Never had a chance.

[wausaubob]

Correct. Admiral Farragut got his steam powered vessels past the twin forts on the Mississippi. He held the city of New Orleans under threat of his naval guns until Butler arrived and captured the city as intact communications center.
Then Farragut got the Hartford above Port Hudson again in 1863 and by March almost all communication with Texas and Louisiana was lost, and then things got progressively worse after that.
The US had access to all the internal waterways, and controlled all the ship and boat building cities and towns of the US within about 1 year of the beginning of the war. So the Tullahoma difficulties encountered by Bragg were a direct result of the failing logistical system of the Confederacy.

 

[wausaubob]

If the French and British had not intervened on behalf of the Ottoman Empire, the Russians would have whipped the Ottoman's in short order and taken that part that was valuable to them.
Sure the British could have intervened on behalf of the Confederacy. But they would have been antagonizing a people that spoke English, with whom they were connected at the family level because of recent emigration, and would have hurt an economy in which the English and Scots were deeply invested in.
I think Foote would have recognized that neither the British nor the French were interested in owning the slave economy of the Confederacy. They were willing to allow it to exist, as long as they did not have to prop it up.

 

[Rhea Cole]

If the French and British had not intervened on behalf of the Ottoman Empire, the Russians would have whipped the Ottoman's in short order and taken that part that was valuable to them.
Sure the British could have intervened on behalf of the Confederacy. But they would have been antagonizing a people that spoke English, with whom they were connected at the family level because of recent emigration, and would have hurt an economy in which the English and Scots were deeply invested in.
I think Foote would have recognized that neither the British nor the French were interested in owning the slave economy of the Confederacy. They were willing to allow it to exist, as long as they did not have to prop it up.

The British military realized that if they came in on the side of the CSA, they could kiss Canada & the sugar islands goodbye. They knew full well that they were incapable of supporting a force of any size across the Atlantic.

 

[wausaubob]

The British military realized that if they came in on the side of the CSA, they could kiss Canada & the sugar islands goodbye. They knew full well that they were incapable of supporting a force of any size across the Atlantic.

Their problems would have been in the Upper Great Lakes, and in the Columbia region. The Russians would have loved to help the US in the northern Pacific. The Russians would have helped themselves to another piece of Poland.

 

[wausaubob]

The British military realized that if they came in on the side of the CSA, they could kiss Canada & the sugar islands goodbye. They knew full well that they were incapable of supporting a force of any size across the Atlantic.

On the eastern side of the Atlantic the British would have been recruiting working class Englishmen and Irishmen to go fight other English and Irish families who has emigrated to the US just in the last 16 years. The naval part of it would have been easy for the British, but a land battle would have been far too much like a civil war.

 

[wausaubob]

The late Mississippi author never got into the fairy tale of possible British intervention. He was more interested in Forrest and Lee.

 

[wausaubob]

I think Mr. Foote realized that if the war went on for any considerable period, it was going to promote some hard fisted semi barbarian leader like Grant. Sherman was part of the civilized world, but he was an educated man from the provinces. Sheridan was definitely an immigrant and in Tolstoy's scheme would have nearly a Cossack.
Lee and Buell would have been defenders of the ancient system. McClellan and Halleck would Frenchophiles with high prestige in the cultural capital. In the US that is NYC as compared to St. Petersburg in Czarist Russia.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Their problems would have been in the Upper Great Lakes, and in the Columbia region. The Russians would have loved to help the US in the northern Pacific. The Russians would have helped themselves to another piece of Poland.

According to the British generals, all that was necessary was to blockade the Saint Lawrence to conquer Canada. The only base of any kind that could support a RN force was in Halifax. If I recall it is 300 miles from the nearest US port. According to the RN & army analysis, there was absolutely no prospect of fighting a successful war on North America. I see no reason to argue with their conclusions.

 

[wausaubob]

According to the British generals, all that was necessary was to blockade the Saint Lawrence to conquer Canada. The only base of any kind that could support a RN force was in Halifax. If I recall it is 300 miles from the nearest US port. According to the RN & army analysis, there was absolutely no prospect of fighting a successful was on North America. I see no reason to argue with their conclusions.

My memory is that when Gladstone shot his mouth off about recognizing the Confederacy, Palmerston loosed the War Secretary on him and quashed any idea of forced mediation. Which comports with your post.

 

[unionblue]

My memory is that when Gladstone shot his mouth off about recognizing the Confederacy, Palmerston loosed the War Secretary on him and quashed any idea of forced mediation. Which comports with your post.

@wausaubob ,

The book, Union In Peril: The Crisis Over British Intervention in the Civil War, by Howard Jones, covers your and @Rhea Cole 's observations and is well worth a read on the topic.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

 

[Sgt. Tyree]

What Mr. Foote said reminds me of the threads we've had about bold cavaliers and those dashing and daring cavalry raids.

With perhaps rare exceptions, when the Confederacy finished a cavalry raid it could not replace the men and horses it lost on the raid but the Union could rebuild any destruction the raid had caused.

When the Union finished a cavalry raid, Ol' Dixie was driven a little further down.

 

[atlantis]

There was an excellent chance for success on the part of the confederacy. It all depended on self restraint on patience. The confederates needed to focus on making the best use of interior lines to avoid being out flanked and the best use of field works to offset superior numbers of enemy forces. Conscription cost the confederates victory for it made the generals reckless with men's lives and turned many people against the confederacy.

 

[wausaubob]

Foote's reasons are descriptive, but the main reason was the US achieved naval dominance and could move troops, and supplies long distances by water transport.
Consistently throughout the Civil War mobility allowed units to achieve victories, and it worked for both sides. Marching ability and hard riding cavalry led to many wins, without excessive battle counts. Thomas Jackson, for instance, drove his soldiers to march far and fast, and created many victories that way.
But the US could move troops down the Atlantic coast, in the Gulf of Mexico, and on the internal rivers, and the Confederacy was left to try to defend everything.
As others have noted, it was more than the Confederacy's military and support manpower could maintain.

 

[wausaubob]

The more precise reason that the US was going to dominate was that the section with the larger economy, the larger population and the more modern communication system was going to control the 5 border areas and hold the capital.
This was hidden from the Confederates. They could look around and rightfully conclude they were a modern nation. And a large modern nation at that. There were only a few nations that were more modern the Confederates, the US, the British and the French. Unfortunately for the Confederates they were engaged in a fight with one of those three. The other two had already given up on competing with the US in North America.
Because the US controlled Wilmington, Baltimore, Wheeling, Cincinnati/Covington, Louisville/New Albany and St. Louis, on top of the port cities in the NE and Pittsburgh/Alleghany, the US controlled nearly all the ship and boat building cities and towns of the US. What the US didn't control in the first 6 months as the two belligerents faced off, the US took in the next 8 months.
After the first week in May of 1862, the US controlled all of the coast and most of the internal rivers.
In that circumstance the land battles made no difference. Prof. Gallagher states that the Confederates did not win enough battles, that is why they lost. That is incorrect. The Confederate did win enough land battles and they kept winning them until the end of July 1864. But that would never have made any difference.
The US had achieved and maintained absolute naval control. The US would have maintained and improved that naval dominance even if there had been an armistice and a period of independence.

 

[wausaubob]

By the middle of September of 1861 the US was a solid mass of 21 states including the four big states, NY, PA, OH and IL. By October of 1861, CA, OR and the NV mining camps were connected by wire to the rest of the nation. The next four states were going to be some combination of WV, NE, CO and NV. The Confederates controlled approximately 10 4/5 states.

 

[wausaubob]

Mr. Foote points in the same direction as @DaveBrt . Immigration, mechanization and modernization all meant that if the US Civil War was sustained for any substantial period, the Confederate labor force was going to decline as black workers fled slavery and white farmers fled anarchy.

 

[Rhea Cole]

The more precise reason that the US was going to dominate was that the section with the larger economy, the larger population and the more modern communication system was going to control the 5 border areas and hold the capital.
This was hidden from the Confederates. They could look around and rightfully conclude they were a modern nation. And a large modern nation at that. There were only a few nations that were more modern the Confederates, the US, the British and the French. Unfortunately for the Confederates they were engaged in a fight with one of those three. The other two had already given up on competing with the US in North America.
Because the US controlled Wilmington, Baltimore, Wheeling, Cincinnati/Covington, Louisville/New Albany and St. Louis, on top of the port cities in the NE and Pittsburgh/Alleghany, the US controlled nearly all the ship and boat building cities and towns of the US. What the US didn't control in the first 6 months as the two belligerents faced off, the US took in the next 8 months.
After the first week in May of 1862, the US controlled all of the coast and most of the internal rivers.
In that circumstance the land battles made no difference. Prof. Gallagher states that the Confederates did not win enough battles, that is why they lost. That is incorrect. The Confederate did win enough land battles and they kept winning them until the end of July 1864. But that would never have made any difference.
The US had achieved and maintained absolute naval control. The US would have maintained and improved that naval dominance even if there had been an armistice and a period of independence.

CSA battlefield victories were consistently without strategic consequences.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Mr. Foote points in the same direction as @DaveBrt . Immigration, mechanization and modernization all meant that if the US Civil War was sustained for any substantial period, the Confederate labor force was going to decline as black workers fled slavery and white farmers fled anarchy.

The massive loss of labor by self-liberating slaves was something the SC hotheads never even contemplated in their wildest imaginings. They really believed that the slaves would remain loyal. The delusional nature of the secessionists' presumptions is impossible to exaggerate.

 

[wausaubob]

CSA battlefield victories were consistently without strategic consequences.

They were victories in the press and gave information to the northern Democrats who were supporting the Confederates, but they never prevented the Lincoln administration from building the US that would survive even if he failed and there was an armistice.

 

[wausaubob]

The massive loss of labor by self-liberating slaves was something the SC hotheads never even contemplated in their wildest imaginings. They really believed that the slaves would remain loyal. The delusional nature of the secessionists' presumptions is impossible to exaggerate.

@leftyhunter has written that liberating the other side's slaves was a time honored tactic. The northerners had made it very clear that in war situation they intended to liberate the south's slaves. Therefore that was miscalculation that was inexcusable. People in Kentucky never made that mistake. They thought that by claiming neutrality and then remaining loyal they could at least slow down abolition.