Dear Lord, great for Sherman but things are not looking good for the North.
It is merely the darkness before the dawn. I realize it's frustrating but believe me, it's necessary for the war to last a little longer for my future purposes.
Sherman do it again! (The Marching to the sea. Not so much the callousness towards the Freedmen.)
Soon he will be marching through Georgia
After all, marching through Alabama just doesn't have the same ring.
I wonder if Sherman's behavior will balance out his postwar popularity in areas not named the South.
A more radical Reconstruction would probably result in a more critical view of Sherman. More similar to, say, Patton or McArthur, where some praise his ruthless patriotism but don't forget his racism.
Hopefully Atlanta is taken in time (or some other major union victory occurs like in OTL)
The pieces are all set, but I'll leave you in suspense for a little while longer
Great update! It'll be interesting to see the civilian reaction and situation in these months. With regards to the backlash to Radical Republican measures, I think that it won't be limited to just votes in the retaken slave states. Maryland, Louisiana, Kentucky and Missouri are all hotspots for another uprising or riots against Republican policies. There's also the Southern food situation - a post-war famine is going to happen and one of the breadbaskets of the South (Black Prairie) has been set ablaze or taken over by freedmen. The maps of the campaign are below:
As always, thank you for your maps and my sincere gratitude for your invaluable help! Yes, the situation in Kentucky especially is reaching critical levels, as we'll see soon. And lamentably some areas of the South are near famine level already.
Man, this Yankee generals are a bunch of indecisive cowards. They are just cosplayers with great egos. Only Sherman and some others seems to know their job.
Lincoln surely shares your sentiments. I will be honest and admit that the poor performance of some generals, such as Hancock and Schofield, is based on me disliking them due to their racist and reactionary OTL beliefs. Both were commanders under Johnson who did little to protect the freedmen during Presidential Reconstruction, and I would rather not have such men in high esteem. At the same time, I do base their performances in their OTL records and flaws. Hancock, in this case, was in truth disliked by Grant IOTL - those quotes calling him vain and weak are all real. I believe it's plausible for Hancock's flaws to be magnified by getting overall command. Unfortunately, that has led to disaster.
Honestly I imagine that the republican troops will be trying to aliviate the famine issue, at least a little bit so they don't get their barracks overrun with starved and most likely diseased refugees, Freedman will have a better time since they'll have their own land they'll most likely have some crops that are enough that they can avoid starving,. wouldn't surprise me if guerrillas or just desperate whites started attacking their farms both because of food and because they're outraged at the idea of blacks having their own land, which will lead to either Federal troops or black militias driving them back and will lead to the myth of "abolitionist troops firing at starving women and children!" Among particularly bitter southerners. Although I can also see some callous Northerners saying that the southerners "deserve" to starve because of them continuing the war or simply as God's punishment, either way, it'll be a tragedy that will be a part of the national southern conscience, both white and black, as a sort of Biblical Apocalypse as famine, war, disease and death come from a unstoppable force, but while blacks will see it in the same way the apocalypse ends with them being freed of a evil world by the forces of good and getting their New Jerusalem, the whites will see it as the triumph of the antichrist over the forces of good, there will be a lot of conflict between them for sure
Basically all you describe is on point. The Federals are trying to bring relief to many areas, but their efforts are obstructed by several factors. First, the Southern transportation network is collapsed. Military supplies have priority and need to be moved under heavy guard. Food is often stolen, and if it reaches its target it may be stolen there by guerrillas. Northerners are also ideologically opposed to long-term relief, so they often just straight up abandon the freedmen or the refugees, who struggle to raise enough food. All these factors also contributed to massive displacement, resulting in refugees moving through the country and concentrating in a few areas, which in turn leads to disease spreading.
I don't remember who the Democrats chose for their candidate. Is it Hancock? I don't think it could be mcclellan, Hancock is in the position McClellan was in our timeline, having done really poorly but not... well almost treason-like the way McClellan looks in this timeline. So I suppose they could nominate Hancock.
I actually haven't said yet! We will explore all that in the next update.
God damnit, for once I want a TL where the Union troops go around the damn crater in the Battle of the Crater.
Me too, but the war can't end yet. I do wonder, however, what the effects of a successful Crater would be.
So if McPherson exists in this world, does that mean most OTL historical figures will still be born? It'd be interesting seeing what careers later US history figures have in this version of the US
This is one of those things I just have to ask you to suspend your disbelief for. Every time a historians is mentioned, they are a real-life individual and I'm quoting from real books. The list is in the first post. With this I don't mean to imply anything about the historians or how the TL deals with butterflies. It's just me trying to be honest by not plagiarizing. I find it highly interesting when TL's are written with in-story historians and books - for example, see
@EnglishCanuck's TL which does it in a very charming way. But that's not my style, so the reader can only accept that James McPherson and Eric Foner and others somehow were still born, still became historians, and still wrote books that are largely the same as in OTL. I do think that most OTL people until, like, the 1930's should still be born unless something ought to have affected them directly.
Woodrow Wilson could be so scarred by This more horrific Civil War that if he survives he might well become a real life
Edith Keeler. Using a position in education to become an extreme pacifist who seeks to avoid war at any cost. His writings could be very interesting in this time linecome though he might still be racist he would be much more focused on the butchery of just everyone. And his vision of a league of nations Or even a more central world government being much more focused on preventing war than even in our timeline.
You're right, I haven't considered that Wilson is right now just a child in wartime Georgia. But man, I despise Woodrow Wilson. Maybe he could cameo later as an intelectual.
Aww man, big shame TTL's battle of the crater was bungled same as OTL. A lost opportunity to have a very cool battle. At least Grant is finally in direct command of the army. Time to plow ahead!
Fall of '64 and we're already seeing Paraguay-esque mobilizations of boys. The CSA is going down in flames.
And it seems we're actually getting "forty acres and a mule" rolled out on a large scale! Oh yeah. Glad the Northern authorities could get Sherman in shape. I noticed that a lot of the things done to improve the lot of freed slaves is done out of pragmatism by otherwise-racist Northerners looking for a way to maintain order in the countryside or lessen their logistical burdens. Seems there's a moral here, about how acting on racism rather than proper logic is fundamentally deleterious to everyone.
The coming battle of Atlanta seems it will be decisive.
Things are only going to get worse for the Rebs.
I believe it's more believable if Northerners are still racist but willing to take the right measures out of pragmatism. It would be unrealistic and naive to simply say the racism is all gone and they are all egalitarians now.
Young man, you are exposing yourself unnecessarily, and had better get to cover." - General Polk, CSA, before getting torn apart by a Union shell
Huh, I actually could have totally used this one.
Red!
[I have to admit it I giggled for a couple of minutes]
My God, that is such a godawful pun - I hope that merchant's wares are among the first to burn at the end of the siege.
To be fair, the OTL quote also was a pun, just with Hood's name: Richards said Hood was trying to "Hood-wink" the enemy. Naturally I have to make a pun of my own, and I do think it's quite terrible. Sorry not sorry.
I wonder if a Populist coalition between poor blacks and poor whites would mean fairly generous support for family farms throughout much of the south. Something analogous to France, where things are less urbanized than a similarly industrialized neon (outside of Paris, at least) and the countryside is still strongly idealized.
I believe the city and industry is still likely to be seen as the thing to aspire to, especially by later generations of Black youth who will grow up in freedom and with more economic stability than their OTL counterparts. But some kind of agrarian populism is a given.
Ww1 still goes on like otl?
I didn't mean to imply that WW1 as we know it happens ITTL. I was intentionally vague, mentioning merely some unknown early 20th century wars, because it's almost certain that there will be wars in Europe with technology and conditions similar to our WW1. But it won't be like WW1. What countries will take part, for what reason, in which alliances? I don't know! I haven't planned that far ahead and I prefer to focus on the US before thinking of butterflies in Europe.
Even if WWI doesn't go like OTL in the particulars, if a major war happens at that time, assuming no major tech divergences, trenches warfare Ala WWI is still nearly inevitable.
Yes, exactly.