Realistic CSA victory timeline

1864 is too late for that. If Lincoln wins the North will eventually win. The CSA lost too many men and territory while its economy is a basketcase. Even with a Litttle Mac victory in 1864 I would only give the CSA two years tops. It no longer has a decent manpool to draw new soldiers from while the US does. Even that is stretching it. By late 1864 the CSA had virtually no one left except old men and young boys to draw any replacements from. Even if Little Mac wins Sherman is still going to destroy CSA railroads which means that Lee can last, at most, until Sherman comes up from behind to destroy him. When Sherman comes in through NC Lee has no supply line at all. After that it is a mere question of time.
Okay then. Some of the other PODs I had in mind where keeping Bill Quantral alive to divert more Union attention to Missouri from Tenn., and have the CSA offter recognization of Maximillian's power in Mexico to encourage trade with France. I was hoping that putting these in a timeline with a victory at Spring Hill would be enough to have the South streach out the war longer and force a peace but perhaps not. Does anyone have any further suggestion? I really want to write a plausible CSA victory timeline where I don't have to rewrite most of the war and keep most of the major events intact for the sake of future wars in my TL.
 
Okay then. Some of the other PODs I had in mind where keeping Bill Quantral alive to divert more Union attention to Missouri from Tenn., and have the CSA offter recognization of Maximillian's power in Mexico to encourage trade with France. I was hoping that putting these in a timeline with a victory at Spring Hill would be enough to have the South streach out the war longer and force a peace but perhaps not. Does anyone have any further suggestion? I really want to write a plausible CSA victory timeline where I don't have to rewrite most of the war and keep most of the major events intact for the sake of future wars in my TL.

By that time France gave up the CSA as lost. It isn't going to back the loser in a major war. Anyways IIRC the CSA DID offer recognition for Max in exchange for recognition from France and was turned down.
 
By that time France gave up the CSA as lost. It isn't going to back the loser in a major war. Anyways IIRC the CSA DID offer recognition for Max in exchange for recognition from France and was turned down.
Okay then :( I suppose I have been left with no choice . . . I must summon the Alien Space Bats! To the interdimesional transporter! AWAYYYYYYYYY!!!
 
Okay jokeing aside does ANYBODY know of ANYWAY to make a timeline with a CSA victory without removeing Sherman's march or Lincoln's 2nd presidency without having to use ASBs?
 

frlmerrin

Banned
Response to lloyd007 on Beefing-up Union coastal defences

if the US was at war with the UK, does anyone think the US would not beef up its defenses around its major harbors over what they had OTL?

This seems reasonable … right up until you think about it a bit. Where is the best place to keep large calibre 8”+ cannon and rifles? There are two answers, in fortifications and on ships. Keeping them anywhere else is pointless.

It is fairly well known that many of the coastal forts of the Union had few guns and no garrison during the American Civil War and that those that did have guns did not have all the guns they were supposed to have. So where would the Union get the guns to fill up the forts (forget the garrisons that is a separate issue)? Any Union blockade ships that escape the British Navy and reach a Union port at the start of a war can be stripped of all their guns and the guns and crews placed in forts. This is roughly what the Black Sea Fleet did in the Crimean war. Sending a weak fleet against a powerful one is fruitless and pointless. Other than that what are the alternatives? The Union can strip the landward Washington defences of large cannon. These defences were not particularly extensive in 1862. They can disband any siege trains and use those cannon.

How about building new cannon? A large Dhalgren is cast from several tons of iron. It takes a long time to cool and a long time to set-up new moulds. In a war with the English, over the Trent Affair say, it would take less than a week before the local British Navy squadron engages the Union blockaders and either destroys them or drives them into port. Five to six weeks after that the home fleets start arriving from England and they are ready to start reducing fortifications. How many large cannon can be cast in seven weeks? Not many, not a fraction of what would be needed.

Could they perhaps be purchased from a third party and shipped in? Well no, the English Navy will have set up a minimal blockade of the USA in no more than two weeks and in any case who has that many heavy cannon to sell at so short notice?

Perhaps they could use smaller cannon? Well they could use 32lb cannon but the Federals don’t seem to have many of those either and in any case whilst they can hurt a two deck steam battleship it takes a lot to put one out of action as was seen in the Crimea war bombardments and the Kaiser at Lissa. Better than nothing though. Anything smaller is just wasted; it won’t really hurt a big ship.

So with all of those additional canon the Union coastal forts would be well short of guns. Where do the cannon needed to ‘beef-up’ the defences come from lloyd007? If you can’t think of anything that I have missed then I think we have to assume that the defences don’t really get beefed up very much at all.
 

amphibulous

Banned
Okay jokeing aside does ANYBODY know of ANYWAY to make a timeline with a CSA victory without removeing Sherman's march or Lincoln's 2nd presidency without having to use ASBs?

Actually, that's not too hard.

Lincoln may well have had syphilis - the disease that is often blamed for one Adolf Schickgruber's dizzy decline in command skills and sanity points. Syphilis can hit the nervous system in a number of bizarre ways, so if you the Dice Of Disease role differently then Reliable Abe quickly morphs into, say, a brooding charismatic paranoid.

Otoh, this might have led him to have McClellan shot quite early on, which could only be a good thing...

But you might not feel this fits your spec - as we now have a Lincoln who no longer is Lincoln, so to speak.
 

amphibulous

Banned
This seems reasonable … right up until you think about it a bit. Where is the best place to keep large calibre 8”+ cannon and rifles? There are two answers, in fortifications and on ships. Keeping them anywhere else is pointless.

It is fairly well known that many of the coastal forts of the Union had few guns and no garrison during the American Civil War and that those that did have guns did not have all the guns they were supposed to have. So where would the Union get the guns to fill up the forts (forget the garrisons that is a separate issue)? Any Union blockade ships that escape the British Navy and reach a Union port at the start of a war can be stripped of all their guns and the guns and crews placed in forts. This is roughly what the Black Sea Fleet did in the Crimean war. Sending a weak fleet against a powerful one is fruitless and pointless. Other than that what are the alternatives? The Union can strip the landward Washington defences of large cannon. These defences were not particularly extensive in 1862. They can disband any siege trains and use those cannon.

How about building new cannon? A large Dhalgren is cast from several tons of iron. It takes a long time to cool and a long time to set-up new moulds. In a war with the English, over the Trent Affair say, it would take less than a week before the local British Navy squadron engages the Union blockaders and either destroys them or drives them into port. Five to six weeks after that the home fleets start arriving from England and they are ready to start reducing fortifications. How many large cannon can be cast in seven weeks? Not many, not a fraction of what would be needed.

Could they perhaps be purchased from a third party and shipped in? Well no, the English Navy will have set up a minimal blockade of the USA in no more than two weeks and in any case who has that many heavy cannon to sell at so short notice?

Perhaps they could use smaller cannon? Well they could use 32lb cannon but the Federals don’t seem to have many of those either and in any case whilst they can hurt a two deck steam battleship it takes a lot to put one out of action as was seen in the Crimea war bombardments and the Kaiser at Lissa. Better than nothing though. Anything smaller is just wasted; it won’t really hurt a big ship.

So with all of those additional canon the Union coastal forts would be well short of guns. Where do the cannon needed to ‘beef-up’ the defences come from lloyd007? If you can’t think of anything that I have missed then I think we have to assume that the defences don’t really get beefed up very much at all.

This is carefully thought out as far it goes, but I think you've missed quite a lot.

- How many ports does the RN have to blockade?

- What happens if USN ships run the blockade at various ports and concentrate at a single one for battle, for example with the help of bad weather?

- Won't the shift to steam for combat give the US a significant advantage?

- What about the Monitor? What if the the US builds a perhaps more ocean-worthy but still short range class of ironclads? These could be hard to counter with long range ships - the British have their two terrifying Warrior class super-ships (the biggest fastest and meanest warships yet built - each capable probably of killing entire fleets of older vessels) but these are horribly expensive (and too big to refuel except in a tiny handful of ports.) Expecting the US to supinely allow the RN to blockade its ports with warships that became obsolete the moment the Monitor fought the Merrimack - and the Admiralty accepted this - is completely unrealistic. The large RN numerical advantage in conventional warships will become meaningless, at least for close blockade. Instead the RN may have to fall back on a raiding strategy - so the USN will counter-raid, and each side will convoy and try to deploy Warrior-type bluewater ironclads. And there is no way of making sense of this at all, because it is a huge commitment of resources and the British have no sane reason to make it.*

- What about blockade runners?

- What are the logistics of a blockade? Men at sea have to eat, spars have to be replaced, ships have to go for repair. Can Canada provide support for ships in the Pacific? How far west can an RN blockade extend?

*Perhaps a Draka novel falls back in time and Queen Victoria says "Hey - we could do that!" And so the conquest of the USA is justified as a necessary initial consolidation of the Master Race?
 
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frlmerrin

Banned
Response to amphibious

Amphibulous,

I don’t think your questions relate to the very simple question I was exploring ‘Can the USA beef-up its coastal defences in the event of a war with the English? However I know the answers to some of them or I can work them out for you.

- How many ports does the RN have to blockade?


The English Royal Navy has to blockade somewhat under one third of the length of coast line that the Union was trying to blockade. They need to blockade the mouth of the Chesapeake bay, Delaware bay, Sandy hook and the Lower bay, the sound of Long Island, the channels off Newport, Boston harbour, Marblehead and the Massachusetts bay, maybe Gloucester, Portsmouth-Kittery and Portland. Maybe a couple of ships off Cape Cod.


- What happens if USN ships run the blockade at various ports and concentrate at a single one for battle, for example with the help of bad weather?

The British are almost certain to be the ones initiating war and given the fact that the Declaration of War would be given to the American Minister in London AFTER local forces have already initiated hostilities. Thus remembering that this is before wireless and that the Confederacy would not facilitate telegraph messages between Washington and the Union fleets off their coasts, then with the exception of those vessels cruising off the northern coasts or very close to them most vessels of the Union navy will be caught completely unawares by the British sailing out of Vera Cruz, the Havana or Jamaica and Bermuda. Those that are aware of immanent hostilities are going to have to make a dash for the Hampton roads. Thus most of the assets of the Union navy are never going to make it to a Union port. If we assume that the Union decides to go to war when the British break off relations then the Union navy would fare a little better, the ships in the Gulf are still lost but a lot of those on the east coast of the confederacy would make it back to the Hampton roads.

So assuming the Union navy concentrates at the Hampton roads, that they have at least three of the big frigates and most of the decent sloops then against the weaker northern part of the British navy local squadron they may put up a decent fight, they might even win (extremely unlikely), but it would be a Pyrrhic victory. In two or three weeks the Vera Cruz squadron arrives along with immediate reinforcements, five or six weeks at most later the home fleets arrive and the British have enough ships on station to reduce all the Union coastal defences and blockade the Union. When the gunboats arrive the raiding begins.


- Won't the shift to steam for combat give the US a significant advantage?

The Union fleet in Jan/Feb 1862 had around 200-220 effective ships with couple of dozen more being built, converted or provisioned. Of these most are ex-merchant navy sailing ships, barks and schooners with a few small guns for patrol work. One of these was a decent warship. There are also a number ex-merchant navy of paddle and screw vessels most of these are rather small and only carry a few small guns, they are for chasing the early blockade runners. Around ten to fifteen of them are decent commerce raiders. The rest are the old navy ships, half of which are sailing ships and some new build steam warships, including the Unadilla gunboats which are really sloops.
Thus being really charitable the Union has a steam navy of somewhere between 50 and 70 warships.
The English local squadron is all steam and has several battleships (the Union navy none), the only Royal Navy sailing ships in theatre are a receiving ship and a tender at Jamaica.
All the warships ships coming out from the home islands will be steam ships. The only exceptions will be store ships and mortar boats should they be deployed.
Thus steam gives complete and utter advantage to the English Navy


- What about the Monitor? What if the the US builds a perhaps more ocean-worthy but still short range class of ironclads? These could be hard to counter with long range ships - the British have their two terrifying Warrior class super-ships (the biggest fastest and meanest warships yet built - each capable probably of killing entire fleets of older vessels) but these are horribly expensive (and too big to refuel except in a tiny handful of ports.)

The Monitor was not completed or even launched if I recall in Feb 1862. It can’t fight in anything but near flat calm, cannot travel in anything other than the most modest sea state, it is slow, fires slowly and its armour is poor. It can be taken by three gunboats with one large gun each. It can be run over by a frigate or a battleship. If it fails utterly against the British why build anymore, especially when casemate ironclads are simpler technology and much cheaper.

Such is the advantage of the UK iron and ship building industries in capacity and technology that they can build three ocean going ironclads for every monitor the Union can produce. This would not however be necessary as a few floating batteries would be sufficient to match a similar number of Union coastal ironclads.

Warrior can refuel at sea and did so (but not underway)


- What about blockade runners?

What about them? Where are they going to go? Ditto commerce raiders, where would they resupply.


- What are the logistics of a blockade? Men at sea have to eat, spars have to be replaced, ships have to go for repair. Can Canada provide support for ships in the Pacific? How far west can an RN blockade extend?

Halifax is a huge naval base, Bermuda is a huge naval base, Jamaica has a naval base, and Nassau, Trinidad and most other possession in the West Indies have ports. Nantucket Island and Martha’s Vineyard can be taken as a base almost unopposed. The Confederate bases at Norfolk, Charleston (for smaller ships), and New Orleans (for smaller ships) and so on could all be made available. The British also have a temporary base at the far end of the Gulf at Vera Cruz.

In the Pacific the British have bases at Esquimalt, Callao and Valparaiso. The Union fleet in the Pacific is tiny and very weak compared to the British one and the British can call up support from China, India and Australia/NZ. The British really don’t need to blockade California all they have to do is blockade San Francisco. California is pretty much San Francisco and Sacramento at this time. In any case it is probably easier to occupy San Francisco rather than blockade it.
 

amphibulous

Banned
Amphibulous,

I don’t think your questions relate to the very simple question I was exploring ‘Can the USA beef-up its coastal defences in the event of a war with the English? However I know the answers to some of them or I can work them out for you.

Ok.


The English Royal Navy has to blockade somewhat under one third of the length of coast line that the Union was trying to blockade. They need to blockade the mouth of the Chesapeake bay, Delaware bay, Sandy hook and the Lower bay, the sound of Long Island, the channels off Newport, Boston harbour, Marblehead and the Massachusetts bay, maybe Gloucester, Portsmouth-Kittery and Portland. Maybe a couple of ships off Cape Cod.
Ok. Just don't expect this to put the Union out of the war - they'll make they're own nitrates, just as the CSA did. In fact the main effect of the British blockade will probably be to stop the North importing weapons from Britain. Hmm - there might be a simpler way of doing this...


[re. concentrating a US fleet against RN ships at a port]
The British are almost certain to be the ones initiating war and given the fact that the Declaration of War would be given to the American Minister in London AFTER local forces have already initiated hostilities. Thus remembering that this is before wireless and that the Confederacy would not facilitate telegraph messages between Washington and the Union fleets off their coasts, then with the exception of those vessels cruising off the northern coasts or very close to them most vessels of the Union navy will be caught completely unawares by the British sailing out of Vera Cruz, the Havana or Jamaica and Bermuda. Those that are aware of immanent hostilities are going to have to make a dash for the Hampton roads. Thus most of the assets of the Union navy are never going to make it to a Union port. If we assume that the Union decides to go to war when the British break off relations then the Union navy would fare a little better, the ships in the Gulf are still lost but a lot of those on the east coast of the confederacy would make it back to the Hampton roads.
This doesn't have anything to do with how blockades actually work. They have to be maintained for years and an enterprising opponent will take advantage of any chance - eg storms that disperse a blockade fleet, fog - to get units out, concentrate them, and counter-attack.



Thus steam gives complete and utter advantage to the English Navy
In terms of numbers yes. In terms of logistics, no.


The Monitor was not completed or even launched if I recall in Feb 1862. It can’t fight in anything but near flat calm, cannot travel in anything other than the most modest sea state, it is slow, fires slowly and its armour is poor. It can be taken by three gunboats with one large gun each. It can be run over by a frigate or a battleship. If it fails utterly against the British why build anymore, especially when casemate ironclads are simpler technology and much cheaper.


Excuse me: I didn't say that the USN should deploy the Monitor at sea. My points were

- The Monitor - and still more Hms Warrior, which was ocean-going - made most of the RN fleet obsolete. No other ship in the RN could have stood even momentarily against the Warrior and her sister - she was three times the size, faster, armoured beyond their ability to realistically harm, and had firepower in proportion.

- If the USN gets in a iron clad building race then the RN's lead will consist of just those two ships! The rest are irrelevant.

- The USN will have the home advantage in steam operations - which is considerable. She will be able to repair damaged vessels quickly, concentrate her forces, and build ships optimized for short range combat.

(In fact, the US did build one such ship - the New Ironsides. She was only half as fast as the Warrior and a third the size - but the speed with which she was built suggests the US would easily have been able to build more. She had 4 times the tonnage of a Monitor, and the US built 50 of those for no very good reason.)

Such is the advantage of the UK iron and ship building industries in capacity and technology that they can build three ocean going ironclads for every monitor the Union can produce. This would not however be necessary as a few floating batteries would be sufficient to match a similar number of Union coastal ironclads.
Ok: if this is true, then USN has a much huge problem! Not that I doubt you, but do you have sources for that claim? I'd have expected something like a 4 to 1 disparity, but the above implies something vastly greater - taken to refer to the tonnages of the Warrior and Monitor you're claiming a thirty times greater output!

Warrior can refuel at sea and did so (but not underway)
That's interesting and extremely relevant - thank you.
 
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frlmerrin

Banned
Response II

Amphibulous,

In reply to some of your comments.

In reply to my answering your question about what the British might have to blockade you wrote the following.

Ok. Just don't expect this to put the Union out of the war - they'll make they're own nitrates, just as the CSA did. In fact the main effect of the British blockade will probably be to stop the North importing weapons from Britain. Hmm - there might be a simpler way of doing this...

A British blockade of the Union east coast is relatively easy for their navy to accomplish. It would shut down almost all Union import and export trade, it would stop them fishing the Grand Banks and it would capture any American whaler seeking to return home. Blockading the Union coast is far more efficient than blockading the Confederate coast for the following reasons:

1) The Confederate coast was over three times the length of the Union east coast, not only that but the Geography is such that ships only need to be placed at a few key locations, most noticeably the mouths of the Chesapeake and Delaware bays to close of several ports access to the ocean
2) There are no convenient third party nations close to the east coast of the Union from which blockade running is possible in a Franco-Anglo-Union war. There were several third party nations very close to the Confederacy during the ACW from which blockade running was possible, primarily Cuba, a Spanish possession, northern Mexico and Nassau and Bermuda which were British possessions.
3) The British have more than sufficient warships to make the blockade effective.
4) The British can inspect neutral ships outbound into the Atlantic in European
waters.

No the Union will no longer be able to import British weapons but of course the British don’t need a blockade to achieve this. The blockade will however stop Austrian and Belgian and other European arms getting to them.

The blockade is completely irrelevant to the supply of saltpetre (Potassium Nitrate) which is a vital component of gunpowder to the Union. Due to a quirk of geography; lots of cows, no rain and a warm and dry atmosphere for most of the year India produced a supra-abundance of saltpetre in a unique way, basically they could scrape it off the ground in any farm yard. No other country had the geography to come close to the production levels of India. India was controlled by Britain and thus in the event of war all Britain has to do is to stop selling saltpetre to the Union. No blockade is necessary.

They did extract saltpetre from guano which has a high Potassium Nitrate content. Most guano is compacted dried seabird shit which at the time of the American Civil war was extracted from a few islands off the Pacific coast of South America. The guano trade was completely controlled by British companies. Now it is true that the British did not own the guano islands so that in theory the Union could cut a deal with either the Peruvian or Chilean governments and ship the guano back to the USA. Unfortunately for the Union they used to load the ships by hand and it would take between four and six weeks to load a ship. So it would be relatively easy for a ship of the British fleet in the Pacific to patrol the guano islands on the lookout for Union ships. Then the guano has to be somehow smuggled passed the British fleet off the South American coast and the fleet blockading the Union. In conclusion it is not going to happen.

There was an alternative source of guano, bat shit from cave floors. There were a number of caves in the USA or just over the border of the Confederacy that contained bat guano. Unfortunately for the Union the overall quantities involved were rather small compared with their overall need. The locations were remote, the material had to be intensified and purified on site and was spread around many different locations. In the event that the British blockade the Union would unquestionably make use of this source but it would not produce a great deal, would need a huge amount of labour (which won’t be available for the Army of course) and it will not produce it that fast.

In OTL the Union did experiment with producing saltpetre from Chile Nitre which is mostly Sodium Nitrate by reacting it with Potash (wood fire ash) which contains several Potassium salts but primarily Potassium Hydroxide. The amounts made were tiny compared to Union needs, pilot runs for the process. In any case the Chile Nitre comes from the deserts of Chile and once again would have to be smuggled passed three British fleets, it is once again not a viable option. Chile Nitre is also found in Death Valley but there was not even a powder works in California until very late in the OTL ACW. Transporting a bulk cargo of saltpetre east across the Great American desert at that time is not a viable option.

This leaves Nitre beds. Nitre beds are basically huge mounds of human and animal waste products as they rot down crystals of Potassium Nitrate form at the bottom. The CSA built huge nitre beds which were ultimately quite productive but it took several years before they were running at full capacity. It takes between six and nine months for a bed to start producing. So given a month or two to build the things and another month loading it with organic matter you are looking between a minimum of nine months and a year before the Union could start producing saltpetre by this method and after that it has to go to a powder works to be mixed with charcoal and sulphur and made in to gun powder. Unfortunately for the Union so vast is the disparity of force between it and the British Empire and so vast the financial problems that would beset her government that it is hard to imagine a war lasting until the saltpetre began to be available for gun powder production.

This doesn't have anything to do with how blockades actually work. They have to be maintained for years and an enterprising opponent will take advantage of any chance - eg storms that disperse a blockade fleet, fog - to get units out, concentrate them, and counter-attack.

The above was your response to me explaining how one way or another most of the Union Navy would not survive the first weeks of a conflict between Britain and the Union and most of the rest would be blockaded in port. So I am confused what exactly would you propose the Union counter attacks the British fleets with? As I explained before the Union fleet might achieve a victory against a part of the British local squadron at the beginning of the war if they threw everything they had into the fight but if they did so they would take terrible losses themselves. Ten or twelve steam sloops and large gunboats might take a two-deck battle ship by mobbing and boarding if nothing else but you would expect at least half of them lost in the effort. So my questions to you are, what forces do you think the Union would have to send out to counter attack, what would be the point against the sort of solid blockade fleet of British warships that can be in place around six weeks into the war? As for commerce raiding, what is the point? They first have to get passed the blockade fleet, then they have to avoid the hunting ships in the Atlantic, worse the British may start convoying merchantmen, they can’t approach the European coast as that is thick with British warships, they are unlikely to be able to break out of the Atlantic as the British have a fleet off the coast of South America and off the west coast of Africa that would seek to prevent them, there is almost nowhere to coal, repair and refuel most ports are either French, British or South American clients of the British and lastly there is nowhere to take prizes either.

I claimed that contrary to your initial assertion being steam powered the English navy would have an advantage over the Union navy. You claimed:

In terms of numbers yes. In terms of logistics, no.

What I think you are getting at, you have not explained yourself, is that the British ships will need coal. This is true. However, it is important to remember that the steam warships of this era are auxiliary sailing ships, they can stay on station for months, and they only really use steam to fight, get somewhere fast and move in and out of port. Furthermore there were coal mines in New Brunswick and they supplied coal to Halifax naval base, in addition to this Halifax was buying coal from Union merchants in New York and stocking up all through the Trent Affair (gotta love a capitalist). The British also sent a large quantity of coal out to Bermuda around the time of the Trent Affair and they supplied the base with either one or three (can’t remember) month’s supply of coal for the local fleet on a war footing. Coal can also be obtained from neutral ports in South American and from Mexico and the Confederacy. In short it is not a problem.

Excuse me: I didn't say that the USN should deploy the Monitor at sea. My points were

- The Monitor - and still more Hms Warrior, which was ocean-going - made most of the RN fleet obsolete. No other ship in the RN could have stood even momentarily against the Warrior and her sister - she was three times the size, faster, armoured beyond their ability to realistically harm, and had firepower in proportion.

- If the USN gets in a iron clad building race then the RN's lead will consist of just those two ships! The rest are irrelevant.

- The USN will have the home advantage in steam operations - which is considerable. She will be able to repair damaged vessels quickly, concentrate her forces, and build ships optimized for short range combat.

(In fact, the US did build one such ship - the New Ironsides. She was only half as fast as the Warrior and a third the size - but the speed with which she was built suggests the US would easily have been able to build more. She had 4 times the tonnage of a Monitor, and the US built 50 of those for no very good reason.)

Depends what you mean by obsolete. If you mean the English won’t be building many more un-armoured steam warships then Monitor and Warrior did indeed make the RN fleet obsolete. If on the other hand you meant that the ships of the local fleet were no match for Monitor then they are by no means obsolete. Most of the vessels of the local fleet could take Monitor in a one to one battle in the open sea or even an open harbour. The gunvessels and gunboats would need to team up to take it however.

Your proposed suggestion that the Union would have a ‘home advantage’ in steam operations is a chimera. Halifax and Bermuda are very close to the Union coast. The Confederate bases at Charleston and Norfolk (once Fort Monroe has been taken) could also be used. Nantucket would be an ideal base and being on an island is easy to take and hold. Union forces can only really concentrate before the British arrive in force, once they do they have no ability to concentrate other than by stealth. Neither would I count on the Union being able to repair or make ships of any sort optimised or otherwise for very long. One of the first targets for naval bombardment after reducing the key coastal forts would be ship yards and naval bases. It will be very difficult to build a ship anywhere the British can’t get at it.

In Dec. 1861 the British have the following lead in ironclad ships
Defence
ship armoured (2nd class)
In general commission
Warrior
ship armoured (1st class)
In general commission
Terror
floating battery
guardship
Aetna
floating battery
tender to Cumberland
Thunderbolt
floating battery
tender to Cumberland
Black Prince
ship armoured (1st class)
1st steam reserve
Caledonia
ship armoured (2nd class)
1st steam reserve
Resistance
ship armoured (2nd class)
1st steam reserve
Royal Sovreign
ship armoured cupola
1st steam reserve
Erebus
floating battery
2nd steam reserve
Glatton
floating battery
2nd steam reserve
Thunder
floating battery
2nd steam reserve
Trusty
floating battery cupola
2nd steam reserve
Achillies
ship armoured (1st class)
building
Agincourt
ship armoured (1st class)
building
Enterprise
sloop armoured
building
Favorite
corvette armoured
building
Hector
ship armoured (2nd class)
building
Minotaur
ship armoured (1st class)
building
Northumberland
ship armoured (1st class)
building
Ocean
ship armoured (2nd class)
building
Royal Alfred
ship armoured (2nd class)
building
Royal Oak
ship armoured (2nd class)
building
Valiant
ship armoured (2nd class)
building
Zelous
ship armoured (2nd class)
building


This excludes several ships being built by private yards for foreign countries which could be taken into British Navy service instead. In any case the British can out produce the Union in ironclads from a standing start.

New Ironsides is probably just a tad better than one of the Crimean war floating batteries. I understand the British put aside monies to build several new floating batteries in the event of war with the Union. They do take about six months to build so the war could be over before they are finished. The French had lots of floating batteries at this time OTL and were building more. New Ironsides would not be available until the middle of a Franco-Anglo-Union war in OTL she was commissioned in August, the Union could probably shave a couple of months off that date in this scenario. However, the Union is unlikely to be building many of these ships as the armour is 4.5” wrought iron plate which was hard to make in the USA and took a long time. It is also worth noting that in the event of Britain ceasing to trade with the USA there will be a large iron shortage in the USA that domestic production cannot hope to make up.

As regard the relative ship building capacities of the Union and Britain I would looking the first instance at the Statistical abstract of the USA for 1878 (not that helpful) and a British statistical abstract for around 1864/5. There is also one reference on JSTOR that I suspect you will not be able to access?
 

amphibulous

Banned
Amphibulous,

A British blockade of the Union east coast is relatively easy for their navy to accomplish.


A claim is not an argument.

It would shut down almost all Union import and export trade,

Which with industry diverted to war production may well just mean the Union can't swap grain for guns with the UK.

it would stop them fishing the Grand Banks and it would capture any American whaler seeking to return home.

The horror! Oops - wrong nautical novel.

[Interesting stuff but un-sourced stuff about nitrates deleted for length - I'd appreciate a reference...]

If you're claiming the cutting off nitrates from India would have inevitably brought the US to defeat - rather than badly hindering it - you're making an extraordinary claim without evidence. And one very hard to reconcile with US behaviour which, if your claim is true, should have been utterly supine towards the UK. If the UK's position was that strong, then why did the UK consider Canada badly at risk in a US-UK war? Your claims seem very hard to reconcile with known historical fact. While Indian nitrates were important, it seems likely that they could be substituted for to some degree. (If not, the UK could have conquered the world fairly easily by turning off the gunpowder tap!)

The above was your response to me explaining how one way or another most of the Union Navy would not survive the first weeks of a conflict between Britain and the Union and most of the rest would be blockaded in port.


As I said, existing ship numbers don't matter. If the two are going to fight, ironclads like Warrior and New Ironsides will be the weapons.

What I think you are getting at, you have not explained yourself, is that the British ships will need coal. This is true. However, it is important to remember that the steam warships of this era are auxiliary sailing ships,


I'm sorry: I thought this was too obvious to need explaining. (Not sarcasm btw!) The US can come out, force the RB to burn coal to chase them, then head for home. Repeat. Unless the RN has a strong speed advantage (which it may.)

Furthermore there were coal mines in New Brunswick and they supplied coal to Halifax naval base, in addition to this Halifax was buying coal from Union merchants in New York and stocking up all through the Trent Affair (gotta love a capitalist). The British also sent a large quantity of coal out to Bermuda around the time of the Trent Affair and they supplied the base with either one or three (can’t remember) month’s supply of coal for the local fleet on a war footing. Coal can also be obtained from neutral ports in South American and from Mexico and the Confederacy. In short it is not a problem.

It is a problem because ships take a finite time to shuffle between the blockade and the coaling station. And the US, with its coal at hand, has the initiative.

[quote[
Depends what you mean by obsolete. If you mean the English won’t be building many more un-armoured steam warships then Monitor and Warrior did indeed make the RN fleet obsolete. If on the other hand you meant that the ships of the local fleet were no match for Monitor then they are by no means obsolete. Most of the vessels of the local fleet could take Monitor in a one to one battle in the open sea or even an open harbour.
[/quote]

I've made it clear that is NOT what I mean. Go google the New Ironsides.

Your proposed suggestion that the Union would have a ‘home advantage’ in steam operations is a chimera. Halifax and Bermuda are very close to the Union coast.


Close to the coast doesn't matter. Are they close to ALL the potential blockade points?

Neither would I count on the Union being able to repair or make ships of any sort optimised or otherwise for very long. One of the first targets for naval bombardment after reducing the key coastal forts would be ship yards and naval bases. It will be very difficult to build a ship anywhere the British can’t get at it.

Maybe. I'd have to look at the record for the effectiveness of bombardment of the time. Plus the RN fleet will have a deep draft, while the New Ironsides is a compromise between blue and brown water needs, so the design - which I did refer to you and you might want to look at - can be built in places the RN will find hard to reach. Plus there such things as mines and fortifications, and the US can build new slipways - it's the ironworks that count.

In Dec. 1861 the British have the following lead in ironclad ships

..Which the Admiralty of the time goes on record as considering as utter bilge: after the Monitor-Merrimack fight one of the sea lords states very clearly that they now consider the entire fleet, other than Warrior and Black Prince, as no longer belonging in the line of battle. And let's not even talk about your including floating batteries!

As regard the relative ship building capacities of the Union and Britain I would looking the first instance at the Statistical abstract of the USA for 1878 (not that helpful) and a British statistical abstract for around 1864/5. There is also one reference on JSTOR that I suspect you will not be able to access?

I can't get at JSTOR. no. Are you claiming that these sources quote that weird (when converted to numbers) 30 to 1 claim??? Once again, if the Union had merely diverted resources from Monitors into sister ships for New Ironsides then they could reasonably have had 10 of them - and a British blockade would have inspired a much greater response. And the first of the class was built in only nine months.
 
Union troops are likely to come pouring down the Mississippi and split the country in half. Eventually the US will control the CSA and be *mad* at the UK. Look for some CSA folks to prefer Washington to London as well. Mammoth Cave in KY will become important as will many others in Appalachia, and the gunpowder works in Augusta could be captured by Union forces to devastating effect. Given that the US essentially layed down in the naval role for almost 20 years after the Civil War look for naval technology to accelerate, and I would not be surprised if they look to the Hunley as a way to beat larger bad-*** British warships. There will be a US invasion of Canada and, if France gets involved or sneezes the wrong way, Mexico too. UK can land troops but without local support all they get is a nasty guerilla war. And US influence can wreck havoc on their far-flung Empire in South Africa, India, Ireland, Hong Kong, and anywhere else where the locals are none too fond of Victoria et al.

All in all I think the UK getting involved only pisses off the Lincoln administration and almost guarantees him a second term as "the man who efends our honor and liberty from the dastardly John Bull"
 

frlmerrin

Banned
Response III

Amphibulous,

A British blockade of the Union east coast is relatively easy for their navy to accomplish.
A claim is not an argument.

I would have thought that given the number of ships and bases available to the English this would be self evident, but fair go, you tell me as clearly as possible what you think has to be demonstrated in order to make a convincing argument.

It {a blockade} would shut down almost all Union import and export trade,
Which with industry diverted to war production may well just mean the Union can't swap grain for guns with the UK.

In OTL Union industry was converting or already had converted to war production by early 1862. We know that they were experiencing a short fall of iron production they could not make up in OTL when they imported a large amount from Britain (see RuG Research Memorandum GD-55 and any discussion of how the USA’s railway set-ups were funded). Union rolling mills could produce 1” plate routinely at the beginning of the war and 2.5” at the end. The British could produce 12” plate from 1863 (see Wikipedia John Brown). Without thicker plate the Union could not make very good steam engines, they were not as efficient as British ones which ran at much higher pressures as they could use thicker plate in their pistons cylinders to contain the pressure. The Union have a cloth shortage specifically woollen cloth (see Shoddy and Mungo) and they have neither the sheep nor the production capacity to make up the short fall in the event of an end to British imports. Opium was a British controlled trade too so it would reasonable to assume that there would be no analgesia of any sort for Union soldiers’ once domestic stocks ran out. There would also be a huge shortfall in arms production in 1862 but as that has been discussed several times on this site I won’t mention it further.

The British don’t need Union grain there are two reasons for this. First Russian production and sales have recovered from the Crimean war and the Baltic trade is back up and running again. So the British traders can simply buy there instead. There may be a price rise but there won’t be any shortage. Second, in 1861, in response to having no domestic market for grain in the south the Union merchants dumped vast quantities of grain on the international market which the British traders brought (see British Statistical abstract for any year post 1863).


[Interesting stuff but un-sourced stuff about nitrates deleted for length - I'd appreciate a reference...]
If you're claiming the cutting off nitrates from India would have inevitably brought the US to defeat - rather than badly hindering it - you're making an extraordinary claim without evidence. And one very hard to reconcile with US behaviour which, if your claim is true, should have been utterly supine towards the UK. If the UK's position was that strong, then why did the UK consider Canada badly at risk in a US-UK war? Your claims seem very hard to reconcile with known historical fact. While Indian nitrates were important, it seems likely that they could be substituted for to some degree. (If not, the UK could have conquered the world fairly easily by turning off the gunpowder tap!)


There is no single source for the information on nitrates, it is a synthesis of every thing I have picked up. You could start with a basic chemistry text book, the history of Du Pont’s which is available on line, the google articles on Chile Nitre, Potash, Guano, Guano Islands an Saltpetre, Chandler, A, DuPont, Dahlgren and the Civl War nitre shortage, Military Affairs 13 No. 3 (Autumn 1949), The Hazardville Gunpowder Industry web page, Instructions for the Manufacture of Saltpetre: LeConte, Joseph, 1823-1901Electronic Edition, the online California in the ACW website, Artillery Through the Ages: A Short Illustrated History of Cannon by Albert Manucy. There are many more but I can’t remember them off-hand.


I do not accept that the claim that a lack of gunpowder would have driven the Union to surrender is an extra-ordinary claim. The phenomena was seen in earlier wars. What I can say is I have not yet seen a comprehensive transient mass balance of gunpowder in store, being used, being manufactured being exported and being imported for the Union in either OTL or this scenario for the period 1861-1863. Only with that information could one make definitive statements. However, I have enough unpublished data to conclude that the Union would unquestionably have to have taken all of the gunpowder in civilian hands in the USA (about 1/3 of total) and given it to the army (the navy as we have discussed is not an effective fighting force against the British). This might, might have given them the powder they needed to fill the gap for nine months before their nitre beds began producing, it certainly would not last them a year. The consequence of this would be, as a minimum, that the production of specie (a significant part of funding the war) would collapse, that coal production would be reduced massively, that quarrying and hence the building of fortifications would fall to a fraction of pre-war levels.

The Province of Canada is at risk in any war with the USA. Chances are the whole of Canada West (modern Ontario) would fall to Union forces as the British simply do not have enough assets in position to defend the place. However Kingston would only fall to siege and the chances of Montreal falling to siege are very small it is probably the most powerful fortress in north America. The Union generals are not stupid however and they know that once the ice has gone from the Saint Lawrence river the British will be able to send a fleet up as far as Lake Ontario. Any ad hoc Union assets on Lake Ontario would be unable to stand against a real fleet and so the only way of supporting the Union troops in Canada would be via the Niagara peninsula which is vulnerable to amphibious assault. They are thus most unlikely to advance beyond Kingston.

In any case the occupation of parts of the Province of Canada is of relevance only to those that live there because once the British have destroyed the USA ‘s navy and coastal fortifications they can start on destroying naval yards, ports warehouses and heavy industry which all on the water front. At the same time the USA would be have to deal with a manpower shortage due to more men in the army and the cessation of immigration, depression, financial collapse, defaulting on debts, possible famine in the cities if the grain price collapses and farmers burn crops they can’t sell. Lincoln isn’t Stalin or even Churchill; he does not have a command economy and the means to wage 20th century total war. The Union government will yield to the British before they destroy their country, they may be patriots but they are not fools.

There is nothing that the Union has on hand to substitute for Indian saltpetre that they can use in a war against the British other than bat shit from caves which is in very small hard to get at quantities and will take some time to ramp up to full production and nitre beds which will take between nine months and a year to even start producing. In the short term the Union is facing a powder crisis and it is the short term that counts.

The above was your response to me explaining how one way or another most of the Union Navy would not survive the first weeks of a conflict between Britain and the Union and most of the rest would be blockaded in port.
As I said, existing ship numbers don't matter. If the two are going to fight, ironclads like Warrior and New Ironsides will be the weapons.

Monitor isn’t even finished when the war starts and is not a match for nearly all of the British wooden steam warships. Once she has been sunk why build another monitor? She is a failed and expensive experiment.

The British will not send ANY ironclad to American water until at least April when the weather begins to warm-up. This is because the iron case contracts and the iron embrittles in the cold and the ship become less well protected. This is no problem for the British as they already have HMS Terror on station and in the very unlikely event that New Ironsides is finished before she is destroyed on the stocks Terror can pin her whilst she is raked by a couple of steam liners. The British do not need Warrior or any ironclad to destroy the Union navy of Feb, 1862

I'm sorry: I thought this was too obvious to need explaining. (Not sarcasm btw!) The US can come out, force the RB to burn coal to chase them, then head for home. Repeat. Unless the RN has a strong speed advantage (which it may.)

Sarcasm remark accepted.

In general most Union ships are sailing vessels and are useless against steamers. Most of the Union steamers were pretty slow and the British vessels with better steam engines faster but this is a generalisation some Union vessels were fast some British slower.

The British would tend to blockade with small ships in shore (but not off the bar like Union practice) and large ships further out. They would also have hunting vessels in the Atlantic. So it is quite difficult for your Union vessels to get out in the first place (but not impossible). Once they are a fair way out the hunters chase them not the blockaders. The British burn coal chasing what of it they have the largest merchant fleet in the world and they can coal at sea. They have bases close by. Union sallies are merely an annoyance and are going to cost the Union many of their few remaining ships.

It {coaling} is a problem because ships take a finite time to shuffle between the blockade and the coaling station. And the US, with its coal at hand, has the initiative.

No it is not a problem the British would just rotate ships, one would come out from a base and one would return to coal. They did this for provisioning in the war of 1812 and the Union did it when they were blockading the Confederate coast. It is a non-issue.


I've made it clear that is NOT what I mean. Go google the New Ironsides
What was your point? It was not clear to me.

Your proposed suggestion that the Union would have a ‘home advantage’ in steam operations is a chimera. Halifax and Bermuda are very close to the Union coast.
Close to the coast doesn't matter. Are they close to ALL the potential blockade points?

Look on a map, yes they are close enough to the Union coast to support a blockade.

Maybe. I'd have to look at the record for the effectiveness of bombardment of the time. Plus the RN fleet will have a deep draft, while the New Ironsides is a compromise between blue and brown water needs, so the design - which I did refer to you and you might want to look at - can be built in places the RN will find hard to reach. Plus there such things as mines and fortifications, and the US can build new slipways - it's the ironworks that count.

The English navy has well over 150 shallow draft steam vessels to deploy if they wish. They will not find it hard to reach any ship yard with a slipway. They may find it hard to reduce the coastal defences first (but probably not)

In Dec. 1861 the British have the following lead in ironclad ships
Which the Admiralty of the time goes on record as considering as utter bilge: after the Monitor-Merrimack fight one of the sea lords states very clearly that they now consider the entire fleet, other than Warrior and Black Prince, as no longer belonging in the line of battle. And let's not even talk about your including floating batteries!

It is my understanding that the remarks made after the Monitor-Merrimack battle were made by a private gentleman in the letters columns of The Times. If you have any evidence to suggest that it was made by the Admiralty I would be most interested to see it.

The floating batteries were better armoured than New Ironsides and had better armour piercing guns, if I recall correctly they were a little slower and they wallowed a bit in a decent seaway. Ironsides was a little bigger. There really was not that much in it between them,

I can't get at JSTOR. no. Are you claiming that these sources quote that weird (when converted to numbers) 30 to 1 claim??? Once again, if the Union had merely diverted resources from Monitors into sister ships for New Ironsides then they could reasonably have had 10 of them - and a British blockade would have inspired a much greater response. And the first of the class was built in only nine months.

How did you get 30 to 1? Did you divide the burthen of Warrior by the displacement of Monitor? Warrior and Black Prince were monsters most British ironclads were a half to the size. If you can’t into JSTOR you are a little bit stuck all you can look at is raw numbers and do some sums.

Appoligies for the formating my copy or Word seems to have had a brain fart.
 

frlmerrin

Banned
Response to M79

M79,
Union troops are likely to come pouring down the Mississippi and split the country in half.

Yep they have to take New Orleans or the Union will be split in half by the Royal Navy and the Confederacy.
On balance of probabilities in a Trent war the Union will be unable to do this, the Royal Navy and Confederates will. Of course even if the Union take New Orleans there is nothing to stop the British Navy taking it from them.
Eventually the US will control the CSA and be *mad* at the UK.
HOW will the USA control the CSA? The USA will be short of weapons, powder and finance half of her troops will be using muskets! Her only advantage will be in manpower but that will fade as the quality of army life fades. The CSA will have access to powder, rifle muskets, rail stock, locomotives and good artillery. So how are the Union going to go about controlling the CSA?
Look for some CSA folks to prefer Washington to London as well.
I am not sure what you mean, perhaps you could explain? There is a good chance in a Britain intervenes scenario where as people are telling me the USA refuses to yield that Washinton ends up in the CSA.
Mammoth Cave in KY will become important as will many others in Appalachia,
Yes as I have discussed in some of my previous posts but it not nearly enough to met Union saltpetre needs.
and the gunpowder works in Augusta could be captured by Union forces to devastating effect.
It is in Georgia isn’t it? How do the Union forces get there in Feb. 1862?
Given that the US essentially layed down in the naval role for almost 20 years after the Civil War look for naval technology to accelerate, and I would not be surprised if they look to the Hunley as a way to beat larger bad-*** British warships.
If the French are in the war then the Union needs to worry about Plonguer a far more serious submarine than Huntly (have not checked names)
There will be a US invasion of Canada and, if France gets involved or sneezes the wrong way, Mexico too.
Where are all these troops coming from the Union simply does not have that many men. The Union and the British both estimated that the Union could field around 80,000 men in BNA and sustain them. How many of those do you want to send across the American Desert all the way to Mexico through hostile territory because that is all you have got?
UK can land troops but without local support all they get is a nasty guerilla war.
No, they burn something important and go back to their ships for tea, did it all the time in European wars
And US influence can wreck havoc on their far-flung Empire in South Africa, India, Ireland, Hong Kong, and anywhere else where the locals are none too fond of Victoria et al.
How? Explain.

All in all I think the UK getting involved only pisses off the Lincoln administration and almost guarantees him a second term as "the man who efends our honor and liberty from the dastardly John Bull"
If you say so, I think he could be lynched before the 1864 election as the man that destroyed the USA.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Union troops are likely to come pouring down the Mississippi and split the country in half. Eventually the US will control the CSA and be *mad* at the UK. Look for some CSA folks to prefer Washington to London as well. Mammoth Cave in KY will become important as will many others in Appalachia, and the gunpowder works in Augusta could be captured by Union forces to devastating effect. Given that the US essentially layed down in the naval role for almost 20 years after the Civil War look for naval technology to accelerate, and I would not be surprised if they look to the Hunley as a way to beat larger bad-*** British warships. There will be a US invasion of Canada and, if France gets involved or sneezes the wrong way, Mexico too. UK can land troops but without local support all they get is a nasty guerilla war. And US influence can wreck havoc on their far-flung Empire in South Africa, India, Ireland, Hong Kong, and anywhere else where the locals are none too fond of Victoria et al.

All in all I think the UK getting involved only pisses off the Lincoln administration and almost guarantees him a second term as "the man who efends our honor and liberty from the dastardly John Bull"

As to Lincoln second term, British intervention changes American politics to an almost unrecognizable form. Lincoln may win, but he could easy lose to either a pro-peace candidate, or a "Competent fighting" pro-war candidate. And the House and Senate and Governorships look a lot different.

The Union could find a way to handle the blockade, just as the South did, but initially it will harm to the war effort substantially. If the British go with the blockade as the majority of their military action, it setups for a potentially quite long war. The CSA simply lacks the manpower to conquer and occupy the North.
 

frlmerrin

Banned
Response to BlondieBC

BlondieBC,

The Union could find a way to handle the blockade, just as the South did, but initially it will harm to the war effort substantially.

The South never managed to 'handle the blockade' this one of the many reasons that it lost the ACW. The best it could do was run some cotton out and and some munitions and luxury goods in and the quantities involved were never close to ante-bellum levels. In the event of a British blockade where would the blockade runners come from? It was hard enough in OTL to run stuff in from Halifax, Bermuda and the Havana. The Union would have to run stuff in from the Baltic (Prussia, Scandinavians and Russia) or White sea (Russia), Spain and Portugal or the Mediterranean (Italy, the Ottomans) or lastly Morroco. Clearly blockade running over such a distance and with such obvious choke points (Iceland-Faroes gap, Skagarak and pillars of Hercules) is unworkable any ships that tried to do it would be picked off like flies. The prospects are somewhat better from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Danish possessions in the West Indies but the distances are large, go up the Confederate coast and right through the British fleets so that is not going to work either.

So if you cannot suggest a way that the Union can 'handle the blockade' and I have already explained that blockade runners won't work it is fairly safe to say the Union cannot 'handle the blockade' and they are in serious, war losing trouble.

It is in your court, what have I missed? How will the Union 'handle the blockade'?
 
The British and French both made errors in the Crimean War, yes. But these errors reflected as much the traditional Russian skill in artillery used to good effect as their own mistakes. The outcome of the war also reflects that the Russian army in that war in practice was better than it was made out to be subsequently, as some of those battles ended as they did because the Russians weren't drooling idiots backstabbing each other and incapable of more than frontal assaults, dependent on personalities to the point that an individual's death wrecked an army, but were instead another professional army well-trained and well-disciplined. "

Actually, the Czar 'stressed unthinking obedience and parade ground evolutions rather than combat training." "His army was not up to date because of incapacity at the top, inflexibility, corruption, and technical backwardness. The soldiers were supplied with outdated weapons and had little training, if any."

"...except for their dazzling parade ground performances, the Russian troops would prove sadly untrained for this war. Russian men typically saw their twenty-five year conscription as a death sentence."

"The men learned discipline, to be sure, but little about war. Their old, short-ranged, smoothbore muskets were highly polished on the outside, but often rusty inside, and many had other defects. Just before the Crimean War began, 1400 of 1991 muskets in one regiment proved to have significant defects, not surprisingly because they were almost never fired in peacetime."

"They learned nothing about skirmishing, taking cover, entrenching, defending themselves against cavalry, or any of the tactics then common in war.

"That the infantry was a dumb mass to be flung at the enemy, to impale it on permanently fixed bayonets, remained an axiom in the Russian Army, and few Russian officers took note that new weapons had condemned this tactic to bloody failure."

"This failure to adapt to modern warfare should come as no surprise because most Russian officers did not waste their time studying war, and the army's leaders abhorred change."

"To supplement their meager incomes (a colonel made only twice as much as a lieutenant) most freely stole the money the government provided to buy food, clothing, and even gunpowder for the troops."

"Most of the Junkers officers were as jealous of their peers and superiors as they were brutal to their subordinates. Obedience might be essential, but cooperation rarely took place."

"Tsar Nicolas I did not take the field with his armies, but he did meddle in their command. Unfortunately, despite his lifelong obsession with militay uniforms, drill, and parades, he cared little about weapons, tactics, or military modernization. Worse yet, he consistently displayed the worst possible judgement in choosing his generals. He gave overall command of his troops in the Crimea to seventy-year old Prince Menshikov. Menshikov was well-educated and witty, but he used his sharp tongue destructively. He spoke six European languages and lived a luxurious lifestyle but knew nothing about generalship. In the Crimean War, he bungled battle after battle while his cold, merciless approach to his subordinates to his subordinates led them to detest him."

"When even the Tsar could no longer stand Menshikov's failures, he replaced him with Prince M D Gorchakov, a French-speaking aristocrat who could barely make himself understood in Russian. Absentminded, if not quite feebleminded, and so nearsighted that he could not recognize faces at his own dinner table, he proved hopeless as a leader."

"Only in the Russian army did significant numbers of officers earn such hatred from their men that they were shot in the back as soon as combat began."

"Even more that Czar Nicholas's infantry, his magnificent-looking cavalry was almost all for show."

"Between 1825 and 1850, 30,000 Russians died in combat, but at least 900,000 died of disease, and on the eve of the war in the Crimea, the peacetime death rate of Russian troops was twice that of other European armies."
 
M79,

Yep they have to take New Orleans or the Union will be split in half by the Royal Navy and the Confederacy.
On balance of probabilities in a Trent war the Union will be unable to do this, the Royal Navy and Confederates will. Of course even if the Union take New Orleans there is nothing to stop the British Navy taking it from them.

The British Navy is formidable but even if they could hold New Orleans, there are two problems. The CSA can not hold its largest banking/financial center without international assistance and the Cajun population is likely to have concerns about British domination, one wrong move and we get a commander loathed by the locals. Also, the Union will have bases upstream, and there is plenty of potential for guerilla activity along the river. I doubt the UK will land enough people to do more than take the environs of New Orleans (why would they need to?) but the constant threat of taking the city is going to lead them to either station masses of troops around the city or have to blockade the port fiercely if they leave it in CSA hands. Unless the UK wants to land enough people to claim most of the state I think it becomes a quagmire, and it also represents a chance for Union folks to gian a serious propaganda victory if they can beat the British there twice in half a century.

HOW will the USA control the CSA? The USA will be short of weapons, powder and finance half of her troops will be using muskets! Her only advantage will be in manpower but that will fade as the quality of army life fades. The CSA will have access to powder, rifle muskets, rail stock, locomotives and good artillery. So how are the Union going to go about controlling the CSA?

CSA rail infrastructure is *very* limited in 1860, and in fact one of the reasons they were so dieihard about protecting Eastern Tennessee is that only three rail links at the time connect the upper south and lower south. Nashville-Louisville, Knoxville-Virginia, and another on the Virginia side. Northern rails link as far west as the Missouri river north of Kansas City and thoroughly connect the northern states east of the Mississippi. Union rifle production will improve as the economy turns for wartime priorities, and I wonder if we do not see an earlier introduction of the Spencer rifle on a larger basis. Civilian manufacturers will be horrified and yes there will be serious concerns about what happens but there is a war on, and this is the same UK that will have battered our door three times in a century. As for locomotives, do you think the UK is simply going to provide the CSA with trains? They do not have that many when the war started and many were wood-burning 4-4-0s...

I am not sure what you mean, perhaps you could explain? There is a good chance in a Britain intervenes scenario where as people are telling me the USA refuses to yield that Washinton ends up in the CSA.

Southerners are as proud of independence as anyone else. If they find themselves under the boot of London with redcoats on the ground and having to fight their battles London *will* extract a pound of flesh in exchange. Also, remember that several areas of the South are home to pro-Union populations (Arkansas, Eastern Tennessee, Northern Georgia, parts of North Carolina/Texas, northern Western Virginia, etc.). A concerted Union effort down from LExington KY to Knoxville TN would liberate a large area and put a pro-Union state in a position to deal serious damage to the interior of the Confederacy. Sherman actually was put in a position to do just this in 1862 and I think it went wrong somewhere around Moore's Mill, KY. Reinforce that position, use the forts in western TN to occupy Confederat strategists, then take Nashville and Knoxville away. There is serious coal and saltpetre in the hills along with a publication from about this time noting how to make it artificially anyway.

Yes as I have discussed in some of my previous posts but it not nearly enough to met Union saltpetre needs.

Are you sure about that? Take Nashville TN and the largest Confederate supplier of the early war falls into Union hands. Just as it did in 1862 OTL.

It is in Georgia isn’t it? How do the Union forces get there in Feb. 1862?

Not that tough, northern GA, eastern TN, and northern AL are home to some serious pro-union populations. There is also a pocket in south-central GA not far from Augusta. See above for moving people into those areas. It also puts them within striking distance of Jackson, Montgomery, Atlanta, Memphis (assuming they have not already been taken by a Union offensive down the river). Augusta will be hotly defended but will not be invulnerable to defeat.

If the French are in the war then the Union needs to worry about Plonguer a far more serious submarine than Huntly (have not checked names)

If the French are in a position to deploy the Plonger in wartime under this scenario, we've already made it to at least early 1863 and that is before sea trials. I doubt the French are also going to rush an experimental weapon into open combat, especially in the presence of the world's strongest navy and likely the major target it was designed for anyway. Either way it means the war has not ended quickly for anybody...

Where are all these troops coming from the Union simply does not have that many men. The Union and the British both estimated that the Union could field around 80,000 men in BNA and sustain them. How many of those do you want to send across the American Desert all the way to Mexico through hostile territory because that is all you have got?

Mexico can be dealt with later and via supplying insurgents, just as the UK can be irritated and distracted in much the same way. I've read letters from Palmerston et al who worried that the quality of UK troops in Canada was at best abysmal. Not to say that they would lack for courage, but that they were disorganized, fortifications were in dangerous states of disrepair, and there were problems with even basic logistics. The UK would probably be able to field about 10,000 troops initially, and though Halifax and Montreal might hold out, the rest of the area is like going to come under US control at least temporarily.

No, they burn something important and go back to their ships for tea, did it all the time in European wars

The UK recognized that the US would be a unique enemy for them to deal with because we could supply a lot of our own needs internally. This means their naval blockade will be able to do damage but not bring us to our knees the way it can with almost any other country. Yes, the British can burn down buildings or raid cities or even mints, but inevitably they will have to put *large* numbers of people on the ground in order to hold territory and ultimately win the war. Ireland, India, and other Imperial subject will be watching, and if London is amassing manpower in one place look for trouble to start elsewhere.

How? Explain.

It would not be difficult to send plans for designs or technical assistance elsewhere during the war via spies and saboteurs. Bahadur Shah II is still alive in Burma, the crowned Mughal Emporer and a figure for leadership in the Indian Mutiny which id *very* fresh in the minds of India. Ireland is not terribly far away and terror-driven attacks will be problematic, especially after the very poor treatment recieved by the Irish over the last two decades with plenty of Irish living in Northern cities at the time. The (Boer) South African Republic is tired of British interference and would like its lands around the Cape Colony back, or if nothing else to be left alone. They are also sitting on one of the world's richest diamond deposits though that will not be known for another few years. Again, when the cat is away...

If you say so, I think he could be lynched before the 1864 election as the man that destroyed the USA.

We will have to agree to disagree on this. In a wartime scenario with the British coming into play I think you overestimate the British chances for knocking out the Americans and underestimate the USA chances in an awkward civil war with the UK having to defend a slave-holding nation and giving the #2 power in the world a chance to rally both public opinion and popular sentiment to bear against a foreign power.

Let's say the war drags on until 1863 when the Plougher might be deployed. For the US to hold out against the UK until then will make the British look potentially vulnerable, and the longer the war drags on the greater the chance for opportunistic powers to get involved (Prussia, Russia, Italy, Japan, maybe even China) and for rebellion to cripple the Empire elsewhere. Assuming the war does not end earlier with the UK selling the occupied areas of Canada to the US, I figure ultimately the war ends 1864-1865 with the US reclaiming the CSA and taking over Canada minus Newfoundland, PEI, Quebec, and Nova Scotia. Mexico gets trounced as soon as their locals are able to cleanse the country and the US is left with a nasty memory of burning cities, torched factories, and dying civilians as a result of British incursions. It might even be seen this way in the South, how would the British react to a Union-held seaport in CSA territory? Could a Union soldier burn down a town there and blame it on British shelling or soldiers? Either way it sets up for further wars later and the US will become a naval power in 1880 to rival anyone on the globe. Look for an earlier naval arms race and improved battleship design much, much earlier.
 
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