Until Every Drop of Blood Is Paid: A More Radical American Civil War

I would disagree. American generals have experience with drawn out conflicts versus the short, decisive wars of Europe (Crimea aside). Depending on what nations are looking for, having experience in multi-season campaigns that would be impossible for most European nations to provide.

Of course, the challenge is finding someone who takes “These guys can teach us how to fight long wars” over “These guys can teach us how to end a war quickly.”
I think those ex civil war officers (both confederate & union) if they decide to go abroad, will mostly end up in countries that in the process of modernize their army (like Egypt, Tunisia, Ottoman Empire, Qing China, or even Japan) rather than the one who already have established one (like Britain, France, and Prussia).

Also, in a way the one who in the process of modernize their army is more open & flexible to new idea and innovation since they are not yet institutionalize certain thought or doctrine for their army. Even otl, many of these ex-civil war officer serve position in those army. Like for example in Egypt/Ottoman alone:
Stone Pasha https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Pomeroy_Stone ,
Thaddeus P. Mott https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaddeus_P._Mott ,
Henry H. Sibley https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hopkins_Sibley ,
Loring Pasha https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wing_Loring
 
Few officers will have strategic experience, though. Most will not know anything relevant about prolonged campaigns. The average regimental commander won't be even near the level of a Prussian staff officer.
 
Note that women suffrage in post-ww1 France still stagnated even with massive young male population loss. It is not a given that women suffrage would have been more advanced than IOTL.
 
Most the 500k+ civilian casualties come from famines in the last year of the war plus its immediate aftermath. They are limited somewhat by two factors: the Bureaus are bigger and much more willing to intervene than OTL's Freedmen's Bureau. They will be in the South giving out food and other supplies to struggling Southerners. The second factor is that land redistribution has resulted in a shift from commercial cotton, sugar and rice agriculture to small scale home farms, a lot of them being Black owned farms that prefer to focus on their own subsistence. Of course, the fact that many of the South's yeomen have been reduced to subsistence farming is nothing less than a disaster, but it also means that food production will recover quicker than cotton production, alleviating the famine somewhat. Still, a lot of people will die of hunger and disease, and side effects like malnutrition will remain for many years - I wouldn't be surprised if even in 1900 the average Southerner is shorter than the average Northerner.
I knew they grew Cotton and sugar but Rice. I thought that the US started growing that in the 1900s. The amount of water needed to grow that crops is sizeable.
 
I knew they grew Cotton and sugar but Rice. I thought that the US started growing that in the 1900s. The amount of water needed to grow that crops is sizeable.
No, actually rice was one of the first cash crops cultivated in South Carolina in the 18th century. While rice does require a lot of water, the Southeast generally speaking has a lot of water to spare, so it's not a huge problem any more than it is in Southern China.
 
Don't forget that Europe saw a lot of wars. Sure, the officers who served in the ACW would have valuable experiences - but not really anything better than officers who served in the Crimean War, the Second Schleswig War or the Austro-Prussian War, for example.
Maybe, but keep in mind that this is still a very short list of modern wars, and at this point in the TL two of those haven't happened yet.
Not to mention that scale is another factor here; neither the 2nd schelswig war nor the Austro-Prussian operated over large fronts or lasted more than a year. And if nothing else, it could lead european leaders to more seriously consider the possibility of action from a 5th column force.
 
I knew they grew Cotton and sugar but Rice. I thought that the US started growing that in the 1900s. The amount of water needed to grow that crops is sizeable.

Rice had actually been a important crop in parts of the South since the 17th century - especially in the coastal regions of South Carolina and along the Mississippi in Louisiana. It wasn't to the same level of cotton production, of course, but it still proved to be a very important crop.
 
I do wonder if the worse conditions might lead to a greater sense of collaboration between some people and could lead to a growing division in the South as some southerners will blame some of their treasonous neighbors for this mess and this could grow over time...
There's already a lot of alienation among the Southern poor, who identify the Confederate cause with the protection of the rich planter aristocracy. "Rich man's war, poor man's fight", basically.
 
There's already a lot of alienation among the Southern poor, who identify the Confederate cause with the protection of the rich planter aristocracy. "Rich man's war, poor man's fight", basically.
Do you know why that didn't happen IOTL (at least enough to make the Republican biracial coalitions last)?
 
Vallandigham running to Canada after a military tribunal indicted him, and Woodward deciding to tour Europe, citing health reasons but confessing privately that he feared “being tarred and feathered, or worse, by the abolition mob”.
It's well to see the good men really standing by their convictions.
Similar to how the Confederate guerrillas are the predecessors of the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist organizations that sought to overturn the new Southern order during Reconstruction, the war-time Union League was the forerunner of several paramilitaries that operated in both North and South with the aim of stamping out disloyalty and defending the gains of the war.
I think it's kind of funny that Ho Chi Minh got brought up in the last few pages of the thread and the first thought I had was, "Oh, they're finally privatizing (individualization? decentralizing?) the war effort.
That's the only way the gains can sustain themselves once the money runs out and the congressional majorities fizzle out from scandals and public fatigue.
Leading the Maryland radicals was Henry Winter Davis, a representative that bitterly opposed Lincoln because the President had sustained his enemies in the Blair clan, though Davis was somewhat mollified when the Blairs broke with the administration in the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation. When a Constitutional Convention was called early in 1863 after the victory at Anacostia seemed to secure the state once and for all, Radicals swept to power, partly aided by the memory of the recent campaign, partly by loyalty oaths administered by the military. The main concern of the Convention was abolition, and, although some conservative Unionists insisted on compensated emancipation, Davis and his men stood firm, declaring that “their compensation is the cleared lands of all Southern Maryland, where every thing that smiles and blossoms is the work of the negro that they tore from Africa.” Immediate, uncompensated emancipation was enacted.

Aside from abolition, the Convention took several progressive steps, aimed at breaking the power of the old planter aristocracy and install in Maryland a system of free labor. Public education was established for the first time, along with progressive taxation and protections against seizure for debt to benefit poor yeomen. But the big question of the era was what was to be done with the enslaved, now freedmen. Though some delegated disclaimed “any sympathy with negro equality”, Davis and his radicals moved to incorporate at least some form of Black suffrage within the state constitution, which arose “such terrible cries” from the conservatives that it had to be removed lest the whole Unionist party collapse.
The protections from seizure are something I missed on my first read through, but going back that's actually ingenious to include.

You can seize all the property you want, but if the tide shifts and reactionaries are reshaping the tax regime, putting their weight on the scales against freedmen and new property holders, most of those gains could just be seized post-war and sold off in private auctions to all the "honorable gentlemen" that they were taken from in the first place.
As the Convention closed with cheers for the “new and regenerated Maryland”, a disgusted Radical declared that none of its work had “been from high principle, … but party spirit, vengeful feeling against disloyal slaveholders, and regard for material interest.
I love a radical that's never satisfied. They're the best kind.
Only in North Carolina did the poor people’s discontentment blossom into open advocacy for peace. In that state, which had joined the Confederacy only reluctantly when pushed by Virginia’s secession, William Holden had been organizing a powerful, and to Breckinridge dangerous, pro-peace movement, which based its political strength in the Western part of the state, with few slaves and high resentment against slaveholders. Similarly to how Vallandigham colluded with rebel agents in the North, Holden colluded with Unionist guerrillas such as the Heroes of America. As he readied for the next North Carolina governor’s election in the summer of 1864, it was clear that his was shaping up to be a reconstructionist campaign, that openly called for North Carolina to secede from the Confederacy and rejoin the Union. As a committed Confederate observed, in the many reunions Holden organized “the most treasonable language was uttered, and Union flags raised.” A Holden supporter even directly told Governor Vance that "we want this war stopped, we will take peace on any terms that are honorable. We would prefer our independence, if that were possible, but let us prefer reconstruction infinitely to subjugation.”
This was a very interesting thread of events that I'm a bit sorry to see snuffed out. The idea of state re-defecting isn't one I've seen before, and I've definitely never considered it as a possibility, either.

I've never conceived of the South as having a dynamic political process honestly, especially in war time. I always figured that once the war was in full swing, the whole structure of the society shifted onto war-footing, with all the rigidity that implied.
Needless to say, I love to see it, and hate to see it put down.
The battle, which had seemed so terrible and so hard-fought, had actually only involved at most a hundred men on each side. It wasn’t worth mentioning to General Eaton, much less report to General Grant. They had lost 15 men and had 28 wounded; their blood had resulted in 22 corpses in gray.
This was just a nice story, and I hope they get their sheriff, there's enough blood in the soil for that at least that much.
To solve this problem, in middle-1862 the Army started to lease abandoned plantations to loyal men. As part of the policy of conciliation, loyal Southerners and recanting Confederates were allowed to lease it too after swearing a loyalty oath. Most of the leased plantations, however, ended under the control of Northern leasers, who usually arrived not with idealistic convictions or a genuine sympathy for the freedmen, but a desire to build a fortune in cotton trade.
Through 1863, over thirty lessees were murdered along with thousands of freedmen, in many scenes of gory massacre. One lessee, for example, found the heads of his two sons on his doorstep, a note telling him to leave. He preferred to kill himself. Recanting Confederates fared even worse, for they were considered traitors to their section. “We live in terror and dismay, sir. Daily deadly threats come in against my husband’s life since he turned Union”, a woman desperately wrote to her local commander, begging for some protection. “We know these men don’t hesitate to murder women and children in the most horrendous ways. Please sir, we need soldiers to protect us loyal people.”
The contrast between the two states of being that these proto-carpetbaggers found themselves in doesn't quite put a smile on my face, but rather leaves a poor taste in my mouth.

They came down to be the new predators, and found that the old lions still had claws. They got cut down with all the rest, and it serves them as well as anything else I guess.
he lessees also found it difficult to obtain the tools and food they needed and had to face unscrupulous Army officers and the “Army worm”, named like that because, like the Army officers, it always “found ways to appropriate nine tenths of the crop”.
I really don't understand how society is still functioning if the armies (Confederate and Union) are really taking that much produce from the populations there. Maybe I'm just overestimating how much people need and underestimating how fertile the soil is.

Call it ignorance.
Surmised in constant disputes and constant threats, most lessees found it impossible to turn a profit despite the sky-high price of cotton. The increase of guerrilla activity and the worsening of the humanitarian crisis after the fall of Vicksburg created an even more desperate situation. Disillusioned, most returned North by late 1863. This allowed for an alternate system, one that encouraged Black independence and land ownership, to take hold.
Something something... "America always chooses the right thing after trying everything else."
Furthermore, while Lincoln sincerely believed in Black suffrage as the right thing to do, savvy Radicals were quick to recognize that for the President it was mostly another “carrot and stick”, because it would push planters and other Confederates to quickly pledge loyalty to the Union and take command of the Reconstruction process lest Black people do it first. For that reason, Lincoln would allow the new governments ample capacity to regulate the transition to free labor and the new state institutions, which smacked of betrayal to Radicals committed to deep and revolutionary changes in Southern life.

Ooh, I wonder if Lincoln's newfound popularity will still get a challenge in upcoming elections.

The appetite for action in the Radicals is far outstripping the pace set by the administration and if Maryland is any bellwether, it'd be very fitting for Lincoln's main 1864 challenger to come from the left instead of the nearly dissolved National Union.
And if not then, at least the threat of it should keep him on his toes during the major parts of reconstruction.

We've talked about what shape the party system is going to take post-war before, and the idea of a Republican hegemony seemed like the most common guess as to how things would shape up. But now I don't know about that.

The way things seem, during the war might be the most unified the Republican Party will ever be, if only for the sake of virtue rather than moderation.
 
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Rice had actually been a important crop in parts of the South since the 17th century - especially in the coastal regions of South Carolina and along the Mississippi in Louisiana. It wasn't to the same level of cotton production, of course, but it still proved to be a very important crop.

The Louisiana Rice Industry is so powerful, in fact, that a rice lobbyist helped killed the 1988 bill that would've punished Saddam Hussein for gassing the Kurds.
 
What did rice have to do with Iraq?



Because once upon a time, Saddam Hussein was America's ally during the Iran-Iraq war, and Iraq imported a lot of American food.

To show you how duplicitous American foreign policy is, there is a picture of the recently-deceased Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam.

1625239788747.png


So when people wanted to punish Saddam with sanctions, a lot of Americans farmers were upset because of the business they would lose.
 
Because once upon a time, Saddam Hussein was America's ally during the Iran-Iraq war, and Iraq imported a lot of American food.

To show you how duplicitous American foreign policy is, there is a picture of the recently-deceased Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam.

View attachment 663673

So when people wanted to punish Saddam with sanctions, a lot of Americans farmers were upset because of the business they would lose.
I didn't even know Rumsfeld had died until now.
 
I love a radical that's never satisfied. They're the best kind.
You know what you call a radical that's satisfied? A liberal. There's always something more to push for because the conservatives never give up an inch without screaming bloody murder. When you stop pushing the terrorists conservatives win.
 
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