The imagery of the 'coffee battery' is at the least quite evocative. The proto-machineguns might be too immature a technology to carry the day for now, but one might imagine that this company could be assigned a mixture of artillery and machineguns in future wars based on this precedent.
Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond
- Thread starter EnglishCanuck
- Start date
While proto-machine guns are certainly scary weapons, their battlefield effectiveness was always questionable at best. Prone to jamming, overheating, and a myriad of technical problems, these weren't war changing weapons. Despite many many writers wondering what might have happened were guns like this employed en masse, the sad truth is they probably would have been cumbersome burdens on the armies they were employed with. Just keeping them supplied with ammunition alone would have been a logistical headache that I don't imagine any officer would have been thrilled to tackle.
The quintessential example really is the French mitrailleuse from the Franco-Prussian War, where a combination of flawed tactical inception and staggering Prussian artillery superiority meant that even when the guns were used effectively, they were never tide of battle turning weapons. The example here would be where even if a Union battery got a Gatling gun or the like into battle properly, on the field an Armstrong gun (or even a Union Napoleon) is going to rather effectively turn the tide due to range superiority.
Despite some thinking that General Ripley and the Ordinance Department were too conservative in their thinking, I do think he was right in deciding that repeating weapons were not the right weapons to arm the US in the Civil War. Just expanding the 16,000 man peacetime army to a paper strength of 500,000 men come the start of 1862 was a daunting enough task that the thought of trying to arm them all with weapons that were still in their teething stages is something I think any soldier worth their salt would have nightmares about! The future of warfare though, is probably going to be seen effectively in some cases.
While the campaigns haven't reached the Overland level of trench and re-trench warfare we saw OTL, now that the armies are moving, you can be sure that the pounding around Washington and the vicious fighting at Savage Factory and the Patuxent means that no one really wants to be dodging bullets out in the open anymore.
Thank you for sharing.
Here is the US Navy List from 1860.
At the start of the Civil War, the US 42 active ships, plus 48 that were laid up for repair or maintenance. Then they lost all of the ships at the Gosport Naval Yard in Norfolk, Virginia. By the end of 1861, the US Navy had increased from 7600 to 22,000 sailors and had increased to 264 active ships. This included the 7 City Class Ironclad gunboats on the Mississippi River and 11 of the Unadilla class gunboats on the East Coast.
Of course mere numbers is not everything. The US Navy brought the top three classes of the naval academy directly into service, so there were some very young and inexperienced officers. And a lot of those 264 ships were former civilian vessels with a couple guns bolted on - decent for blockade duty, passable commerce raiders, and hopeless against a real warship.
The Royal Navy has its own problems - they have a blue water navy, while the Union has a brown water navy. Many of the RNs ships have a deep enough draft that they would be severely limited trying to maneuver in Union bays. They also have longer supply lines. And as Admiral Milne worried about, storms of the East Coast could do veru bad things to blockading ships. OTL's Burnside Expedition was scattered and delayed by storms.
And ironclads are a game changer. Though everybody's ironclads are experimental, they can play havok with most existing warships in the world. Of course, as a brown water navy, the US Navy would be at a disadvantage in the open ocean. Most British blockade ships could run away from Union ironclads, assuming anyone was suicidal enough to take a Monitor into the open ocean.
Planning!
Finance!
Supply!
It's so good to see logistics acknowledged in an ATL.
I am left with a couple questions, though.
1) What about the Great Lakes? There were some important naval actions on them in the War of 1812 and a few ships built there could make a difference.
2) What about Peru? They are a major exported of guano, and thus nitrates.
I also love that the British are dealing with logistics - transportation, weather delays, recruiting, information delays, old gunboats being unfit for service....
And overconfidence. Another nice touch.
Interesting divergence. If the US public sees this as Mary Lincoln working herself to death, it would harden views against Britain. It might harden the views of some Confederates against Britain as well- as I recall some of Mrs Lincoln's brothers and brothers-in-law were Confederate officers.
Thank you! They were, to my surprise, rather interesting questions to research and answer all around. I admit I am, so many years on, still proud of many of these early chapters since they're firm blends of historic fact and converging counterfactual circumstances and are probably still quite strong for it.
This is answered more in depth in later chapters, but in short, Lake Erie is an uncontested American lake, the British don't really have a hope of contesting it, and so focus their attention on Lake Ontario, Lake Champlain, and the St. Lawrence and Richelieu Rivers which, in some cases, has an immediate pay off.
I do think that my own lack of focus on the Lakes is a weakness of the TL in general. They would be far more important to the outcome than I have really portrayed. It's something I intend to fix.
For Peru, it's a problem of geography. Wrong side of South America, and the industry and transportation on the West Coast of the US (and British North America) is very underdeveloped compared to what it would be even 20 years later. A voyage around the Tierra del Fuego is fraught with not just natural danger, but the presence of British warships who would interfere with an American flagged merchant, and even a neutral merchant still has to make a journey of some 3,100 nautical miles. Makes for a less than secure supply.
If they weren't, I couldn't really get away with saying this had any basis in realism. I think I hit upon some of their problems quite well, and continue to do so as the TL unfolds.
Well, even having read a lot of OTL British assessments that ranged from quite realistic to blindly optimistic, I think they'd fall somewhere in the latter category in Whitehall at first.
Your research definitely shows. As does your bringing balance to a scenario dominated by shouty Trent Warriors who are allergic to facts or balance. On another forum I've encountered someone who thinks that the Union was completely dependent on Canadian horses and grain.
I have gotten that far. I don't know about Canadian history books, but in the US, the naval conflict in the Great Lakes is covered little if at all when discussing the War of 1812.
I wasn't thinking about going around Tierra del Fuego. I was thinking running between Peru and California, then shipping overland. It's not a war winner but it would help.
Have you considered the Pacific Coast as a front for the War? IIRC, the US Pacific fleet is based in San Francisco, while the British are based in Vancouver and Chile. And the US naval forces would find out about the war first. (Except in bad timelines, where downed telegraph lines and every person in the United States forgetting about stagecoach lines or the recently defunct Pony Express leaves the Union with no idea how to get the message those last couple hundred miles.)
Well he was up against Beauregard and Price, not exactly the Confederate A Team there...
A lot of Confederate generals in the west were pretty bad. But Beauregard was one of the Confederacy's best.
Many thanks! I've tried to keep it as realistic within the bounds of my research as possible, and I'm glad it's held up!
The Union was far from an autarchy, but the Canadians were far more dependent on US trade than the reverse. I do know that the Union bought thousands of horses from Canada to meet their war needs, but I'm reasonably certain that losses in that market would not even remotely break the bank as it were.
It's pretty well covered in the books I've read. It has its highs and lows, and there's been some great general work by Pierre Berton and Donald Graves.
It would certainly alleviate some of the problems posed in the domestic market, but I don't regard it as being very effective.
I think you've read those chapters (if I have tracked your likes correctly) and I do delve into it more. I've laid out what I think the likely strengths and weaknesses are, and the general strategies pursued by both sides. The tyranny of time and distance has shaped the struggle on the Pacific front, and the (relative) paucity of resources has led to these being rather short, sharp, campaigns.
I think he was a brilliant commander on the defensive, but his offensive ideas leave a lot to be desired.
Damn, just finished reading this over the span of a day and I'm a bit overwhelmed, this has been excellently researched. I'm excited to see how the war pans out. Especially when/if the British are instigated into joining again. Right now the confederacy is in probably the best position it possibly could be.
Thank you! I'm glad you've enjoyed it thus far, and I have many more places to go with it!
So far the peace treaty with Britain is still in its youth, I'll be covering it as we get into July 1864, once I finish off the big fights in the Eastern Theater, there will be some political drama to cover before I play a bit of catch up out West. Then it's downhill to November 1864...
One of the factors in any British intervention in the Civil War is that the Confederacy suddenly gets a huge shot in the arm, and many of their 1862 campaigns may come off better, depending on the generalship. In this alternate 1864 the Confederacy is in a goodish position, Lee has a larger army than he did historically, Virginia hasn't been devastated by two years of fighting between Centreville and the Rapidan, with thousands of fresh troops, modern rifles, and artillery to back them up. The major problem is the political meddling keeping scores of soldiers at Annapolis which might otherwise be used to blunt the coming Union offensive.
Lee certainly has his work cut out for him! But so does Rosecrans.
It has been awhile since I last commented.
Got to say that this story continues to be a joy to read. Politics, war, small slices of life, accurate portrayals of historical figures all rolled into a wonderful bundle of What If.
I'm hoping the confederates get kicked out of Kentucky soon. It would be nice to see progress made now that England and America are preparing to stop fighting.
Got to say that this story continues to be a joy to read. Politics, war, small slices of life, accurate portrayals of historical figures all rolled into a wonderful bundle of What If.
I'm hoping the confederates get kicked out of Kentucky soon. It would be nice to see progress made now that England and America are preparing to stop fighting.
It wasn't until 1902 that Victoria Crosses were awarded posthumously.
Great timeline.
Much like Robert E Lee? In OTL, Lee's offensive campaigns usually failed, often at irreplaceable cost to the Confederacy. Seven Days was a success, but either Malvern Hill and Gaines Mill were each around as costly as Pickett's Charge.
Hopefully Beauregard at least gave clearer orders than Lee.
Lee was successful because no commander ever believed he could be so audacious, I don’t think Beauregard is a bad commander by any means but he’s certainly an…. Interesting one
I'm glad you're enjoying it!
I will say I am sorry in the lack of recent progress. Real life drama has alas interfered with much of my writing schedule and so I am quite behind. Hopefully we will wrap up at least the summer of 1864 before December!
Captain Montague is a strange case as he was awarded while he was convalescing in Canada from his wounds, but died before he could officially receive it from the Queen.
Many thanks!
No arguments about the outcome there, but at the very least I think it can be said that Lee probably won more on the offensive than Beauregard. He was aggressive in a way that very few Confederate commanders were, which effectively kept everyone but Grant on the backfoot. Arguably his best offensive campaign was post-Seven Days leading up to Bull Run, and even up to Antietam where he effectively fought McClellan to a draw, but then withdrew his army without pursuit and McClellan 'won' by dint of not having withdrawn first.
I'm probably more critical of Beauregard because of the lead up to, and execution of, the plans at Shiloh. While there is a lot of blame to be cast about on the Confederate side, Beauregard bears much of the blame for jumbling the forces and a premature declaration of victory and being somewhat lacking in his duties the day of the battle. Doesn't excuse Johnston's failings of course, but Johnston was far more determined to see the battle through in the first place and, in my opinion, Beauregard was just trying to ride Johnston's coattails of the days success and had no clear picture of the field of battle and got such a beating the next day because of it.
I’m excited for the next chapter, but I think even more excited to see how the Virginian Campaign will ultimately end, because while Rosecrans isn’t a bad General by any means, he’s honestly pretty clever and is a great logistician, looking at his defeat at Chickamauga, I think we’ll potentially see him take at least 1-2 major blows before the campaign season ends. The war in the west is going to be the most interesting though.
I just found the original version of this timeline and wow its been fun to read over and compare.specially because if I read it correctly in that timeline France joins in .as well the miltary details are longer but the text then loses some of its narrative feeling.its really fun to read.