S.M. Sterling's post:
3: The Transformation Approach.
Go back to, say, 1827, with a load of diamonds (much more valuable then, relatively speaking) and technical/historical information on microfiche. And
some medical stuff -- make sure all your shots are up to date, and your
appendix is out! You might consider getting your teeth replaced with implants,
too.)
The microfiche can be made readable with a good microscope and a lantern.
Get immensely rich (not hard, with your information). Move to Richmond, Va.,
and start investing; that was the major Southern industrial city, and it had
excellent communications for the era.
Found an investment bank -- it's a new concept, but the time was ripe. Also
buy a large plantation, which is necessary for social status, and introduce
agricultural innovations.
Buy newspapers, and set up a publishing company -- you can push the works of
pro-slavery theorists, and promote "southern" culture, authors like William
Gilmore Sims, George Fitzhugh, etc. (and see if you can dry Edgar Allen Poe
out -- he was a brilliant editor and literary theorist as well as a writer of
genius... when sober). Promote the career of de Bow, of de Bow's Review, and
a number of other men you know to be very able.
You should join, and come to dominate, the Southern Commercial Conventions held
from the 1840's on -- they'll be invaluable for networking.
Finance Edmund Ruffin, the agricultural reformer, so that his discoveries and
magazine have even more impact than they did in OTL, and sooner.
Introduce tea to the Sea Islands of Georgia and S. Carolina (it grows well
there -- there's a plantation of it near Charleston).
Back the Tredegar Works in its early days, feeding in capital and
"discoveries", but not too fast at first.
This turns it from the second-largest iron/engineering works in the US to the
largest, with branches in other states and a massive locomotive construction
plant. You also prompt Anderson, the firm's manager, to go into the
riverboat/sawmill/cotton gin steam engine business, supplying the Southern
market.
"Invent" things a couple of years before they're due -- the telegraph, for
instance -- and set up plants in the South to make them. Endow chairs of
science and technology at William and Mary and U. Virg., and become one of the
founding patrons of the Virginia Military Institute. (At VMI you can gradually
influence the tactics taught, as well.)
Start a steam packet line in the coastal trade; this will give you a cadre of
experienced men later. You could also get the big truck-farming trade to the
North from areas like tidewater Virginia going a little earlier than in OTL.
"Discover" the phosphate deposits of South Carolina in the 1830's, and those of
Florida in the 1840's.
After the Panic of 1837, buy up defunct railroad charters across the South --
there were plenty, and they were going cheap. Then start building railroads,
using corporate forms from the 1870's, and a few "discoveries" of methods that
make construction and operation cheaper and more efficient (you know what
worked for each problem, after all.) Don't go overboard, but by the late
1850's you should have a Vicksburg-Savannah line, a Florida-Richmond, one from
Richmond to the Ohio, and one from Mobile (and New Orleans) to Lexington,
Kentucky.
Bribe and propagandize the Southern state legislatures to adopt the 5-ft
railway gauge -- that was the predominant one in the South in OTL, and your
influence could make it universal.
Some time in the depression of the 1840's, buy up the area around Birmingham,
Alabama, and then around 1850 start a big ironworks to catch the rail and iron
booms of the 1850's.
(This nearly happened -- a group of rich cotton-belt planters tried to get a
company going, and failed to get a charter by a very narrow margin. You can
afford to buy the Alabama state government by now. Get the planters involved
by allowing them to buy shares with slaves -- a common arrangement on Southern
railroads -- which you can use for the mining and other labor-intensive parts
of the enterprise.)
Around the same time, endow a medical school in Richmond, and "discover"
(through your professors) the germ theory of disease, antiseptic surgery, and
the mosquito vector of malaria.
This will face considerable resistance (see what happened to Simmelweis in
Austria), so you'll need time -- but it can be done; Pasteur would be working
soon anyway. By the later 1850's you'll have doctors who can keep an army from
wasting away with "camp fever".
If you manage it right, you can get the Northern medical schools to reject this
southern heresy so they won't have the methods.
In the mid to late 1850's (after making new fortunes off your 'inventions',
your railways, and your uncannily accurate financial manipulations) start
building some stuff specifically aimed at war potential.
Until now, you've let weapons _sensu strictu_ advance at their own pace, while
concentrating on building up machine-tool and engineering capacity. That means
you can now introduce greatly superior weapons _en masse_, skipping the R&D
process altogether, and achieve technological surprise.
A large powder works in Georgia, and small arms works there and in Virginia.
(Back in 1842, you bought up the patents of the bankrupt Colt Revolver company
and transferred its plant to Petersburg, Va.) Develop the coastal sulfur
deposits around Galveston, Texas, and see if you can get a railroad to El Paso.
Develop the lead and zinc deposits of southwestern Virginia.
Also a shipyard in Norfolk, another in Mobile, and a riverboat works in
Memphis, capable of turning out good seagoing steam engines and ironclads. In
1859-60, lay the keels of what are supposed to be oceangoing merchant steamers,
but are actually designed to be a small fleet of seagoing wood-framed steam
rams/ ironclads in the 3000-ton range, with 4-inch armor and 6-inch rifled
guns. Set the completion date for late 1861. And some fast commerce raiders,
too.
Ditto 'brown water' ironclads at your Memphis works. For those, the initial
design could be for tugboats intended to tow barges -- the engines would be
similar, anyway. Set up for mass production.
You might be able to get a crude but workable compressed-air powered torpedo in
production; Whitehead did in 1866, in Austria. Keep that as a 'secret weapon'.
Beef up the Tredegar's already formidable heavy artillery works. Add a
tinplate mill to the Birmingham works, and go into food canning. Develop the
copper mines of east Tennessee.
Make a final killing by having your agents 'discover' the Comstock Lode a
couple of years early -- stockpile a proportion of the specie produced in your
First Bank of Richmond, where it'll be useful to back the Confederate currency.
Back the Graniteville textile works in South Carolina, and other similar
entrepreneurs (the South had a surprisingly strong textile industry prior to
the war -- didn't recover that ground until the 1880's in OTL). And invent the
sewing machine, a simple but workable model.
In 1859, your RSA (Richmond Small Arms works) will "invent" and start to
produce (but secretly, warehousing the products):
i) A good brass-cartridge bolt-action repeating rifle -- a black-powder
version of the short Lee-Enfield, say. Like the Lee-Metford, but with some
later features like sripper-clip loading, 12 aimed rounds a minute, 2000 fps
muzzle velocity, and accurate to over 100 yards.
ii) The Gatling gun -- 1890's version, quite reliable and capable of 500 rounds
per minute.
iii) mortars.
iv) 1880's-style breechloading rifled artillery.
Meanwhile, of course, you've become a major political mover and shaker, with
your newspapers, campaign contributions, etc. Don't run for office, but build
up a stable of men who do and who are indebted to you in one way or another.
I suggest that you remain a Whig in the 1840's, and then go over (with suitable
inducements) to the Democrats during the first crisis over slavery in the
territories acquired from Mexico.
Once in the party, cultivate the moderate Southern Rights faction -- men like
Davis -- but don't cut off ties to the Fire-Eaters, either.
Don't try to be President; operate behind the scenes, and get "your" men into
strategic positions. (You're in a wonderful position to act as patron to a
generation of rising political and military talent.)
When the crisis comes, you can suggest the appropriate policies -- for example,
all enlistments to be for "3 years or the duration", rush troops into West
Virginia (and arrest Unionist leaders there), and no embargo on cotton. Send
better diplomats to Europe. Stage a coup in St. Louis, and prepare for a
secessionist insurrection in tidewater and Eastern Shore Maryland.
Get the new Confederate government to set up an efficient intelligence and
cover-operations _apparat_, using some suggestions from you -- in fact, if you
hold any official office, I'd recommend this one.
As soon as you can be sure that the war's going to start on schedule -- by this
time, the 'butterfly effect' is going to have modifed the political scene
somewhat -- import massive stockpiles of essentials from Europe in areas where
the South is likely to have shortages.
When the war starts, you'll have enough on hand to equip 200,000 men with
repeating rifles, Gatlings (4 per regiment) and 1880's-style artillery. Plus
you'll have flotillas of 4 ironclads each in Norfolk and Mobile ready to sink
the USN before the Monitor is more than a gleam in Erickson's eye, and a
brown-water fleet capable of dominating the Mississipi and its tributaries and
Farragut be damned.
Given that this comes off (and you don't trip and kill yourself getting out of
the bath or something of that nature) I'd say the war will last about 6 months,
with the South winning so big that it can impose whatever terms it likes and
then go on to carved out the Latin American empire the "Knights of the Golden
Horseshoe" dreamed of.
The long-term results will probably be pretty ghastly, but we're assuming that
the operative is a bit of a nut.
-- S.M. Stirling