Response to gaveston bay I
lets start from the beginning
Great idea Maria von Trapp and I think it is ‘a very good place to start!’
the limit of the French Army in Mexico was not simply shipping.. The biggest army they ever deployed overseas to this point was Crimea, roughly 300,000 men deployed including naval personnel (and 95,000 dead, overwhelmingly from disease... cholera is nasty stuff).
1) I think you are forgetting that most of the French deployment to the Crimea was in British shipping provided by the British. The French did not have the resources to deploy that many troops.
2) Why on Earth do you think the French would need to provide 300,000 troops to fight the Union? Are you still thinking of my reducto ad absurdum argument numbers as realistic projections? What would they do with that many of them? All they would need is the 3,000 troops already in the Pacific to occupy Drum barracks and take Fort Yuma – giving the Confederates the south west, 5,000 – 10,000 troops as an amphibious threat off of the east coast of the Union, maybe 20-30,000 troops, some launches and floating batteries to support a Confederate thurst up the Mississippi, a few thousand to secure the French West Indies and another few thousand to hold Vera Cruz. So 50,000 tops, job done, Bob is mon Oncle. An easier deployment than OTL.
3) You will note that as a Trent outrage war will start between 23rd Dec and 28th Jan (between the fastest negative response to the British demands and the slowest British reply to an ambiguous Union response). Thus the French will not have committed themselves in Mexico before they become involved in the war against the Union over the Trent outrage. They can always go back to Mexico after they have cut a deal with the Confederates to isolate the Juaristas from Union support.
4) I do appreciate your bringing up the Crimean war again. It is very instructive for the uninformed reader and the points below cannot be repeated often enough. In many respects the Crimean war is an excellent model for an Anglo-Union war over the Trent outrage. First, the Royal Navy fought all over the world wherever there was an opportunity to attack the Russian Empire. Second, the abrupt end of the Baltic grain trade as a result of the war affected neither British policy nor the diet of the British chap in the street. Third, the Imperial Russian Navy was almost completely destroyed in the conflict. The British, with some help from their allies, defeated and humiliated the Russian Empire. Lastly, the economy of the Russian Empire and its satellite states was shattered in the war and took many years to recover. This is of course almost exactly what would happen to the Union if they attempted to fight the British, only the outcome would be even worse for the Union as they would probably lose considerable territory to the Confederacy too. Something which thankfully the poor Russians did not have to deal with.
In Mexico they sent 70,000. So lets say you are right, and they can afford to send more even though they have to monitor events in Italy and Germany. At most figure 200,000 men (assuming the other 100,000 sent to Crimea were replacements). That does give the French, excluding naval personnel, about a field army in size.
Once again you are responding to a reducto ad absurdum argument as if it were a serious proposition. I have no idea why you are doing this?
The question is when does it [the French??] get to North America? Presumably the British are using their merchant marine and naval transports to move their troops and supplies as the priority, and the two powers are hardly close allies, even (or perhaps because) of Crimea. My guess is that it arrives substantially later than the British Army.. at best.
I fear your guess is almost certainly wrong as it assume that the vast and competent British merchant marine cannot transport 50,000+ British regulars to eastern continental BNA whilst transporting a similar number of French to the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern coast of the Union. Of course it can do both simultaneously! So realistically the French can commit to war with the Union over their outrages against neutral shipping (in OTL they made clear through diplomatic channels they were ready to do this) at the close of Dec. or beginning of Jan.. Then the first wave of troops will be on the way three weeks later or less (time to charter and load based on the British response in OTL) and in the Gulf in 6-8 weeks later at most. If they are going to the French fleet off the east coast of the Union then just 2-3 weeks later.
Where does it go? It seems unlikely to head for Mexico and I can't imagine the British want a French Army anywhere near Quebec, so perhaps Louisiana or somewhere else (Charleston the other likely port, perhaps Mobile or Wilmington)
You are correct about this. The British will not want the French in Canada East. Well done! However, there is no reason to send the French to Mobile, Charleston or Wilmington where they can do nothing useful. The places to send them I have indicated below.
Which means it has establish and maintain a lengthy and large line of communications home to keep it fed, as the South can barely feeds its own armies. This will be very expensive, as even if just the French merchant marine is used there are the costs of chartering ships, the opportunity costs lost as merchant shipping is taken out of trade etc. Sure they could charter British ships but then French money is going to the British which will upset the balance of payments rather impressively.
I find the reasoning here rather strange. In the first place even in the OTL Mexican adventure the French managed to feed the troops they sent to Vera Cruz and the interior. In that scenario they could not charter British merchant ships. In this scenario the French troops are at various places and could be supplied thus.
• In the south west of the Union they can be fed from British occupied California or Pacific Mexico.
• In New Orleans or up river they can be fed locally or from Spanish Cuba or the British West Indies primarily Jamaica. Do remember that the problems with food distribution that the Confederacy had did not occur until late in the American Civil War and were exacerbated by large parts of that nation being occupied by Union armies. In Spring/Summer 1862 with the British and French fighting the Union none of that will happen.
• Furthermore in this scenario the Confederate armies should all be much better fed than in OTL not least because the blockade will be ended within a week or so of the start of hostilities thus allowing the Confederacy can resume coastal transport of supplies.
• The troops in the French West Indies would be fed locally.
• Only the troops off the east coast need to be supplied by the RN and those rations would probably come from the Maritimes.
A soldier needs 3 lbs of food a day, a draft animal between 8-16 pounds (varies on size of animal), and the average field army has about 1 animal per 3 men in this century (and well into World War 2 for that matter), so you do the math, ...
That is very interesting. It sounds like the Union is going to have real trouble feeding and equipping the huge number of troops TFSmith121 thinks are going to deploy to the northern borders. I would value your comments on how you propose to feed these gallant Union troops in the far north with only the iced-up roads and the inadequate and inadequately connected Union railway network to supply them at the beginning of the war? You are also no doubt aware that the Canadas exported large numbers of horses to the Union army in OTL. The Union army used vast number of them, in part because even by the standards of contemporary observers they used them harshly and the horses did not last long but also simply because the need was vast. In this scenario when the Union is fighting not just the CSA but the British and probably the French the Union army will have a significant shortage of horses, whilst there will be plenty for the British to buy. How do you think this shortage of horses in the Union army will affect rations for the brave Union soldiers?
I observe the British can be fed locally from food produced in the Province of Canada or the Maritimes. Most of these rations can be moved around on the Grand Trunk and subsidiary railways and would only need to go a short distance by cart/sledge/traction engine road train.
... but the 180,000 men and 60,000 animals works out to a lot of pounds per day doesn't it?
No not really, not compared with the Union army at this time. The poor Union army has to feed roughly three times that many troops and horses (well actually perhaps not that many horses as they have to deal with a shortage).
as to the point of your post...the reducto ad absurdum style of debate generally makes the user look more foolish then his target. There is no reason to respect such an argument and I do not. Frankly it comes across as trolling to me.
Well I am astonished, reducto ad absurdum arguments have been part of the armoury of Western philosophy from classical times all the way up to Russell and beyond and yet to you they come across as trolling? You consider the arguments of Abelard, Kant and St Thomas Aquinas based on the technique are ‘foolishness’? I think that in taking up the position you do, you do yourself no favours in wanting to be accepted as a serious poster.
In an attempt to clarify your position on the original question, let me ask you the following question ‘Are you suggesting that TFSmith in comparing 10% of the population of the Union with 10% of the population of BNA as a relative measure of the strength of the opposing forces is more or less appropriate that comparing 10% of the Union population with 10% of the population of the total opposing forces?’ Perhaps you would like to suggest an alternative comparison
as to the Southern Labor force benefiting from slavery.. it depends. A lot actually. As the Union Armies moved into the South that slave labor force voted with their feet in staggering numbers, markedly hurting the Southern agricultural economy.
Why don’t you, as you have suggested to me on a number of occasions, ‘do the maths’? It is easy enough and you can then post it for everyone to see. If you don’t come to the same conclusions as I then I shall be very surprised. I note that a Trent outrage war would start in Dec 61/Jan 62 and probably be over by the end of 1862. Conditions in the Confederacy would be improving for all of that time with no blockade and a Union that probably could not progress a significant offensive. Your comments on the slave labour force are therefore irrelevant, they are only relevant to the late war in OTL not 1862 in TTL. In TTL the slaves have neither the opportunity nor the motivation to run away in significant numbers. Furthermore even in the historical late war I can find no significant evidence that slaves ran away in anything like ‘staggering numbers’ as you suggest. Please provide citations to source quantifying ‘staggering numbers’ as I have never seen any and I am eager to learn more of this if you are correct.
Indeed on many occasions Southern slave owners were unwilling to even loan out their slaves for vital projects...like digging fortifications. The Civil War is full of examples.
To the best of my knowledge this is true. However it was never all of the slave owners or even, again to the best of my knowledge, most of the slave owners, It is also irrelevant to the argument I was making. In fact if the slave owners keep the slaves focused on private wealth creation rather than military matters then they make a greater contribution to the labour pool.
No Civil War history that I have seen, and I have read dozens over the 45 years I have been reading them, as ever indicated that at any point the North faced a serious labor problem, particularly as immigrant its were still flooding in during the entire war. While a British naval blockade would temporarily end that, there are plenty of women in the American labor force (just as in English factories) and at worst the factories have to pay more money in wages.
Simply because you have not read of it does not mean it was not the case. Once again I simply suggest you ‘do the math’ and see what the result is and post your results. Note that you can even include the impact of migrants and women in the labour pool if you want. Although, as you say, the British blockade will stop the migrants and you don’t really get large numbers of (free white) women in the work force until the 1880s. Before that date I suspect it would be quite hard to get women to replace men in the workforce as a result of wartime shortages.
as to grain... there are readily available statistics on the world grain market in the 1860s.. you should look at them closely. Half of all grain exported (or more depending on year) is from the United States in the 1860s. Block that grain and prices will climb markedly and quickly. But we have had this discussion before. You assertion simply pretends that this discussion hasn't been gone over. While famine will not loom in Europe, prices will climb very quickly, and this is not going to make the British government popular at home or in Europe. Particularly if the Anglo-French armies buy it by the thousands of tons to feed their armies and thus cause the price to climb further.
Why do you think I would not have looked at the statistics for grain imports and exports from Britain, imports and exports from the USA and the Union during the war and equally importantly re-exports from Britain? How do you think I am in a position to say the things I have been saying if I were not familiar with the available historical material? For your information I am also aware of the annual change in the price of bread in Britain and the price of a hundred weight of cereals of various type at the various local markets in Britain. All of this material is in the British statistical abstracts for this period or the newer American abstracts which became available some years later. Some is available from the Institute of social history. Other material is available in domestic histories.
The fact of the matter is the Union grain merchants did exactly the wrong thing from the strategic point of view of the Union by selling all of the grain they could not sell south in 1861 internationally thus producing a glut. Neither the British nor anyone else in Europe is going to starve as a result of a Trent outrage war. Especially as the British do not eat a lot of wheat and have access to other grains, potatoes and rice. It is a small proportion of the total carbohydrate in the British diet.
It is also worth mentioning that a Trent outrage war will start in Jan 1862 and the Union’s 1861 harvest will already have been sold and exported between Sept and Nov./Dec.. The 1862 harvest won’t be needed until Sept. 1862 at the earliest. Given that Lincoln is not a fool (unlike certain members of his cabinet) the most likely conclusion of a Trent outrage war will be that the Union surrenders to/comes to terms with the British within 6 months. In which case, Union grain is a complete irrelevance. Only if the Union cabinet are all very silly indeed and behave like Worzle Gummige with his turnip head on does the Union fight on much beyond the 1862 harvest.
The British don’t have to blockade wheat if they don’t want to. It is up to them what they decide is contraband of war. They can have it transported in neutral ships or if they occupy some of the New England ports they can license Union ships to trade with the home islands. On top of all this there will be smuggling of wheat across the upper lakes and possibly Lake Ontario as the Union farmers won’t be able to afford to do anything else.
Moving supplies ... there are plenty of sources that show that after about 250 miles, a horse drawn wagon team will eat more than they carry. Thus the value of railways and internal waterways. There is exactly one railroad going into the United States from Canada. So assuming the British need all the rail they can get to support their own forces, that means the French are now relying on the terribly overburdened Confederate railways which are barely holding together even in 1861 (as they imported their rolling stock and rails primarily from the North)
There are several railways going from the Union into Canada. What I think you are saying is there is only one railway that the British could capture and hold in order to get troops from Halifax to the Grand Trunk railway in the Canadas. This is true, however the British would only need it until the thaw of the St Lawrence in March/April (say a bit over three months from the start of hostilities). Once the St Lawrence is thawed the British can run supplies all the way up to the Niagara peninsula by water. The Union would of course have no way of securing the St Lawrence and Lake Ontario against a British fleet after the thaw and after that the railway becomes less important.
Actually, if the French are on the Mississippi and in the south west (Fort Yuma) they will be supplied by river boat and coastal steamer + river boat respectively. No trains needed.
Where exactly do you think the British will need to send supplies 250 miles by horse and cart without any fodder on the way side?
Having said all of that there is the question of what the British do for the three months between the start of hostilities and the thaw? The problem here though is not moving rations about but about how to move troops, guns and ammunition from Halifax to the Province of Canada? They have two ways of doing this:-
1) They can use the ice road they used historically. Troops would be taken to St John (NB) by boat. Then the troops would be taken by sleigh from St John (NB) to Rivière du Loup and the Great Trunk railway. The sleigh trip would take 10 days at a rate of 160 men and several tons of equipment per day. Now we should remember that they did not open this route up until the Trent Affair had already been decided and the Union had yielded to British demands. Consequently the British army ran it as a relaxed training exercise. In a real war situation they would have done things differently. As a minimum they would have got the trains running on the line to Canterbury taking about three days off the trip. They would use the engineers and locals to improve the route and they would import standing engines to help move the heavy artillery up the hills. They might even bring in road traction engines to drag the larger pieces (as they did in the Crimean war).
Curiously enough it was not the sleigh section that was the rate determining step it was the trains on the Grand Trunk. In a war situation the army would both take priority and in all probability take over the running of the railway.
2) The Royal Navy can steam into Portland Maine and take over the town which was the Atlantic terminus of the Grand Trunk and take over the railway north. The forts defending the town are either under construction or obsolete and empty of guns and garrison so they present no problem. The difficulty with this approach is that a large number of troops will be needed to defend the railway from sabotage and counter attack. This almost forces the Royal Navy to raid the coastal rail way at several points and render it unusable by the Union.
Alternatively the British can use all or most of the troops available at Halifax aggressively rather than defensively and go on the offensive.
As to getting grain from the Americans... sure, how is it getting to Canada exactly? By wagon? Certainly not by rail and it won't be via the Great Lakes either, as there is no way, short of ASB assumptions, that the British will ever control the Great Lakes in any war after 1812 (and they lost them during that one too).
If you want to I shall be happy to review any arguments you wish to make on why you think the British will not be able to control the great lakes but in respect of Lake Ontairo and Lac Champlain you will be struggling.
So:-
1) Yes Union farmers/lake traders would smuggle grain across the lakes. Working on the assumption that the British would control Lake Ontario and the Union the Upper Lakes the most likely lake for smuggling would be Lake Erie. Grain is fairly easily transported from the north eastern shore of the lake to Canada West with the railways and Lake Ontario as a means of moving it to export.
2) Based on previous behaviours of poor farmers in the anti-bellum USA if they cannot sell their crops then they will burn their farms and move over the frontier to make another farm where they don’t need to pay taxes and will not be conscripted.
3) The British have three newish and three oldish mail ships on Lake Ontario that were built to be used as warships should the need arise. There are also a large number of guns at Kingston to arm these ships and many others. There are also several screw merchant ships that could be converted to warships. The Union had a far larger merchant fleet on Lake Ontario and had far more screw ships that could be converted to warships than the Canadians. However the Union had an acute shortage of canon even in OTL. In a Trent outrage war where the Union needs to find several thousand guns for the coastal defence forts the Union lake commanders will find it very difficult to find guns for their ad hoc lake navy. However, all of this ad hoc preparation becomes insignificant about a week after the thaw when the Royal Navy comes barrelling up the St Lawrence like the wrath of God. Big frigates can reach Quebec City, large sloops of war can reach Montreal and smaller vessels including sloops, gunvessels, gunboats and floating batteries can reach Lake Ontario. They can do this even if the Union blow-up all of the locks on the St Lawrence as most of the ships have large steam engines and the ones with smaller engines can be towed by the big sidewheel RN vessels. There is nothing the Union can do to defend Lake Ontario against this force.
4) The RN may or may not be able to reach Lake Erie. If they can reach it they can control it. It all depends on who holds the Welland canals or if the Union can destroy the lock system. It should be noted however that the British appear to have considered having lock gates built in Britain and transported to Lake Ontario against this possibility.
5) It is most unlikely that the British would wish to passage Detroit in order to control the upper lakes as it would be a terrible cost for a small gain.
I would also remind you that like the Crimea and many other 19th Century wars the war of 1812 was a British victory.
in short, your argument deserves to be dismissed as absurd
One point:-
It may well be that my argument should be dismissed as absurd but:
a. I am not clear what argument in particular you are talking about?
b. Nothing I can see of what you have written above has in any way shown any of my arguments to be absurd. Please explain what you think you have demonstrated is absurd?
