The Potomac Calls: WI Virginia Elected a Unionist Governor in 1859?

Anaxagoras

Banned
Replace the CSA's commissary officer with Johnston and you have a big change.

Replacing the CSA's commissary officer (Lucius Northrop) with the freaking neighborhood cat would help the Confederacy. No single individual contributed more to the Confederacy's defeat, except perhaps Abraham Lincoln or Ulysses Grant.
 
Replacing the CSA's commissary officer (Lucius Northrop) with the freaking neighborhood cat would help the Confederacy. No single individual contributed more to the Confederacy's defeat, except perhaps Abraham Lincoln or Ulysses Grant.

I forgot his name momentarily , but yeah he was awful. Johnston was not, certainly not in administration. You must also put Jeff Davis on the list.
 
To add to that IIRC you are the one who pushes the importance of inflation in regard to the CSA's fall. Want to bet that the inflation rate would be lower with Johnston being commissary officer as there would be much less waste under Johnston? :biggrin:
 
To be fair I'm simply playing with what happens if theirs a Unionist Governor. I am well aware that a Unionist Governor is not a magic bullet, this is just a study of what happens if the variable changes.



With Texas and Virginia you're correct. With Tennessee the second vote was rigged.

I'll go though everyone else's thoughts when I can but as a heads up I am spending tonight showing off how good a cook I am to a very interesting lady so the first chapter and all that is going to take a while.

Though since it's been brought up, Emancipation, Confiscation and the Thirteenth Amendment are beyond the scope of this TL.
As there's been nothing from you for over 24 hours, I trust the cooking was successful?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
To add to that IIRC you are the one who pushes the importance of inflation in regard to the CSA's fall. Want to bet that the inflation rate would be lower with Johnston being commissary officer as there would be much less waste under Johnston? :biggrin:

I suppose it would have helped a bit. But a better fiscal policy on the part of the government and a lack of the self-defeating cotton embargo would have made a much bigger difference.
 
I suppose it would have helped a bit. But a better fiscal policy on the part of the government and a lack of the self-defeating cotton embargo would have made a much bigger difference.


I think it would help more than that. A lot of food was being lost by the CSA commissary which pumped up food prices and caused starvation among the civilians. That lowered production because you don't produce as much is you are weak from hunger. There were a lot of hungry people in the CSA.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I think it would help more than that. A lot of food was being lost by the CSA commissary which pumped up food prices and caused starvation among the civilians. That lowered production because you don't produce as much is you are weak from hunger. There were a lot of hungry people in the CSA.

Good point.
 
EDIT: Please provide your source for the statement that secessionist sentiment was higher in Texas than in Virginia.

A quick google search shows that the Virginia plebiscite to secede was 80% for and 20% against.

That was the result reported by Letcher - with many thousands of ballots from northwest Virginia "lost". Letcher "estimated" the vote from those areas. In any case, votes were cast openly, with secessionist goons in attendance.

However, I think there is a great deal of evidence that secessionism was less popular in Virginia than in Texas.

The most obvious evidence is that the entire northwest part of the state repudiated secession, formed the state of West Virginia, and provided 24 regiments of Union troops.
 
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