frlmerrin
Banned
Response to Snake Featherstone
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.
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?
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.
I don’t see the point you are making, sorry.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.
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?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.
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.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.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.
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?