How did the other countries of the world view the American Civil War?

>States' rights

Can this meme die already

kek, the 1865 Union Army would have cut through any Eurotrash force like a knife through warm butter.

The 1865 Union Army is an outdated force that fought like the 1864 Austrian Army.

Which Prussia trashed.

France and Britain were both opposed, generally, to slavery but had an economic interest in supporting the South and applied pressure to the US over the blockade to open up cotton markets. However they never felt it necessary to directly intervene, which was almost totally unforeseen by the Confederacy.

The meme before 1861 was that KING COTTON was what fueled the European economy and the Europeans would therefore never let the North blockade the South. Cotton would buy the South all the guns and butter it could possibly need. Cotton would keep Southern currency afloat. Cotton would save the Confederacy.

Except the reason cotton grew so great in the 1840s and 50s was that the South had been flooding the market with it. Everyone in Europe had massive surpluses which were in no danger of running out while they developed new sources in India and Egypt. So the cotton meme failed disastrously because the Confederates failed to understand basic economics.

>Be German
>See efficient indirect way to cripple the enemy war effort
>Be unimpressed

Typical.

>Sherman's medieval tier chevauchee.
>Efficient and indirect.
LMAO!

You know, other than the fact that the Union army was 5 times the size of the Austrian army. Man for man the Union infantryman would be outmatched by their Prussian counterparts, however, there were 4 times as many of them.

One aspect where Americans did have the qualitative advantage in was cavalry. Union cavalry was armed with breech loading carbines, repeating rifles, and revolvers at a time when European cavalry still relied heavily on lances and sabres.

Oh look, its a southaboo.

I know you cant read down there, cause we sent you back to the stone age, but Sherman's march is a strategic masterpiece.

>Create a massive second front on the enemy's poorly defended frontier. (On the Mississippi, one of the enemies lifelines.)
>does it with a relatively small army.
>Says fuck supply lines and sheds all comforts in order to march that much faster.
>Starves the enemy by using their supplies.
>Free niggers to reek havoc behind your lines more.
>Several times the enemy flees before even engaging because they overestimate Sherman's strength.
>Win war.

muh nordern agreshin
shermin wuz a butsher
midieval taktikz!

>fought like the 1864 Austrian Army

In what way?

Muzzle-loading rifles. Firing from the standing position, marching in multiple ranks.

Basically all things that have to do with using Muzzle-loading rifles, and tactics to make the most out of the 2-3 rounds/minute that you can squeeze out of a Springfield 1861.

However, the Union generals weren't braindead. The cavalrymen/skirmishers who were armed with Henry/Spencer repeaters fought with modern skirmish tactics that were actually more effective and flexible than the Prussian tactics with their Dreyse Needle gun, which could still only shoot 10 or so RPM vs 20 for the Spencer, and also caused the shooter to lose sight picture.

No they didn't: dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA384203

some excerpts:

>Prussians criticized the prewar militia system for providing poor training but came to admire American operational and tactical command
>Germans didn't understand the role of firepower in the fortification battles of 64-65
>praised Union artillery but regarded American cavalry inferior to Prussians

so, no, not like the Austrians.

Even as an American, I'm highly skeptical of that. Didn't we model a lot of our weapons and tactics off of the French?

>Prussia sent observers in the Union side during the ACW. Helmut Von Moltke summarized Sherman's campaign by saying there's nothing to be learned from what essentially is "an armed mob."

If Moltke said that, which is questionable, then he was demonstrating rather poor judgment and was quite at odds with the comments of Prussian observers who had actually witnessed the war.

The observers found both lessons to learn and pitfalls to avoid in the ACW. They were very critical of the organizational capacity of the Union army, particularly the raising of militia units. Infantry tactics, however, were deemed comparable to the Prussian infantry tactical system by 1862-3. American cavalry was thought vastly inferior, although this was because the Prussian expectation of cavalry was as a shock element which fought principally with sabers, and American cavalry tended to fight more often as mounted infantry, which in retrospect was arguably more "modern" than the Prussian expectations. Prussian observers also put a lot of praise on the innovations of the American medical corps.

Arguably, however, what the Prussians were most interested in from a military perspective was not so much the discipline or performance of the troops but the effect of technology, particularly the new rifled artillery and its effects on fortifications, something which had been much discussed and theorized on in Europe but had not yet been tested on such a grand scale. Moltke's reorganization of the Prussian artillery after the 1866 war very obviously implemented lessons learned from the recent ACW.

The observers also learned wrong lessons sometimes, since being a Prussian doesn't make you a god of military analysis. Scheibert considered breech-loading rifles to be over-hyped wastes of ammunition and considered the ironclad to be rather shitty and pointless.

Yes, but by 1865 the US Army had more accumulated combat experience than any contemporary European army. The brief, decisive engagements Prussia fought taught them nothing remotely comparable to what Grant learned about the conduct of campaigns. Austria folded after one battle in 66, the US Army had the organizational strength and command competence to rebound from multiple Sadowas, as indeed they did.

Secondly it's almost certainly false that Moltke ever said that about Sherman.

> Didn't we model a lot of our weapons and tactics off of the French?

That we did, the Union army copied damn near everything. The 1860 US army uniform was nearly indistinguishable from the 1850 French uniform.

However, the US army started diverging as it learned from the terrible bloody lessons of the Civil War, and by the end, while the uniforms still looked similar, the doctrine and the way that they fought had changed greatly.

>Prussia talking shit about anybody's army

>How did the other countries of the world view the American Civil War?
It resulted in more dead Americans. So a good thing.

Dutch history student here, didn't have an answer to your question so I thought I'd quickly do some superficial research because wikipedia wasn't any help. There's this online database of dutch newspapers printed in the dutch language that goes back to 1618 (www.delpher.nl). I meant to look at some newspapers from around the time the civil war did start and from when it ended to get a rough idea. I found something that interested me more though: a dutch newspaper from the United States named De Sheboygan Nieuwsbode

There's editions from 1849 to the 8th of May 1861 available. It was printed in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, a town with a substantial amount of dutch immigrants. Now that i found this source I thought I could look into it some more tonight and see if I can find anything interesting. If I do I might make a thread about it in a day or two.

During the 19th century (and 20th) a substantial amount of dutchmen migrated to the US. Most of them went to northern states like Michigan and other states near the Great Lakes. Therefore the majority of dutch immigrants that might have fought in the war, would probably have done so for the North. The character from that book (Pfifer, what a silly name) would have been quite unique.

Anyway, your questions
>Why would a recent dutch immigrant fight for the Confederacy
This could be the answer, but a more likely reason would be that he was some poorfag that didn't want to starve to death. Becoming a soldier would mean food and a job.
>What would his fellow dutchmen think
His fellow immigrants up north would probably disapprove, having set up a new life for themselves in the North and all that. In the Netherlands, I doubt people had any reason to care for the Confederacy, it wasn't of any economic importance as far as I know and slavery just wasn't as fashionable anymore. My guess is that people didn't care much and if anything perceived the confederates as rebelling.

>One aspect where Americans did have the qualitative advantage in was cavalry.
Nope.jpg

American Cavalry was pretty much a dragoon force largely because the wild terrain of much of Northern America meant that there will be a lot of times when cavalry will be useless and the men on horses would have to dismount.

Europeans meanwhile can afford specialist cavalry.

Thank you for addressing my actual question.

>The character from that book (Pfifer, what a silly name) would have been quite unique.

Well Earl van Dorn, James Longstreet, and John Bell Hood were all of Dutch descent themselves, but they were not immigrants. They were born and raised in the South.

By the way, Pfifer was an actual person. Company H is Sam Watkins' memoirs of his experiences in the Civil War. In all its glory, horror, and everything in between. It's regarded as one of the best firsthand accounts of war ever written.

I'm gonna guess his name actually was Pfeiffer (a Jewish name) and that Watkins either misspelled it used it as a nickname.

The elites in British Government would have love to see the South win as it would weaken the US over all, but the issue of slavery made it politically impossible to join on the side of the South as Europe was more abolitionist than the North.

Southaboo alternative history: Had the South abolished slavery on their own during the war, they might have gotten the UK to join and break the blockade with their navy. Russia might have gotten involved some how though.

I vaguely remember reading the current Tsar was liked Lincoln or something.

The independent Margravate of Brandenburg-Prussia never lost a war.