- Joined
- Aug 16, 2015
Kentucky, a slave state, refused Lincoln's call for volunteers and chose to remain neutral.
What if Virginia had followed Kentucky's lead?
What if Virginia had followed Kentucky's lead?
Kentucky, a slave state, refused Lincoln's call for volunteers and chose to remain neutral.
What if Virginia had followed Kentucky's lead?
There would be a significant amount of negotiation. As long as Virginia allows the Treasury officers to collect the tariff, I think Lincoln decides to go around. Obviously there is some risk to the blockade effort if that happens, so there is plenty to argue about.Kentucky, a slave state, refused Lincoln's call for volunteers and chose to remain neutral.
What if Virginia had followed Kentucky's lead?
What if Virginia had followed Kentucky's lead?
Thanks for your response.The C.S.A. just simply can not survive without Virginia and North Carolina.
If everything gets bogged down, perhaps the blockade and a tariff are enough to produce peace. And after some shouting, a huge discriminatory tariff on anything imported from a slave economy, directly or indirectly through Britain, is enough to produce reunion.
In that scenario the Republicans inform the middle south they have a few weeks to abandon neutrality before the FSA is eliminated and slavery is a goner in DC regardless.
Unless they want all whiskey, mules, hemp and hogs coming from Kentucky and Tennessee to Illinois and Ohio to pay a 25% tariff, they have a few months to rejoin because loyal farmers are going to get a tariff preference over neutral farmers.
Nobody wants to pay a big tariff premium on cotton textiles, but by June it becomes a patriotic fashion to wear linen, wool and silk.
Negotiations open with the Spanish empire and Brazil to abolish slavery and can most preferred nation status.
Missouri finds out right away the neutrality means the Union Pacific begins at Rock Island or Davenport and builds straight west from there and the government is going to build the bridge and Council Bluffs on a contract basis.
I believe had Virginia chosen neutrality, North Carolina may have followed Virginia's lead, and without those two key states the Confederate States of America either collapses without a war or they fight a short (5 to 8 month) war. The C.S.A. just simply can not survive without Virginia and North Carolina. Both those states provided a huge amount of man power, resources, and material the C.S.A. could ill afford not to have.
Respectfully,
William
One Nation, two countries
View attachment 193165
Interesting conjecture. Virginia and Kentucky both declaring neutrality would have put a crimp into anybody's war efforts. What intrigues more would have been what if the whole border area, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia , Maryland and Delaware had done the same and flat out refused to fight any other Americans. Maybe a truncated and chagrined South and a frustrated and more accommodating North. Too bad it was never tried.
Not much risk. The northern states were a railroad economy. The economy was rapidly becoming self sufficient. The northern states were in a position to take off, with territory in Nebraska, Colorado and the Nevada mining towns ready for development.Isn't there a problem with such economic pressure potentially prompting those states to secede and join the existing rebels? Or possibly, if their being discriminated against by Washington they reject such tariffs and existing ones that heavily benefit the northern states by hindering the purchase of cheaper European goods. After all the high tariffs on imports was another big source of resentment from just about everybody outside the north east states.
Given how protectionist the north was at the time and how dependent Washington was on income from such tariffs I doubt it will make favourable deals with external nations. Especially since many of their productions are primary ones and hence likely to be in competition with US producers.
Perhaps Lincoln should have traded that fort for a state, especially that one. DarnIt would have been a much shorter and less bloody war. The south loses significant manpower, generalship (Lee, Jackson, Stuart, AP Hill among many) and they lose Tredegar.