WI:The CSA wins, how long does its government last?

frlmerrin

Banned
Add another regiment worth of oxen. It isn't like the Union was short on manpower or draft animals! They were coming OTL. Are you saying YOU know better than the Union Army logistical planners who only very rarely had logistical problems? People who did this for a living at the time, know more about 19th century logistics than you do and had a very good record in supplying troops? Do you really think none of them thought of these obvious things?

In the first place the logistical movements of the California column were organised by California militia officerscs not Union army officers. In the second the California militia officers did not organise the march es in the way you suggest. I therefore suspect you of hyperbole, if you have any evidence of how the Union army organised its logistics please show it.
 
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Add another regiment worth of oxen. It isn't like the Union was short on manpower or draft animals! They were coming OTL. Are you saying YOU know better than the Union Army logistical planners who only very rarely had logistical problems? People who did this for a living at the time, know more about 19th century logistics than you do and had a very good record in supplying troops? Do you really think none of them thought of these obvious things?[/ quote]

In the first place the logistical movements of the California column were organised by California militia officerscs not Union army officers. In the second the California militia officers did not organise the march es in the way you suggest. I therefore suspect you of hyperbole, if you have any evidence of how the Union army organised its logistics please show it.

They didn't die of thirst OTL. The Union moved around militia troops around all the time and kept them in supply. There are actual rivers in AZ and the Union knew where they were so I was being EXTREMELY pessimistic. The Colorado River goes through AZ, the Arizona River goes through AZ, the San Pedro goes through AZ. There are a number of rivers that the Union forces could send back the oxen in AZ alone. I don't think there is a state in the Union where there are no rivers whatsoever. Here is a map of the rivers in AZ http://www.bing.com/images/search?q...BF9176A669FAE5E0&selectedIndex=14#view=detail

As you can see there are a number of rivers in AZ they can get back to get water from. Guess what? The army knew full well where these rivers were. So yes the army can keep it in supply. They can also use the Colorado River to ship supplies down from Colorado. What about the Confederates? Don't THEY need to supply their troops? Their record of supplying troops is far worse than the Union. There were a number of times CSA troops went hungry. That didn't happen often with USA troops arpart from Chattanooga.
 
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Nicking my scab analogy! How uncivil is that?

I'd like to say that it's been fun and rewarding, but really it hasn't been. Reading your posts is singularly unrewarding and a painful and unpleasant experience to boot. I think that both of us would be much happier if I put you on ignore. Feel free to reciprocate. The fact that I dislike your posts is in no way of judgement of you as a person. Good day to you, 67th Tigers, or frlmerrin, or whoever you choose to be. I wish you the best, and hope your experience on the Board is a positive one.
 
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You can't support anything from Fort Jefferson it had no fresh water. Key West is an option as a base but it is too far to the East to small and in an area with far too many shoals and banks to be of much value and you are making the assumption the Union get to keep it in the peace. This may or may not be the case. So even accepting your suggestions the Union still don't have a proper Gulf base.



Thanks for all the replies, I think this is the longest thread I've ever started on here!

And the above quote, and the tread about a possible foreign Gibralter on English soil, got me thinking about the possibility of a Union one on Confederate soil. :p
 

Dorozhand

Banned
I'd like to say that it's been fun and rewarding, but really it hasn't been. Reading your posts is singularly unrewarding and a painful and unpleasant experience to boot. I think that both of us would be much happier if I put you on ignore. Good day to you, 67th Tigers, or frlmerrin, or whoever you choose to be.

Jeez! What was so bad about his posts?
 
Pro-Union Trolls? How and why?

Guys who were combative jackasses like the now banned Snake Featherston and Wolfpaw. Long before them, and years before I ever joined (I was still lurking back then) there were a few trolls who advocated things towards the former-Confederates that would make the Radical Republicans blush with shame.

Good riddance to them, and I'm glad this site jealously holds to a sense of civility. I miss Robert though, he would have had some awesome input on this subject.
 

mowque

Banned
Inertia would probably keep it around for awhile. Nations don't disappear easily. That said, the CSA has alot of problems to deal with. It will take leaders of singular vision to pull it through.
 
Jeez! What was so bad about his posts?

I found his treatment of people generally to be unpleasant. I think I'll be much happier ignoring him. And I certainly think that his life will in no way be impaired if he puts me on ignore. I certainly would encourage him to do so. I believe that the 'ignore' function exists so that people who find each other pleasant can reduce their personal frictions.

I wish him no ill will. I just don't care to read anything he writes any more. Call it a personal preference. It's not malicious.

If you enjoy and find his posts useful and informative, then all to the good. Different strokes and all that.
 
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Inertia would probably keep it around for awhile. Nations don't disappear easily. That said, the CSA has alot of problems to deal with. It will take leaders of singular vision to pull it through.

I think that the modern precedent is that states will last quite a long time, even if badly managed and run. Just about all of the Latin American states for instance, are closing in on their second century of existence. Unless a state gets conquered or absorbed somehow, it'll pretty much endure.

The question as to what sort of governance it has can vary, but even there, most states stick to long term patterns.
 

frlmerrin

Banned
I'd like to say that it's been fun and rewarding, but really it hasn't been. Reading your posts is singularly unrewarding and a painful and unpleasant experience to boot. I think that both of us would be much happier if I put you on ignore. Feel free to reciprocate. The fact that I dislike your posts is in no way of judgement of you as a person. Good day to you, 67th Tigers, or frlmerrin, or whoever you choose to be. I wish you the best, and hope your experience on the Board is a positive one.

DValdron,

Well ... gosh ... I'm at a bit of a loss really?

I can make no sense of this whatsoever but you do what you have to do lad. I hope you find a little equilibrium in eliminating me from your world.

I shall not put you on ignore. I will read your posts and comment on them where appropriate for the benefit of myself and others. This should not disturb you if you have me on ignore.
 
I think that the modern precedent is that states will last quite a long time, even if badly managed and run. Just about all of the Latin American states for instance, are closing in on their second century of existence. Unless a state gets conquered or absorbed somehow, it'll pretty much endure.

The question as to what sort of governance it has can vary, but even there, most states stick to long term patterns.

It is likely to stick around for a while but if it lasts to the present day it is Mexico or Brazil in wealth and influence not Germany, the US or Japan.
 

frlmerrin

Banned
And the above quote, and the tread about a possible foreign Gibralter on English soil, got me thinking about the possibility of a Union one on Confederate soil. :p

There are lots of possibilities of this nature. Key West is probably the most likely along with New Orleans which is a very interesting possibility. You might also consider Port Royal and the area around it. The other Federal enclaves and forts around the CSA's coast are probably not tenable after Confederate independence and would eventually be abandoned.

There is also the possibility of at least one Confederate enclave/fort if they ever managed to take Fortress Monroe. In a scenario where the CSA becomes independent by their own efforts this is pretty unlikely in a scenario involving a war between the Union and the British Empire over Trent it is pretty likely.

Actually in a Trent based scenario you get all sorts of possibilities for British or Confederate or even French enclaves on the Union coast. The extreme example of this is the whole of the Delaware peninsula south of the Chesapeake and Delaware canal (Confederate). Smaller easier options include Matha's Vinyard and/or Nantucket Island (British or French), Block Island (British or French) and the Santa Catalina's (British). It is also a fair bet that in a Trent Affair war the British get the San Juan Islands, all of them and a big chunk of Washinton territory too!

In a Trent affair scenario you could end up with the absurd situation where the Union get New Orleans and Key West (I'm pretty sure they would lose Fort Jefferson), the Confederates get the southern Delaware peninsula and Fortress Monroe and the French get Martha's Vinyard. For extra absurdity make Brazil a Confederate ally and give them Nantucket Island as a naval base as spoils.
 
It is likely to stick around for a while but if it lasts to the present day it is Mexico or Brazil in wealth and influence not Germany, the US or Japan.

Well, certainly anything along the lines of Germany, Japan or the US is profoundly ASB.

But whether it makes it into a second tier of first world nations - Italy, Greece or Spain, or devolves to a dreary mid-level, third world backwater, that's another question. My own view is that it will tend towards the bottom, but I've seen respectable arguments otherwise.

But the question here relates to what sort of government would a successful Confederacy have. That's a fairly open question.
 
How far do you think the Californians would have to march? Are there sufficient water holes to march as a single body? Would they be harrased upon the journey? How long would the supply line be? How much in the way of supplies would they need to get to the spearhead of the army each day to make it a viable fighting force?

In actual history, the Union was able to reach Ft Yuma while the Confederacy was not.

No the USA does not have power projection capacity across the Arizona desert.

The Union was able to do this in actual history.

It is only you that think the CSA is going to have no money and you have never made anything like a convincing case to me. In every post I have read on the matter CSA debt is vastly inflated by including both junk bonds and currency in circulationin the debt which is completely unjustified.{/quote]

Read Look Away by William C Davis. In actual history, the Confederate government accumulated $2.7 billion in public debt. (This number does not include the public debt of individual Confederate states.) Confederate graybacks were not like modern currency, they were Treasury Notes, redeemable at interest within 6 months of the end of the war. Just that interest would have been $120 million. (For contrast, government revenue for the entire US in 1860 was $52 million.)

Neither have I seen anything to suggest that the CSA's credit would be bad. It has export goods. It is an excellent prospect for investment and it has several agricultural and primary products booms comming over the fifteen years after independence. It is going to be a wealthy country.

In actual history the American South had all of that going for it, yet it was significantly poorer than the rest of the United States. An independent Confederacy will have the added burdens of $2.7 billion in public debt, a weaker currency, and 10% of their manpower having left the country.

Yes on the right terms it can buy all of the larger elements of a navy from the British and French and build smaller ones for itself.

The Union had a larger population, a smaller federal government, about 40% of the per capita public debt, greater population growth, better infrastructure, an established navy, an established shipbuilding industry, naval shipyards, and the majority of the former US coal.

If the Confederacy starts a naval arms race, the Union will win. European powers with colonies in the area (Britain, France, Spain) would probably be wary of Confederate naval expansion as well.

Again I question your assumption that the Union would be particularly wealthy after CSA independence. I think it is going to be pretty poor for a couple of decades in many scenarios.

How wealthy the Union is after the Civil War is a matter of debate. The Confederacy ending up better off than the Union will require the Confederacy exceed the Meiji Restoration in political and economic advancement while the Union simultaneously makes a series of blunders that makes modern Greece look like financial wizards.
 
An unanswerable question, really.

To even begin to have a hope of answering it, you'd have to come up with a viable theory and POD where the South wins, and what sort of shape the south is in when it wins.

I see three major possibilities.

* The Confederacy does not fire on Union troops or announce its intention to seize the Union capital. The Union decides to just let them go. This is probably the best case scenario for the Confederacy, but it requires different Presidents for both the Union and the Confederacy.

* The Confederacy gets Britain or France to support them militarily. Mere recognition is not enough. This will require vastly better Confederate diplomacy and a bigger trigger than the Trent Affair.

* Peace by exhaustion. This is the mostly likely as the early loss of a few key Union or Confederate leaders could be enough for Confederate morale to outlast Union morale.

The pseudo dictatorship, with its near totalitarian bureaucracy and major military apparatus of the end of the civil war suggests the evolution of an extremely authoritarian, profoundly centralized, Southern regime - far closer to unitary state than a federation.

An early Confederacy might preserve the centrifugal forces and produce a very loose and decentralized association or federation.

You might see a Confederacy so loosely knit in some circumstances that it literally dissolves into sub-confederacies or member states, or has breakaways.

Or you could see a pseudo-Nazi totalitarian/authoritarian racial superiority, 'triumph of the white will' kind of centralized state.

Or a lot of stuff in between.

Democracy? Pretty damned unlikely.

Agreed save that either the centralizing or centrifugal forces could win out regardless of the length of the war. However its shakes out, an independent Confederacy (or its successor states) is not going to resemble the Union with a southern drawl.

Mostly, I'd see variations of the Latin American model - Caudillo Strongmen on top, either through questionable elections or outright dictatorships, ruling with occasional faux populism and with the concurrence of conservative elites, and serving the interests of those elites, which mostly amounted to keeping the poor folk and the darkies in their proper places.

It seems to me that the primary interest of the landowning elites in an independent Confederacy is going to be in maintaining and enforcing a fairly unstable social 'stability.' That has to be done with a lot of policing and occasionally violence. Whatever forms the Confederacy takes, that's always going to be the underlying rationale.

This is certainly possible, but I don’t see the Confederate states as that homogeneous. Planters had more legislative power than their numbers, but there were Confederate states where the dominant power in the legislature was men that owned no slaves or smallholders that owned a few slaves.

Looking at the 1860 Census, there are significant differences between states where planters were the majority or plurality of the legislature and states where smallholders dominated. Planter-dominated states tended towards a single dominant crop, averaged over half the population as slaves, had little industry, and virtually no immigrants or free blacks. Smallholder-dominated states had more diversified agriculture, only a third the population as slaves, more immigrants, a lot more free blacks, and most of the Confederate industry.

As for the decepticons, they show some tactical ingenuity, but their strategic planning is utter crap. They might show off well in a few battles, but ultimately, they'll cause the Confederacy more headaches than they're worth, and over any span greater than a few weeks, the Autobots are going to show up and crush them.

Save for the bit about the Autobots, you could replace ‘Decepticons’ with ‘Confederate generals’ and get a good description of actual history. Then again, Decepticons were less prone to infighting than Confederate generals.:D
 
Well, certainly anything along the lines of Germany, Japan or the US is profoundly ASB.

But whether it makes it into a second tier of first world nations - Italy, Greece or Spain, or devolves to a dreary mid-level, third world backwater, that's another question. My own view is that it will tend towards the bottom, but I've seen respectable arguments otherwise.

But the question here relates to what sort of government would a successful Confederacy have. That's a fairly open question.

Even today, many people picture the Confederate government as small, decentralized, unintrusive, and fiscally responsible. The real Confederacy funded itself on debt and inflation and threatened to draft workers to force businesses to take government contracts at rates dictated by the Confederate government.

There are certain things we can conclude from looking at the actions of Confederate leaders both before and during the Civil War.

* They were fine with a strong central government, so long as they were the ones that ran it. The Dred Scott Decision and the Fugitive Slave Law, for example.

* They believed they were racially superior, not just to blacks, but to Yankees. The Mudsill Speech is the best example.

* They were afraid of slave revolts and were willing to use any means to stop anyone from condemning slavery. Examples include censorship of the US mail, the Gag Rule, and the Sumner Caning.

* They believed keeping the blacks enslaved was morally justified and that failing to do so would destroy the white people of the south. Examples include the Cornerstone Speech and the various Declarations of Causes for Secession.

* They were aggressive and expansionistic. Example include the Ostend Manifesto; the filibusters, the Border Ruffians; firing on Ft Sumter and declaring their intention to seize Washington DC; attempts to get northern Mexico to join the Confederacy; the invasions of Kentucky, Missouri, and Arizona; and the attempted invasion of Colorado.

* They were deeply divided on every issue but slavery. In Look Away, William C Davis notes their major political groupings were Nationalists, Moderates, Fire Eaters, and Unionists. The Unionists lacked leadership; each of the other groups was deeply divided based on personal animosities. Leaders of the Confederate Army of the Tennessee spent more time fighting each other than the Yankees and other Confederate armies were not immune to infighting.

* They believed that your candidate losing a nomination justified forming a new political party and your candidate losing an election justified forming a new country.
 
Yea. The Boll Weevil is going to cause a pretty epic economic depression ontop of the Stock Market Crash.
 
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