Let’s say that at the point that Lincoln was elected that the South hadn’t attacked Fort Sumter, but instead just established a shadow congress and started to “act” like an independent country. The Confedracy could apply tariffs and trade directly with other countries, tax its own citizens, and begin to build up a war chest.
I’m sure the North would have eventually marched on the southern Capitol and would try to arrest everyone there for treason… but if they instead simply ignored the South, for say 6 months, that would have provided time for the Confedracy to aquire better armorments, train it’s army, and build substantial fortifications. The North would then have been put in the position of attacker with the South dug in for a long defensive engagement. The South never attacks the North but instead builds a border around the Confederacy. A true “two state” solution.
Do you think the war would still have lasted 4 years and cost 600,000 lives? Might the outcome have been different if the South used this strategy?
The North was in the position of attacker in every way except the moral point of the South firing first. Davis adopted the strategic defensive and made the Union come and get him.
That aside, what you’re getting at wasn’t possible. The South “walling itself off” meant that Federal facilities in the South (forts, arsenals, and the like) would have been inside the Southern area, and it was precisely Lincoln’s determination to “hold, occupy, and possess” these forts and facilities that triggered the Sumter crisis. In his view (a view supported by many others at the time) these Federal properties belonged to the general government the South claimed to want no part of, and (the South’s) taking them over was seizure of Federal property.
The same holds true for all the land in the South, really; Lincoln once said, when being told that the rebels had been chased off our soil, “Will our Generals never get that idea out of their heads? The whole country is our soil.” True, it was on the legally stronger grounds of holding the forts themselves that he chose to make his stand, but eventually he would have come for the rest of the states’ land as well: “The whole country is our soil.”
Also, the South could not have acquired better armaments early on without a wholesale change in the attitude of its leadership. In the first months, before the North was able to get the Anaconda plan (the blockade) functioning, the South could have shipped enormous amounts of cotton to Europe to buy desperately-needed things, and some counseled just that. But Southern leadership (not just Davis) was hellbent on using cotton as a lever to force European powers to get involved on the South’s side. The idea was to withhold the cotton, starve the textile mills of England and (to a lesser degree) France, and force them to intervene or face financial ruin. This failed, of course, and with hindsight, it can be seen that selling the cotton right off would have been enormously better strategy. But to imagine that the South could have deviated from its vision of itself as “too important to do without” and its primary crop as “King” is to imagine a very different South than the one that so confidently seceded. The flaws that caused the South to lose were part and parcel of the same worldview that caused it to secede, to even exist, in the first place.
I am by no means a Civil War expert… but I recall a pivitol battle in Pennsylvania which was certainly not located in the South. Are you suggesting that the South was defending Gettysburg or am I missing something here?
I am suggesting that Gettysburg was not part of Jefferson Davis’ strategy, but the product of Robert E. Lee’s capitalizing on his battlefield success. He decided on invading twice (first time resulting in Antietam) but it was not part of the South’s first, or principal, strategy.
Okay, point taken, so let me restate my conjecture. Had the South followed Jeff Davis’ strategy of letting the North attack and simply dug in and built strong defenses, AND if they had dumped as much cotten on the world market early on as possible, might that have changed the outcome, or was the South doomed no matter what they had done short of inventing the atomic bomb?
BTW, I realize the federal forts in the South posed a problem for both sides, but the South could have surrounded the forts until the union forces ran out of food, water or ammunition. Eventually they would have surrendered, no? The forts fall and the South hunkers down for the inevitable onslaught… your move.
Pretty much doomed. There was too much difference in industrial capability and sheer numbers of able bodied men available to serve as troops.
The South’s best hope was some early victories to discourage the northern populace, followed by those in power in the North losing interest in pursuing an unpopular war and simply letting those states that wanted to leave, leave.
The early victories were accomplished, the war became unpopular in the North, but Lincoln’s resolve never wavered.
If the British and/or French had immediately jumped to the defense of the South would that have made any difference? Certainly that would have tipped the balance of power at least to some degree…
The South was not doomed. It, in fact, faced vastly better odds than many other revolutions in history, include the Revolution of 1776!
However, this strategy would have failed terribly. It was precisely because the South was losing such a war that Lee (and other) went on the offensive.
If either Britain or France get too involved with the Confederates, they risked being jumped by the other. Not sure they would have ever been able to ally with each other at that time.
Also they have to be concerned with the US Navy or privateers preying on their commercial vessels.
And Britain and France really had no good military options.
France under Napoleon III was not up to doing anything against Great Britain; the days of France dominating Europe were over and Napoleon looked toward Britain’s lead in the matter. Independently, they had trouble putting Maximilian on the throne of Mexico and were bogged down fighting there (and they needed to secure Mexico to have a staging area for troops).
Britain had Canada, but the logistics were a nightmare. And they’d be going up against the largest army in the world – in a country where many able bodied men did not fight. Northerners who may have been ambivalent about the South seceding would have supported the Union en masse if the British were coming. Other than Canada, it meant that the British troops would constantly have to run the blockade, which made it difficult to move troops. And, of course, an amphibious landing in, say, New England was going to be a risky proposition.
I can’t imagine British military leaders were keen on their prospects.
I am unconvinced that the blockade would have posed much of a barrier to the British; 90-day gunboats and ramshackle converted riverboats might not have stopped the world’s leading navy. Especially since blockade required the ships to be dispersed, and the British could take a large fleet down the coastline, defeating each blockading squadron in detail. Possibly, a British declaration would have outright forced Lincoln to lift the blockade in order to concentrate the fleet for action.
However, I am very much in agreement with the rest of RealityChuck’s analysis.
dolphinboy, what you’re asking is one of the greatest “what-ifs” of American history, and the US Civil War is perhaps the most written-about historical topic in the English language. The problem in framing a reply is keeping it concise, not thinking of what to write. I will try to throw together a little more opinion on this topic for you in a bit, without going off the deep end and accidentally starting a 20-year historical trilogy.
Britain and France had already fought as allies in the Crimean War a decade earlier. Despite some residual bad feelings from the Bonaparte era, they weren’t enemies and wouldn’t have turned on each other. As noted above, Napoleon III was content to largely follow the British lead on foreign policy as it related to the American Civil War.
The British certainly had the naval power to have broken the blockade and gave serious thought to doing so, particularly at the time of the Trent Affair in late 1861: Trent Affair - Wikipedia Lincoln allegedly told his Cabinet “one war at a time” and SecState Seward engineered a moderately face-saving compromise.
There were several ways in which the Confederacy might have won the war and thus its independence, but I don’t think just hunkering down was one of them.
No, the North would have sent new supplies. That’s what happened at Fort Sumter–the fort was about to run out of food, so Lincoln sent a resupply expedition. The South had three choices: (1) attack the resupply expedition; (2) attack the fort itself before the expedition arrived; or (3) allow the fort to be supplied and maintained indefinitely. They chose (2).
Your question is, what if they had chosen (3)? It’s an interesting question, and option (3) sounds attractive.
But, keep in mind that only seven states had seceded to that point. A confederacy without the upper South wasn’t very viable, and the upper South wasn’t going to secede unless and until shots were fired. In the short run, the attack on Fort Sumter was a great success, as it induced four more states to secede.
Also, there was zero chance of European recognition as long as the Union maintained Fort Sumter. Sovereign nations don’t allow foreign countries to maintain forts in the heart of their territory, and the existence of Fort Sumter was de facto evidence, to foreign countries, that the Confederacy wasn’t sovereign.
Finally, inaction was politically impossible. The Southern public demanded the expulsion of the Yankees with one voice. If the politicians had said no, they would have been replaced by more bellicose politicians at the next election.
Britain could have made much trouble for the North. Maybe even swung the war to a Southern victory. However, Britian couldn’t be sure.
If Britain would have went in in 1961…what if the South would have crumbled right away? Remember that people thought this was a likely outcome.
By the time of the South’s doing well in the East (they always did poorly in the West) and Britain deciding they could pitch in it was late 62/early 63…and the North had a HUGE army equiped in the field and this army had FOUGHT. They weren’t ‘green’. Even the North’s navy was cranking up to high geer. If Britian came in and the South was contained, the North would have chewed up the Brits something fierce. Even on the sea, Britain would still have dominated but it would have been a struggle…and VERY expensive.
The other important fact was that Britian was coming to the realization that trouble was brewing. Countries other than England/France were getting their shit together (like Germany and Russia) and England was starting to see that it could be surrounded by enemies soon. It was a huge risk to piss off the North…because if the Brits came in and the South lost…they would have had a VERY pissed off United States on their hands…one that would likely embrace these new powers to drive a stake into Britain in the future when the opportunity arose (like WWI).
So…Britain would have come in if the South looked like they could carry the fight. So, when Lee invaded the North the first time resulting in Antetiem, if he could have won and carried into the capital, Britain would have come in because they would have had a viable ally/counterweight to the United States in the Confederacy.
Britain did the right thing. They didn’t support a losing country and went about befriending the U.S. and did it at the right time.
To further box in the Confederate leadership and maintain the moral high ground for the Union, Lincoln wrote to the governor of South Carolina ahead of time that the steam freighter Star of the West was unarmed and carrying only food and non-military supplies for the tiny garrison in Ft. Sumter, and that the garrison would not be reinforced (at least in the short term). The Confederates nevertheless fired on the steamer when it arrived in Charleston harbor, and later fired on the fort itself, so they actually chose both (1) and (2).
The Star of the West was sent while Buchanan was President. At that time the Carolinians did indeed fire upon her.
In April, Lincoln made it clear that he would resupply only provisions, but that resupply would be backed by naval support, and if it was resisted, the naval support would fight back. This made attacking the supply vessel much less attractive, so the South chose to reduce the fort before the expedition arrived.
It’s also exceedingly unclear what Britain could have done against the U.S. Navy. You may mock 90-day gunboats, but the U.S. rapidly built huge fleets of true warships, as well as dozens of ever-better ironclad warships. A handful of them would be enugh to utterly obliterate the entire British Navy.
And I am not joking: the Merrimac was a half-arsed design put together on the cheap and it still took three of America’s finest wooden ships to pieces in a hour. The Monitor was a much more dangerous design*. By late 1862, I highly doubt even the entire British Navy could have done more than temporarily lift the blockade. Moreover, their entire military was dwarfed by the Union army, and it was not clear they could actually recruit, transport, or feed enough people to make a serious threat. The north was a massive grain supplier to Europe, and England particularly.
*It’s guns were more than powerful enough to turn the Merrimac into rust and kibble. Had the Navy not been worried about the guns exploding, the Monitor would have blown stright through the Merrimac’s armor. Later tests proved this.
The Star of the West was sent while Buchanan was President. At that time the Carolinians did indeed fire upon her.