Either side of the American Civil War could defeat any other contemporary military in the world

>proffesional armies

Dude they were draftees and conscripts in the North you're high as balls

>Lol come on just stop. The North was Xerxes, the South was Sparta and Chancelorville was Thermopylae

The rebels weren't much better. The only thing they had going for them was fanaticism.

>implying "draftee" or "conscript" would be an accurate term for a soldier in the 1865 Union army.

When you read soldier diaries from both the North and the South the motivations are so clear and stark it boggles the mind.

The Northern soldiers, motivated by nothing much more than beating the Southern rebels. And preserving the Union at all costs.

The Southern soldiers, motivated by ideas of liberty and standing up to invasion and subjugation.

No, they really couldn't, even a company WW1 machine gun would fuck up everything they ever knew and learned about war

Two methods of evading the draft were available. A man could hire a substitute who would serve in his place, or he could simply pay $300 to get out of the obligation.

The lower classes resented this system; resistance and anger were especially fierce in the Northern cities, where large groups of immigrants lived. In July 1863, draft riots broke out in New York City and lasted four days. Some of the anger had been fueled by the Democratic Party, whose leaders doubted the wisdom of the war and hated Lincoln. News of heavy losses at Gettysburg ignited smoldering racism and led to a number of very unfortunate incidents. Freed blacks were unfairly targeted as the cause of the war and several were beaten to death or lynched by the mobs; a black orphanage and church were set on fire. The rage subsided only when the Army of the Potomac, supplemented by cadets from West Point, was deployed in New York.

>the Year of Achtzehn Hundert und Fünfundsechzig
>a bunch of colonials think they are anywhere near the Euro Top 5

How cute

Prussia, Austria, Switzerland, basically any country that had compulsory military service

Who was Richard J. Gatling?

>Even comparing a handcrank to a fucking automatic
Yeah, and repeaters are the same as modern assault rifles too

A chilling song chronicling immigrant draftees front the Irish perspective

youtu.be/_VCX-Zdz5qA

Every American should hear it once

Just saying they weren't overawed by massive amounts of lead.

The Southerners would likely raid an armory or purchase machine guns at the first opportunity.

The southerners would likely break because they relied on their cavalry arm that would get totally neutered by a machine gun much like cavalry was in WW1

that isn't saying much after 1848

The real elephant in the room is air power and artillery.

America's War doctrine of land battles is to engage the enemy and then immediately call in air support and artillery strikes on enemy positions literally shielding our infantry behind a wall of shells and other forms of explosive munitions.

Ground troops without air support are really only used in police actions in the modern era.

Like going door to door to collect weapons and intelligence or as garrison soldiers.

There are no more sit and shoot it out battles. The trench wars showed the ultimate futility of such tactics. Inevitably it becomes impossible to move the line one more single inch forwards

>America's War doctrine of land battles is to engage the enemy and then immediately call in air support and artillery strikes on enemy positions literally shielding our infantry behind a wall of shells and other forms of explosive munitions.
Pretty sure the British deployed that in WWI before the Americans even joined the conflict.

But the Americans were always "better" at it and I would even say perfected it

I don't know, the Iran-Iraq war was fought in trenches and still had airpower overwhelmingly in favor of one side

American Revisionism

There is literally nothing as inefficient on the battlefield as a modern infantry rifleman division.

They are nearly useless for anything but tying down enemy resources.

All the real combat goes to small units in the SOCOM spectrum.

Care to explain how?

Just like English.

We didn't create it but we perfected it :)

Hey, you ruined my meme hand pointing to that retarded post.

Can't hold a position with a 6 man team against a battalion user, you might want to reassess your opinions on this. Small unit combat doesn't disavow the importance of a larger unit holding that terrain

Yeah, holding terrain.

Oh great! The world's most overhyped area denial method.

As far as actually killing the enemy riflemen have nothing much. Evryone just bunkers down in cover and takes pot shots eventually. Automatic rifles make maneuvering impossible.

And then they just call in the firepower. You do know that the Air Force kills more in every war than the Army and Marines combined right?

Of course America hasn't had a conventional war since the Korean Armistice.

Just police actions really. Even Vietnam was a guerilla war with... small unit tactics.

>War is only a numbers game
Are you daft? This isn't an FPS, no one gives a shit about the K/D ratio, only the political results

War is just politics by other means after all.

The point wasn't about kill/death ratios it was about the anachronistic nature of the rifleman.

Hollywood makes much fuss over the lone soldier with his little 5.56 mm bangety bangety.

They should really focus on the artillerymen. The real mass murderers in the common era.

As true as that might be the artillery doesn't do anything without land held by the shit slogger infantry

>Take a look at the left leg. See how it extends upwards into the center? This clearly shows how the left leg is the superior and most importan element
>Are you nuts? Watch how right leg goes down from the center into the floor, clearly sustaining the whole structure. Right leg is superior in every way

"Contemporary" as in militaries at that time (1861-65)

Needleguns would wreck the shit out of everything but the partisans the South had

General Sheridan actually did become a military observer in the Franco-Prussian War. Bismarck was very interested in his input. When he sent his letters back to the USA, he had this to say (AMONG other things):

perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2001.05.0035:chapter=41

Short version, he wasn't impressed.

>"There is nothing to be learned here professionally, and it is a satisfaction to learn that such is the case. There is much, however, which Europeans could learn from us. The use of rifle-pits [trenches]- the use of cavalry, which they do not use very well. For instance, there is a line of communication from here to Germany exposed to the whole south of France, with scarcely a soldier on the whole line, which the French have not touched. There are a hundred ways in which they are behind us. The staff departments are poorly organized, the quartermaster's department is wretched, etc.
>Very respectfully, your obedient faithful servant:
>P.H. Sheridan, Lieutenant-General

I'm thinking a Prusso-American war in the 1860s would have been like a steampunk Operation Barbarossa

>Germans confronted by insane numbers
>Germans confronted by insane distances
>Germans confronted by insane partisan activity whenever they take land
>massive coastlines mean that the defending power gets all the supplies it can carry from other people who hate the Germans
>places like Chicago and New York turn into Leningrad and Stalingrad

He was just salty, that noone took him serious.

>An Irish manlet killed the South
How embarrassing for America

The Union perhaps. The CSA however was a niggerized agricultural shithole with 1830s technology and they would get smacked the fuck around by every great power that existed at the time, possibly even the Ottomans.

>underestimating manlets
>yes, yes good tall trees don't mind us we're too short to threaten you

Bismarck did. The Prussians loved him and very much valued his opinion on the war.

books.google.com/books?id=KaVqDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT359&dq=that man has a great military head on his shoulders&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiU6IayitzTAhVBGmMKHUydBKsQ6AEILTAB#v=onepage&q=that man has a great military head on his shoulders&f=false

>possibly even the Ottomans.

The Ottomans lost to forces with much less training, experience, and equipment than the Confederates around that time.

Prussia and England would have rekt them every day of the week.

Nice

So much this. Inter-branch rivalries are fucking retarded. Each branch supports every other branch