Snake Featherston
Banned
That is OK I don't think you could reasonably defend your position from the points I have made.
Now why are some of your posts like this readable and others ones I have to highlight the text to read?
That is OK I don't think you could reasonably defend your position from the points I have made.
I'm not even going to attempt to read that post until it is in a reasonable font.
Well, not everyone is 16 years old with 20/20 vision... some of us are decrepit old menAnd I can see the microbial lifeforms evolving in the text. Seriously, how far away from the screen are you sitting? I'm an easy 3 feet away or so and size 10 seems to be fine for me.
And even if that's too small, you could at least have the courtesy of shrinking the text size before posting.
Rogue Shadows said:True enough. But I still don't see Britain intervening. It just wouldn't make sense given the few tangiable gains weighed against the possibility of a long slogging war
Rogue Shadows said:67th Tigers said:Oh they came close four (4) times.67th Tigers said:<omitted>
2. Trent Affair. Enough said.
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Rogue Shadows said:Again, cooler heads prevailing. You'll need a differnt POTUS than Lincoln to actually see this lead to war.
… there seems to be an assumption that because the British did not want a war with the Union they would not go to war over the Trent Affair and that all the preparation for the defence of British North America was simply posturing. This is not the case, the British Cabinet did not want a war with the USA but they felt they had been pushed into a position by the Union where they had no choice but war. In 1861/2 Great Britain is the dominant world power militarily, economically and technologically. That dominance is based on trade and the free passage of goods around the world. The free passage of goods is, to British eyes, guaranteed by the existence and operations of the Royal Navy and by the growing body of international law.
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Prior to the halting of the Trent the British Government asked its law officer to consider the detention of a British ship in international waters with the Confederate Commissioners on board. They concluded that if the ship were taken to a Union Admiralty Court for adjudication it would probably be legal but that simply removing the Commissioners would not. The Earl Russell, foreign secretary, had also received, prior to the affair, what he believed to be, from the Union Minister in London, Adams, an assurance that the Commissioners would not be so taken.
Thus when the Commissioners were taken and the Trent herself was not it was seen by the British Cabinet as either a huge mistake or a deliberate attempt to weaken the standing of Great Britain. The British Cabinet felt that both international law, as Great Britain understood it, and the prestige of the Royal Navy upon which the prosperity of the Empire was based required that the Union yield, either to diplomatic pressure or to military force. They felt that they had been understanding of the Union’s internal difficulties, Victoria had after all declared their neutrality and they had not recognise the Confederacy as a nation. Yet the Union had apparently sought to undermine British authority and prestige. They had been backed into a corner where, if no satisfaction could be obtained by diplomatic means, and in early December that looked unlikely based on the Union news papers then available in Britain via the Halifax packet ships, there had to be a war.
The above interpretation is completely consistent with the behaviour of the British Government and Forces during the Affair. The swift reinforcement of the regular army in BNA along with arms for the BNA militias, the rapid build-up of naval forces in support of the NA&WI station, coal and provisions for three months of war being set to Bermuda, cruziers off San Francisco and (perhaps) the Vera Cruz build-up are all the actions of a nation preparing for war not posturing. The British Minister in Washington, the Lord Lyons was given particularly precise instructions with very little flexibility for formal negotiations, either the British got what they wanted or he packed up the mission and asked for his passports back, this was very unusual in that period where a Minister was expected to operate with little support from home. The theatre commanders were all given conditional war orders.
For the most part, Seward and one or two others excepted, the Union Cabinet had no idea how close the British were to going to war until the Cabinet meeting of Christmas Day 1861. Many of them seem to have been locked into a mindset based on border disputes with BNA which had nearly always gone in the USA’s favour (49th parallel) or were being settled by international arbitration (The Pig War). Lincoln in particular wanted to push for international arbitration. Fortunately Seward managed to convince him otherwise.
1. Snake answered your first point... Canada is a huge place... but placing your flag in the middle of a forest that goes on for 200 miles in each direction isn't very productive is it? And the climate being what it is a defeated British army would be smarter to surrender rather than be chased off into said forest because they WILL freeze, no possible way for a 'resistance' type movement as is possible in the CSA.
2. Hmm... you have the breakaway rebel states, you have the European powers against you, one of whom was the power you fought twice for your freedom in 1776 and again in 1812 and the other looking greedily at large portions of your claimed territory... It wouldn't be at all possible for an astute politician and a yellow press to spin this as a fight for survival.
The reason I think that F/B/CSA has a good chance of losing this fight big time (1863 war) is that the only ones who really have their heart in the fight are the CSA who got beat OTL and after Gettysburg are in the middle of a downward spiral that only a gargantuan amount of aid would correct. France is acting as the opportunist and you can bet they won't be invited to Canada and otherwise they have to march through hundreds of miles of wilderness to actually get anywhere important in the American SoWest.
Britain at this time has certainly grossly underestimated the will of the Union and the CSA's capabilities or they wouldn't be intervening in the first place. I dunno if there is the political will to go in whole hog against the US and fall and winter are already closing in on Canada which means while the Union might be able to put together an army to invade in the late summer/fall it's going to take months to get together the supplies and troops to defend Canada and/or attack the Union.
And it will take Britain's own Bull Run to realize what they are dealing with. By that time it might be too late to save most of Canada from occupation and the butcher's bill retaking it will be far greater and possibly not something politically feasible especially if they have significant unrest at home. If the Union takes Canada it would be a massive political blow far FAR outweighing its actual impact to Britain's warmaking ability especially considering their allies, an opportunistic imperialist France and an arrogant slave holding CSA.
Of course I'm not also forgetting that there are 1001 ways for the Union to eff things up or for the British to pull of brilliance. And as has been stated Canada is not defenseless at this time and, while imo overstated, British sealift capability is still impressive. It could easily be Union troops being polar bear popsicles in any invasion of Canada.
To really get the Union out of the war after Gettysburg you have to have starvation, which isn't going to happen as long as the Midwest remains (and lets be honest, that's not going to happen), you have to occupy major cities and areas without any real hope of retaking them (which means Canada has been held and the Union decisively defeated, any other scenario is ASB), somehow the largely internalized Union has been completely broken economically, something which would take years and years of war and by that time the CSA will be beyond basket case, France will be near revolution or invaded by Prussia and Britain's govn't will have been deposed for getting into such a clusterfuck that wasn't at all necessary for the defense of Britain, or, finally, the morale of the Union and its will to fight is broken by some event or chain of events which frankly is unlikely to happen before Britain says "Fuck this!" and puts Palmerston's head on either a figurative or literal pike.
Interesting. That suggests it was Seward, normally seen as the extremist who prevented Lincoln blundering into war.
Stevep,
In this case in was Seward that understood the situation and had bring Lincoln and the rest of the Cabinet to his point of view. I understand Lincoln initially wanted to go for international arbitration as in the Pig War.
It is my understanding that Sewards earlier suggestion of a war with Britain to unite the country was made prior to the formation of the CSA, with the intention of being executed at that time. I personally do not think it was stupid at all, it was certainly ruthless but I think it would have worked at that point in time.
This is where I took the quote from:
http://civilwartalk.com/forums/showthread.php?35947-what-if-(due-to-the-trent-affair)-the-british-empire-had-fought