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Obdicut posted:Saying the US is more culturally homogenous than other countries is not the same thing as saying the US is culturally homogenous. I said "largely homogenous" and was specifically comparing the formation of the United States to that of Latin America. Arglebargle III posted:What's the point of this whole line of argument? A country covering that amount of territory would normally have numerous secession movements from the ethnic groups that have been conquered and absorbed into it. The United States does not, and it's obvious why. Sucrose fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 13:30
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PittTheElder posted:A sample size of 1 proves exactly nothing. Good thing he said, "merely the most extreme example," implying the existence of others.
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Apr 3, 2014 16:30
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Obdicut posted:That's not true either, though. The South/North divide alone was huge, and urbanization was already making a huge difference between rural and urban culture. What's interesting is that when you look at the Civil War and American culture, it actually greatly contributed to country's stability in the long run. One thing pointed out by many Civil War historians is that before the Civil War, people referred to the US as "These United States," as many people (Both North and South) identified more greatly with their state than with the country as a whole. After the Civil War, however, people referred to the US as "The United States", a single, unified nation. While there have been other divides in American culture, such as resentment towards immigrant groups, the urban and rural divide, and the civil rights struggle, there's never been another threat of mass uprising or secession because everybody believes that they're the "Real Americans" TM, regardless of what those other godless commies and/or fascist lunatics might be doing to destroy this great country  (This is obviously a slight exaggeration, but you can see the point I'm trying to make)PeterWeller posted:Good thing he said, "merely the most extreme example," implying the existence of others. I'm sort of confused why people are arguing against the idea that wars are inherently destructive, and thus it's a beneficial to not to have them on your own soil, since it's a pretty common view in history. Just look at the Soviet Union right after the Second World War-the entire point of dominating Eastern Europe and creating buffer states was to prevent a war as destructive as the Second World War from ravaging their country again by ensuring that the front lines would be far, far away from their own soil. Going back to older examples, Britain had a huge advantage over other European nations up until the advent of aviation, as they were able to avoid the devastation of the various European wars on their own soil by making themselves impossible to invade. Japan had a similar advantage in Asia, but suffered from a lack of resources that ultimately doomed it in the Second World War. I might be misunderstanding what people are trying to argue, though, so I'm certainly open to people trying to expand on their stances.
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Apr 3, 2014 17:03
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Acebuckeye13 posted:What's interesting is that when you look at the Civil War and American culture, it actually greatly contributed to country's stability in the long run. One thing pointed out by many Civil War historians is that before the Civil War, people referred to the US as "These United States," as many people (Both North and South) identified more greatly with their state than with the country as a whole. After the Civil War, however, people referred to the US as "The United States", a single, unified nation. While there have been other divides in American culture, such as resentment towards immigrant groups, the urban and rural divide, and the civil rights struggle, there's never been another threat of mass uprising or secession because everybody believes that they're the "Real Americans" TM, regardless of what those other godless commies and/or fascist lunatics might be doing to destroy this great country I had heard it as, we went from "The United States are" to "The United States is," but they're probably just aspects of the same thing.
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Apr 3, 2014 17:17
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Acebuckeye13 posted:I'm sort of confused why people are arguing against the idea that wars are inherently destructive, and thus it's a beneficial to not to have them on your own soil, since it's a pretty common view in history. Just look at the Soviet Union right after the Second World War-the entire point of dominating Eastern Europe and creating buffer states was to prevent a war as destructive as the Second World War from ravaging their country again by ensuring that the front lines would be far, far away from their own soil. Going back to older examples, Britain had a huge advantage over other European nations up until the advent of aviation, as they were able to avoid the devastation of the various European wars on their own soil by making themselves impossible to invade. Japan had a similar advantage in Asia, but suffered from a lack of resources that ultimately doomed it in the Second World War. EEeeeeeeeeeeh... Wars, for one thing, have a habit of forcing adaptation and change on social and political institutions. Since the most common way of measuring 'strength' and 'power' (which is dumb as poo poo but whatever) is by measuring a nation/states capacity to beat people up, proper wars have a way of breeding empires. Yes, even very destructive ones fought on home soil. Cannae, the Reconquista, Temujin's efforts to unite the Mongols, both the USSR and the USA pre and post WWII, these are all very clear phenomenon. Certainly winning that crucible war is very important, but the catalyst of the war and the way that focuses institutions towards successful war means that 'good wars' (imperialism) become much easier. Hell, the Thirty Years War was horrifically destructive for the HRE as basically all of Europe decided to use it as their proxy battlefield to pour all their rivalries into. And while it pretty much broke the last vestiges of the HRE as an institution a lot of scholars point to the pressure and demands of that sort of warfare as creating the Early Modern State. Austria and Prussia, to a certain extent, came out of that war still ready to take on Spain and France. Spain, for its part, was declining rapidly despite the relative security and stability in their Iberian homeland. This discussion proceeded from the assumption that 'wars are inherently bad' then looked at (relatively) war-torn 19th Cent. Europe and saying 'but they're not doing so bad, so why?' Then there's lots sticking fingers in ears and going 'lalalalala.'
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Apr 3, 2014 18:20
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Acebuckeye13 posted:I'm sort of confused why people are arguing against the idea that wars are inherently destructive, and thus it's a beneficial to not to have them on your own soil, since it's a pretty common view in history. Just look at the Soviet Union right after the Second World War-the entire point of dominating Eastern Europe and creating buffer states was to prevent a war as destructive as the Second World War from ravaging their country again by ensuring that the front lines would be far, far away from their own soil. Going back to older examples, Britain had a huge advantage over other European nations up until the advent of aviation, as they were able to avoid the devastation of the various European wars on their own soil by making themselves impossible to invade. Japan had a similar advantage in Asia, but suffered from a lack of resources that ultimately doomed it in the Second World War. I don't think anybody is arguing against the idea that wars are inherently pretty destructive, simply that the gains from war can be worth more than what was destroyed, which is especially true if you can fight it on someone else's territory. In a specifically American context, I'd say that there's been a number of wars that actually made a stronger state than the one that existed before. The ACW is the bigger one (in that it built a lot of the institutional strength that the JJ is getting at), while the Indian Wars also turned out to be enormously profitable.
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Apr 3, 2014 19:07
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:I don't think anybody is arguing against the idea that wars are inherently pretty destructive, simply that the gains from war can be worth more than what was destroyed, which is especially true if you can fight it on someone else's territory. In a specifically American context, I'd say that there's been a number of wars that actually made a stronger state than the one that existed before. The ACW is the bigger one (in that it built a lot of the institutional strength that the JJ is getting at), while the Indian Wars also turned out to be enormously profitable. Neither the Indian wars nor the ACW were fought in the American industrial heartland. The Southern economy was mostly focused on cash crops and resource extraction (in addition to substinence farming) which can rebound quickly after a war, but is not a recipe for widespread prosperity.
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Apr 3, 2014 19:26
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sullat posted:Neither the Indian wars nor the ACW were fought in the American industrial heartland. The Southern economy was mostly focused on cash crops and resource extraction (in addition to substinence farming) which can rebound quickly after a war, but is not a recipe for widespread prosperity. I like how the first seven CSA states to secede were just so sure that not exporting cotton would bring Britain to its knees and force them to aid the rebels, but instead the British just began growing cotton in India and Egypt instead 
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Apr 3, 2014 19:31
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:I like how the first seven CSA states to secede were just so sure that not exporting cotton would bring Britain to its knees and force them to aid the rebels, but instead the British just began growing cotton in India and Egypt instead
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Apr 3, 2014 20:13
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sullat posted:Neither the Indian wars nor the ACW were fought in the American industrial heartland. The Southern economy was mostly focused on cash crops and resource extraction (in addition to substinence farming) which can rebound quickly after a war, but is not a recipe for widespread prosperity. Well exactly. I'm not saying "all wars are profitable", nor that America has not benefited from being removed from the industrialized warfare of the 20th century. Just that some wars have been very profitable indeed. Jerry Manderbilt posted:I like how the first seven CSA states to secede were just so sure that not exporting cotton would bring Britain to its knees and force them to aid the rebels, but instead the British just began growing cotton in India and Egypt instead A lot of that is due to the basic competence of the British textile industry as well. They were very wary of a shortage of raw materials (not from any particular cause) and so they'd stockpiled tons of it. They still wound up looking at shortages in '62-'63 though. Of course, the CSA self-embargoing in an attempt to blackmail Europe was still a pretty stupid thing to do.
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Apr 3, 2014 21:06
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:I like how the first seven CSA states to secede were just so sure that not exporting cotton would bring Britain to its knees and force them to aid the rebels, but instead the British just began growing cotton in India and Egypt instead
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Apr 3, 2014 21:35
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Ofaloaf posted:The (partial) revival of cotton after the war is rather saddening. In Alabama at least, farmers returning in 1865 saw that cotton prices were high (due in part to the Confederacy's well-thought-out scheme) and tried planting as much cotton as they could in 1866, oftentimes using liens to cover the cost of planting. The price of cotton plummeted as the last ripples of the war faded away, however, and many farmers found they were in debt or did not profit nearly as much as they had gambled. Even so, cotton still sold for more than cereal crops and it was what many merchants were willing to offer loans for, so the farmers planted cotton again in 1867, then in '68, '69, and so forth, each year trying to plant more to bring in a bit of profit for themselves and instead just contributing to overproduction, the continued depression of cotton prices in the South, and their continued reliance on crop liens to make do. Oh, is this one of the main pillars of sharecropping? "Aw shucks, Bubba, you just didn't grow enough cotton to get out of debt this year. Maybe next time!  "
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Apr 3, 2014 21:37
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sullat posted:Neither the Indian wars nor the ACW were fought in the American industrial heartland. The Southern economy was mostly focused on cash crops and resource extraction (in addition to substinence farming) which can rebound quickly after a war, but is not a recipe for widespread prosperity. What wars are we contrasting this against then? Again, the starting question was 'if Europe fought x wars while the US fought y, why did it take so long for the US to overtake Europe.' And I think we can all agree that WWII had a temporary effect describing that (ignoring the really very quick Marshall Plan reconstruction and the might of the extremely wartorn USSR). But what European war, in that industrial timeline, had the sort of destructive effects that we're looking for? E.g., big throw downs and mass destruction in industrial heartlands.
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Apr 4, 2014 02:35
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:Oh, is this one of the main pillars of sharecropping? "Aw shucks, Bubba, you just didn't grow enough cotton to get out of debt this year. Maybe next time! Yep, but it's not like all the rich white people got around a table and were like 'okay, this is how we'll do it...' It just sort of happened and then people ran with it because hey, who doesn't like exploitation? It's not until the start of Jim Crow that oppressing blacks gets more complex and organized than terror and violence.
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Apr 4, 2014 02:39
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It's a little depressing that they were so shitkicking poor that they couldn't really afford to plan more than one harvest ahead.
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Apr 4, 2014 04:59
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sullat posted:Neither the Indian wars nor the ACW were fought in the American industrial heartland. The Southern economy was mostly focused on cash crops and resource extraction (in addition to substinence farming) which can rebound quickly after a war, but is not a recipe for widespread prosperity. The Southern Economy incidentally did not rebound quickly after the war.
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Apr 4, 2014 12:52
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Ofaloaf posted:The (partial) revival of cotton after the war is rather saddening. In Alabama at least, farmers returning in 1865 saw that cotton prices were high (due in part to the Confederacy's well-thought-out scheme) and tried planting as much cotton as they could in 1866, oftentimes using liens to cover the cost of planting. The price of cotton plummeted as the last ripples of the war faded away, however, and many farmers found they were in debt or did not profit nearly as much as they had gambled. Even so, cotton still sold for more than cereal crops and it was what many merchants were willing to offer loans for, so the farmers planted cotton again in 1867, then in '68, '69, and so forth, each year trying to plant more to bring in a bit of profit for themselves and instead just contributing to overproduction, the continued depression of cotton prices in the South, and their continued reliance on crop liens to make do. Related, what year did the boll weevil hit and how big of an effect did it have?
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Apr 4, 2014 17:47
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Hey, this is almost getting to the point about the economic insidiousness of the Lost Cause myth, which was blaming the eighty years of economic afterthought-ness that afflicted the South on the Union army's rapaciousness and on Reconstruction rather than the fact that the same slave/cotton economy and resistance to modernization that had caused the war to begin with were being held in place by people with a vested interest in Jim Crow.
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Apr 4, 2014 18:15
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sullat posted:Neither the Indian wars nor the ACW were fought in the American industrial heartland. The Southern economy was mostly focused on cash crops and resource extraction (in addition to substinence farming) which can rebound quickly after a war, but is not a recipe for widespread prosperity. That depends on how you define "rebound" and "quickly." Part of the issue the South dealt with was that yeah, the land was still there, but it had already been utterly ravaged by monoculture crop farming in the first place. One big, big issue the South was already facing was that you just flat out can't plant the same crop over and over in the same place for 50 years and get good results but a lot of plantations were like "ALL COTTON, ALL THE TIME, gently caress YEAH!" or similar nonsense. Even so, you need infrastructure to get those cash crops and raw materials to the places they need to go. The North had a much better infrastructure from the get go while the South's already sucked. Then the North burnt it all right the gently caress down. It wasn't like today where you could just send poo poo from point A to point B easily so long as you slapped enough postage on it. Railroads were still pretty new and were limited in what they could do. They also weren't exactly quick things to build. The South also had some massive systematic and social issues that prevented a recovery from happening anything that even resembled quickly. The people with the money and power were resistant to change because change meant they couldn't have as much money and power as before. A lot of people wanted to return to the times of "I own land and people grow cotton on it and I get money" even though that just wasn't a feasible long-term plan like, at all. Really, the South is still dealing with issues that stem back to the ACW.
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Apr 5, 2014 08:25
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Really, the South is still dealing with issues that stem back to the ACW. I don't remember where I heard this but I remember someone writing about the reason the South doesn't have major metro cities like a Chicago or a NYC is because the Civil War burned a lot of it to the ground and it is only the last decade or two that southern cities are really developing and growing at rates other areas had seen that weren't in the south. Is there any truth to that at all?
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Apr 6, 2014 19:40
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notthegoatseguy posted:I don't remember where I heard this but I remember someone writing about the reason the South doesn't have major metro cities like a Chicago or a NYC is because the Civil War burned a lot of it to the ground and it is only the last decade or two that southern cities are really developing and growing at rates other areas had seen that weren't in the south. It's a mix of reasons. That certainly didn't help but the main reason is that cities like New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Chicago became major urban centers very early compared to places like Atlanta. Especially in the case of New York, which was a major trade center before America even existed. While the North focused on industrialization, infrastructure, and trade, which mandates having large urban centers, the South focused primarily on farming on big plantations, which requires spreading the population more thinly. The South didn't develop urban centers because it didn't really need to.
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Apr 6, 2014 20:01
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ToxicSlurpee posted:It's a mix of reasons. That certainly didn't help but the main reason is that cities like New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Chicago became major urban centers very early compared to places like Atlanta. Especially in the case of New York, which was a major trade center before America even existed. While the North focused on industrialization, infrastructure, and trade, which mandates having large urban centers, the South focused primarily on farming on big plantations, which requires spreading the population more thinly. The South didn't develop urban centers because it didn't really need to. To add on this, the South's largest cities at the time of the Civil War were all port cities (e.g. New Orleans, Savannah, Charleston) to help export their cotton to the North or Britain. Northern cities also received the bulk of European immigration before the war (as well as some border state cities such as St. Louis, Louisville and Baltimore), and would continue to do so for a long time after; some 87.5% or so of European immigrants came to the North, and there was twice as many Southerners moving to the North than vice versa in the antebellum period.
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Apr 6, 2014 20:05
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ToxicSlurpee posted:It's a mix of reasons. That certainly didn't help but the main reason is that cities like New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Chicago became major urban centers very early compared to places like Atlanta. Especially in the case of New York, which was a major trade center before America even existed. While the North focused on industrialization, infrastructure, and trade, which mandates having large urban centers, the South focused primarily on farming on big plantations, which requires spreading the population more thinly. The South didn't develop urban centers because it didn't really need to. Looking at Atlanta. Atlanta is a late forming city that formed because it was a rail hub, which could hardly happen before the advent of a rail network. The major city in Georgia was Savannah because it was the port in an export economy. Savannah was never burned down so its gradual eclipse by Atlanta can hardly be blamed on Civil War depredation. Meanwhile Atlanta's post-Civil war population fairly exploded through out the post war period with migration to the city. The idea the burning of southern cities, especially Atlanta as it seems to be the go to example, is the reason for any sort of late industrialization seems unsupported by facts.
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Apr 6, 2014 20:16
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farraday posted:
Yeah, that's also ignoring cities like Houston that were mostly untouched by the Civil War but were still very late developers (it had the same population as Portland, Oregon in 1940, while the state of Texas was 6 times as large as the state of Oregon).
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Apr 6, 2014 20:18
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notthegoatseguy posted:I don't remember where I heard this but I remember someone writing about the reason the South doesn't have major metro cities like a Chicago or a NYC is because the Civil War burned a lot of it to the ground and it is only the last decade or two that southern cities are really developing and growing at rates other areas had seen that weren't in the south. Even before the Civil War, the North was industrializing and urbanizing while the South wasn't. I'd say a bigger reason was that the South was heavily agricultural and dominated by agricultural interests, while the North was more the domain of merchants and early factories even by that point. The South's economy and infrastructure was hit hard by the war, but they were already lagging behind by that point.
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Apr 6, 2014 22:31
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computer parts posted:Yeah, that's also ignoring cities like Houston that were mostly untouched by the Civil War but were still very late developers (it had the same population as Portland, Oregon in 1940, while the state of Texas was 6 times as large as the state of Oregon). And Houston only really started growing after Galveston was leveled by a hurricane, I think. That might be a just-so story, though.
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Apr 6, 2014 22:42
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notthegoatseguy posted:I don't remember where I heard this but I remember someone writing about the reason the South doesn't have major metro cities like a Chicago or a NYC is because the Civil War burned a lot of it to the ground and it is only the last decade or two that southern cities are really developing and growing at rates other areas had seen that weren't in the south. The short answer would be no, it's not like Southern cities were on the ascent pre-war either, New Orleans is the only Southern City that would have cracked the top 10 in 1860, after Charleston dropped off the list entirely in the 1840s. Antebellum Southern politicians were sent specifically to Washington to scuttle any kind of infrastructure projects that might have fostered urbanization (and consequently interfered with the feudal slaveocracy of the planter elites).
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Apr 7, 2014 01:02
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notthegoatseguy posted:I don't remember where I heard this but I remember someone writing about the reason the South doesn't have major metro cities like a Chicago or a NYC is because the Civil War burned a lot of it to the ground and it is only the last decade or two that southern cities are really developing and growing at rates other areas had seen that weren't in the south. Not really no. From the very beginning the South never invested any money in industrial development or infrastructure, which is what the north did, and instead invested all that money into buying slaves instead. Parts of the south tried to change that after the Civil War and they succeeded in a few cases like with textile factories in North Carolina, but the South was largely still rural and not industrialized by the 1960s. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Apr 7, 2014 |
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Apr 7, 2014 03:12
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The South also feared large numbers of workers in one place, given their likely racial makeup.
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Apr 7, 2014 03:23
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Badger of Basra posted:And Houston only really started growing after Galveston was leveled by a hurricane, I think. That might be a just-so story, though. Mostly true. Thing is the Texas cities were tiny in 1860. The big ones, like Galveston, Houston and San Antonio, didn't have more than 8,000 residents on the eve of the Civil War, whereas New Orleans had close to 170,000.
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Apr 7, 2014 03:45
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notthegoatseguy posted:I don't remember where I heard this but I remember someone writing about the reason the South doesn't have major metro cities like a Chicago or a NYC is because the Civil War burned a lot of it to the ground and it is only the last decade or two that southern cities are really developing and growing at rates other areas had seen that weren't in the south. Nope, not really. In addition to what everyone else has posted, I'd really emphasize the predominantly rural character of most of the country right up until World War 2. If you didn't live on the coast or the heavily industrialized northeast and Great Lakes region, you probably lived in a small town. Also, a lot of the growth hasn't really been in the regions in which the Civil War was fought. The real watershed for growth in the south and west was the post-WW2 suburbia boom. Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Washington were 7 of the 10 most populous cities in the US in 1950, and they all peaked in the 1950 census. That's total population, not just rank. By 1960, Houston was in the top 10, followed by Dallas in 1970 and San Antonio, San Diego, Phoenix, San Jose, in the decades since. All these cities have population densities less than half that of Los Angeles, let alone Chicago, Philadelphia, or New York.
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Apr 7, 2014 05:55
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farraday posted:The idea the burning of southern cities, especially Atlanta as it seems to be the go to example, is the reason for any sort of late industrialization seems unsupported by facts. Atlanta wasn't even the fifth biggest city in Georgia when it burned. Atlanta was founded in 1837 as a rail terminus, started becoming an actual town after 1845 when east-west and north-south lines were completed, and during the war grew tremendously as a center of what little military industry and transport the Confederacy could muster. In the 1860 census Atlanta was the 99th largest city in the US, and the 12th in the CSA. It was one of the few places in the South that was an actual logistics center, which is why Sherman targeted it. When he ordered the 'city' to be burned he really only burned everything of direct military value, which was the majority of the city. Point being that no, you can't really say that ACW damage is what set back southern urbanization, given that most southern cities didn't really start growing until the mid 20th century. I think this myth holds on because the destruction of an American city is somewhat rare and highly dramatic, plus probably Gone With The Wind and other literary works which focus on the destruction of Atlanta as metaphor. If anything, I would say that industrialization never really reached the South until later because it made more sense to continue to develop the North. Why start opening up an agricultural region when you've already got the ground infrastructure in place and you'll see much more return on your investment elsewhere? Once the Feds started building the Interstates a lot more of rural America opened up to development, including large portions of the South. boner confessor fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Apr 7, 2014 |
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Apr 7, 2014 05:58
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Popular Thug Drink posted:In the 1860 census Atlanta was the 99th largest city in the US, and the 12th in the CSA. I knew the CSA was empty, but goddamn. A note to any would-be secessionists: if you don't have the population to put you in power with votes, you proably don't have the population to do it with guns, either.
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Apr 7, 2014 06:16
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dublish posted:I knew the CSA was empty, but goddamn. Don't make the mistake of assuming wars happen rationally. Few on either side thought the war would drag on past a few months. boner confessor fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Apr 7, 2014 |
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Apr 7, 2014 06:23
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Popular Thug Drink posted:Don't make the mistake of assuming wars happen rationally. Few on either side thought the war would drag on past a few months. Unfortunately the latter were mad enough to want to test that hypothesis to the point of absolute destruction.
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Apr 7, 2014 06:52
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The south thought the war would be quick because the union wouldn't want to deal with the bloodbath. They were almost right for what its worth.
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Apr 7, 2014 06:56
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The South by and large thought the northerners were such cowards and weaklings that they would never fight at all, and if they did, then the good old southern boys would whip them good. There were many notables among them, Robert E. Lee included I believe, who pointed out that this was nonsense, but nobody wanted to listen. They had convinced themselves that they were intrinsically superior not just to the black race, but also to the nation of merchants and shopkeepers to their north.
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Apr 7, 2014 07:14
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PittTheElder posted:The South by and large thought the northerners were such cowards and weaklings that they would never fight at all, and if they did, then the good old southern boys would whip them good. There were many notables among them, Robert E. Lee included I believe, who pointed out that this was nonsense, but nobody wanted to listen. Yeah, there was a bit of a disconnect between moneyed political opinions who thought the President would be unwilling to fight a huge war over secession and the Army officers who actually knew how said war would turn out. Lee was totally against the war and thought secession was ridiculous, and would have lead the Union army if Virginia hadn't seceded. It's also important to note the level of interconnection these groups had with their counterparts on the other side of the war. Military officers on both sides knew each other very well, being colleagues for decades. The same is true of politicians, who served together in government. A lot of this superiority poo poo was just otherizing rhetoric. The only people who would have really believed this were the common people, who were volunteering to fight for abstract regionalist reasons anyway. Before the draft at least. boner confessor fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Apr 7, 2014 |
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Apr 7, 2014 07:20
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William T Sherman posted:You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it… Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fall. Basically the south was screwed before it even got started and it did well to survive as long as it did. A more aggressive and determined campaign by McClellan might have ended the war sooner. The other thing that people need to remember is that this was a Civil war and there were lots of northeners fighting for the confederacy and a lot of southerners willing to fight for the union so the notion that the nation was divided into completely monolithic geographical blocs is false.
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Apr 7, 2014 08:52
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| # ? Jun 2, 2024 14:43 |
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Regarding New Orleans, it was not only the largest city in the South by a significant margin but it was also captured early in the war, and with it went any real hope of the South having an actual fighting chance. If anything the capture of New Orleans was a more significant event than Antietam. In addition, intervention by European powers was completely a pipe dream, neither Britain or France wanted to get into a long and potentially very costly military conflict with the US and after the early stages of the war they had started finding new suppliers for cotton. Also, the public in both countries absolutely supported the North, helping a country founded on slavery was going to be more than a small issue. Beyond that, France by 1861 had become increasingly involved in Mexico and didn't have the extra resources to fight what would be a major war. In addition, Britain didn't have the standing forces to send either, and most likely all they could have done would have been to lift the blockade and harass the Eastern seaboard. However, the blockade being lifted wouldn't have been enough to swing the war in the South's favor and Britain would have to worry about Canada's frontiers which would have been extremely vulnerable. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Apr 7, 2014 |
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Apr 7, 2014 09:29
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