The Boll Weevil infestation in an Independent CSA.

No, it wasn't like Vietnam. The USA had the aid of no less than three rivals of the UK able to squeeze it in far more critical areas and providing direct intervention on US behalf, fighting the UK openly. The British conceded independence but maintained forts and supporting their own Native allies against the USA, and in the War of 1812 the USA was in the Pollyanna view stalemated, in a realistic view it got drubbed on land and sea.

The UK recognizes the Confederacy, brings one of the best armies of the time, and strangles the US economy.....the USA's waging a large-scale Civil War and was vulnerable to economic pressure to sustain said war. This is akin to British intervention in the Taiping Rebellion and with the same result for the side it intervenes in favor of. Of course the US Dolchstosslegende will attribute its defeat to the British and refuse to see any flaws with how it fought the Confederacy....

In neither the ARW or the War of 1812 did the British gain anything of major importance. They ALREADY HAD the forts and the allies so they didn't gain anything and so it was a strategic loss. Again what did the British GAIN out of the War of 1812 outside battlefield victories? Nothing of real consequence. Great Powers fight wars for more than bragging rights!
 
In neither the ARW or the War of 1812 did the British gain anything of major importance. They ALREADY HAD the forts and the allies so they didn't gain anything and so it was a strategic loss. Again what did the British GAIN out of the War of 1812 outside battlefield victories? Nothing of real consequence. Great Powers fight wars for more than bragging rights!

The British spent years fighting a war with the USA without having to give it any of their undue attention. The USA was a weasel gnawing at the UK's ankle in that fight, if it had been more serious, Prussia and Russia and Austria would have still beaten Napoleon.
 
That isn't a wank, Fiver. It's not impossible.

So we need vastly more Confederate success on the battlefield, an ability to hold territory they never had due to the abject lack of logistics, and the Union handing back territories at the peace treaty.

It's not an impossible wank, like the standard 67th Tigers fare, but it is extremely unlikely.
 
Perhaps you didn't pay attention to the POD, it is in September 1862. In late 1862 the CSA still held all of East Tennessee and large areas of Middle Tennessee, the only part of Tennessee the Union held was a Confederate stronghold that engaged in guerilla violence constantly, and Arkansas was still largely in CS hands, except for areas of the northern part of the state North of Little Rock, which would inevetably be returned in the peace treaty. This POD also doesn't negate that after Lee's political victory in Maryland the Army of Tennessee embarks on an ATL version of the Heartland Offensive and has Kentucky wrangled from the Union. Arizona is gained in the peace treaty. They don't get New Mexico, or West Virginia (save for a couple counties), Missouri or Maryland. They just get what they were able to get in late 1862 and after the peace treaty. That isn't a wank, Fiver. It's not impossible.

The smallest problem with that scenario is that the Heartland Offensive and Maryland Campaigns happened for entirely different reasons and nothing says Bragg smashing the Army of the Ohio at one of its nadirs gets the CSA Kentucky.
 
So we need vastly more Confederate success on the battlefield, an ability to hold territory they never had due to the abject lack of logistics, and the Union handing back territories at the peace treaty.

It's not an impossible wank, like the standard 67th Tigers fare, but it is extremely unlikely.

The *simplest* thing there is Bragg winning a crushing victory at Perryville or its equivalent against the entirety of Buell's army, which is actually doable. Going from that to a CS occupation and annexation of Kentucky is rather a big leap. Lee winning an annihilating victory against the entire AoTP is impossible, and even at Perryville Bragg won't annihilate the Army of the Ohio so much as rout it.
 
The British spent years fighting a war with the USA without having to give it any of their undue attention. The USA was a weasel gnawing at the UK's ankle in that fight, if it had been more serious, Prussia and Russia and Austria would have still beaten Napoleon.


True enough, but again GB didn't GAIN anything outside a lot of corpses from the War of 1812. Besides in 1814 was a minor power in 1860 it was a regional great power with the #2 industrial economy in the world. As far as the strategic results are concerned they lost a few thousand men to gain bupkis. It didn't cost them much but they got NOTHING out of it.
 
The smallest problem with that scenario is that the Heartland Offensive and Maryland Campaigns happened for entirely different reasons and nothing says Bragg smashing the Army of the Ohio at one of its nadirs gets the CSA Kentucky.

Then what does it get it? It pretty much puts the CS government firmly in the state house in Frankfort. And if they can hold out until the treaty, they can pull the card of "we liberated Kentucky and we hold most of it".

The *simplest* thing there is Bragg winning a crushing victory at Perryville or its equivalent against the entirety of Buell's army, which is actually doable. Going from that to a CS occupation and annexation of Kentucky is rather a big leap. Lee winning an annihilating victory against the entire AoTP is impossible, and even at Perryville Bragg won't annihilate the Army of the Ohio so much as rout it.

Nobody is talking about annihilating the Army of the Potomac, just enough of a victory to score recognition, a bloodynosing, a victory that he scores somewhere in western Maryland.

Like I said, the occupation of Kentucky is completely postwar.
 
Then what does it get it? It pretty much puts the CS government firmly in the state house in Frankfort. And if they can hold out until the treaty, they can pull the card of "we liberated Kentucky and we hold most of it".

Major strategic gains, including a complete military refusal of the AoO to assume the offensive for some time, not an occupation of Kentucky. Bragg has too much ammunition, not enough food. He installed a Confederate government IOTL and it got him nothing. The CSA also cannot pull that card save by virtue of supreme hypocrisy given it ITTL twice invaded Kentucky in two years. Ironically this might actually prove a decisive battle in favor of *Lee* who will benefit from the panic mode that Bragg's victory will put the Union high command into.

Nobody is talking about annihilating the Army of the Potomac, just enough of a victory to score recognition, a bloodynosing, a victory that he scores somewhere in western Maryland.

Like I said, the occupation of Kentucky is completely postwar.

Lee can't do that in the context of 1862. The losses he's already sustained are critical and he can no more sustain troops in the North than Bragg can, and unlike Bragg's rivals the AoTP's problem is not enough fighting on the part of generals who wanted to fight more than their leader, not the complete collapse in the AoO. Ironically Bragg here may actually save *Lee*.
 
A few thoughts:

1) A victorious CSA could claim both sides of the Chesepeake, including the Virginian section of the Delmarva peninsula. In wartime that would give them control of the opening of the waterway to DC, and I suspect the Union would be most interested in negotiating for control of it. The price could easily be the undeveloped, unpopulated Arizona territory - and that's about the only way I see it swinging into Confederate hands.

2) The Union Army in 1863 is expanding but it is *not* the powerhouse that it would be by 1864 or 1865. If the UK intervenes, it is going to do serious damage. The major problem for Britain is that the US has its resources available domestically - the Royal Navy, ferocious as it is, can not strangle the nation by blockade. To be effective, it must land troops and actually invade American soil. There is a chance this could kick off a global conflict - Bismarck will pounce if he sees an opportunity and I could see the Northern German Confederation as a counter to France with other nations of Europe at least championing the opportunity to see London taken down a notch. Also, Ireland, China, and India present *very* tempting targets of opportunity for home-grown revolts in this case.

3) There are at least enough Spencers and Sharps rifles around that maybe this forces the Union to switch to repeating firearms en masse, if they do this then the UK will have a *much* harder time against a field army of the US. Also, it will bring a devastating "peace" to the South and there will be retaliation against Canada. Expect a bloody conflict with perhaps little or no territory changing hands.
 
M79, there is no point that the Union Army would be a serious threat to the UK in the 1860s. It made itself look ferocious against an enemy that preferred to resort to headlong frontal attacks, had no comprehension of logistics, and whose commanders were used more to fighting each other than the Union army. If winning a civil war is all it takes to ensure armies should do well, then the Chinese Army should have run roughshod over the UK and France during the Taiping Rebellion.

Too, defeating Bragg, Hood, Johnston, Lee, and Kirby-Smith is no indication of being able to fight a European power in the kind of wars seen in Europe at the time. The British emphasis on professional firepower discipline will wreak a murderous slaughter on the Union army. And even its best leaders, like Grant and Thomas, will simply be competent and skilled by European standards and nothing more.
 
M79, there is no point that the Union Army would be a serious threat to the UK in the 1860s. It made itself look ferocious against an enemy that preferred to resort to headlong frontal attacks, had no comprehension of logistics, and whose commanders were used more to fighting each other than the Union army. If winning a civil war is all it takes to ensure armies should do well, then the Chinese Army should have run roughshod over the UK and France during the Taiping Rebellion.

Too, defeating Bragg, Hood, Johnston, Lee, and Kirby-Smith is no indication of being able to fight a European power in the kind of wars seen in Europe at the time. The British emphasis on professional firepower discipline will wreak a murderous slaughter on the Union army. And even its best leaders, like Grant and Thomas, will simply be competent and skilled by European standards and nothing more.

Yeah, but the Brits don't have much to gain and much to lose. Even ten percent of the casualties the CSA suffered would be too high for the Brits. What do they have to GAIN out of a fight? Cotton? That is far from enough. There were good reasons they stayed out.
 
The Union army never has to be a threat to the UK itself, it can harass Canada and foment rebellion in India and elsewhere. With a multifront war going on and loss of their cotton fields/major economic depot in India, perhaps China too, the UK is in trouble even if she has the world's strongest navy. Plus I'd put the Union army of 1865 against any military of the world at the time, the experience of the troops themselves and genesis of new tactics might make the difference against any single nation of the era, especially if repeaters become more commonplace.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
The Union army never has to be a threat to the UK itself, it can harass Canada and foment rebellion in India and elsewhere. With a multifront war going on and loss of their cotton fields/major economic depot in India, perhaps China too, the UK is in trouble even if she has the world's strongest navy. Plus I'd put the Union army of 1865 against any military of the world at the time, the experience of the troops themselves and genesis of new tactics might make the difference against any single nation of the era, especially if repeaters become more commonplace.

What new tactics?

The Union Army has been in decline since 1863. The peak of their combat effectiveness was ca. Gettysburg. Combat exhaustion has set in.
 
What new tactics?

The Union Army has been in decline since 1863. The peak of their combat effectiveness was ca. Gettysburg. Combat exhaustion has set in.

The peak of their combat effectiveness, assuming such a thing existed, was the Vicksburg Campaign, not Gettysburg, where they were static and defensive the whole battle and didn't need to be anything else so long as Lee was intent on ramming his army to death on entrenched, well-dug in defenders that outnumbered him.

I agree that defeating the factionalized and incompetent Confederate Army which had no comprehension of logistics or the proper use of artillery will lead the USA into a buzzsaw against the UK, and that even Grant will be simply competent by European standards more than anything special.
 
The Union army never has to be a threat to the UK itself, it can harass Canada and foment rebellion in India and elsewhere. With a multifront war going on and loss of their cotton fields/major economic depot in India, perhaps China too, the UK is in trouble even if she has the world's strongest navy. Plus I'd put the Union army of 1865 against any military of the world at the time, the experience of the troops themselves and genesis of new tactics might make the difference against any single nation of the era, especially if repeaters become more commonplace.

The only things that might really put a dent in the British would be use of telegraph wire and Gatling Guns, and even then that would be due to this being one of the first occasions where a precursor of WWI trench warfare would be used and the British not being any more prepared for it then than they were in the Second Boer War. And that's not tactics so much as making proper use of new weaponry. And even then given how long it took the USA to crush the Confederacy the odds of it actually defeating the British Empire at its height in a war are somewhere around those of Imperial Japan defeating the USA in a USA-Japanese War in the 1940s.

In the 1860s there's literally no way for the USA to defeat the UK. It simply can't be done. I'm a great admirer of General Grant but to be perfectly frank he was a man surrounded by idiots on his side and that of the enemy, and he'd be simply competent and a skilled maneuverer by European standards, not someone able to win wars. And this is just the LAND side, at sea the Royal Navy will do unto the US Navy what the US Navy did unto Imperial Japan in the 1940s, but much shorter in terms of the time required and far more totally.
 
The Union Army has been in decline since 1863. The peak of their combat effectiveness was ca. Gettysburg. Combat exhaustion has set in.

If Grant won with an inferior army, what does that say about McClellan's generalship?:D
 
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