Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

A lot of people were placing bets during the Civil War; Russia, Spain, France, England, whichever European nation had a Navy and knew that America existed...

I mean we had industry, agriculture, and resources. Lumber, tobacco, furs, cotton, coal, etc were all pretty big back then and America had all of them. The Civil War gave certain countries the ability to try to get in with the new guy and either cut some sweet deals or invade after America had weakened itself enough.

As the story goes, the South burned, the Union won, Lincoln tried to start fixing stuff up, Lincoln was shot in the head, people who didn't like the South took over, and Europe was stuck stroking their bushy mustaches in contempt while probably saying something like "Gads! Foiled again!" in a dastardly voice.

The US basically wiped out the Native Americans, and settled the land wholesale. I used subjucate to mean "rule over," much like the most colonies were by European powers (and Japan).

So, while Britain held India, it had to not only defend it from other great powers, but had to deal with internal threats. Compare that to the American West, which the US was going to hold much easier.

Yeah, if you really want to see how badly the natives got screwed look at Andrew "I don't give a feth" Jackson. They guy was nuts and really a dick.

halonachos wrote:Yeah, if you really want to see how badly the natives got screwed look at Andrew "I don't give a feth" Jackson. They guy was nuts and really a dick.

He's dreamy. He also stopped that whole SOuth seceding thing in his term but threatening to hang secess politicians. Amazingly they didn't start any gak with the hero of New Orleans.

Polonius wrote:The US basically wiped out the Native Americans, and settled the land wholesale. I used subjucate to mean "rule over," much like the most colonies were by European powers (and Japan).

So, while Britain held India, it had to not only defend it from other great powers, but had to deal with internal threats. Compare that to the American West, which the US was going to hold much easier.

So the morale of the story is don't try to conquer and assimilate, just Genocide 'em?

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Polonius wrote:The US basically wiped out the Native Americans, and settled the land wholesale. I used subjucate to mean "rule over," much like the most colonies were by European powers (and Japan).

So, while Britain held India, it had to not only defend it from other great powers, but had to deal with internal threats. Compare that to the American West, which the US was going to hold much easier.

So the morale of the story is don't try to conquer and assimilate, just Genocide 'em?

er uh well er...look over there! (runs off)

The point I was making is that while the British Empire 1860 controlled more land area and more people than the USA, the US was far more secure in holding that territory and population.

We also had emptry territory to expand into.

All of this would make them at least passively supportive of the South during the Civil War, as it would weaken a potential rival.

Being from the South and having traveled over the entirety of the United States I can give you the one and only reason the Civil War was fought...

Sweet Tea

IMO the most fascinating thing about the Civil War is how incredibly incompetent McClellan was. How do you manage to start a campaign, soundly win EVERY SINGLE tactical engagement, not suffer any large losses or have any additional large force coming to disrupt the situation, but end up retreating in defeat? Put a competent general in his place, and you end up with the war ending years earlier!

Manstein wrote:If you think it is BS, take it up with renowned Civil War historian and Professor at Yale University, David Blight. Here is his short bio at Yale's website:

He's not here to take it up with, and you haven't actually cited anything from him, just linked to a long series of lectures that may possibly comment on it somewhere. Exactly which lecture and at what time does he talk about Britain's plan to invade the union? The trick is, there's no doubt that the UK moved a lot of troops to Canada, anyone can find 47,315 cites for that. What you have to actually show to support your claim is historians saying that they were an offensive force and that the UK had serious intention of invading the Union, which needs more than just troop movements, and I doubt that David Blight is saying that (and am not going to watch hours of lecture to find out, tell us exactly where to look if he does say it).

Everything I've ever seen on British thoughts about tangling with the union at the time was that they really didn't want a massive land war. The British Navy would have no problem sweeping the seas of American ships, but by the end of the war the Union army (just in North America) was massively larger than the entire British army, which couldn't all focus on North America anyway, and the only other country in the area that might help (Mexico) had been utterly smashed by the US less than two decades before. That lends a lot of credence to the idea that they were a defensive force, to make sure that the union didn't decide to just snap up Canada.

You can't just say something, name a professor, and declare yourself winner.

Typeline wrote:Being from the South and having traveled over the entirety of the United States I can give you the one and only reason the Civil War was fought...

Sweet Tea

And worth it too!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would not sit in that firm belief the British navy could have slammed the Union navy. We'd moved ahead a new generation technoclogically with steam powered, turrented iron clads. I don't think the British Navy had anything like that.

The British navy would have played hell with our shipping, but then so would we with theirs. They could try to blockade ports, but the Merrimack showed the difficulties in blockading a port with wooden ships.

It shows how expensive/stupid a war would have been, for so little gain.

Unless we did in fact invade Canada. Mmm all your maples syrups are belong to us!

I do think any British troop movements in Canada were probably more defensive in nature. You guys do have a habit of trying to steal our maple syrup and beavers.

Frazzled wrote:

Typeline wrote:Being from the South and having traveled over the entirety of the United States I can give you the one and only reason the Civil War was fought...

Sweet Tea

And worth it too!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would not sit in that firm belief the British navy could have slammed the Union navy. We'd moved ahead a new generation technoclogically with steam powered, turrented iron clads. I don't think the British Navy had anything like that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warrior_(1860)

Polonius wrote:The British navy would have played hell with our shipping, but then so would we with theirs. They could try to blockade ports, but the Merrimack showed the difficulties in blockading a port with wooden ships.

The US had less chance of beating the Royal Navy then than the Royal Navy has of beating the US Navy today, and that's really no chance at all. US ironclads couldn't really touch British shipping, because they were coastal ships - they couldn't do anything more than mess around in the West Indes, which wasn't vital to the UK. Britain and France had been building ironclads before the Union and Confederacy started, had more and better of them, and could have bought more from other European ports if they really needed to. If the Royal Navy did somehow run into any problems fighting the US navy, then the British would turn all of their effort to rectifying it immediately, because without naval superiority Britain would simply cease to be an effective power.

If you look at Killkrazy's link, you'll see that the British and French started competing in building ironclads back in 1858.

Any historian can propose a position and present evidence to support it. It doesn't make him right. I find the idea of any historian realistically entertaining the idea of British involvement post-Emancipation Proclamation to be evidence of bad history more than good argument making.

The Civil War demonstrated rather ideally the role of nation and ideology in coming modern warfare. It's unlikely Britain would become involved following the Proclamation because it would be hard for a nation that abolished slavery to take a position that protected it. In this case they probably couldn't have sold the position to the population. Hell, the South couldn't sell that position. They specifically avoided the subject and touted the states rights issue during the war because asking foreign powers for help in protecting slavery wasn't going to fly.

BearersOfSalvation wrote:IMO the most fascinating thing about the Civil War is how incredibly incompetent McClellan was. How do you manage to start a campaign, soundly win EVERY SINGLE tactical engagement, not suffer any large losses or have any additional large force coming to disrupt the situation, but end up retreating in defeat? Put a competent general in his place, and you end up with the war ending years earlier!

Manstein wrote:If you think it is BS, take it up with renowned Civil War historian and Professor at Yale University, David Blight. Here is his short bio at Yale's website:

He's not here to take it up with, and you haven't actually cited anything from him, just linked to a long series of lectures that may possibly comment on it somewhere. Exactly which lecture and at what time does he talk about Britain's plan to invade the union? The trick is, there's no doubt that the UK moved a lot of troops to Canada, anyone can find 47,315 cites for that. What you have to actually show to support your claim is historians saying that they were an offensive force and that the UK had serious intention of invading the Union, which needs more than just troop movements, and I doubt that David Blight is saying that (and am not going to watch hours of lecture to find out, tell us exactly where to look if he does say it).

Everything I've ever seen on British thoughts about tangling with the union at the time was that they really didn't want a massive land war. The British Navy would have no problem sweeping the seas of American ships, but by the end of the war the Union army (just in North America) was massively larger than the entire British army, which couldn't all focus on North America anyway, and the only other country in the area that might help (Mexico) had been utterly smashed by the US less than two decades before. That lends a lot of credence to the idea that they were a defensive force, to make sure that the union didn't decide to just snap up Canada.

You can't just say something, name a professor, and declare yourself winner.

Careful what you say about McClellan. The guy did make a lot of mistakes and he did eventually show that he lacked virtually any finesse when it came to "going after" the opposing force. Nevertheless, the guy did train and make pretty much "make" the Union army into a well trained and disciplined fighting force. Without the excellent training regimes and micro-management of McClellan, later Generals might have had a rougher time. McClellan, was, in short, a logistician and trainer, not a field commander.

Then again, it might all just be perspective. Although Lee, Longstreet, Stuart and Jackson were no Napoleons, they were certainly brilliant and above average officers, thus making McClellan all the worse. When it came to feeding, managing, and training an army as massive as the army of the Potomac, he was your man.... just maybe not on the battlefield when squared against the likes of Lee.

Manstein wrote:Careful what you say about McClellan. The guy did make a lot of mistakes and he did eventually show that he lacked virtually any finesse when it came to "going after" the opposing force. Nevertheless, the guy did train and make pretty much "make" the Union army into a well trained and disciplined fighting force. Without the excellent training regimes and micro-management of McClellan, later Generals might have had a rougher time. McClellan, was, in short, a logistician and trainer, not a field commander.

Made a lot of mistakes is an understement. He had a campaign that could have won the war early, won every single battle, but kept retreating and eventually called the whole thing off and evacuated his army back to camp. He was, in short, a field commander, and an absolutely terrible one, with the kind of laughable incompetence that people would complain is unrealistic if you put it into a fiction book. There are a lot of commanders that made mistakes (Lee screwed up really badly at Gettysburg, for example), but I can't think of a single other commander who managed to launch a campaign, be successful in every battle, but call off the campaign in spite of the absolute crushing success it had achieved, it's just mind-boggling.

Then again, it might all just be perspective. Although Lee, Longstreet, Stuart and Jackson were no Napoleons, they were certainly brilliant and above average officers, thus making McClellan all the worse. When it came to feeding, managing, and training an army as massive as the army of the Potomac, he was your man.... just maybe not on the battlefield when squared against the likes of Lee.

Not on the battlefield, at all, period, and he didn't need to be facing the likes of Lee, he needed to be facing ANYONE. An officer wouldn't have to be above average or brilliant to succeed in a campaign where they won every single battle with minimal losses, they'd just have to not back out when they've won every single engagement. Whatever else he was skilled at, he was such a pathetic field commander that it overrides the rest.

Manstein wrote:Careful what you say about McClellan. The guy did make a lot of mistakes and he did eventually show that he lacked virtually any finesse when it came to "going after" the opposing force. Nevertheless, the guy did train and make pretty much "make" the Union army into a well trained and disciplined fighting force. Without the excellent training regimes and micro-management of McClellan, later Generals might have had a rougher time. McClellan, was, in short, a logistician and trainer, not a field commander.

Then again, it might all just be perspective. Although Lee, Longstreet, Stuart and Jackson were no Napoleons, they were certainly brilliant and above average officers, thus making McClellan all the worse. When it came to feeding, managing, and training an army as massive as the army of the Potomac, he was your man.... just maybe not on the battlefield when squared against the likes of Lee.

You sound like you've read Harry Williams.

I don't think McClellan was as bad as Bearers thinks, but he definitely was not a good combat leader. He had way too much ego and was too obsessed with the concept of mass/concentration (among other things) . He was an excellent administrator, but a horrible Army leader.

BearersOfSalvation wrote:

Manstein wrote:Careful what you say about McClellan. The guy did make a lot of mistakes and he did eventually show that he lacked virtually any finesse when it came to "going after" the opposing force. Nevertheless, the guy did train and make pretty much "make" the Union army into a well trained and disciplined fighting force. Without the excellent training regimes and micro-management of McClellan, later Generals might have had a rougher time. McClellan, was, in short, a logistician and trainer, not a field commander.

Made a lot of mistakes is an understement. He had a campaign that could have won the war early, won every single battle, but kept retreating and eventually called the whole thing off and evacuated his army back to camp. He was, in short, a field commander, and an absolutely terrible one, with the kind of laughable incompetence that people would complain is unrealistic if you put it into a fiction book. There are a lot of commanders that made mistakes (Lee screwed up really badly at Gettysburg, for example), but I can't think of a single other commander who managed to launch a campaign, be successful in every battle, but call off the campaign in spite of the absolute crushing success it had achieved, it's just mind-boggling.

Then again, it might all just be perspective. Although Lee, Longstreet, Stuart and Jackson were no Napoleons, they were certainly brilliant and above average officers, thus making McClellan all the worse. When it came to feeding, managing, and training an army as massive as the army of the Potomac, he was your man.... just maybe not on the battlefield when squared against the likes of Lee.

Not on the battlefield, at all, period, and he didn't need to be facing the likes of Lee, he needed to be facing ANYONE. An officer wouldn't have to be above average or brilliant to succeed in a campaign where they won every single battle with minimal losses, they'd just have to not back out when they've won every single engagement. Whatever else he was skilled at, he was such a pathetic field commander that it overrides the rest.

Because Fredericksburg was a win? McClellan's troops did not by any means win all or a majority of their battles. One could say the early days of the naval based march on Richmond were filled with victories, but he faced far inferior numbers of Confederates who were only doing delay operations anyway.

Painting McClellan as some fool who won almost everything but failed to follow it up, is far too strong a picture. McClellan could win engagements, but he was simply too cautious and had too much bad information to follow it up. During the second Richmond campaign McClellan, as a result of his calculations and false intelligence, often believed that Johnny Reb had anywhere from 5 to 10x as many troops on the field as they actually had.

Also, don't forget that, other than Scott, the vast majority of both Army's commanders had zero experience on the operational levels of warfare. During the Spanish-American war these guys were dealing with Regiments and Brigades, not Corps and Army's (I use the military definition). During the onset of the war, as well as much of the way through it, generals who had never received training above the regimental level (since those were the largest units at West Point and no training operations above that level were ever done) and maneuvering these massive armies was no simple task.

McClellan was not incompetent, he was not a horrific leader, he was just the wrong man for field work, especially when forced to spar against commanders who are far and wide accepted to be tactically more brilliant than he.

Yes, without McClellan's training of the army, Hooker, Pope, and Burnside would have had a much more difficult time at losing battles.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Typeline wrote:Being from the South and having traveled over the entirety of the United States I can give you the one and only reason the Civil War was fought...

Sweet Tea

And worth it too!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would not sit in that firm belief the British navy could have slammed the Union navy. We'd moved ahead a new generation technoclogically with steam powered, turrented iron clads. I don't think the British Navy had anything like that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warrior_(1860)

Ironclads including Dern ferreners
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclad_warship

The one, the only, the Monitor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Monitor

Sailing class
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_New_Ironsides_(1862)

Cool drawings of massed ironclad assaults - Go Yankees
http://www.klauskramer.de/Schiff/Panzerschiffe/Ironclads_1/Ironclads_1_engl_top.html


Monitor



Automatically Appended Next Post:

BearersOfSalvation wrote:

Polonius wrote:The British navy would have played hell with our shipping, but then so would we with theirs. They could try to blockade ports, but the Merrimack showed the difficulties in blockading a port with wooden ships.

The US had less chance of beating the Royal Navy then than the Royal Navy has of beating the US Navy today, and that's really no chance at all. US ironclads couldn't really touch British shipping, because they were coastal ships - they couldn't do anything more than mess around in the West Indes, which wasn't vital to the UK. Britain and France had been building ironclads before the Union and Confederacy started, had more and better of them, and could have bought more from other European ports if they really needed to. If the Royal Navy did somehow run into any problems fighting the US navy, then the British would turn all of their effort to rectifying it immediately, because without naval superiority Britain would simply cease to be an effective power.

If you look at Killkrazy's link, you'll see that the British and French started competing in building ironclads back in 1858.

Interestingly if such a conflict started, it would have been interesting on the UK side as well, as the Union could have potentially sent support to Ireland to create shenannigans there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Manstein wrote:

BearersOfSalvation wrote:IMO the most fascinating thing about the Civil War is how incredibly incompetent McClellan was. How do you manage to start a campaign, soundly win EVERY SINGLE tactical engagement, not suffer any large losses or have any additional large force coming to disrupt the situation, but end up retreating in defeat? Put a competent general in his place, and you end up with the war ending years earlier!

Manstein wrote:If you think it is BS, take it up with renowned Civil War historian and Professor at Yale University, David Blight. Here is his short bio at Yale's website:

He's not here to take it up with, and you haven't actually cited anything from him, just linked to a long series of lectures that may possibly comment on it somewhere. Exactly which lecture and at what time does he talk about Britain's plan to invade the union? The trick is, there's no doubt that the UK moved a lot of troops to Canada, anyone can find 47,315 cites for that. What you have to actually show to support your claim is historians saying that they were an offensive force and that the UK had serious intention of invading the Union, which needs more than just troop movements, and I doubt that David Blight is saying that (and am not going to watch hours of lecture to find out, tell us exactly where to look if he does say it).

Everything I've ever seen on British thoughts about tangling with the union at the time was that they really didn't want a massive land war. The British Navy would have no problem sweeping the seas of American ships, but by the end of the war the Union army (just in North America) was massively larger than the entire British army, which couldn't all focus on North America anyway, and the only other country in the area that might help (Mexico) had been utterly smashed by the US less than two decades before. That lends a lot of credence to the idea that they were a defensive force, to make sure that the union didn't decide to just snap up Canada.

You can't just say something, name a professor, and declare yourself winner.

Careful what you say about McClellan. The guy did make a lot of mistakes and he did eventually show that he lacked virtually any finesse when it came to "going after" the opposing force. Nevertheless, the guy did train and make pretty much "make" the Union army into a well trained and disciplined fighting force. Without the excellent training regimes and micro-management of McClellan, later Generals might have had a rougher time. McClellan, was, in short, a logistician and trainer, not a field commander.

Then again, it might all just be perspective. Although Lee, Longstreet, Stuart and Jackson were no Napoleons, they were certainly brilliant and above average officers, thus making McClellan all the worse. When it came to feeding, managing, and training an army as massive as the army of the Potomac, he was your man.... just maybe not on the battlefield when squared against the likes of Lee.

No he made the union army fighting on the East Coast. The more successful central armies were not tainted by his loser presence. Eventually those commanders were the ones that were transferred and won the war. McClellan was an absolute tosser.