Good update. I'm really glad to see Black troops aren't taking this betrayal lying down. People tend to forget how much military service radicalized the Black soldiers. "Apostles of freedom," they were called, and the OTL defeated Southerners always complained very bitterly against them. That's why one of their first demands, which the bastard Andrew Johnson conceded quickly, was for Black regiments to be retired and disbanded. Hopefully they get to kill many slavers here. Nonetheless, I'm afraid for them too - could we see Confederate counter-raids? Even McClellan surely isn't cowardly and racist enough to accept Confederates coming North to kidnap Black people.
Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond
- Thread starter EnglishCanuck
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I feel that with the retainment of New Orleans, in addition to the British shattering of the nascent Northern blockade at the Florida Keys, in the spring of 1862, that the city would have been selected to host the Government's permanent "National Armory" and "Central Laboratory" instead of Macon, Ga., although both cities do possess their respective advantages for the project.
New Orleans' chief advantages include its direct sea access permitting the undemanding importation of heavy machinery, chemicals and lead, central geographic position relative to the Confederacy as a whole, its attractiveness to potential European workmen, and existing industrial establishment on par with that of Richmond in the East, including the brickyard of St. Tammany Parish (the fire-proof bricks manufactured here would be of great value to an ammunition plant!). Macon, meanwhile, enjoyed an inland location in the "strategic depths" of Georgia free from enemy naval attack and other such raids, the more mature and dense rail communications of the Southeast (the post-Crimea Southwestern rail boom was strangled in 1861), and access to a "fertile corn region" permitting "cheap living for operatives". Real-estate was also superior here. These facilities were designed to be some of the largest, most prolific, and sophisticated, in regard to both technology and management, government-owned factories in the world, after all, requiring much space.
These are, however, merely thoughts.
New Orleans' chief advantages include its direct sea access permitting the undemanding importation of heavy machinery, chemicals and lead, central geographic position relative to the Confederacy as a whole, its attractiveness to potential European workmen, and existing industrial establishment on par with that of Richmond in the East, including the brickyard of St. Tammany Parish (the fire-proof bricks manufactured here would be of great value to an ammunition plant!). Macon, meanwhile, enjoyed an inland location in the "strategic depths" of Georgia free from enemy naval attack and other such raids, the more mature and dense rail communications of the Southeast (the post-Crimea Southwestern rail boom was strangled in 1861), and access to a "fertile corn region" permitting "cheap living for operatives". Real-estate was also superior here. These facilities were designed to be some of the largest, most prolific, and sophisticated, in regard to both technology and management, government-owned factories in the world, after all, requiring much space.
These are, however, merely thoughts.
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The Confederacy was essentially a collection of aristocrats whose only long-term political objective was war supremacy. It would be a miracle if they have an actual functioning country by the start of the XX Century. Likely, it's going to result in a heavily militarized country with a nonfunctional democracy that would make Latin American countries look utopian and an economy in constant stagnation.
Honestly, I hope the USA has a rematch someday. These assholes deserve to be sent back to reality eventually.
You know, with all these arguments and discussions about this timeline, I can't help but think back to Harry Turtledove's TL191 series and how outdated it was (or is 'historically inaccurate' a more appropriate term?) when compared with timelines such as this, 'Cinco de Mayo' and its sequel, and 'Nothing For Which to Apologize'.
A New Orleans C.S. armory/ordnance plant might be at the center of any Cuba intrigue to supply insurgents with Enfield-pattern weaponry. It will be remembered that the power of the sugar planter has not been broken, and gangs abound. It might produce internal conflict/scandal between an excitable Delta elite and the Richmond bureaucracy.
When I first got into Alternative History, I loved How Few Remain and I really enjoyed a lot of the Great War series, but Turtledove’s history mirrored IRL way to much especially with the massive changes the creation of the Confederacy would herald. I also despise the Second Great War Series but that might just be me
I think Turtledove's TL-191 is a great way to get into ACW alternate history. Since it does mirror OTL so much, it's easier to follow along when you're just starting to dip your toes into althist. I still have a real nostalgic love for the series, but nowadays it's really easy to see the flaws and I doubt I'd love it as much if I was to read for the 1st time now.
I really feel the same way, I can still read and enjoy the series until Breakthroughs but the interwar period and the Second Great War periods I just can’t get into and enjoy anymore
While there's definitely men in his administration who would love to see the black soldiers "put in their place" (Pendleton) McClellan himself thinks way too highly of both his own image and the implications for national sovereignty and security. He would not be keen on either occurrence. Though in Wrapped in Flames McClellan really has nerve to think black soldiers can't fight after they saved the fortifications at Fort Lincoln in 1863 protecting Washington from Lee's assault.
The black soldiers themselves will largely be conducting cross border raids, but slipping deeper into the Confederacy. At some point both nations are going to work to police the problem, the Confederacy with bullets, but the Union largely with court orders and paper. The only real limiting factor on the raids I'm afraid is going to be how long the men willing to fight last.
Unfortunately, they very much can have a functional country since they built it from the bastardized bones of the US ones. So they all have an institutional memory of the US, how that system worked and was supposed to work, and a shared interest in maintaining both their wealth and white supremacy, which is a witches brew of ideas and policy which can keep a majority white state imposing its will on a minority even if its one that compromises 1/3 of the population! However, you do hit the nail on the head that the Confederacy, while a republic, is not necessarily a democracy. The states that seceded were ones that still did not maintain universal manhood suffrage, and they often tied voting rights to property qualifications. Indeed the Confederacy is very unlikely to pass any sort of guarantee for even white voters. South Carolina least of all.
The country has a very steep slope it can start sliding down if its not managed correctly. Though that is something we shall see after the so-called Three Good Presidents
That said, I genuinely do find the ways this corrupted vision of the United States they believed in could end up quite fascinating. Very anti "liberty for all" and very much "liberty for some, but the vote is also negotiable."Someone will end up saying "sic semper tyrannis" indeed.
These are excellent points! I think New Orleans (especially one which has been undisturbed by the war) was destined to be one of the most important cities in any independent Confederacy (besides Richmond) due to its commercial and potential industrial value. Access to the sea, the ease of transport up the Mississippi, and these other advantages (the brickyard I was unaware of!) would be a godsend to the Confederate military industry.
Macon might still grow, but I can certainly see rival arms manufacturers agitating for each site. The government in Richmond would have to make the call. However, I can also see the Fire Eaters and imperialists leaning towards New Orleans because they were fixated on obtaining Cuba for the Confederacy, and a base at New Orleans to launch an invasion from makes sense. Each have their virtues.
Unfortunately, the Confederacy would probably never agree to that. They're free to build whatever fortifications they like, while simply not sending their own warships up into the headwaters of the Mississippi, while the United States has agreed to the same.
There is a good window of time where British investors might see owning railroad bonds in the Confederacy as a surer bet compared to the United States whom they may have a war scare with, which would ruin railroad securities. In this war quite a few British investors in railroads got burned because their assets were either deflated from the war, or in some cases taken directly by the government for use without compensation to investors, and in a few cases straight up torched by invading armies. That's going to have a bit of a deflationary effect on foreign (but especially British) investment for the immediate future, especially when it comes to the continental railroad projects in America.
There's room to expand into Southern markets though, as there's men who really did want to expand the Southern railroads as well. The South will be busy building upon itself that I can assure you.
I think "outdated" is the better term. He wasn't necessarily historically inaccurate, but he leaned heavily on history to get his narrative going. The Second Mexican War was always IMO a bit of a stretch. But I do think that TL's like Cinco de Mayo, Nothing for Which to Apologize, A Glorious Union and Until Every Drop of Blood hew closer to a more realistic depiction of alternate civil wars. Basically, Turtledove was writing a very interesting narrative which he had themes he wanted to touch on and imagine. These stories are all taking broad history "what ifs" and running with them, trying to see how the history might have developed.
Even a minority white state can impose its will on the majority with control of the institutions. Apartheid, only 17%-13%...
Honestly I am basing some later actions by the Confederacy on what Apartheid did. Though with a different context.
Also, Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to 2024, and soon to the end of the year 1865! Chapter 118 is incoming this weekend, then we will explore the rest of the world in 1865, as well as I will take any requests on areas people would like explored in more depth before I kick off 1866 officially!
I do wonder how the (cotton) planter fixation on "direct trade", stimulated by the shadowy figure of consul Charles Goethe Baylor, with Continental Europe, rather than with middlemen in hostile, abolitionist "Old and New England", would fare in an independent Confederacy, especially considering Trenholm's earlier boast ("We have merchants along the whole North Sea coast and agents operating from Havana to Constantinople. Ships waving the Confederate flag can be found the world over now, in greater abundance than those flying the flag of the United States!"). The Cotton Planters Convention of Georgia, presided over by Howell Cobb, achieved some antebellum success in appointing agents and fostering mercantile and financial connections in Western Europe before secession, with its activity culminating in a "magnificent three-week fair at Macon in December, 1860, to which goods were shipped for display and sale from Belgium, Holland, Germany, France, and Russia." It was here also that the secessionist Dr. Joseph Jones of Augusta gave an address ("Agricultural Resources of Georgia") to the Convention outlining the South's ruinous "economic vassalage" to the North, and boasting in conclusion that "GEORGIA has been and will ever continue to be, if she improves aright the blessings of Providence, the EMPIRE STATE of the SOUTH--Georgia is not only the Empire State of the South, but she has the resources and the power to maintain her independence with or without the South, and to form by herself an EMPIRE."
Indeed, I would argue it was the intrepid spirit of Georgia's entrepreneurs which did much to enable secession in the first place! From @David T (RIP): '...things looked bleak for the South Carolina ultras. But then came the "incredible coincidence" I described at http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/8b15a54b3f1a3dbd "A railroad had just been completed linking Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C. As the South Carolina legislature deliberated, leading citizens of the two cities took part in a celebration. The Georgians, carried away by the emotion of the moment, pledged their state's support for secession. Suddenly convinced that other states would follow, the legislature moved the secession convention up to December. The 'coincidence,' Freehling argues, changed history. Had South Carolina not taken this step, Unionists might have prevailed throughout the South."'
Also established in 1861 was the Atlanta-based "Manufacturing and Direct Trade Association of the Confederate States", with William Gregg of Graniteville, SC., fame as president, but the War seems to have vastly-limited its activity. Neither did the proposed "Iron-Masters' Convention" occur in 1863, especially considering competition between firms for government patronage, particularly in East Tennessee.
I have some notion of C.S. railroad development and an "Agency" designed to promote it financially with European capitalists and with planter savings, but I'd imagine the most significant road-building would occur in Central Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and Arizona, with the ultimate intent of hauling the "great staple" to Guaymas. It was the opinion of some far-sighted men in the South, at least not those engaged in the careworn, fluctuating, competitive production of it, that China and India would become the chief consumers of raw cotton in the twentieth-century.
Indeed, I would argue it was the intrepid spirit of Georgia's entrepreneurs which did much to enable secession in the first place! From @David T (RIP): '...things looked bleak for the South Carolina ultras. But then came the "incredible coincidence" I described at http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/8b15a54b3f1a3dbd "A railroad had just been completed linking Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C. As the South Carolina legislature deliberated, leading citizens of the two cities took part in a celebration. The Georgians, carried away by the emotion of the moment, pledged their state's support for secession. Suddenly convinced that other states would follow, the legislature moved the secession convention up to December. The 'coincidence,' Freehling argues, changed history. Had South Carolina not taken this step, Unionists might have prevailed throughout the South."'
Also established in 1861 was the Atlanta-based "Manufacturing and Direct Trade Association of the Confederate States", with William Gregg of Graniteville, SC., fame as president, but the War seems to have vastly-limited its activity. Neither did the proposed "Iron-Masters' Convention" occur in 1863, especially considering competition between firms for government patronage, particularly in East Tennessee.
I have some notion of C.S. railroad development and an "Agency" designed to promote it financially with European capitalists and with planter savings, but I'd imagine the most significant road-building would occur in Central Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and Arizona, with the ultimate intent of hauling the "great staple" to Guaymas. It was the opinion of some far-sighted men in the South, at least not those engaged in the careworn, fluctuating, competitive production of it, that China and India would become the chief consumers of raw cotton in the twentieth-century.
Groups like the Georgia entrepreneurs are, essentially, the future of the Confederate economy. The Confederacy very much was an export based state, so the maintenance of overseas mercantile connections will be paramount to the maintenance of the economy going forward. Cotton, tobacco, rice and eventually sugar, are going to be the cornerstone of the Confederate economy. In exchange they'll be getting access to cheaper European manufactured goods and finished products. Part of that is an opening of the door to European markets that was simply not possible in the US (even with moderate tariffs post-war, the Confederacy has a way lower import cost than the US) which will make them the export market of choice for cheaper European goods. That, naturally, is going to have a negative impact on the US economy.
So too will the South's desire to import European rail iron and locomotives. During the war much of the existing railroad infrastructure was destroyed in the Upper South, but unlike OTL they didn't have to cannibalize their existing railroads to keep them going and could import rail iron, engines and other stock or machinery from Europe. This trend will continue, which won't be too bad for American rail industry in the long run because they're about to be building across the continent to the Pacific.
The notion that the Confederacy would want an agency (of what sort I'm not 100% sure yet) to promote more integration or investment from European economies is absolutely on point. I'm reading more into that at the moment, but efforts by economists from the Confederacy to better integrate with the European market are going to be driving forces in the post-war economic world.
Will the confederacy attempt to atract european immigrants ?