Realistic CSA victory timeline

frlmerrin

Banned
Response to Snake Featherstone

Snake Featherstone,
The idea that Union’s efforts to put a modestly sized army into the field against the Confederacy is in anyway comparable to the effort expended by Britain, a very wealthy country in fighting the Napoleonic wars is laughable. What is of note is that the effort as a fraction of national wealth required of the Union just to defeat the Confederacy was enormous far greater than the fraction of British national wealth expended on fighting Napoleon. The USA stayed in debt over the American Civil War until the first world war.

The Confederacy was the size of Western Europe. When it came to serious fighting in Europe as in both world wars, the UK left it to other societies to raise large armies for mobile operations. It did not have the capability to do so, nor the necessity so long as Russia, Prussia, and Austria were willing to do the bleeding and dying for it. The force sent in 1914 was equivalent in size to the force in 1814, so so much for British progress in 100 years. /snerk.

Snerk?

What you say is true, but completely irrelevant. The British would behave in the way you have suggested. They would facilitate Confederate aquisition of arms, put a moderate army into eastern BNA, a smaller one still into California and use several thousand marines and blue jackets to raid the coast . Job done. I fail to see the point you are making.

By destroy I mean wreck the economy, cause a depression, cause famine, wreck the personal fortunes of the merchant classes, destroy waterside fortifications, warehouses and factories, take the government gold and silver from California, take the American whaling fleet and reflag or take the American merchant fleet. Maybe capture Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.

I think your suggestion that Lincoln would fight on to the utter destitution of his country rather unfair, he may have been a fanatic to keep the Union whole but he was also a realist.


If such is the British concept of a "limited war", why does the Union *want* to surrender? This is the approach that leads to Sino-Japanese War scenarios as the losing side has no reason whatsoever to seriously surrender. The UK anticipating the IJA in China against white people will be as bad for it as the Second Boer War was. Victorian Double-Standards tie the British as much as fighting the CSA does the USA.
I don’t see the point you are making, sorry.

The British are not going to be stretched by a war with the Union it is an affordable war that won’t even require all of the steam reserve never mind converting the sailing vessels in reserve. The logistics are easier than the Crimea. You do realise that the colonial forces in India (not part of the Royal Navy) operate more steam frigates than the USN?

I have already demonstrated that the grain market is full of cheap Union wheat from 1861 and the Russians would have no problems selling to the British, they cannot afford not to. The price of bread might rise a little.


This would be the war in the Crimea where the British showed abysmal logistics against a Russia armed with 18th Century weaponry? The Union army's not the latter-day Mongol-style Marty Tzus its apologists rhapsodize it as, but let's hardly say that Inkerman indicates the British are extremely good here, either. And if London does what you and Tigger say it will, then the UK will never get a negotiated peace signed by any self-respecting US government.
Don’t be silly when everything goes to hell in a country they always come to the negotiating table. There are a few exceptions to this a good example is Paraguay. Do you really think Lincoln or Seward or any of those sensible, realist, politicians is going to fight on for national honour when the nation is suffering to no good effect?
For Certain this would be a limited war broadly comparable to the Crimea, less of an effort than the Napoleonic wars. For the Union the war is self limiting, the more it fights the British the better the situation for the Confederacy and the worse for themselves.
To be sure, yes. But to claim that burning entire cities in the Victorian Age with those cities inhabited by white people will be acceptable is blinkered stupidity. This would be seen as the Second Boer War on steroids.
I may be wrong but where have I said burning entire cities? If you burn the water front you make sure you do it after you loot it. Ditto factories and armouries. Public buildings are a fair target.


The USA was by no means a unique enemy, it was just like the Russian Empire during the Crimean war but fortunately smaller. The Union domestic economy can no longer supply her internal needs during the ACW. Your statement was true in 1812 but certainly not in 1862

This would be the Russian enemy who had real fights from the French of Napoleon III, and a dreary litany of incompetence and logistics failures from the British? Inkerman and Baklava are not great testaments to British strengths. The Union Army doesn't gain the ability to conquer the world from defeating the CSA the way people put it as doing and the British are more grounded in a proper war than it is, but I fail to see where the Crimea shows the British army as anything strong in itself.
As with the USA against the CSA defeating the Union would be relatively unimpressive and be a triumph of professional soldiers against raw armies of inexperienced troops, no more and no less.


My point was that the USA was not a unique enemy and that 1862 is not 1812, I fail to see what bearing your post has on that?
 
This is the same Inkerman where 7,000 British troops and 2,000 French, reinforced late in the battle by another 6,000 French held off some 60,000 Russians?

It's an interesting battle for another reason. It is the first battle where riflemen suppress artillery at long range (800 yds).

Balaklava? The battle where 25,000 Russians could not make headway against 1,000 British cavalry, 500 infantry and a couple of thousand Turks?

The Russians were armed with modern weapons for 1854-6. The general issue infantry weapon in 1853 was the M1845 (or a variant) percussion musket and issued the Nessler ball as standard which gave no effective difference from the 1st gen rifle-musket at 200 yds. By the time of the Crimean war the M1854 Minie rifle-musket was already being issued. Their artillery arm was modern for the time, and the breechloading Dreyse rifle was also on issue to rifle units.

The British Army was probably man for man the best army in the world. The Crimean War exposed the failings that had developed during the long peace and none of these applied in the early 1860's.

Boer Wars? The first Boer war a minor police action in which the Boers possessed all the advantages of position, entrenchment and strength (they outnumbered the British in all engagements). The second was a disaster for the Boers - after their initial numerical advantage failed to make an impact the British banged up 14 divisions and took the Boer republics in a few months. After that it was pacification rather than war.

Yes, yes, I understand, the UK doesn't really lose, it just has hiccups. Majuba wasn't a defeat, nor was it an attempt to ensure the British annexation of the Transvaal Republic stuck that failed. Nor did the British problems against armies of white people with artillery and infantry as opposed to tribes with oxhide shields and spears indicate the British Army wasn't extremely flawed in the kind of war it was supposedly best at.

If the British Army were what you said it was, the war would rapidly have been outside the Crimea, the French would not have been necessary at all, and the Russians would have ended the war somewhere in Siberia. :rolleyes: For that matter, if the British Army was so all-fired trained in Marksmanship, just what did happen to it in the Boer Wars when it kept missing shots against enemies that used methods like firing from cover and had the kind of natural marksmanship seen in the Confederate armies due to hunting for entertainment? But I'm sure the UK was really stabbed in the back somehow and can't lose wars.

Snake Featherstone,


Snerk?

What you say is true, but completely irrelevant. The British would behave in the way you have suggested. They would facilitate Confederate aquisition of arms, put a moderate army into eastern BNA, a smaller one still into California and use several thousand marines and blue jackets to raid the coast . Job done. I fail to see the point you are making.


I don’t see the point you are making, sorry.


Don’t be silly when everything goes to hell in a country they always come to the negotiating table. There are a few exceptions to this a good example is Paraguay. Do you really think Lincoln or Seward or any of those sensible, realist, politicians is going to fight on for national honour when the nation is suffering to no good effect?

I may be wrong but where have I said burning entire cities? If you burn the water front you make sure you do it after you loot it. Ditto factories and armouries. Public buildings are a fair target.





My point was that the USA was not a unique enemy and that 1862 is not 1812, I fail to see what bearing your post has on that?

1) Last time I checked deliberately burning the wealth of a nation and looting it from the loser, DELIBERATELY doing this was outside the boundaries of so-called civilized war at this time. Perhaps the Brit-wankers are deaf to this reality but the societies of the time frowned on this if it wasn't done to some African kingdom like Bunroyo.

2) So when you said in the post I quoted that the UK would "burn the material wealth of the nation" and 67th Tigers claims the UK's idea of limited war was to "burn New York to the ground" and both of you think that the Victorian era would have allowed this to be done to white people.....congratulations, Brit-wankers, you broke your empire over what you think qualifies as "limited' war that people with the ability to actually comprehend the meaning of words would consider "Operation Barbarossa." The Germans burned a few villages in Belgium and were lambasted over it, the UK razes New York to the ground it will be a pariah state thereafter.

3) My post notes that when it came to fighting armies in the European style the British were really not that good at this time. Against an army committed to a civil war they'll be good, yes, but that's because US Civil War armies were not all that impressive by the standards of the time. If we go by Baklava, Inkerman, Majuba, Lsandlswana, then it's not at all clear that the British have what it takes to win the fighting required to destroy the USA in six months. Two years? Absolutely, and over time the Union hemhorrages and has already lost the war before the shooting started, but if people think razing cities of white people to the ground will be acceptable in the Victorian era then they delude themselves. The reaction to the Second Boer War is what the Brits will be looking at here.
 
Because the Union infantry was really good at making attaques du preste? :eek:

The accuracy numbers are well known. Strachan reports 1 in 16 hits (ref) with rifles. Various calculations for the ACW estimate between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 68 (the former being Sherman's army in the Atlanta campaign and the latter being Gaines Mill where the fighting was very close).

In fact if a Union infantry brigade attacked a British infantry regiment I imagine that they be forced to go to ground 3-400 yds off the objective and simply soak up casualties. The Union simply didn't indulge in rifle training, and neither did the Confederacy until 1863-4.[/QUOTE]

True, but then there's the problem of poor British marksmanship in both Boer Wars, in histories written by British writers who noted this. This was changed before WWI (when less-well-trained German conscripts tore the BEF to red rags) but admittedly the UK's supposed marksmanship advantage appeared in neither 1881 or 1899-1902. By contrast the USA, less well-trained took down the Spanish in a model victory where the greatest enemy it had was its own logistics and in the Battle of Manila trounced conventional forces of Filipino nationalists in one battle. The USA then spent years in "pacification".

And if I may ask, if the UK again was an army of miracle-workers, how, precisely, did it wind up failing in 1881 at all? Police action or no (and nice Truman turn of phrase that), Majuba would qualify as an epic defeat by the standards of anyone that judged wars on an academically honest, purely military level. Not an ambiguous "Waah, you're killing my army I'm commanding without ever seeing the battles" sort as in the Seven Days' but an actual Mukden-style curbstomp.

And if it's just that Colley was a fuckwit, then this again raises a big problem: nothing says the UK will send the A-Team to fight the USA here.
 
Unfortunately you don't have a grounding in the period.

In 1854 the British Army has just starting to come out of a long period of decline brought about by the long peace. The Army had dwindled to about 80,000 infantry and cavalry (sans India), and after other commitments it was able to send 32,000 (inc. ordnance) immediately. Note Grant's claim that at Shiloh he only had 33,000 effectives (and only 25,000 after a number ran away). By the standards of the ACW this is a respectable force.

However, this was not by any means "it". The British cycled over 100,000 infantry and cavalry through the Crimea by means of further units and individual reinforcements.

The initial landings were by 34 infantry regiments, 10 cavalry regiments all at 2 sqn strength and leaving only 8 line and 4 guards battalions in the UK. The expeditionary force is reinforced over the winter of 1854-5 by 7 of the 8 line battalions in the UK (the 51st is still recruiting back to strength) and 12 of the 18 regiments in the Med stations. Their stations are taken by mobilisation of Militia units (which are "part time regulars" in UK service*, not like US militia). With reinforcements from depots in the three months late September-December 1854 (and the 18th from India) ~ 60,000 infantry are landed in the Crimea. 54 infantry battalions and 14 cavalry regiments served in the Eastern Army.

In 1861 the British simply have a much larger army. Nearly 160,000 (exc/ India) in the same state as the 80,000 that provided ~60,000 within a few months in 1854. Foreign commitments have not changed, excluding India the British need 20,000 regulars plus the mobilised militia. The British have nearly 140,000 men, or about 120,000 after China and NZ are accounted for (those force can't really be moved). The plan was for 75,000 men to deploy to defend Canada (in five army corps of the organisation created after the Crimean) which would raised ~100,000 militia immediately. After the thaw the US invader is facing an army of 175,000 on her northern border. Along the Maine-NB border are another 20,000 regulars and the NS and NB militia (~40,000 strong). In sheer numbers the army they are facing has more men in the field than the Confederacy.

* Of the 120,000 militia, 40,000 volunteered for the regular army and were posted accordingly. The same would happen again in 1861-5.

Yes, this is why the British failed to relieve Cawnpore during the Mutiny, found themselves facing bitter, unexpectedly tough fighting against the Sepoys who forced them into a major war (where if the British were gods of war as you make them out to be how could a rebellion happen in their center of power under their noses in the first place?). This is why the British failed in the First Anglo-Afghan War, losing an entire army to a bunch of disgruntled tribes. This is why the serious fighting in the Crimean War was done by the army of Napoleon III, not any of the British generals who were too busy pursuing their feuds to bother actually *fighting* much of the time. This is why the British, using their mighty modern juggernaut were smashed at Lsandlswana, and then listened to the Boers which they should have done the first time. This is how the British lost an 1881 war.

And incidentally, your claims you've made repeatedly that Lee led an army of 120,000 or whatever, if the Brits outnumber the entire CS Army by December 1861, when did Lee come up with these phantom soldiers?
 

67th Tigers

Banned
True, but then there's the problem of poor British marksmanship in both Boer Wars, in histories written by British writers who noted this. This was changed before WWI (when less-well-trained German conscripts tore the BEF to red rags) but admittedly the UK's supposed marksmanship advantage appeared in neither 1881 or 1899-1902. By contrast the USA, less well-trained took down the Spanish in a model victory where the greatest enemy it had was its own logistics and in the Battle of Manila trounced conventional forces of Filipino nationalists in one battle. The USA then spent years in "pacification".

Actually there is a bit of a myth here. After the war there were shooting matches between the Brits and Boers. The Brits won hands down. The main issues in the war were locating the enemy. The British infantry would reliably hit standing individuals at 800 yards in 1899, but they had to see them. The Boers fought from concealment making this phase of the firefight difficult. Boers expended in the region of 500-1,000 rounds of rifle fire per hit.

The real killer in the (2nd) Boer war was the modern Boer artillery with airbursting lyditte shells. These were new weapons developed in the 1880's-90's and also fielded by the British. The heavy Boer firepower would force the British to go to ground

And if I may ask, if the UK again was an army of miracle-workers, how, precisely, did it wind up failing in 1881 at all? Police action or no (and nice Truman turn of phrase that), Majuba would qualify as an epic defeat by the standards of anyone that judged wars on an academically honest, purely military level. Not an ambiguous "Waah, you're killing my army I'm commanding without ever seeing the battles" sort as in the Seven Days' but an actual Mukden-style curbstomp.

And if it's just that Colley was a fuckwit, then this again raises a big problem: nothing says the UK will send the A-Team to fight the USA here.

Largely simply numbers.

The British garrisons in the future ZAR were besieged and couldn't hold out. Reinforcements were en route but Colley was convinced they'd be too late so took the Natal field force into the ZAR with what he had, was surrounded and actually fought his way out of the encirclement skillfully (so skillfully Jourdan was convinced the British had hidden their guns and baggage in the rivers and spent days searching for them).

Majuba? A tiny action involving barely 300 British infantry overrun by many times their number of Boers.
 
1) "After the war". Any damn fool can hit something on a target range when he's not about to be shot by some other damn fool with a rifle. "After the war" is not relevant. "During the war" is relevant, and the British couldn't have hit the broad side of a barn with a 155 mm artillery piece in direct fire at times during both wars. Hardly an endorsement of the British in a war against people who aren't going around in loincloths with spears and shields.

2) Ah, but the mighty British Gods of War can beat Union armies that outnumber them by such margins in your own view of this war. What do Boers have that Yanks don't?
 
This is the same Inkerman where 7,000 British troops and 2,000 French, reinforced late in the battle by another 6,000 French held off some 60,000 Russians?

The initial Russian assault force was about 6000. Total Russians involved were 42,000; which were committed piecemeal. The terrain strongly favored the British and the fog masked their lack of numbers and led to Russians wasting artillery on unoccupied positions.

It's an interesting battle for another reason. It is the first battle where riflemen suppress artillery at long range (800 yds).

I find this comment interesting considering how many times you've claimed the rifle was no better than the musket. Most suppression of Russian artillery was by artillery.

Balaklava? The battle where 25,000 Russians could not make headway against 1,000 British cavalry, 500 infantry and a couple of thousand Turks?

The Russians considered the battle a victory. They captured the heights, the outer ring of Allied defenses, and held them against counterattack by the Light Brigade.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
I find this comment interesting considering how many times you've claimed the rifle was no better than the musket. Most suppression of Russian artillery was by artillery.

Nope, see Toldeben.

"Notwithstanding the range, which was particularly great for light artillery, our guns caused considerable damage to the English artillery. But these injuries very imperfectly compensated the enormous losses which the enemy’s riflemen inflicted on the Russian artillery. A perfect cloud of riflemen hid in thick brushwood opened a very violent and very accurate fire against our artillery at the distance of 800 paces. Some of our guns from time to time rained grape upon them, but the discharge only checked the fire of the enemy’s riflemen for a moment, for, after their momentary fright, they only commenced to decimate our ranks more energetically. At the same time the English artillery hurled shrapnel on our artillery and infantry, but it was more the fire of rifled small arms than that of the artillery of the enemy which reached our artillerymen, of whom the greater part were killed or wounded."
 

frlmerrin

Banned
Response to Fiver

Fiver,
If the blockade of the southern coast is raised, which it will be at the start of any Union war with Britain the South can sell cotton and raise bonds against it in a way they never could in OTL. They can buy locomotives from Britain, they can buy rail stock, they can buy guns and gunpowder.

Confederate infrastructure was already so stressed it couldn’t properly get food to all of its population. Ending the Union blockade will take time. Breaking it at one point will help that part of the Confederacy, but not the whole country. Selling cotton helps plantation owners, but tariffs are on imports, not exports. It’s going to take a while for that money to start trickling into their coffers, and even then it will be dwarfed by their rate of spending.
1) At the end of the American Civil War the Confederate railway systems was in a bad state. In early 1862 which is the period immediate after the Trent Affair and the most likely time for a Fanco-Anglo-Union war, it is not significantly worse than the Union system (neither of which was well built by British, European or Indian standard but then there was a lot more track in North America).
2) Ending the Union blockade will take slightly less than two weeks. The time it takes the flotilla based at Vera Cruz to sweep the Confederate coast from Texas to Nassau and the time it takes the flotilla at either Jamaica or Bermuda (depending where Admiral Milne is) to sort out the defence of the West Indies and sail up the coast of the Confederacy to the mouth of the Chesapeake.
There are several reasons for this:
· most of the blockaders are small sailing ships, too slow to run, too weak to fight,
· in the Gulf and of Florida they are most unlikely to be aware of the war before it falls on them,
· these small ships carry very little in the way of provision and water they are supplied regularly (2 weeks or so) by supply ships running down from the north or from the enclaves at ship island, Pensacola, the dry Tortugas and Port Royal (this last may not be taken if British intervene early). These supply ships cannot operate other than in a permissive environment.
· The Union enclaves with be cut off and most will need to surrender due to lack of water and/or food (the forts may not be so unlucky)
3) The Confederacy never had much trouble selling bonds in OTL they will find it even easier in TTL especially if the English government decides to give them loans at low interest to encourage them in the war against the Union. This is roughly the way that Snake Featherstone implied the British would behave and I pretty much agree with him.
4) The OTL Union’s rate of spending dwarfed its revenues and it worked out OK why should the Confederates who have a much more export focused economy not do well in TTL?
I’m not quite sure what you are getting at here but what I was getting at is that in 1862 the defences of Washington are not that formidable. The British can send some quite large vessels up river to threaten it once they have reduced fort Monroe.

Keep in mind British ships will have to have shallow enough draft to make it over Kettle Bottom shoals. And risk mines. A coordinated advance with Confederate troops could take Washington, but the Confederates are going to need supplies, especially if it becomes a siege.
Mines would not be a problem; the British know how to deal with them.
I think that the shoals on the Potomac had been dredged between the war of 1812 and 1862. Certainly some quite large ships made use of Washington Naval Yard in the ACW. If you know differently please let me know, a reference would be smashing. However what the Union could do and Dahlgren was proposing to do if Merrimac was not stopped was sink stone barges in the area. This can be done quickly so it may well have been used against the British. However, in shallow water it would be pretty straight forward to remove stone boats but not necessarily easy especially under fire. Fort Washington is the only significant defence against naval attack in 1862, it is superbly sited but does not appear to have any heavy guns. Even so it could cause serious problems for sloops and smaller vessels. This is why I think the British might lose one or two, maybe more in subduing the defences.
The Union got through vast quantities of powder and they still had to ration it in certain respects.
I haven’t seen any evidence of the Union needing to ration powder. They certainly would if the British got involved, of course.

Three things on that, the very limited live fire training for most Union troops, the frequent references to only a few round for the large guns in the coastal forts and the need to nearly empty Benicia Arsenal in California and to ship its contents round the Horn to the east. Perhaps I should have been clearer, I did not mean so many rounds issued per gun or man, merely that the Union authorities had to be very careful how and where they allocated powder.
I don’t understand this a sympathetic civilian population is not an army?

I think his point is Union war commitment will be much higher if the British intervene. That translates into more recruiting, less desertion. The Copperheads evaporate as a movement. Most Irish back the war.

Mmm I wonder, I would suggest quite the contrary there would be quite a significant amount of desertion from the Union army by the large number of experienced NCOs of British, BNA and Irish extraction that had fought for the British Army or Navy earlier in their lives. It would also cause a great deal of soul searching among many of the British born and second generation Britons living in the USA. Many of them will fight for their Queen, many will fight for the Union and most I suspect will want nothing to do with either side. This is the same for the majority of the Irish, most of those in the Fenians are already fighting for one side or another. Those that have not volunteered don’t want to volunteer and a fight between the English and the Yankees is nothing to do with them.
No I really can’t see how the Union can ‘deal with’ Mexico later unless they win against the British. Even if they win against the British (hypothetically) by the time the war is over the French will be in complete control of Mexico and it is too late
.

I doubt French control in Mexico would be secure for a long time. That said, the Union having to fight the Confederacy and Britain guarantees they will be far too war weary at the end of the ACW to consider intervening in Mexico.

In this scenario where France is allied with Britain and at war with the Union, things would be very different to OTL. First, nobody in Texas is going to help the rebel Juaristas. It will also be very difficult for the British to deny the French the right to charter British merchant ships as troop transports and supply ships as they did in OTL. As a result of this it is reasonable to expect far more French troops in Mexico and that they are very well supplied. In this scenario not only is it much harder for the Union to supply the rebels but they have nothing at all to supply them with.

There is a chance of beating the British, though.

I see no chance of beating the British. If you think there is perhaps you would be so kind as to explain what the Union strategy would be in order to achieve this victory?
During the Trent Crisis the British commander in North America was William Fenwick Williams. His largest independent combat command was less than 20,000 at the Siege of Kars. Cholera and famine finished off about 1/3rd of William's force and he surrendered the rest. This failure was so far above average British performance in the Crimean War that Williams received a title, a pension, a promotion, a seat in Parliament, an honorary degree from Oxford, and several medals.

Williams appears to have been eager for a fight with the Union, though at the same time he also appears to have believed the South would win without British intervention. In 1861, Williams was already being described as “a worn out old roué who might get the 10,000 men the Iron Duke spoke of into Hyde Park, but who never could get them out again.” Garnet Wolseley, then on the quartermaster’s staff for Canada thought the task was well beyond Williams’ ability.

Between Williams eagerness and inadequacy for the task I can see him leading a force of about 30,000 (half of it ill-equipped and untrained militia) in an invasion of the US. The Union should easily be able to meet them with a force of comparable size, and presuming the Union commander is equal or better than Ambrose Burnside, the British should fare about as well as the Confederates did in New Mexico.
British chances improve if the rigors of the campaign prove too much for the old man, but his best subordinates appear to be on the quartermaster’s staff and none seem to have commanded a force of this size, let alone in combat.
Who described Williams as ‘a worn out old roué’? What was the context?
It is clear you don’t think much of him as a general, your analysis has ‘something of the night about’ but then I don’t have a strong opinion on the matter so feel free to denigrate the old chap.
What I do know is that Williams won’t be the wartime commander in BNA and that in response to the Trent Affair they sent out an excellent staff ahead of choosing the theatre commander. In 1861 Williams’s actual post was Administrator of the Government. Pennyfather was the Governor General’s Secretary, Irvine, and Duchesuay were both Provincial Aides de-Camp. Monck as Governor General would have had final authority over any theatre commander.

I also note that nobody was planning to invade the USA with an army of 30,000 men. What was planned was for a number of small detachments, and I do mean small, of line infantry would take up forward defensive positions in the Union to delay any advance on the province of Canada one of these positions was to be at Rouse Point, others opposite the Niagara peninsula. We are talking detachments of a few hundred to maybe a thousand men.

Most of what you say regarding troops in the Province of Canada was indeed said then. The local militia troops were indeed poor compared to veteran Imperial line infantry, compared to the majority of troops in the Union army in Feb 1862 those of them in the volunteers and Flank Cos. of the militia were well trained (but not as experienced of course).

General Doyle complained much of the Canadian militia existed only on paper and the legislatures refused to provide proper funding. Thanks to persistent efforts by Doyle the Canadian militia finally received a week of training in summer of 1864.

All of which was more or less true but the comment by Doyle is not about the flank companies of the militia or the volunteers both groups being much better trained than the rest. Neither does it include the New Brunswick or Nova Scotian militias and volunteers which are separate organisations.
The USA was by no means a unique enemy, it was just like the Russian Empire during the Crimean war but fortunately smaller.

Just like the Russian Army – except the Union had better strategy, tactics, training, morale, leadership, command, intelligence, arms, equipment, supply, medicine, and sanitation.

I don’t agree with your characterisation of the Russian Army. Only in the areas of general equipment and supply am I aware that the Union army was in anyway superior to the Russian. If you want me to believe this you are going to have to show me some evidence of some kind.
The Union domestic economy can no longer supply her internal needs during the ACW.

The Union can easily continue to support its domestic economy even if blockaded by Britain. It can still support most of its military needs as well, but powder would be a serious problem.

How? Show me where the boots, socks and uniforms are going to come from? They had to use substandard boots and shoddy and mungo for uniforms in the OTL ACW and that was when they could import cloth and wool yarn from England. It is one thing to make the statement. Now support it please.
You forget that in the mid 19th Irish nationalism was a completely middle class pass-time most of the country wanted no part of it.

The potato famine made it a good deal more than a “middle class pass-time”.


No, the murrain made people want to leave Ireland any way they could. They wanted a better standard of life not independence. It is not until after the emergence of the GAA and the revival of Irish culture that a sense of national identity appears across the whole population. It is not until the Labour movement and the Socialists get involved that independence became a reality and the flag those guys followed was red not green.

That the Indian mutiny only happened in part of one of the three administrative regions of Indian and that the British response was so savage that no one is yet thinking about another.

And the memory is so fresh that the British only pulled significant troops out of India during the Great War and even then they kept a lot more there than they did pre-Mutiny.
Actually when the army of the HEIC was integrated into the British Army a large number of Europeans left and there was a significant reduction in the number of European troops in India.
I note that the Union built almost no railway miles during the ACW and had problems finding enough rail stock to repair the track they did have.
You note incorrectly. In 1861 the Union built 651 miles of track, 1831 miles in 1862, 1450 miles in 1863, 738 miles in 1864, and 1177 miles in 1865. Some of this was the world's first transcontinental railroad, which by law. had to be built only with American-made rails. This was not a problem - the Union produced 190,000 tons of rails just in 1861.


This is interesting.
I have followed your link to google books and a mining and engineering journal which it won’t let me read so I can’t really comment on what you have abstracted from it.
Assuming the USA produced 190,000 tons of rails in 1861 then roughly speaking that equates to somewhere between 780 and 1050 miles of single track, if you add in the 70 – 95 miles of track that are imported from Britain*,** then it comes to just 850 - 1145 miles. If you take the 651 of new track out of that you are left with ca. 200 – 500 miles of new track available for repairs of what was generally accepted to be a very large but fairly rickety network. It does not feel right. Are you sure that the numbers you quoted are not for ‘track laid’ which would include repairs?
*British export to USA low
**Excludes steel rails as I don’t have the data to do the calculation but non-zero.
 
Nope, see Toldeben.

"Notwithstanding the range, which was particularly great for light artillery, our guns caused considerable damage to the English artillery. But these injuries very imperfectly compensated the enormous losses which the enemy’s riflemen inflicted on the Russian artillery. A perfect cloud of riflemen hid in thick brushwood opened a very violent and very accurate fire against our artillery at the distance of 800 paces. Some of our guns from time to time rained grape upon them, but the discharge only checked the fire of the enemy’s riflemen for a moment, for, after their momentary fright, they only commenced to decimate our ranks more energetically. At the same time the English artillery hurled shrapnel on our artillery and infantry, but it was more the fire of rifled small arms than that of the artillery of the enemy which reached our artillerymen, of whom the greater part were killed or wounded."

Perhaps a citation to the full letter or whatever he wrote that in would be in order.
 

frlmerrin

Banned
Perspective

Snake Featherstone,

You know Snake this seems to be a fairly emotive subject for some people, yourself included but at the end of the day it is just a debate about what might have been. What you have written below is really quite jingoistic and personally unpleasant to any British people reading this thread and I wish you wouldn't do it. It just detracts from the debate even though your question is a valid one.

Ah, but the mighty British Gods of War can beat Union armies that outnumber them by such margins in your own view of this war. What do Boers have that Yanks don't?
 
Snake Featherstone,

You know Snake this seems to be a fairly emotive subject for some people, yourself included but at the end of the day it is just a debate about what might have been. What you have written below is really quite jingoistic and personally unpleasant to any British people reading this thread and I wish you wouldn't do it. It just detracts from the debate even though your question is a valid one.

It's equally unpleasant to have British people claim their armies are inherently incapable of losing wars, only those treacherous bungling ANZACs/Indians/Irish or whoever lose them. It's as irritating to me personally as all the German-apologists that claim German general X didn't lose a thing, someone else was always at fault, not he. I'm actually in agreement the British will smash the USA, and I think the USA loses the war without any shot being fired as thoroughly as Japan did on December 7th, 1941.

What I do not think is that the argument that the British are magic-men who won't have potential issues of incompetence (hey, if the goddamn Zulu could smash them in the first battle) or any potential handicaps in terms of ground-fighting. On the high seas the USA has a chance if and only if the entire Royal Navy is sunk by a convenient wave of meteors has any place in a serious discussion of military logic. Nor do I think that such a war as we're discussing happens without someone in one of these societies going batshit fucking insane.

The way I see such a war unfolding is as follows: US leadership goes insane, declares war on the UK. The CSA keeps getting drubbed in fights with the USA no matter how much ammo it imports as its problem was not ammunition at any point and it was militarily schooled for most of the war. The US Navy gets sunk, the USA's blockaded. The British have rough going in initial battles but the USA's economic issues lead to a British victory in six months, a white peace follows. The UK has no real reason to make the full scale of the defeat worse, the idea of being a CS Ally won't go down well in London at all, as it would complicate any potential gains in Africa unimaginably. British rough going is primarily due to the problems involved in a war with a semi-industrial society and fighting enemies prepared for linear war in the first go-round, the Union loses the war without a shot and economically before any serious fighting gets anywhere near to starting, and like Russia in WWI does tolerably on the defensive and poorly on the offensive early on and has a law of diminishing returns the longer the war lasts. It is defeated economically more than militarily.
 
67th Tigers said:
The accuracy numbers are well known. Strachan reports 1 in 16 hits (ref) with rifles.

Whereas other sources report the British managed 1 hit in 125 shots at Alma and 1 in 80 at Inkerman, with the 1 in 80 being the best the British ever managed. Of course that number is based in the Russians taking 15,000 casualties. 12,000 is a more likely number of Russian casualties, which mean the best the British ever did was 1 hit in every 100 shots.

67th Tigers said:
Various calculations for the ACW estimate between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 68 (the former being Sherman's army in the Atlanta campaign and the latter being Gaines Mill where the fighting was very close).

By "various calculations", do you mean your own personal calculations, or an actual published work?
 

67th Tigers

Banned
Whereas other sources report the British managed 1 hit in 125 shots at Alma and 1 in 80 at Inkerman, with the 1 in 80 being the best the British ever managed. Of course that number is based in the Russians taking 15,000 casualties. 12,000 is a more likely number of Russian casualties, which mean the best the British ever did was 1 hit in every 100 shots.

Well, the refs have the wrong number of shots fired. British ammunition expenditure (inc lost as well as fired) at Inkerman was 199,820 rounds, a factor of six lower. Same point elsewhere.

Suggesting that the British infantry fired 1.2m rounds, five times more than they actually carried must be treated as suspect....
 
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Actually there is a bit of a myth here. After the war there were shooting matches between the Brits and Boers. The Brits won hands down. The main issues in the war were locating the enemy. The British infantry would reliably hit standing individuals at 800 yards in 1899, but they had to see them. The Boers fought from concealment making this phase of the firefight difficult.

So you're saying the British were superior soldiers - so long as their targets weren't moving or firing back? :rolleyes:

Boers expended in the region of 500-1,000 rounds of rifle fire per hit.

So you're claiming the Boers carried 250 to 500 rounds apiece at Majuba Hill?:rolleyes:

Majuba? A tiny action involving barely 300 British infantry overrun by many times their number of Boers.

I like how you only count the British casualties in an attempt to make the British force seem smaller. The British started for the hill with with 22 officers and 627 men. Four companies of infantry as well as a dismounted cavalry troop were left as pickets. When the battle started the British had over 400 men on the high ground while the Boers out numbered them by only 10 or 20%.
 
Well, the refs have the wrong number of shots fired. British ammunition expenditure (inc lost as well as fired) at Inkerman was 199,820 rounds, a factor of six lower.

I note you don't have a source for this number. And that even it does not get the number you claim unless you assume that not a single one of the 7500 French soldiers who fought in that battle ever hit anything. :rolleyes:

And you still have no sources for your claims about the accuracy of troops in the ACW.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
I note you don't have a source for this number. And that even it does not get the number you claim unless you assume that not a single one of the 7500 French soldiers who fought in that battle ever hit anything. :rolleyes:

Excepting the 6e Ligne and 7e Legere they were not engaged at all (and they only lightly because artillery broke the attack of the Iakoutsk and Selenghinsk regiments on them beyond small arms range -the French had smoothbores). The 50e Ligne, 3eme Zouaves, 3eme Bn Chasseur a Pied, 2er Bn Tiralleurs Algerians and 4e Chasseurs d'Afrique arrived after the Russians had decided to quit the field. They could have delivered a decisive counterattack after they were all up on the retreating Russians, but didn't (and blame it on Canrobert getting wounded).

The fighting was very heavily weighted on the British, which is hardly surprising. Helps if you actually look at what occurred in the action.

And you still have no sources for your claims about the accuracy of troops in the ACW.

Still waiting to see if you know ought on the subject, because this is pretty basic stuff, and I've pointed it out to you repeatedly over the years....
 
Well, the refs have the wrong number of shots fired. British ammunition expenditure (inc lost as well as fired) at Inkerman was 199,820 rounds, a factor of six lower. Same point elsewhere.

Suggesting that the British infantry fired 1.2m rounds, five times more than they actually carried must be treated as suspect....

Citations to prove this claim are where, exactly?
 
Still waiting to see if you know ought on the subject, because this is pretty basic stuff, and I've pointed it out to you repeatedly over the years....

Except you've done nothing of the sort. Modern scholars state that armies in the US Civil War did not engage in marksmanship training, to be sure, but much of this had to do with weaknesses in terms of logistics as it did anything else. And when Grant took over the armies he did, it was one of the first things he mandated. Likewise with Rosecrans and the Army of the Cumberland.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
Except you've done nothing of the sort. Modern scholars state that armies in the US Civil War did not engage in marksmanship training, to be sure, but much of this had to do with weaknesses in terms of logistics as it did anything else. And when Grant took over the armies he did, it was one of the first things he mandated. Likewise with Rosecrans and the Army of the Cumberland.

Yet at Stones River Rosecrans reported only 1 musket/ rifle shot in 145 hit something and only 1 artillery round in 27 (common knowledge, but to prevent you simply going "cite" see pg 208 of Catton's "This Hallow Ground" - first google hit).

Grant was not a believer in marksmanship one iota. In April 1864 Meade (not Grant) found 10 rounds per man for practice. However the stress was not on marksmanship, but on drill. Large numbers of men were found to be unable to load and fire their muskets, and this needed rectifying. I suspect this is a case of "marksmanship = good" and "Grant = good" therefore "Grant = marksmanship" - but there is a complete lack of evidence Grant was in the slightest concerned about marksmanship.

Of course the most concerned about shooting was McClellan, because he'd seen what the British had done to the Russians. Indeed so much musketry practice was occurring that regiments in the areas of Balls Bluff did not intervene because the battle was taken as daily practice! See his first general order to the Army of the Potomac issued 4th August 1861 (pgs 76-8 of Sears' "Papers").
 
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