Ruminations on Alternate History WRT the US Civil War

[Carthaginian]

damocles,
Chiriqui, Liberia... several attempts to resettle the Africans forcibly brought here failed (or were not particularly successful). But finding references to them in public school books these days is like trying to find water on the sun- you can find the parts to piece it together, but it's just no there in whole form.

By the way, Walker was SHOT by a Honduran firing squad before there was a Confederacy or a Lincoln.to worry about.

True... but you were very, very wrong in stating that Lincoln would have fixed him.
Lincoln was busy trying cases at the time.

Laertes,
France was actually stirring things up in Mexico at that time... and the French were not opposed to the Confederacy. The Mexican forces that might have liked to have regained Texas were 'otherwise occupied' and probably would have not been too skippy to have joined the Union. ;)


Mario,
I will be a bit more diplomatic... but it's hard to ignore the way history seems to get bent over here. Much like your own situation, the truth is only found if you 1.) look for it on your own or 2.) have it thrust at you from someone who already has.

[Carthaginian]

Nicaragua offers no advantages over transshipping goods via blockade runner from Havana, Bermuda, or the Bahamas either.

Basing Confederate raiders there would have just made it easier for the Union navy to find them.

The primary thing I see it providing is a nation willing to act as 'middle man' in the purchase of the ships that the Confederacy needed. It's 1500 mile distance from the Gulf Coast also provides a simplified logistical chain- easier to resupply and even seek repairs.

And yes, it could have been blockaded by the Union as well- but with much added difficulty as the U.S. Navy was rather limited at that time. It would have also stretched the Union's own supply chain and limited naval resources thinner to have to cover both the CSA and Nicaragua.


Damocles,
If Nicaragua had successfully got at least the Wyvern and Scorpion delivered to them and crewed out, that would have made the 'close blockade' a rather less sure thing. That's where I see Nicaragua coming in- especially since all those 'flying squadron' ships in concert would have had the devil's own time sinking even one of them, let alone both at once.

[Ithekro]

Basing raiders? No

Buying warships and raiders without the United States being able to stop the purchases through diplomatic channels?  Maybe.

Might have been a way to get more raiders for the Confederate Navy...perhaps even a real warship or two before the end (aside from say the CSS Stonewall late in the war).

[Guinness]

I'm not sure how Nicaragua being in Confederate friendly hands would have prevented the ironclads from being impounded by the Brits. I don't think it changes circumstances at all for the Union diplomatic mission in London, in other words.

At any rate, if by some miracle they were delivered, they would not have been a secret to be sure. So I believe they simply would have resulted in New Ironsides having at least one sister. To be sure, Union shipuilding resources were strained by 1863, but finding a slip and enough rolled armor to duplicate New Ironsides was eminently possible.

This is also where the fallacy of this train of thought becomes apparent. If we're talking 1863, it's too late. By the end of that summer the Confederacy had lost all initiative on land and the Mississippi was a Union waterway. The Union was nearly fully mobilized. By the time those ships are at sea, it was already only a matter of time.

It wasn't just the blockade that prevented assistance from overseas. After a certain point, it was clear to the Europeans that backing the CSA would be backing the losing side. Palmerston after all waited to even present the idea of mediation until the results of Lee's invasion of the North bore out. Without a stinging Union defeat, the British believed, the Union wouldn't even agree to talk to the South via the British. After Gettysburg, in British minds such efforts would be fruitless.

Frankly, if we're looking for a way for the British to be encouraged to better back the CSA in an alternate history setting, have Charles Foster Adams walk in front of a horse or something. Effective Union diplomacy was a much bigger factor, IMHO.

[Borys]

Ahoj!
Using Mexican port for transhipment was "legal". Any 3rd port was OK to get around a blockade.
As long as British goods on British ships we going in.
The use of 3rd party ports became "illegal" in WWI, and was used to starve Germany.

As to Belgium:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Partition-plan-Talleyrand-en.svg
Borys

[maddox]

I don't like that Talleyrand plan.

Laertes, why would killing Walloons be awesome?  The man in the street in Wallonia doesn't know much better. It's all prechewed for him. If he has a non government payed job, he's being fleeced by Flemish politicians, and he "knows" it.
If not, he gets money from the government (more than 50% of the Walloon adults are working for the government, and the 15% or so unemployed get dole), and then the Flemish who are voicing their concern about government spending are evil people who want to destroy the good life.

The lands motto is "Strength trough unity". But our politicians know the power of "divide and conquer" all too well.
And use that adagio since Flanders got more financial power than the traditional steamtech iron and coal bound Wallonia (funny enough, that Walloon Industry trived on Flemish farmers sons untill WWII destroyed a lot, and Flanders needed to rebuild. This sparked the first Immigration wave from Southern Europe, the need for unskilled laborers for the coalmines and steelplants), to keep the country going.

My personal view is that we should divide up Belgium, and get back to the roots of it all. The Latin language border and outlook on life itself.
Flanders being Flanders, Wallonia being Wallonia, the East Kantons-annexed parts of Prussia after WW I. And Brussels (as arrogant as Paris).

The main hot iron is Brussels. Historicaly a Flemish/Brabant City, but now a a hidious monstrocity overwhelmed by French speaking bourgeoisie, French speaking North African immigrants and the uncaring Eurocrats in their sheltered enviroment. Most of the hardcore Flemish nationalists want Brussels in Flanders, no buts ifs or whens. The extremist Walloons claim ,due to language, that Brussels needs to be Walloon is Belgium implodes,and that there should be a wide corridor where French/Walloon should be promoted, even mandated to form a consistent whole with Wallonia.
Another option is to "deed" Brussels to Europe and get rid of it. A kind of Brussels DE -District of Europe-

Some people advocate re-uniting Flanders with the Netherlands, and a more hard voiced bunch "rattachists" demand France to occupy and assimilate Wallonia (and Flanders if possible).

Oh well, it's a subject that has as many interpretations as assholes.

[Laertes]

Laertes, why would killing Walloons be awesome?

I was attempting to be funny; I can't back the statement up in any way. For what it's worth, I'm politically in the "let Flanders and Wallonia be separate EU regions" camp.

[damocles]

damocles,
Chiriqui, Liberia... several attempts to resettle the Africans forcibly brought here failed (or were not particularly successful). But finding references to them in public school books these days is like trying to find water on the sun- you can find the parts to piece it together, but it's just no there in whole form.

By the way, Walker was SHOT by a Honduran firing squad before there was a Confederacy or a Lincoln.to worry about.

True... but you were very, very wrong in stating that Lincoln would have fixed him.
Lincoln was busy trying cases at the time.

With all due respect, the point I actually made was that Lincoln with a navy and a huge army failed, that Walker failed, that Napoleon III failed, and that a Confederate Filibuster scheme would fail and for all the same reasons. The Latin Americans would fight. The advantages were all theirs-especially with a Great Britain serving as their de facto protector at that time.    

Laertes,
France was actually stirring things up in Mexico at that time... and the French were not opposed to the Confederacy. The Mexican forces that might have liked to have regained Texas were 'otherwise occupied' and probably would have not been too skippy to have joined the Union. ;)

There was this little thing called the Mexican American War a previous twenty years before. The Mexicans hated the US. Some of them still do. The Juarez government took Union help because they had no other friends then who could help and "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", prevailed. The Mexican government was/is a practical one given their actual history. They do not love or even respect the US. They just fear it.

Mario,
I will be a bit more diplomatic... but it's hard to ignore the way history seems to get bent over here. Much like your own situation, the truth is only found if you 1.) look for it on your own or 2.) have it thrust at you from someone who already has.

Agreed. But then I had good teachers for whom the Civil War was a very sore and well covered subject. They didn't call it "Bloody Kansas" for nothing.

I'm not sure how Nicaragua being in Confederate friendly hands would have prevented the ironclads from being impounded by the Brits. I don't think it changes circumstances at all for the Union diplomatic mission in London, in other words.

Charles Adams was cheaper than building a fighting squadron.

At any rate, if by some miracle they were delivered, they would not have been a secret to be sure. So I believe they simply would have resulted in New Ironsides having at least one sister. To be sure, Union shipuilding resources were strained by 1863, but finding a slip and enough rolled armor to duplicate New Ironsides was eminently possible.

The Lairds rams were very advanced tech for 1861. I wonder if a New Ironsides class could even compete? More likely we would have to see a US version of a breastwork monitor, possibly a variant of the Onondaga class, or an 1862 version of the Demilogus as an answer. In either case, the Lairds rams were coast defense blockade breakers and were not suitable as commerce raiders. Their job would be to make sure that the Alabamas, Floridas, and so forth could break out to raid shipping and to drive off the Union North Atlantic Squadron under Admiral Sydney Lee. (cousin of Robert), and ensure Confederate naval and blockade runner passage of the James, Potomac, and into the Chesapeake Bay. The Lairds rams were actually useless in any other naval context or operating area to the CSA. It is also my opinion, that if Charles Adams failed to embargo, that the US would have to build a complete fleet of seagoing Monitors as the two French built Stonewalls and a broadside armored frigate the British built whose name escapes me, Mallory intended, along with the Merrimack, the Lairds rams, and the James River squadron of three Richmond class Confederate built armored rams to use these ships to form a Confederate battle fleet. Just the two Richmonds located at Charleston harbor acting in concert gave Admirals Dupont and Dahlgren fits. Those US admirals had the greatest concentration of ironclads the US assembled at sea (Port Royal, Hilton Head, SC, was their naval base.).              

This is also where the fallacy of this train of thought becomes apparent. If we're talking 1863, it's too late. By the end of that summer the Confederacy had lost all initiative on land and the Mississippi was a Union waterway. The Union was nearly fully mobilized. By the time those ships are at sea, it was already only a matter of time.

I agree with this; though it was closing the Mississippi, Tennessee, and Yazoo Rivers that was the cork and not the sea blockade or the Union land armies. Those armies would not really bite into the CSA until 1864 after they breached the Appalachian shield plateau at Chattanooga.  

It wasn't just the blockade that prevented assistance from overseas. After a certain point, it was clear to the Europeans that backing the CSA would be backing the losing side. Palmerston after all waited to even present the idea of mediation until the results of Lee's invasion of the North bore out. Without a stinging Union defeat, the British believed, the Union wouldn't even agree to talk to the South via the British. After Gettysburg, in British minds such efforts would be fruitless.

With Seward, the snake? Can we be certain about this? After all the secret understanding with Russia was still a very iffy thing for the US as of 1863, and up to this point, the United States had few other friends that it could count on its thumbs. The British were fairly well set as to the military equations. The British were only forestalled from intervention by domestic politics, not calculus as to whether Lee could win or not-or whether a victorious enraged United States would successfully munch on Canada next. Palmerston's government could be voted out and that was what concerned him.  

Frankly, if we're looking for a way for the British to be encouraged to better back the CSA in an alternate history setting, have Charles Foster Adams walk in front of a horse or something. Effective Union diplomacy was a much bigger factor, IMHO.

He was worth the Army of the Potomac and the South Atlantic blockade squadron all by himself and I think the Lincoln government knew it. Hence why there were no Federal seagoing monitors laid down until 1864, and then just enough of them to deal with the two French-built Confederate ironclads. I think if Lincoln had escaped assassination, the US would have then built its ironclad battle fleet courtesy of Mister Lincoln and his pet admiral (who went insane off Charleston, but was left in command!) John Dahlgren. He, Lincoln, hinted at this in his second inaugural address.    

[Guinness]

Damocles: I think we're actually arguing the same thing here:

It wasn't just the blockade that prevented assistance from overseas. After a certain point, it was clear to the Europeans that backing the CSA would be backing the losing side. Palmerston after all waited to even present the idea of mediation until the results of Lee's invasion of the North bore out. Without a stinging Union defeat, the British believed, the Union wouldn't even agree to talk to the South via the British. After Gettysburg, in British minds such efforts would be fruitless.

But despondent after Brooks Conrad's third error yesterday afternoon, I didn't state it very well. What I really should have written was something like this: The Brits were concerned about having to fight the  Union in Canada, and that risk was only worth taking if the the Confederacy could be expected to hold out on its own for an extended period of time (while Britain was able to mobilize forces to North America, etc.). This was where, for the British, Lee's prospects taking the war to the North were key. If he was turned back or destroyed, Britain would run the risk of the South collapsing or capitulating before they were well enough positioned to help without getting their own clocks cleaned up North. It seems Palmerston and team attached at least large symbolic value to Lee's campaign.

[damocles]

Damocles: I think we're actually arguing the same thing here:

It wasn't just the blockade that prevented assistance from overseas. After a certain point, it was clear to the Europeans that backing the CSA would be backing the losing side. Palmerston after all waited to even present the idea of mediation until the results of Lee's invasion of the North bore out. Without a stinging Union defeat, the British believed, the Union wouldn't even agree to talk to the South via the British. After Gettysburg, in British minds such efforts would be fruitless.

But despondent after Brooks Conrad's third error yesterday afternoon, I didn't state it very well. What I really should have written was something like this: The Brits were concerned about having to fight the  Union in Canada, and that risk was only worth taking if the the Confederacy could be expected to hold out on its own for an extended period of time (while Britain was able to mobilize forces to North America, etc.). This was where, for the British, Lee's prospects taking the war to the North were key. If he was turned back or destroyed, Britain would run the risk of the South collapsing or capitulating before they were well enough positioned to help without getting their own clocks cleaned up North. It seems Palmerston and team attached at least large symbolic value to Lee's campaign.

Here again, Charles Adams was worth an entire army. He carefully used a combination of friendly British political and intellectual contacts to stir up anti-slavery and class warfare sentiment in the Western British industrial towns and somehow tapped into the nascent British labor movement's political discontent for the United States' own purposes.

Add to this, that the ruling planter aristocracy that actually ran the Confederate government were totally oblivious to this political force's existence. Mister Adams, as he came from New England, was well aware of the political trouble that this "workers politics" already caused in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, and was thus by experience well suited to seek it out and exploit it as a counter to "King Cotton" when he discovered it existed as a major problem in Britain.

Palmerston was acutely aware of this state of affairs as well. It had been no more than two decades since the last time the British army had to put down labor riots. That had to affect British policy to some extent.         
==============================================================
To be honest, the United States and Britain were mortally afraid of each other, because each recognized that during that decade in history, the one (Britain) could destroy the then national integrity of the other (United States) but only at the cost of a damaged empire (East Canada falling to what was left of the mauled and radicalized rump United States, North India to Russia by extension.).

Given the domestic concerns in both nations, plus the near military certainty of those predicted outcomes, can one understand just how crazy Palmerston might be to push the risks as far as he did?

Anyway, the point, here, is that I think Palmerston, in this case, was well played by Charles Adams, the greatest diplomat the United States ever fielded against an enemy nation.

Yes, I mean enemy nations. Britain and France, the governments, were enemies of the United States, though not the bulk of the British or French people. Call it the ruling aristocrats sticking together with their CSA "brethren".         

D.

[Laertes]

Yes, I mean enemy nations. Britain and France, the governments, were enemies of the United States, though not the bulk of the British or French people. Call it the ruling aristocrats sticking together with their CSA "brethren".         

At the time, most of Parliament were drawn from the Liberal classes. While the very top were largely landed aristocracy, the majority of Britain's government were much more similar to the educated merchantile class that ran the Northern US states, rather than the landed gentry that ran the South.

Also, please remember how abhorrent slavery was to most of Europe. There are scathing comments throughout the 1830-1860 period about Americans being uncivilised savages, simply due to their perpetuation of the "peculiar institution". It wasn't just a labour movement. It was a cultural belief.

[damocles]

Yes, I mean enemy nations. Britain and France, the governments, were enemies of the United States, though not the bulk of the British or French people. Call it the ruling aristocrats sticking together with their CSA "brethren".         

At the time, most of Parliament were drawn from the Liberal classes. While the very top were largely landed aristocracy, the majority of Britain's government were much more similar to the educated merchantile class that ran the Northern US states, rather than the landed gentry that ran the South.

Also, please remember how abhorrent slavery was to most of Europe. There are scathing comments throughout the 1830-1860 period about Americans being uncivilised savages, simply due to their perpetuation of the "peculiar institution". It wasn't just a labour movement. It was a cultural belief.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_John_Temple,_3rd_Viscount_Palmerston

Let me quote:

American Civil War

Lord Palmerston's sympathies in the American Civil War (1861-5) were with the secessionist Southern Confederacy of pro-slavery states. Although a professed opponent of the slave trade and slavery, he also had a deep life-long hostility towards the United States and believed that a dissolution of the Union would weaken the United States (and therefore enhance British power) and that a southern Confederacy "would afford a valuable and extensive market for British manufactures".

At the beginning of the Civil War, Britain had issued a proclamation of neutrality on 13 May 1861. Lord Palmerston decided to recognise the Confederacy as a belligerent and to receive their unofficial representatives (although he decided against recognising the South as a sovereign state because he thought this would be premature). The United States Secretary of State, William Seward, threatened to treat any country which recognised the Southern separatists as a belligerent, as an enemy of the Union and the North. Lord Palmerston ordered that reinforcements be sent to Canada because he was convinced that the North would make peace with the South and then invade Canada. When news reached him of the Confederate victory at Bull Run in July 1861 he was very pleased, although 15 months later he wrote that "the American [Civil] War... has manifestly ceased to have any attainable object as far as the Northerns are concerned, except to get rid of some more thousand troublesome Irish and Germans. It must be owned, however, that the Anglo-Saxon race on both sides have shown courage and endurance highly honourable to their stock". When news came of the Confederate defeat at the Battle of Antietam a week later, this made Palmerston reject Napoleon III of France's offer to recognise the Confederacy. Palmerston continued to reject subsequent attempts by Confederate supporters to persuade him to recognise the South as he thought the military situation did not warrant it. The tide eventually turned in the United States' favour when the Confederacy was defeated in 1865.

After the seizure of the British ship Trent by a United States Navy vessel under Captain Charles Wilkes in November 1861 to prevent two Southern separatist diplomats making their way to Europe to campaign for support for the Confederacy against the United States, Lord Palmerston ordered the Secretary of State for War to send an extra 3,000 troops to Canada and demanded the release of the two diplomats. Lord Palmerston called Wilke's actions "a declared and gross insult" and in a letter to Queen Victoria on 5 December 1861 he said, "Great Britain is in a better state than at any former time to inflict a severe blow upon and to read a lesson to the United States which will not soon be forgotten." In another letter to his Foreign Secretary the next day, he expected there was going to be war between Britain and the North:

   

It is difficult not to come to the conclusion that the rabid hatred of England which animates the exiled Irishmen who direct almost all the Northern newspapers, will so excite the masses as to make it impossible for Lincoln and Seward to grant our demands; and we must therefore look forward to war as the probable result.

However, the United States of America's government decided to hand back the prisoners. Lord Palmerston was convinced that the reinforcements he had sent to Canada had persuaded the North to acquiesce.

Lord Palmerston received a law officer's report he had commissioned on 29 July 1862 which advised him to detain the CSS Alabama because it was being built for the South in the port of Birkenhead and it was therefore a breach of Britain's neutrality. Further, the cotton famine in industrial regions of the North was beginning to bite, just at the time when British popular opinion was starting to harden against the Confederates. The ship had left the port after the order had been sent on the 31 July but departed too soon for it to be detained, and it went on to damage Northern shipping. The United States government accused the British government of complicity in the construction of the ship and, in the so-called Alabama claims, demanded damages from Britain. Lord Palmerston refused to pay damages or to refer the dispute to arbitration. It was not until after his death that his successor (Gladstone) agreed to these demands and paid the United States $15,500,000 in gold as damages.

ENEMY of the United States and as he led, so HIS government followed: Parliament included.

As for Napoleon III, well his actions were even more egregious.

[TexanCowboy]

And....this has anything to do with Nicaragua how? This topic is drifting after it was split from another topic for drifting...

[Desertfox]

There was this little thing called the Mexican American War a previous twenty years before. The Mexicans hated the US. Some of them still do. The Juarez government took Union help because they had no other friends then who could help and "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", prevailed. The Mexican government was/is a practical one given their actual history. They do not love or even respect the US. They just fear it.

We dont hate the US, nor are we afraid of it. We do strongly dislike certain aspects of the US. Note that the Mexican-American War was a Southern War with very strong anti-war sentiments by Northeners. Mexico did not want an independant CSA. And had it not been for the French there might have been more pro-Union support from Mexico.

[damocles]

There was this little thing called the Mexican American War a previous twenty years before. The Mexicans hated the US. Some of them still do. The Juarez government took Union help because they had no other friends then who could help and "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", prevailed. The Mexican government was/is a practical one given their actual history. They do not love or even respect the US. They just fear it.

We don't hate the US, nor are we afraid of it. We do strongly dislike certain aspects of the US. Note that the Mexican-American War was a Southern War with very strong anti-war sentiments by Northeners. Mexico did not want an independant CSA. And had it not been for the French there might have been more pro-Union support from Mexico.

1. What has Australia's attitude to do with Mexico?
2. What does Mexico's attitude have to do with Australia?
3. Do you know what La Raza is?

And....this has anything to do with Nicaragua how? This topic is drifting after it was split from another topic for drifting...

The British in Honduras is what it has to do with British attitudes towards the United States in general. It was the British Royal Navy that caught Mister Walker as he tried to flee Nicaragua for the last time. They turned him over to friendly adjacent Honduras to have him shot by those people for Britain's own convenience sake to protect their own British colonies.

Get this notion through clearly: the United States and Great Britain had clashed repeatedly in a cold war in the Caribbean around Cuba, and during the Mexican American War, and all along the Pacific coast during the 1850s:

http://www.outwestnewspaper.com/pigwars.html      

By 1859 tempers were extremely short on BOTH sides, with a mountain of decades of grievances and grudges dating back to the Revolution that still soured the two nations' relations. This hostile attitude was especially strong in the US and British Royal Navies where old FAMILY scores remained to be settled. You ought to look at the early life stories of David Dixon Porter, and David Farragut-especially the history of the USS Essex.

http://www.1812privateers.org/NAVAL/essex.html

Guess who was Captain David Porter's "adopted" and natural sons?    

Guess who became the premier admirals of the US Navy during the Civil War?

Guess how much they "loved" the British Royal Navy?

Farragut aboard the USS Essex, the American version of events.







And Lincoln was worried about the rather cannon-happy Admiral Charles Wilkes...?