Worst possible ACW

WARNING: this post has content containing violations of the Geneva Convention!

Let's say Halleck succeeds in court-martialling Grant. Sherman becomes an Army commander. After the debacle at Fredericksburg, Lincoln sends George Thomas east to command the Army of the Potomac. Sherman launches a series of offensive operations in the west over a 4-year period and succeeds in burning down pretty much every Confederate city outside Virginia except for Savanna and Montgomery. ITTL, Sherman has no scruples against what today would be considered violating the Geneva conventions, and as long as it shortens the war he will do it. By the time Lee Surrenders around 1867, the south is a complete wasteland- no functioning rail lines outside Virginia, no farms manufacturing any crops, no functioning businesses, no plantations that haven't been totaled, all the trees have been burned, all the livestock have been killed, all the women (even girls who were as young as 11 when the war began!!! :eek: :eek: :eek:) have borne children fathered by Union troops, and there are dozens of towns that were burned to the ground, plowed over, salted, and abandoned (some of whom had their entire populations put to the sword! :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:).
This was what Sherman called "Hard War"- when the entire enemy country is a combatant, and the despoiling and desolation of the enemy is required in order to win the war. Johnny Reb will lose hope if his town was burned down and there is no living thing within a 3-mile radius of it, his family is in a refugee camp, his daughters are all pregnant with Union troops' children, and all his life savings and investments are gone, and he will have to travel to what is left of his home on foot. Even the most die-hard Confederates will give up if they are hungry, humiliated, and utterly ruined this way.
George Thomas manages to capture Robert E Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, and then realizes that, thanks to Sherman, the most optimistic future for the non-Virginian elements of the AoNV is for them to be POWs for life.

If you think TTL Sherman's apparent acceptance of his men's actions toward civilians is ASB Vlad Tepes Award bait, I took a page from a different chapter of military history... (you did ask for the worst possible ACW after all!)

Please don't ban me if the content of this post is too extreme. I DID put a warning on it!
 
Yeah, no. That's not Sherman, that's the Lost Cause caricature that the South tried to paint of him to make themselves the poor, innocent victims of Yankee aggression even though the March to the Sea was actually less costly to civilians than the various Confederate invasions of the North. Or, for that matter, their suppression of Unionists within their own territory. It's not that that post earns a Vlad Tepes award, it's that it's ASB. Either Lincoln would remove Sherman from command, or his own damn troops would mutiny.
 
Let's say Halleck succeeds in court-martialling Grant. Sherman becomes an Army commander. After the debacle at Fredericksburg, Lincoln sends George Thomas east to command the Army of the Potomac. Sherman launches a series of offensive operations in the west over a 4-year period and succeeds in burning down pretty much every Confederate city outside Virginia except for Savanna and Montgomery. ITTL, Sherman has no scruples against what today would be considered violating the Geneva conventions, and as long as it shortens the war he will do it. By the time Lee Surrenders around 1867, the south is a complete wasteland- no functioning rail lines outside Virginia, no farms manufacturing any crops, no functioning businesses, no plantations that haven't been totaled, all the trees have been burned, all the livestock have been killed, all the women (even girls who were as young as 11 when the war began!!! :eek: :eek: :eek:) have borne children fathered by Union troops, and there are dozens of towns that were burned to the ground, plowed over, salted, and abandoned (some of whom had their entire populations put to the sword! :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:).
This was what Sherman called "Hard War"- when the entire enemy country is a combatant, and the despoiling and desolation of the enemy is required in order to win the war. Johnny Reb will lose hope if his town was burned down and there is no living thing within a 3-mile radius of it, his family is in a refugee camp, his daughters are all pregnant with Union troops' children, and all his life savings and investments are gone, and he will have to travel to what is left of his home on foot. Even the most die-hard Confederates will give up if they are hungry, humiliated, and utterly ruined this way.
George Thomas manages to capture Robert E Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, and then realizes that, thanks to Sherman, the most optimistic future for the non-Virginian elements of the AoNV is for them to be POWs for life.

If you think TTL Sherman's apparent acceptance of his men's actions toward civilians is ASB Vlad Tepes Award bait, I took a page from a different chapter of military history... (you did ask for the worst possible ACW after all!)

Please don't ban me if the content of this post is too extreme. I DID put a warning on it!

Umm no... that is ASB - Sherman would never do that, I doubt even the goddamn Nazis would do that; and suggesting that Sherman would is just making a caricature of the man.
 

CalBear

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If any of this happens the Confederacy wins the war around March 18, 1865. I assume it will take two weeks for President McClellan to come to terms with Jefferson Davis after his inauguration and replacement of the defeated Abraham Lincoln.

If Grant isn't in command, if Sherman doesn't succeed in taking Atlanta, the U.S. loses the Civil War in the only way that it can lose, by choosing to do so.

Grant took Vicksburg. Grant put the spine back into the Army of the Potomac, gave the troops back both their pride and their confidence after years of being run from pillar to post by the ANV and Bobby Lee. Sherman took Atlanta, defeating a huge Confederate force in the process, a huge, front page victory in the run up to the election.

There is no way the Civil War lasts until 1867.
 
Everyone seems so distraught at the thought of a worse ACW, but isn't that what we do here? There have been some pretty shitty worlds created here. Has anyone ever read Shattered World? That place sucks out loud! So please allow me to get creative.

It is clear that as long as President Lincoln is in office he will continue to fight until the Confederate Army marches into the White House and forces his surrender at gunpoint and taking Washington DC is 99% ASB, so that is not going to happen, not without Turtledove's AK-47s, so here are some ideas.

Grant dies or is removed from command early, both almost happened.
Sherman is killed at Shiloh, he damn near was.
Stonewall Jackson is on his game at Glendale, McClellan's Army suffers a catastrophic defeat.

All this means is that Lincoln will rebuild those armies and continue to send them south. Casualties increase in the north, draft riots get worse as the draft will almost certainly be instituted sooner. The Copperheads grow bolder, increasing divisions in the USA.

However, the blockade will still be effective strangling the CSA economy. Northern victories will happen, New Orleans will be taken, the Mississippi river will fall into US hands. The CSA can never hope to challenge the US Navy. The US Army will be filled with hard core volunteers dedicated to the destruction of the CSA and bitter conscripts who only want to go home, atrocities against the South will increase, but nowhere near the level Pennsylvania described. Both sides get harder and more bitter, the war lasts longer but US economic and man power will eventually crush the CSA. The fruits will be more destruction, more casualties and a longer lasting bitterness. Sounds like a real shitty deal!
 

takerma

Banned
Everyone seems so distraught at the thought of a worse ACW, but isn't that what we do here? There have been some pretty shitty worlds created here. Has anyone ever read Shattered World? That place sucks out loud! So please allow me to get creative.

It is clear that as long as President Lincoln is in office he will continue to fight until the Confederate Army marches into the White House and forces his surrender at gunpoint and taking Washington DC is 99% ASB, so that is not going to happen, not without Turtledove's AK-47s, so here are some ideas.

Grant dies or is removed from command early, both almost happened.
Sherman is killed at Shiloh, he damn near was.
Stonewall Jackson is on his game at Glendale, McClellan's Army suffers a catastrophic defeat.

All this means is that Lincoln will rebuild those armies and continue to send them south. Casualties increase in the north, draft riots get worse as the draft will almost certainly be instituted sooner. The Copperheads grow bolder, increasing divisions in the USA.

However, the blockade will still be effective strangling the CSA economy. Northern victories will happen, New Orleans will be taken, the Mississippi river will fall into US hands. The CSA can never hope to challenge the US Navy. The US Army will be filled with hard core volunteers dedicated to the destruction of the CSA and bitter conscripts who only want to go home, atrocities against the South will increase, but nowhere near the level Pennsylvania described. Both sides get harder and more bitter, the war lasts longer but US economic and man power will eventually crush the CSA. The fruits will be more destruction, more casualties and a longer lasting bitterness. Sounds like a real shitty deal!

In this scenario would it not be more likely that Lincoln loses re-election?
 
In this scenario would it not be more likely that Lincoln loses re-election?

Possibly, but McClellan is certainly not going to win or even get the Democratic nomination after the catastrophic defeat at Glendale. I would think the Democratic candidate may even promise a quicker victory than the inept Lincoln could deliver, but as always I may be wrong. Even if the USA allows the CSA to go it's own way, they will fight again. Europe 1914 comes to America!
 

Lateknight

Banned
Getting the British involved would cause this as that would probably end in a stat ate between Britain and America with south still subdued but it would years longer and kill far more people. Also the British acting America in its moments of weakness wouldn't be forgiven it would surely cause more wars between those to countries wars that America would of coarse win but still many would die.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
What about this:

1) There's a Pig War.
2) This is pretty much not as planned for anyone.
3) A Southern anti-war candidate wins the 1860 election, signs peace. Stab-in-the-back myth develops in the North.
4) When the Civil War erupts in 1864(?) it will be utterly brutal.
 
1. Although the CSA field a regular army and fights a few set-piece battles in Virginia, the major Southern strategy involves irregular warfare against invading Union armies, akin to terrorism. After initially attempting to respond relatively humanely, the US forces adopt a brutal campaign waged against civilians and civilian infrastructure, turning the war into a popular uprising that continues well after the official confederate government and military forces are defeated. The white terrorist groups are all eventually termed "Southrons", and they aim their aggression at US forces, freed blacks and slaves, and former representatives of the now defunct Confederate government who counsel peace and reconcilliation.

2. In 1864, to fight the Southron movement, the US adopts a policy of arming freed black slaves to hunt down and terrorize the resisting white population, expecting the black auxiliaries to assume much of the anti-terrorist activities formerly undertaken by the US Army. These groups become known as the "Liberation Army", although some become essentially bands of roving bandits. Law and order, even martial law in areas of US Army control breaks down as the South disintegrates into civil war between Southrons and Liberators.

3. In response, the Southron groups take the war to the North, infiltrating into the US and staging terrorist attacks on government officials and civilians known to harbor abolitionist sentiments, leading ultimately to the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865.

4. Fearing that this is the start of a major Southron terrorist campaign in the US, Radical Republicans and a clique of army officers arrest Andrew Johnson as a possible co-conspirator and enact radical security measures to ensure domestic tranquility, including martial law throughout the US. Two amendments to the US constitution are drafted, passed by congress and ratified by 2/3s of the Northern States, that provide for Emergency Governments that have the authority to suspend civil liberties and postpone scheduled elections. The US essentially becomes a dictatorship.

5. The Southron/Liberator conflict continues in the south (which is no longer considered to comprise individual states but has reverted essentially to an unorganized territory) for another 20 years until the Liberation Army is eventually defeated by Southrons, augmented by white volunteers informally sponsored by the 3rd Emergency US Republic, whose leaders fear a radical black nation in the South more than they originally loathed slavery.

6. The South is never reincorporated into the US as self-governing states, but remains unorganized as the "The Southern Territory" until the Mexican War of 1916.

But that's another story.
 
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Make McClellan commander of the U.S. forces... forever!!!! :p

Or just make him get replaced by an equally sucky general. By 1866, the Union will have won the ACW, but with even more casualties.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Make McClellan commander of the U.S. forces... forever!!!! :p

Or just make him get replaced by an equally sucky general. By 1866, the Union will have won the ACW, but with even more casualties.
McClellan gets a bad rap, but he was not terrible. His job was to build a mass army to conquer the South with, and people were calling him slow and getting impatient about it within the same year he'd been given the job!
When other examples of building a mass army from scratch took years to get proficient at it (the British divisions of Kitchener's Army took between one and two years) it shouldn't be especially surprising.


Citation:

http://67thtigers.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/an-interview-with-prof-joseph-harsh.html
 
Sherman's march.

Damn!

That is a little too extreme, and well beyond anything that the most Western nation would do.

Just a too much!

The Russians did a LOT of nasty stuff in Germany in 1945, as a retaliation for German war crimes. Russian reprisals were so extensive that-
a) a lot of people in East Germany are ethnically half-Russian, and
b) East Germany did not fully heal until the Berlin Wall fell.

If Sherman did stuff that he didn't OTL, it's probably because-
a) he was depressed/drunk/angry of Grant's court-martial, making him even more vengeful and bitter than OTL (and since Sherman was allegedly manic-depressive...),
b) Sherman was simply going overboard with his attacks on confederate infrastructure (foraging liberally, turning railroad tracks into neckties, setting things on fire, etc),
c) Sherman was neither authorizing nor condemning the sheer destruction of infrastructure or other atrocities, turning a particularly blind eye to possible reprisals by USCTs and Southern Unionists to Confederate civilians (especially rich plantation owners and their families, as the aristocratic planters were directly responsible for the whole mess!).
d) Philip Sheridan (who, IOTL, despoiled the Shenandoah valley so thoroughly that "a crow would need to pack rations to fly over it", and would later advocate deliberately driving bison extinct!) was with him, or
e) all the major Union Generals are imitating what Sherman and Sheridan did IOTL.

Umm no... that is ASB - Sherman would never do that, I doubt even the goddamn Nazis would do that; and suggesting that Sherman would is just making a caricature of the man.

That's not even ASB by my definition of ASB. My definition of ASB is:
-ISOTing a Utahraptor into the tent of every General (Brigadier or higher) on both sides :)eek::eek::eek:!!!) and butterflying away all difficulties a Utahraptor would have living in the modern world.
-Dinosaurs in general being ISOTed into the ACW (a google search of 'civil war dinosaurs' will yield many results :D ), and making a lot of trouble for both sides ("No! not in the long grass! Get out of the long gr- AAAARRRGGGHH!!!").
-Jubal Early being bitten by a Werewolf (I added this because of the sheer absurdity of it!).
-William T. Sherman being a natural-born Pyromancer (which would explain his fondness for fire! ;) ).
-each regiment on both sides having a Wizard in it.
-Sherman inventing flamethrowers and napalm, and equipping the entire AotP and AotT with them.

At least I am not doing stuff that is blatantly impossible with Sherman.
 
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That's not even ASB by my definition of ASB. My definition of ASB is:
-ISOTing a Utahraptor into the tent of every General (Brigadier or higher) on both sides :)eek::eek::eek:!!!) and butterflying away all difficulties a Utahraptor would have living in the modern world.
-Dinosaurs in general being ISOTed into the ACW (a google search of 'civil war dinosaurs' will yield many results :D ), and making a lot of trouble for both sides ("No! not in the long grass! Get out of the long gr- AAAARRRGGGHH!!!").
-Jubal Early being bitten by a Werewolf (I added this because of the sheer absurdity of it!).
-William T. Sherman being a natural-born Pyromancer (which would explain his fondness for fire! ;) ).
-each regiment on both sides having a Wizard in it.
-Sherman inventing flamethrowers and napalm, and equipping the entire AotP and AotT with them.

At least I am not doing stuff that is blatantly impossible with Sherman.

Actually you are, since Sherman was nothing like that and would never do anything like you described.
 
Not only is it ASB for Sherman to do that, but the idea of industrialized death that you talk about did not develop until the modern era. You must remember that during this era many countries still believed in some ideas of chivalry.

Lee refused to engage in partisan conflict and choose to surrender. The North choose to allow the Confederate commanders to just surrender and rejoin the Union. The Confederates refused to use coal shaped bombs because it was "ungentlemanly".

The idea's of true unfettered "Total War" did not develop in the West until WW!. Though there was some examples of small instances before, however, most countries condemned those tactics.
 
An extended guerrilla campaign so the war only "officially" ends, making the Reconstruction era look idyllic?

Guerrilla warfare is the most overrated set of tactics on the planet, especially pre-1900. In the Civil War South, it would be especially doomed to failure by:

1. Large numbers of Unionist sympathizers in the affected areas, both black and white.

2. Lack of food that would inevitably force the resistance to banditry, alienating potential support.

3. The reluctance of Lee and other Confederate leaders to endorse continued resistance.
 
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