Every mention of the ACW turns into a pissing match between northerners and southerners

Well most of his commanders were fucking terrible and still thought the main gauche was viable

Well the whole Robert E. Lee strategy to winning the war is to break the Unions moral, it does not matter how many men are left in the field, you could be outnumbered 2 to 1, but as long as a good portion of those men and the civilian population no longer want to fight, then you have a chance of forcing the political leadership of the Union to end the war. Some people think the last chance the CSA had a chance to win the war was either during the Maryland campaign of 1862 or the Gettysburg campaign of 1863. I think the Confederacy had a very slim chance to "win" if you could even call it that during 1864 if they somehow beat the Union army so bad it sends Grant packing. But Grant being Grant and not well, every other Union general who invaded before, was not going to give up, man lost 50% of his army and still kept going, granted Lee lost 60% but Lee is defending and cannot give up the campaign. Back to the point, if Grant loses Lincoln has a chance to lose the election and McClellan could be elected instead and he might start negotiations with the South. Granted by this point the South is in an EVEN WORSE place that before because of the Atlanta campaign, continuing blockade and slavery being outlawed in the North which makes any kind of diplomacy with Europe even harder.

If the Union moral gets broken and the war ends, unlikely but for the sake of discussion say Robert E. Lee gets his way, I do not actually think the north would be bloodthirsty for another war, I think the two nations, if not politically at least the populations would be pretty fine with each other. I see the Confederacy rejoining the Union politically (If not as a whole, on a state by state basis) because of economic troubles. The later the war ends the later the Confederacy starts to have problems and the population starts to think that the Union is not so bad.

I have actually never seen that documentary, been meaning to watch it. Unless Lincoln was this master schemer and amazing actor who could pretend to have panic attacks and pretend to want the war over as quickly as possible with no one noticing I really doubt what you say is true.

I would also not use the word "bloodthirsty" commanders, ambitious well beyond their capability, yes, bloodthirsty, not so much.

I don't think a southern victory would have been interesting due to the existence of the confederacy - I agree that a state predicated almost entirely on chattel slavery and a plantation economy would have failed by the end of the century. What would have been interesting would be the stuff occurring in the periphery as a result of the United States fracturing and ceasing to be the regional hegemon. Consider Mexico. The Second Mexican Empire only fell because the American Civil War ended and France couldn't afford to start fighting a proxy conflict with the Union. But if the Confederacy had won, the French might have had significantly more elbow room to prop up Maximilian, perhaps even with material support from the Northern states.

Also, Grant was probably the best strategic commander of the war, he was also pretty able tactically but I would not put him above Lee or say, Longstreet in that regard. The whole "his battles devolved into meat grinder" premise I think is based on the fact that, well, they did. But they mostly were because of how advanced the Confederate trenches were becoming and how fast they could build them, also because

A. He would not retreat like pretty much every other general that commanded the AotP would have when the Confederates attacked.

B. The kind of trench warfare that happened later in the war

And C. The clusterfuck that was Cold Harbor

And that is unfair because he tried his damnedest to out flank Lee during the Overland campaign. And he did eventually do it, but not before Lee could set up shop in Petersburg, but by that point it was only a matter of time.

Slavery would have economically collapsed within a decade of war's end. Slavery would have institutionally damaged beyond repair, discontent among white voters in the economic downturn would have been widespread, and more importantly, the war jump-started Southern industrialization (much of which was destroyed during the Scorched Earth campaign in the final months), so now a feasible alternative existed.

I don't think the North would have bothered trying again. Too costly in human life, and the political will for it (the Republican Party) would be non-existent. There might border confrontations between the them, but never major fighting. Perhaps the new century leads to the two democracies finding a common ground in the face of alien threats such as Communism and Fascism.

ACW is probably the most boring war in history

*posts absurd theory about how Confederate victory would give us pregnant Anne Frank and World Peace™ Season 2*

In all honestly, I've always thought the Confederacy would go on to be a conservative version of Canada (which a lot of people seem to forget was invaded twice by the U.S.).

>First large scale troop movement by rail for direct military action
>Rapid military advancements happen during war
>First battle between ironclads
>First successful instance of submarine destroying enemy ship
>Goes from line infantry tactics to sieges of cities with trench warfare

I think it is interesting

The cavalry tactics of units like Mosbys rangers are the most interesting part though

>it should have had enormous consequences for history, no?

It arguably might have prevented the emergence of the United States as a World Power or at the very least delayed it. This could mean the U.S. and C.S. stay out of WW1 which would alter its outcome. Although France and Britain's combined effort might still be enough to overpower Germany and its faltering allies, they are not in a position to make the demands at the Treaty of Versailles that fueled the rise of the Nazi Party. This in turn means WW2 is averted entirely or takes a radically different form (i.e. East vs West rather than Germany vs everyone else)

TL;DR Confederate victory could inadvertently prevent WW2, the Holocaust ( gets to be happy), the Cold War, Decolonization, and the modern geopolitical situation we see today.

Alternatively, the Confederacy becomes American-aligned in the 20th Century (for all their differences, North and South still are both democracies with a common ethnic and religious makeup) and doesn't prevent these events, simply becoming a 4th player in North American geopolitics.

I would kill to get Season 2

>Grant is no exception, the guy was no strategic genius he pretty much just threw his troops into the meat grinder and won by having more troops than his opponents.
Grant also won where he didn't have a numbers edge, or where his side was numerically inferior. All Grant could do was win, over and over again. That's why military historians like Liddell Hart and prominent generals like Eisenhower rank him one of the greatest generals in history.

>common ethnic
How similar do you have to be to share ethnicity?

>Perhaps the new century leads to the two democracies finding a common ground in the face of alien threats such as Communism and Fascism
>two democracies
>confederacy
>democracy

The two still have the same basic structure of government and see themselves as vanguards of liberty. They have more in common with each other than European countries experimenting with hyper-collectivist autism.

The confederate governing class was too busy LARPing as landed gentry to have their government develop a government similar to the Union's

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are met on a great battle-field of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground.

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that,

government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

>You can tell it is usually the same couple of cunts every time

So it's like nearly every thread on Veeky Forums.

I wonder what Honest Abe would make of his most famous speech being posted with a picture of pregnant Anne Frank and Charles II of Spain...

pic is an original 1860 Presidential Campaign flag on display in Sacramento, CA btw

This is a good thread.
>It's hard to imagine it being a viable state into the 1870s
I wouldn't be so sure, slavery survived in Brazil well into the 1880s, granted, their cash crops were different (cotton vs sugar and coffee) and they were even less industrialized than the South was even on the eve of the CW.

Asking as a Yankee, why did the CSA tend to have much better generals than the Union? I haven't looked into this, but I've heard that many of the Union generals had little to no military experience before the war, and that many of them were just wealthy men from the urban professional class? Did the South have a quasi-officer class like a lot of European countries did at the time?

>Hamlin
Did he do anything of importance?

I want more Unconditional Surrender Grant memes

It's not limited to on here. The discourse on the Civil War in this country has turned to complete shit since Shelby Foote died

Confederate generals officers had a disproportionate number of combat veterans in their ranks. This included veterans of the Mexican-American War (Jackson, Longstreet, Lee, Jefferson Davis), Indian Wars (Stuart, Hood), Utah War (Albert S. Johnston), and even the Texas Revolution (also Albert S. Johnston).

In addition, being a newly formed army rather than an established one, the Confederate command structure may have been initially more flexible than its Union counterpart and allowed exceptionally skilled officers to move up in rank much more rapidly. By comparison, the US Military was still being run by 74 year old Winfield Scott during the first year of the war. The two most famous Union generals, Sherman and Grant, did not hold major commands at the start of the war and only came to Lincoln's attention in late 1862.

He served in the Maine Coast Guard as a corporal while VP. Probably the only one to do so.

For one I think southerners just tended to join the army more and second, they really didn't have better commanders. The Eastern Theater of the war the South was doing great because you had Lincoln pushing the Union army to take Richmond before it was ready in 1861 and then in 1862 you got Lee, Jackson and Longstreet, three of the wars best generals in one army. But compare this the Western Theater where the Confederates are just making horrible decisions and fighting with each other constantly, take Chickamauga for example, second highest number of casualties after Gettysburg. The Confederates for the most part fought outnumbered and won. but at Chickamauga the Confederates actually outnumber the Union, they win the battle, but can you really even consider it a victory? They fail multiple times in the battle to exploit something that could lead to the destruction of the Army of the Cumberland, they end up taking 18k casualties compared to 16k for the Union and cannot exploit the victory. The ANV might have generally had better generals than the AotP but even then the AotP failures comes from corps and army commanders not from division or lower commanders, and that was fixed once Grant took command. So I think in the East from the start of the war until Chancellorsville the ANV has a slight advantage, not enough to win a war but still good, then Jackson dies and 2nd corps becomes 2nd/3rd corps and Lee starts to think his men are invincible. While in the West the Union and Confederates have the same level of generalship but constant infighting with the Confederates and the Union having Grant really hampers the Confederacy.

It's very hard to come up with a situation after a "southern victory" that doesn't' lead to war breaking out again within 5-10 years. Even if the Union advances slower than it does historically and say McClellan wins the 1864 election and tries to broker an armistice, can you really see the north giving back any of the territory they've overrun? Or of the same pressures that started the war not urging for a continuation as soon as the North recovers? And this sort of security trap will almost force the CSA to become some kind of neo-sparta, trying to keep up through militarism and professionalism a standing force that can compete with a next door neighbor that has more population and industry, which in turn probably means doubling down on chattel slavery in order to support a class of soldiers.

I can't see the thing lasting more than 20-25 years even if everything goes perfectly for the South.

This,

Poor Shelby. He was probably the last historian to do any substantial insight into the Civil War and do it objectively rather than simply parroting his own political views.

I was very surprised to find out he was Jewish though.

>Grant is no exception, the guy was no strategic genius he pretty much just threw his troops into the meat grinder and won by having more troops than his opponents

delete bait thread....

>I was very surprised to find out he was Jewish though.

Why?

>However a lot of the Confederate victories were defensive ones

aside from Fredricksburg which one of Lees' victories were defensive?

He doesn't look Jewish, talk like he's Jewish, and probably didn't see eye-to-eye with most American Jews politically. I never heard him speak a word about Jewish subjects such as Israel or the Holocaust.

Gettysbu..... oh, right.

everything after 1863

Cause hes only a fourth jewish and at that didnt really get raised immersed in Judaism. Reform jews like he was practice an extremely watered down of judaism even id he claimed to idebtify as jewish when youngger

Quick rundown
>south is poor = rich area for military recruitment (still the case today)
A lot of Lee's army were vets of the Mexican-American war, it cannot be understated how valuable veterans are in wars.

me: southerner that's glad the union won

explain that

CSA was definitely a democracy, although it didn't really last long enough to see if it'd just turn into a Latin America style dictatorship or whatever. Confederate constitution was pretty interesting:
>Confederacy outright banned protectionism and subsidies for noncompetitive industry.
Confederacy banned Congress from forgiving debt.
>Confederacy limited the president to one six-year term. (United States enacted term limits on the presidency half a century later, and only after they had a de facto president for life)
>The president can choose to veto specific parts of any law sent to them.
>Confederacy explicitly banned the president from appointing someone during Senate recess if that person was rejected previously.
>Confederate Constitution demands that each bill must deal with only one subject.

Meh, I'm proud of my southern heritage, but the US is much stronger and better together, so I'm happy the CSA ultimately lost. Would've been better if no war happened at all, though.

IIRC he was raised as Jewish until the age of 11 (on account of being raised in his grandfather’s household after his father died) and he is considered a Jew under Talmudic law because his mother was Jewish.

On a side note, Foote’s grandfather was from Austria, so he almost certainly had cousins, great aunts and uncles who died in the Holocaust.

Yeah, the more pure academics always hated him for being a storyteller more than a rigorous historian (and they've pretty successfully murdered his character since then), but he had a more real, personal connection than anyone else I've ever read.

Agreed. His previous work as a novelist was a major part in his success in non-fiction.

You guys are basically white Uncle Toms.

>ayy yo, it was about state's rights.
>Fuck the USA
>Why aren't niggers standing up for the anthem
This is a good thread, don't ruin it

fuck off, it was ruined the second someone posted ann frank

yeah

I think 99% of confederates on reddit are just northern LARPers

Where are you from btw? North Georgia here

> I wouldn't be so sure, slavery survived in Brazil well into the 1880s, granted, their cash crops were different (cotton vs sugar and coffee) and they were even less industrialized than the South was even on the eve of the CW.

Great that you bring up Brazil, because it's a great showcase in how countries that don't industrialize always ends up being shitholes. Industrialization is inherently incompatible with slavery, and in order to industrialize successfully, the South would have to give up slavery on it's own.

Considering that they fought a war over it, and how entrenched in power the planter class were, I doubt they will give up Slavery, and the confederacy will remain an agrarian, pre-industrial country.

One other factor comes into play, which is that the CSA would still share an extremely long land border with the USA. Without sky-high tariffs, the factories of the North would just dump finished goods into the South and strangle Southern industry before they have a chance to become competitive.

By say, the 1900's, the two countries would be vastly different, and the gap in war-making capacity would be even further apart than in 1860.

>Industrialization is inherently incompatible with slavery

>implying industrialization isn't slavery

>implying pregnant Anne Frank isn’t a positive addition to every thread

Reinhard Heydrich plz go

South Carolina. It's alright.

Yeah, good points.
CSA would industrialise or be eclipsed, that wasn't gonna happen until they gave up on the slavery meme. I highly doubt, had they become independent, slavery would've lasted more than a decade. Either because of the economics of the situation, foreign pressure or simply politics (UK would be more likely to work with a state hostile to the Union if they didn't practice slavery).

God I love the randomness of the arrangement of stars on that.

I read somewhere (can't remember where now) that Mississippi and Louisiana were the richest states in the union pre-civil war. How true is this?

It's true

It still hurts

CSA fought an entire war for their right and their way of life and they would refuse to give it up even if it meant being eclipsed by the rest of the world. Slave labor is still big business today. Don't trick yourself into looking at what happened and backapplying it to the South's unique circumstances before and during the war.

Fucking retard

If the south was so autistic about keeping the damn slaves, why not go the middle way and say that they can keep the slaves but no one can be made a slave anymore, children born form slaves are free and the remaining slaves still on the market are to be freed or sold to the federal government (trickery would involve state slaves being taxed just enough to compensate for it)

And then you wait for like a few years while the whole crisis dies down a little, politicaly manoeuver in the slave states to sap the slavers support,then outright ban slavery or fix a date to free the slaves in a short time or tax the fuck out of those who still want to own them.

I'm pretty sure some guy in that period might have proposed that

> that they can keep the slaves but no one can be made a slave anymore
That's literally what Lincoln campaigned on. And throughout the 1850's he campaigned on the idea of compensatory emancipation, which is where the government just buys all the slaves and frees them and compensates slave owners for their investment. But the south refused to even consider it.

>I'm pretty sure some guy in that period might have proposed that
They did. The Corwin amendment was just that: a constitutional amendment protecting slave owners, but only in places which already had slaves.

By the 1860's both sides were sick of the middle way, which is what the government had been choosing since the 3/5ths compromise. All it was doing was creating conditions of impossible gridlock, and both sides knew that whichever side had more states would have more political leverage, which it would use to bully the other side into compliance. Both sides knew that eventually, something would give, and the U.S would either be dominated by free states or dominated by slave states. When it was clear to them that the free states would be the ones dominating, they seceded.

Why are americans are so uncompromising on their views?

I can get that on some points like personal values you just cannot give up, but being that uncompromising on that slavery thing? What you're sayng is Lincoln wasn't about to go full collectivization on their asses, they could have negociated and ran with it.

>Why are americans are so uncompromising on their views?
You obviously haven't done much studying on American political history, I would recommend reading up on the subject matter to show just how hard Americans had to compromise and work together just to get their country off the ground, and how it was exactly that compromising which reached a boiling point that lead to the war. Eventually, the limits of compromise had been reached, and a stand needed to be made. That's the way both sides felt about the issue.

> What you're sayng is Lincoln wasn't about to go full collectivization on their asses, they could have negociated and ran with it.
That's like saying "well, the free states could have avoided the war... if they rolled over politically and let the slave states achieve every single one of their legislative agenda items and set themselves up to dominate congress by making it majority slave-states, so it's really their fault for not letting us win". Both sides wanted to be the ones dominating congress, and the election of 1860 was the deciding moment to see which side would be the one who got to do that.

I was specifically responding to the frogposter's comment here
>And then you wait for like a few years while the whole crisis dies down a little, politicaly manoeuver in the slave states to sap the slavers support,then outright ban slavery or fix a date to free the slaves in a short time or tax the fuck out of those who still want to own them.
They weren't stupid, they knew that's what the free states would have done to them... because bullying the other side into compliance is exactly what the slave states would have done if the situation had been reversed. That's how realpolitik works.

Maybe idk it's just that your current political situation seems fucked is all...

I don't disagree with you. But we're not talking about contemporary politics, we're talking about the Civil War. People are trying to shoehorn contemporary politics into civil war history while knowing very little about the conditions which lead up to the war.

The Confederate States were actually pretty good to Jews compared to the North, but that's neither here nor there.

I haven't been on Veeky Forums very much. What is this pregnant Anne Frank meme?

It buttblasts /pol/ and therefore we like it.

That's all the reason I need.

Foote's ghost should be a mod on this site.

It was always shit, only now we all have a common forum for discussion so that we are more aware of each other's autism.

What Shelby is saying is true. You always remember the losses far better than you do the wins.

It's a conflict that neither side is ever going to let go until something bigger comes along that threatens the very way of life of both sides. Like France and England with WW1.

could not agree more.
McClellan was framed.
But, in the end Lincolns plan did sort of work. The way he wanted the war to be fought and the way it was implemented to devastatiing effect made a relatively smooth smooth reunification with the South possible. If they gad gone about it any other way far less people would have died but re unification with the South post war would have been much more complicated.

Its such a shame that its almost impossible to criticize Lincoln even though he made his fair share of mistakes. He's like a fucking diety in this country.

Agreed, except that bigger something turns out to be another Civil War and it's a thousand times worse than the last one in every way imaginable.

Then we spend the next couple centuries bitching and killing each other over that.

No I meant that WW1 finally got them to get over the Hundred Years War.

Well I don't think the United States ever face a life and death struggle with an outsider the way Britain and France did with Germany (at least one that doesn't end in wholesale nuclear anhilation) so we'll turn on each other instead and by the time it's over, North America geopolitically resembles Europe after the final disintegration of Western Rome in 476 AD.

...

the battle of the crater (to me anyway) shows some of the key issues with the Union in the Civil War.

That is mostly bad officers and bad coordination at key-moments.

The assault post-mine-detonation was to begin with a black/colored-infantry regiment (which had specific orders and rehearsals that emphasized "DO NOT GO INTO THE CRATER"), they were to be followed by the other units that had been sitting in trenches for the past months.

but at the last minute this order was reversed(many site political reasons), and so you had regiments which had suffered attrition in the trench-warfare leading up to the mine-detonation, going into the crater, and either experiencing shellshock from the mangled corpses, or attempting to assist the wounded out of pity/empathy, or just at a low-ground disadvantage. This gave Lee's forces enough time to regroup/rally and basically counter-attack successfully.

Of course in large-respect most of the civil war seems pretty stupid..

the Confederates fighting on after New Orleans was captured/liberated by union forces,
while the confederacy had failed to capture washington in a window/timeframe where it may have been possible. (basically they probably had like at least 6-18 months where there was a nonzero chance of it occurring, as the Union probably needed time to rev-up-production/training and replace a lot of it's officers, soldiers and material that had defected/been-seized to/by the Confederacy).

The confederacy was also a mess politically, the plantation-owners were extremely petty, refusing to cooperate over matters like infrastructure or funding/taxes or military-recruitment/movement.

The Crater would write like a comedy if it wasn't so damn tragic.

I found this version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic today and it's pretty good:

youtube.com/watch?v=Jy6AOGRsR80

Great post, and I say that as someone who is staunchly pro-union.

Battle of Crater and the Battle of Cold Harbor were the two most pointlessly stupid battles in the war. As quick as I am to mock lost-causers for pretending like slavery was a non-issue, I do have a tremendous amount of respect for the officer corps of the Army of Northern Virginia and for the poor bloody infantry who kept the Confederacy going for far longer than it should have

there were similar problems in the first world war, at least in 1915-1916 on the western front, mostly communications-related and stuff.

what I find odd about the battle of the Crater was that there wasn't some kind of pamphlet or notice given out to NCO's and officers of the units that started the attack, (that is after the plan was switched up)

>be Robert E. Lee
>know that the south can only win if they fight defensively
>squander this knowledge by constantly attacking
>taking 20% casualties in almost every engagement
>this is objectively the worst thing any commander could've done
>is consider a military genius
I hate how people are so stupid

>Be Veeky Forums retard
>Don't understand that in pre-industrial war, where armies living off the land is the norm, it is no more costly to fight on the defensive than to fight on the offensive
>Everyone else is taking similar casualties
>And if you don't fight, friction costs like disease and desertion will still whittle away at your army
>Feel that you have enough of an idea of what you're talking about to criticize.
I hate how people are so stupid.

When Lee attacked, it was usually because he either had his back to the wall (Seven Days Battles) or saw an opportunity to destroy the Army of the Potomac as a fighting force (Chancellorsville, Malvern Hill, Second Manassas), which would allow the ANV to either go on the offensive itself, detach formations to aid the faltering Confederate armies in the West (as was done at Chickamunga), or at the very least buy time to reorganize and refit. The Gettysburg and Maryland campaigns were an attempt to destroy the Army of the Potomac and force a Union withdrawal from the West to defend Washington.

Confederateboo here

If it makes you feel any better, I must admit Lincoln was a better war leader than Jefferson Davis who was at best, handicapped by the limited powers he was given by the Confederate Constitution.

that was exactly how slavery was elminated in the Northern States. It'scalled gradual emancipation. However, slabery by the 1830s became an IDEOLOGICAL as much as an economic institution in the South. Either out of insecurity or a desire to reconcile the founding ideas of the US, slavery came by whites in the South to be seen as what they called "a positive good".

This

Truman tried to get back into active duty during WW2 but was turned down.