plausible as we can.

 

[History Learner]

One wonders how the Union is able to fight those battles without bullets, gunpowder or, ironically, guns themselves. In reality, Canada would see up to 100,000 British and Canadians troops, able to best any force the Union sends to them while the Federal navy is confined to port due to dearth of gunpowder and their innate inability to even damage the British ironclads; tests performed with the 11" Dahlgren found that, even with double charge, it could not pierce 4.5" forged plate backed by 20" of oak. Warrior, however, did not even use forged plate but, instead, rolled plate, making its armor even more effective.

Belisarius II said:
Your arguments about economics take into account only one side of the ledger. Your only thinking about British, and American imports not exports. You say the British could replace American Wheat, and the Union needed British Lead, and Nitrates. What you forgetting is the British lose of exports. They were making a lot of money by trading with the Union, and war would cut that off. Business interests didn't want a war with the Union. The British may have found other sources of wheat, at much higher prices, but so would the union find nitrates, and lead at higher prices. American has lots of Batcaves, and lead was found in several areas under Union control.

By all means, do provide us citations for all of this.

Don't you think the Americans were paying for what they were buying? You do understand supply, and demand? If American Wheat was cheaper then European Wheat, and then is taken off the market what would happen to the price of imported wheat in Britain? Nitrates were found in West Virginia, and Kentucky, and was imported from Chile. Lead was mined in Missouri, Idaho, and Illinois.

ZINC AND LEAD DISTRICTS OF ILLINOIS. Zinc and lead minerals are found in two widely separated districts in Illinois. One of these occurs in the extreme southern portion of the State and includes portions of Hardin, Pope, and Saline counties. It forms part of the Kentucky-Illinois fluorspar, lead, and zinc field, and for convenience may be referred to as the Southern Illinois district. The other occurs in the- extreme northwestern portion of the State and includes a part of Jo Daviess County. It is included in the upper Mississippi Valley zinc and lead field and may be conveniently referred to as the Northwestern Illinois district. This district forms the subject of this paper. . Southern Illinois district.—The Southern Illinois district has never yielded zinc in commercial quantity, though small amounts of both blende and smithsonite have been found at a number of points. From that part of the field which occupies the adjacent portion of Kentucky zinc ore has for several years been shipped. The ore has been found- in quantity at only one or two points, and up to the present nothing has been found north of the Ohio which would warrant development. Lead has been mined More or less steadily since 1842, but for some years the output has been small and irregular. Probably the maximum production . was in 1866-67, when 176,387 pounds were shipped by the Fairview mine. The principal ore of the southern district is-fluorspar, and the production of lead is incidental. A separate discussion of the fluorspar deposits is now in preparation, and it will be sufficient to indicate here the author's opinion that important amounts of zinc and lead ores are not likely to be found in



This too, given we know in 1861 the Royal Navy had Terror, Glatton, Trusty, Thunderbolt, Erebus, Aetna, and Thunder. That's seven off the top of my head, so I honestly have no idea how you have the idea there was just four. I also have no idea how you have the idea their cannons are bad, given the 68 pound is the main armament on the Warrior, for example, and had better penetration than the 11" Dahlgren.

The vessels your referring to were floating batteries, what I'm referring to are ocean going ironclads. I didn't say the 64 pounder was a bad gun, I said the breechloaders were. The 11" Dahlgren's using half charges nearly broke the armor plates lose from their wooden backings on the CSS Virginia. The Passaic Class Monitors carried 1 or 2 15" Dahlgren's, or Rodman's, firing a 440 lb. solid shot. The glaring fault of first generation British Ironclads were their unarmored forward, and aft ends. Only the gun deck was armored, protecting a little over half the length of the ship, 213' of Warrior's about 380' along the waterline, 420' overall. If Warrior had ever entered combat she could have suffered serious damage.

In 1861, the population of ‘Canada’ was 3,295,706 people. Based on the 1861 Census and the Newfoundland Census of 1858, the fastest-growing province was Upper Canada, or Ontario, at a rate of 4.34% a year, followed by the Colony of New Brunswick, at 2.60%.

Almost 1 million of these were French Canadians. The British dispatched 11,000 troops to Canada in 1861. It's hard to imagine Canada had 90,000 troops in 1863. The British didn't consider Canada very well defended, or defensible.


s. In the fall of 1863, Lieutenant Colonel W!.F.D. Jervois of the Royal Engineers visited Canada and prepared an extensive report on the defences of Canada. The major centres of fortification were at Quebec and Kingston but there were British troops scattered 1n garrisons further west. Jervois felt t hat it would be impossible to achieve naval superiority on the Upper Lakes and on Lake Erie and that it would only be possible on Lake Ontario if the canals were enlarged to allow ironclads to co me up the St. Lawrence. Without control of Lake nta~io, no defence of Canada West could be possible and the garrisons should be withdrawn to Canada East and concentrated at Montreal. lbe defence of Montreal was essential to Canadian defence for the capture of the city, only a few score miles from the American border, would sever communications with the interior and cut off the retreat of any forces stationed there.
Canadians were largely opposed to slavery, and Canada had recently become the terminus of the Underground Railroad. Close economic and cultural links across the long border also encouraged Canadian sympathy towards the Union. Between 33,000 and 55,000 men from British North America enlisted in the war, almost all of them fighting for Union forces. Some press and churches in Canada supported the secession and some others not.[2] There was talk in London in 1861–62 of mediating the war or recognizing the Confederacy. Washington warned this meant war, and London feared Canada would quickly be seized by the North.[3]

The Civil War period was one of booming economic growth for the BNA colonies. The war in the United States created a huge market for Canada's agricultural and manufactured goods, most of which went to the Union. Maritime ship builders and owners prospered in the wartime trade boom.

Canadians had no interest in a war with the United States, for the Confederacy.

Would you care to edit this? You seem to have messed up the coding and I'm having trouble telling what you're arguing and such.

 

[History Learner]

I would say that the initial PoD and backstory events are implausible. It's a pretty big stretch for the CSA to win at all, and even more so for the Brits to intervene, but it is IMO theoretically possible if extremely unlikely, requiring a diplomatic tragedy of errors.

This gets claimed a lot but I never see it backed up by the actual historians or citations. Not blaming you for this, but it's an extremely common meme, in essence, that just gets parroted around too much.

The USA hating black people is absurd to the point of being ASB. They would logically loathe the South, and as such black people would be lionized in propaganda, perhaps as a paternalistically positively portrayed "inherently noble people who we must liberate".

This would come as a shock, given Northern States were adopting Black Codes by the 1850s and in the 1860s-even as the Civil War was being fought-adopted legislation to their State Constitutions to forbid Black voting.

The CSA industrializing and maintaining white democracy is absurd to the point of being ASB and reflects a complete lack of understanding of the CSA on Turtledove's part. @thekingsguard has written some fine essays about this on his blog before. HTD's handwaves don't change these factors plausibly.

This is another meme, with no real backing; maybe on AH.com but, again, not by Historians. See Confederate Finance by Robert C. Todd, Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation by John Majewski, Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post–Civil War World by Adrian Brettle and, finally, THE CONFEDERACY’S FINANCIAL POLICIES, 1861-1864 by Rose Razaghian.

 

[History Learner]

Ah that makes sense. I was just highlighting that in TL-191 Bragg 'invades and conquers Kentucky' is about the only reason we ever get for Kentucky being in the Confederacy.

It honestly makes sense; see the Confederate Heartland offensive. By the time of the PoD in September of 1862, the Army of Tennessee had conquered all of the major cities of Kentucky (Including the state capitol of Frankfurt) besides Louisville, were in a position to raid Cincinnati, and then still went on to beat Buell at Perryville. The only reason the Confederates pulled out was due to Bragg-as usual-but even even then Buell's troops were so shaken up by the whole thing that ~20,000 had deserted by December.

Also, as a general note, I've often heard total destruction of armies never occurred in the civil war. The Heartland Offensive offers the rejoinder to that: the Battle of Richmond.

 

[History Learner]

For another PoD for Southern victory, I did a cover on the Battle of Stones River which could've been the decisive battle of the war.

 

[Ficboy]

It honestly makes sense; see the Confederate Heartland offensive. By the time of the PoD in September of 1862, the Army of Tennessee had conquered all of the major cities of Kentucky (Including the state capitol of Frankfurt) besides Louisville, were in a position to raid Cincinnati, and then still went on to beat Buell at Perryville. The only reason the Confederates pulled out was due to Bragg-as usual-but even even then Buell's troops were so shaken up by the whole thing that ~20,000 had deserted by December.

Also, as a general note, I've often heard total destruction of armies never occurred in the civil war. The Heartland Offensive offers the rejoinder to that: the Battle of Richmond.

It was very rare for armies to be actually destroyed and given the disparities between the Union and the Confederacy in the free white population even if Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia did smash George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac in Camp Hill they wouldn't be completely destroyed either and still exist.

 

[History Learner]

It was very rare for armies to be actually destroyed and given the disparities between the Union and the Confederacy in the free white population even if Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia did smash George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac in Camp Hill they wouldn't be completely destroyed either and still exist.

Rare, yes, but not impossible as OTL showed and there was plenty of missed opportunities in this regard for the Confederates to completely destroy Federal armies. Stones River, the more I research it, stands out as one such to me, as does Lee's maneuvering against Pope prior to Second Manassas/Bull Run that I pointed out on the first page.

 

[Ficboy]

Rare, yes, but not impossible as OTL showed and there was plenty of missed opportunities in this regard for the Confederates to completely destroy Federal armies. Stones River, the more I research it, stands out as one such to me, as does Lee's maneuvering against Pope prior to Second Manassas/Bull Run that I pointed out on the first page.

Glendale is another close enough scenario. Korsgaard has his Confederate victory about it and the American Battlefield Trust has an article about the Battle of Glendale.

 

[History Learner]

Glendale is another close enough scenario. Korsgaard has his Confederate victory about it and the American Battlefield Trust has an article about the Battle of Glendale.

Glendale is another although personally I consider it less likely than the other two; it required a solid execution of the plan, while Stones River and the "Battle of Cedar Mountain" only required a single thing to go right for Confederate success. There's other opportunities, of course; I think Lee had a strong one during the Bristoe Campaign to destroy Meade if Ewell had put in a better performance/had Jackson still been alive. Michael J. Forsyth also argues in his book The Camden Expedition of 1864 and the Opportunity Lost by the Confederacy to Change the Civil War for another, with the name being self explanatory lol.

There's also numerous, more tactical openings during the war; Negley's Division during the lead up to the Battle of Chickamauga is pretty well known. These won't be earth shattering, in of themselves, but did exist.

 

[Worffan101]

This gets claimed a lot but I never see it backed up by the actual historians or citations. Not blaming you for this, but it's an extremely common meme, in essence, that just gets parroted around too much.

And yet you provide no evidence against this supposed 'meme'. @thekingsguard has a rather nice, well-sourced essay on his blog about the CSA and the long odds it faced; just as the first example I can recall off the top of my head, the USA had more than twice the railroads of the CSA and most of the CSA's railroads were in Maryland, Kentucky, and other border states. Starborn estimated the South's industry as a generation behind the North's in 1830, with the gap only widening over time. @thekingsguard 's statistics note that the USA outnumbered the CSA 2 to 1 in terms of soldiers, and to a truly comical degree in terms of important stuff like firearms and industrial production.

This would come as a shock, given Northern States were adopting Black Codes by the 1850s and in the 1860s-even as the Civil War was being fought-adopted legislation to their State Constitutions to forbid Black voting.

Completely different context; the TL-191 Union has the CSA as a hated national enemy and a small at most black minority; taking another tack is all but expected.

This is another meme, with no real backing; maybe on AH.com but, again, not by Historians. See Confederate Finance by Robert C. Todd, Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation by John Majewski, Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post–Civil War World by Adrian Brettle and, finally, THE CONFEDERACY’S FINANCIAL POLICIES, 1861-1864 by Rose Razaghian.

This is not a 'meme', it is well-known that the core intent of the CSA's founders was to maintain the power of plantation-owning slavocrats by any means. Industrialization was widely (and correctly) seen as against the interests of Confederate power players, who planned to set up an oligarchic agrarian republic. Ideas and attempts at industrialization of the South foundered on the central issue that the political establishment refused to even allow it to happen for fear of their power weakening, for decades before the war. After the war, those powers that be would let their hard-won power go over their cold, dead fingers.

Once the South got done putting down the literal hundreds of thousands of Unionist rebels and the inevitable black revolts, it would be a backwards, impoverished rural state that ran on rapidly depreciating cash crops.

 

[History Learner]

And yet you provide no evidence against this supposed 'meme'. @thekingsguard has a rather nice, well-sourced essay on his blog about the CSA and the long odds it faced; just as the first example I can recall off the top of my head, the USA had more than twice the railroads of the CSA and most of the CSA's railroads were in Maryland, Kentucky, and other border states. Starborn estimated the South's industry as a generation behind the North's in 1830, with the gap only widening over time. @thekingsguard 's statistics note that the USA outnumbered the CSA 2 to 1 in terms of soldiers, and to a truly comical degree in terms of important stuff like firearms and industrial production.

In terms of a long war and with no outside intervention, sure, the C.S. was likely to be beaten. This ignores that:

A) The Anglo-French were seriously considering intervention in the 1862-1863 timeframe as I pointed on in this very thread.
B) Wars are not solely determined by economic determinism; morale exists. As I also noted previously in this thread, Lincoln expected he was going to lose re-election as late as August of 1864 and the historian James McPherson notes that Northern morale was on the verge of quitting the war by then.

All it takes for the C.S. to win is one good battlefield success in the Fall of 1862 or 1864.

Completely different context; the TL-191 Union has the CSA as a hated national enemy and a small at most black minority; taking another tack is all but expected.

Which ignores the Black codes pre-dated the CSA's existence, underlying the racial animus, as well as the fact that the prohibition on Black voting rights was occurring....at the same time Confederates were killing Union soldiers IOTL. I fail to see how any of this changes.

This is not a 'meme', it is well-known that the core intent of the CSA's founders was to maintain the power of plantation-owning slavocrats by any means. Industrialization was widely (and correctly) seen as against the interests of Confederate power players, who planned to set up an oligarchic agrarian republic. Ideas and attempts at industrialization of the South foundered on the central issue that the political establishment refused to even allow it to happen for fear of their power weakening, for decades before the war. After the war, those powers that be would let their hard-won power go over their cold, dead fingers.

Once the South got done putting down the literal hundreds of thousands of Unionist rebels and the inevitable black revolts, it would be a backwards, impoverished rural state that ran on rapidly depreciating cash crops.

It is indeed a meme, and the book citations I've already posted show this. I could add to them Robert Fogel's Without Consent or Contract and The Economics of Industrial Slavery and the Old South by Robert Starobin. In reality, the planters had no opposition to industrialization and the overall trends favored it; it was cost competitive with free labor and the rate of return was, in some cases, equal to cotton; overall it was not far behind. Indeed, hundreds of thousands of slaves even in 1860 were involved in Industrial or Proto-Industrial work and the overall proportion could and did show fluctuations. Case in point is the effort made to develop Birmingham as an industrial center in the 1850s by Planters.

 

[Faeelin]

I'm not denying that (I believe I even pointed out France and Britain had war scares besides) but the point I was making was that Britain or France intervening in the American Civil War doesn't equal eternal hatred of Britain or France by the US. It just doesn't serve anyone's interests for that to be the case.

While I have no doubt many people would have that feeling, any government in Washington really can't base foreign and domestic policy around "sticking it to the British and French" every year after 1864.

Doesn't have to be sticking it to the British. Just removing the Anglophillia and making the relation much more skeptical will make 1917 a darker year for the British.

 

[Belisarius II]

Rare, yes, but not impossible as OTL showed and there was plenty of missed opportunities in this regard for the Confederates to completely destroy Federal armies. Stones River, the more I research it, stands out as one such to me, as does Lee's maneuvering against Pope prior to Second Manassas/Bull Run that I pointed out on the first page.

Camp Hill would have involved essentially the armies that fought at Antietam. Can you layout a campaign plan that would end with the AOP being destroyed? Any defeat near Washington could never be complete, because the army could fall back on the city defenses. Generally the problem with Union Commanders was they were too cautious, not that they were reckless. There's a huge cottage industry that pumps out material suggesting if the Confederates had just pushed a little harder at such & such battle, the whole Union War Effort would've collapsed. Nonsense, the Confederates had more then their fair share of luck. In many battle it's easier to argue that the Union missed more opportunities to destroy Lee's Army then the other way around.