From: "Strong, Lee" <StrongL at MTMC.ARMY.MIL>
To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: alternate histories
Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 08:51:59 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

	Ron's historical recap is quite correct, but understated.  The
British aristocracy was openly pro-Confederate and wanted to recognize the
Confederacy as a means of splitting the upstart United States.  They were
restrained by British popular sentiment which was anti-slavery and
pro-United States.  The British government winked at violations of
neutrality by the Confederates and paid money for it after the war (the
Alabama Claims).  On the other hand, Britain permitted fairly open
recruiting of British citizens (especially Irish) for the US Army which was
questionable under British law.  The British observer to the Confederacy
wrote a book predicting a Confederate victory.  Three months after
publication, Lee surrendered.
	French policy under Napoleon III -- possibly one of George Lucas'
models for Chancellor Palpatine -- was openly and definitely anti-US.  That
emperor openly stated that he wished to dismember the USA "to slay the
dragon of democracy."  We supported the legitimate Mexican government of
Benito Juarez against Napoleon's soi-disant Mexican Empire during our war,
and after our war, we sent General Sherman to the Mexican border to persuade
the Europeans that it was time to go.  I recommend _One War At A Time_ and
_Napoleon III and Mexico_ for further reading.
	Could Britain and France have dismembered the United States with
Confederate help?  I doubt it.  At its Victorian height, the British Army
numbered about 200,000 men and most of them were tied down in India, China
and Africa.  The French Army was larger, but not that much larger, and they
were fighting in Africa and Asia as well as Mexico.  France got involved in
a little place called Indochina during our Civil War.  The Confederates had
900,000 men under arms at maximum effort, and arming the slaves would have
destroyed what little economy the Confederacy had.  The US Army during the
Civil War had 1.5 million men at its maximum size, and we could have doubled
its size easily.  An Anglo-French intervention would have resulted in an
American Canada and Confederacy and a German conquest of Europe.  Harry
Turtledove's Great War/American Empire series and Harry Harrison's Stars &
Stripes series have a number of fanciful elements, but are realistic in
projecting American victories in their scenarios.
	As Ron says, the key factor was willpower.  The Confederacy's best
chance was a Democratic victory in the Presidential election of 1864 and a
negotiated peace.  However, the Democratic candidate, General McClellan,
repudiated the Democratic party platform, and went on to lose the elction.
I recommend the recently republished _If the South Had Won the Civil War_
and _The Shiloh Project_ for Confederate victory stories, and _A More
Perfect Union_ for an interesting variation in which Lincoln decides to let
the South go peacefully.  -- LS

-----Original Message-----
From: ronkean at juno.com [mailto:ronkean at juno.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 1:33 AM
To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Subject: [WSFA] alternate histories

On Tue, 21 May 2002 13:36:44 -0400 "Strong, Lee" <StrongL at MTMC.ARMY.MIL>
writes:
>         Alternate outcomes to the Battle of Gettysburg leading to
> disaster?
> Been done.
>         Interestingly, I read an article in a recent collection
> _Alternate
> Gettysburgs_ stating that a Confederate victory at Gettysburg would
> not
> actually have accomplished much because the Army of Northern
> Virginia would
> have been too exhausted to exploit the victory, and because the
> United
> States would simply have raised and equipped another army.
>

The North had sufficient economic power, in comparison to the South, to
win the war.  But winning the war requires the will to win, in addition
to the simple ability to win.  The North apparently had sufficient will,
but if it had not, the South might well have 'won', since winning, for
the South, would have consisted bringing the North to accept the
secession.  Winning, for the North, required the subjugation of the
South.

Despite the fact that the North had the ability to defeat the South one
on one, the South might have enlisted foreign allies, and thus won.
Britain might have seen an advantage in splitting the U.S., if only
because it might allow them to get cotton from the South more cheaply, by
not paying the tariffs imposed by the North before the war, tariffs which
so distressed the South.  Britain may have felt that Canada was
threatened by the U.S., since there had been some sentiment in the U.S.
for trying to absorb Canada, so dividing the U.S. might have been thought
to reduce that danger.  The slogan 'fifty-four forty or fight' did not
set a friendly tone.  In 1865 or 1866, I think it was, Canada was
actually invaded from the U.S. by anti-British Irish 'Fenians', with the
object of making a sovereign home in Canada for the Irish, but that
invasion was not with the official support of the U.S.

In 1862, armies of France, Spain, and Britain jointly invaded Mexico, the
ostensible reason being to collect defaulted debts owed by Mexico.  They
seized the customs house at Vera Cruz, intending to recover the debts by
intercepting customs duties.  Spain and Britain made a settlement with
Mexico, and withdrew their forces, but the French marched on Mexico City,
and were defeated by the Mexicans in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862
('Cinco de Mayo').  If the French had succeeded in taking Mexico, the
possibility of the French and other European powers becoming involved in
America's civil war was there.  There was sentiment generally in Europe
that the U.S. was a growing power which was inclined to oppose European
power in the Americas, and more than one European power might have
considered entering the fray.  If that had happened, it might have
resulted in dismemberment of the U.S. by one or more European powers, and
the undoing of the 1848 treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo by which the U.S.
acquired vast territory in the southwest.  Britain was already positioned
in Canada, and could have engaged the U.S. on multiple fronts.

Intervening in the U.S. Civil War would have represented just about the
last chance for Britain to recover her American colonies, because after
the economic and population growth in the U.S. in the last third of the
19th century, the U.S. became effectively invulnerable.  The French angle
is particularly intriguing, with the French-speaking population in Quebec
being not entirely comfortable with British rule.  It may be that the
mutual distrust between the French and the British would have prevented
them cooperating in an action against the U.S.  And surely the British
must have realized that it would have been very costly, if not
practically impossible, to maintain any form of colonial rule over
Americans.

One reason given for the Emancipation Proclamation was that it was partly
intended to make the British, who were anti-slavery, less inclined to
support the South.  The Proclamation did not end slavery in the North
(nor in the South), but it was probably a sufficiently strong
anti-slavery gesture to please the British, since it implied that the
days of slavery were numbered, should the North win the war.

As it happened, U.S. and British interests converged after the Civil War,
with both Britain and the U.S. benefiting from the application of British
capital in the industrialization of the U.S. and the railroad building
boom.

Ron Kean