I suspect that after ten years of trying, if they weren't going to have an heir yet, it's unlikely that they were ever going to have an heir. A natural one, at least.
If the Confederacy wins the American Civil War, is the Union going to become revanchist over the next several decades and beyond?
- Thread starter WolfBear
- Start date
I suspect that after ten years of trying, if they weren't going to have an heir yet, it's unlikely that they were ever going to have an heir. A natural one, at least.
Well, that could piss off Mexicans enough to spark a revolution, potentially, just like they actually did later on in 1910.
History Learner
Well-known member
They were adopted, but he always refused to declare them his successors and no evidence exists he eventually intended to do this; more likely was an effort to bring in further European royals.
Interesting; any idea which ones? Fellow Hapsburgs? Or at least other fellow Catholics?
History Learner
Well-known member
Yes, more Hapsburgs. Reason I'm doubtful of that play is because, by 1870, neither Austria nor France are in a position to help with such. The C.S.A. by necessity will have become the primary patron of the regime, and a lack of options will erode Maxmillian's leverage.
bintananth
behind a desk
Um ...
In 1860 the Union States had more than twice as many miles of railroad as the Confederate States (20,000mi v. 9,000mi). The 1,700 miles in the border States which aren't counted as part of either alone were more than 1/6 of the total in the South.
The Union started building the 1,900 mile long Transcontinental Railroad in 1863 while there was only one ironworks - Treadegear - in the entire South capable of even making a railroad rail.
History Learner
Well-known member
The bit concerning railway construction is about the rate of railway building, in which the South started to pull ahead in the 1850s.
When the war started, possibly, but as the war continued industrialization came to the South and would continue to do so in the event of victory.
From the link I posted its suggested
If that's accurate it could have gone either way. Although as you say above getting one of his cousins selected as heir after hinting at the Iturbide heirs is likely to upset a fair number of the Mexicans.
That would depend on the relative strengths of the three nations involved. A Mexico stable under Maximilian where his liberal ideas have been generally accepted could be developing quite nicely and also unwilling to accept close links to the south, especially given past history as it was primarily southerns who 1st settled Texas and then rebelled and who supported the war against Mexico in 1846.
Plus if the south is both independent and strong enough to be a major player then it could end up with the New Mexico/Arizona region in which case its not only the primary threat to Mexico its quite possibly the north would support Mexico against southern expansion. If not both France even if it still suffers its OTL defeat from Prussia and Britain are likely to be possible candidates for such a role.
bintananth
behind a desk
The Tredegear Ironworks in Richmond, VA alone made about half of the Confederate artillery. The South started to industrialize during the Civil War because a lot of manufactured stuff they used to import was no longer available.
bintananth
behind a desk
Any argument which says that an independant Confederacy would be an industrial power on the world stage fails to take the Tredegar Ironworks into account. With only 800 people (white or black, free or slave) that factory in Richmond, VA was half of the Southern industrial capacity all by itself.
On the flip side wealthy Yankees like John T. Wilder could effectively tell Congress "If you won't pay for it, I will." when it came to things like breech-loading rifles. The Confederates never fielded breech-loading rifles - even captured ones - because they could not make the cartridges.
On the flip side wealthy Yankees like John T. Wilder could effectively tell Congress "If you won't pay for it, I will." when it came to things like breech-loading rifles. The Confederates never fielded breech-loading rifles - even captured ones - because they could not make the cartridges.
Buba
A total creep
Oh, we are taking it into account. Those 800 people will disseminate industrial know-how across the South.
You might wish to note that he is now penniless.
bintananth
behind a desk
Buba
A total creep
OK, me bad. I mixed up my threads
In which case - CSA buys all the know-how it needs from abroad.
bintananth
behind a desk
Most of it was blocked by the USN (basically built from scratch) saying "NOPE!"OK, me bad. I mixed up my threads
In which case - CSA buys all the know-how it needs from abroad.
One of the Civil War naval battles took place just outside of Cherbourg, France. The Union also chased a foreign built Confederate raider from off the West coast of Mexico to Liverpool, England - around South America BTW - where the Confederate captain and crew surrendered to the British.
bintananth
behind a desk
If the Confederacy manages to win despite the entire deck basically being stacked against them we'd probably be looking at a very isolated South that's North Korea writ large because Texas is larger than France and there are 10 more Confederate States.
History Learner
Well-known member
Indeed, that's often how industrialization starts. No one is denying the Confederacy started with a lower industrial base than the North, that tweet thread I cited and my own arguments were projecting out in terms of long term trends.
And the U.S. started in the 1780s with none; I think you seem to assume a static picture by ignoring the fundamentals:
- A large, effective and well funded C.S. Central Government
- A political mindset geared towards State Capitalism
- Historic trends
Confederate railroad policy, in fact, provides a microcosm for understanding how secessionists crossed the thin line separating antebellum state activism and a powerful, dynamic Confederate state. On the face of it, most Confederate leaders seemingly opposed national railroads. During the Confederate constitutional convention, South Carolina’s Robert Barnwell Rhett and other secessionists sought to prohibit the central government from funding internal improvements. The Confederacy, they argued, should never allow internal improvements (at least on the national level) to generate the evils of logrolling, budget deficits, and higher taxes. Rhett won an important victory when the Confederate constitution specifically prohibited Congress from appropriating ‘‘money for any internal improvement intended to facilitate commerce.’’ The constitution allowed the Confederate Congress to appropriate money to aid coastal navigation, improve harbors, or clear rivers, but only if it taxed the commerce that benefited from such improvements. ‘‘Internal improvements, by appropriations from the treasury of the Confederate States,’’ Rhett’s Charleston Mercury cheered, ‘‘is therefore rooted out of the system of Government the Constitution establishes.’’
States’ rights ideology, though, eventually lost to a more expansive vision of the Confederate central state. As Table 6 shows, the Confederate government chartered and subsidized four important lines to improve the movement of troops and supplies. Loans and appropriations for these lines amounted to almost $3.5 million, a significant sum given that a severe shortage of iron and other supplies necessarily limited southern railroad building. Jefferson Davis, who strongly backed these national projects, argued that military necessity rather than commercial ambition motivated national investment in these lines. The constitutional prohibition of funding internal improvements ‘‘for commercial purposes’’ was thus irrelevant. That Davis took this position during the Civil War followed naturally from his position on national railroads in the antebellum era. Like Wigfall, he believed that military necessity justified national railroad investment. As a U.S. senator, Davis told his colleagues in 1859 that a Pacific railroad ‘‘is to be absolutely necessary in time of war, and hence within the Constitutional power of the General Government.’’ Davis was more right than he realized. When the Republican-controlled Congress heavily subsidized the nation’s first transcontinental railroad in 1862, military considerations constituted a key justification. Even after the Civil War, the military considered the transcontinental railroad as an essential tool for subjugating the Sioux and other Native Americans resisting western settlement.
When the Confederate Congress endorsed Davis’s position on railroads, outraged supporters of states’ rights strongly objected. Their petition against national railroads—inserted into the official record of the Confederate Congress—argued that the railroads in question might well have military value, ‘‘but the same may be said of any other road within our limits, great or small.’’ The constitutional prohibition against national internal improvements, the petition recognized, was essentially worthless if the ‘‘military value’’ argument carried the day. Essentially giving the Confederate government a means of avoiding almost any constitutional restrictions, the ‘‘military value’’ doctrine threatened to become the Confederacy’s version of the ‘‘general welfare’’ clause that had done so much to justify the growth of government in the old Union. The elastic nature of ‘‘military value,’’ however, hardly bothered the vast majority of representatives in the Confederate Congress. The bills for the railroad lines passed overwhelmingly in 1862 and 1863. As political scientist Richard Franklin Bensel has argued, the constitutional limitations on the Confederate central government ‘‘turned out to be little more than cosmetic adornments.’’
Like Louis Wigfall’s rambling interview with William Howard Russell, the ‘‘cosmetic adornments’’ in the Confederate constitution allowed secessionists to articulate republican principles without actually having to follow them. If Confederate delegates in Montgomery really wanted to stop all national improvements, they could have simply prohibited the Confederate Congress from appropriating ‘‘money for any internal improvements’’ rather than insert the qualifying phrase ‘‘intended to facilitate commerce.’’ It is hard to believe that the inclusion of the ‘‘commerce’’ qualification was accidental. Having spent much of their careers debating the old federal Constitution, the delegates at Montgomery carefully considered the implications of every phrase they wrote.∞∂ The delegates surely knew that men such as Wigfall and Davis had used the national defense argument to justify federal spending on internal improvements. As it was, the delegates ritualistically invoked states’ rights without having to worry about the consequences. Historian Don E. Fehrenbacher has argued that the Confederate constitution was written ‘‘by men committed to the principle of states’ rights but addicted, in many instances, to the exercise of national power.’'Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Confederates were committed to the language of states’ rights in a way that rarely prevented the growth of national power.
The decision to subsidize railroads, while ideologically important, was only a small part of the overall growth of the Confederate state. Other elements of Confederate state building, in fact, proved less controversial. When a shortage of pig iron threatened ordnance production, Davis told Congress in early 1862 that the ‘‘exigency is believed to be such as to require the aid of the Government.’ In April 1862 the Confederate Congress passed legislation that offered no-interest loans to iron masters who expanded their forges. The loans would only pay half the cost of the additional investment, but the Confederate government also covered to make advances up to one-third the value of contracts. To help forges secure additional raw materials, the Confederate Congress set up the Niter Bureau in 1862, which quickly became involved in exploration for new sources of iron. The Confederacy sometimes used private firms to produce ordnance—the famous Tredegar Iron Works is a good example— but the Confederacy’s Ordnance Bureau also built and operated its own arsenals, mills, and factories throughout the South. The arsenal at Selma, Alabama, for example, employed 3,000 civilians, while the Ordnance Bureau’s powder factory in Augusta, Georgia, was the second largest in the world. Whereas the North tended to rely on government contracts with private firms to meet the needs of wartime production, the Confederacy, with surprisingly little opposition, produced much of the military supplies consumed by its armies.
The story of the Quartermaster Department is similar to the Ordnance Bureau. Historian Harold S. Wilson describes Confederate e√orts to outfit soldiers with uniforms, shoes, blankets, and tents as the ‘‘brink of military socialism.’’ The Quartermaster Department of the Confederacy operated its own factories and workshops, employing some 50,000 workers (many of them seamstresses). To obtain cloth for these factories and workshops, the Quartermaster Department exerted immense control over privately owned textile mills. Mills that refused to submit to Confederate controls on prices and profits faced the prospect of having their workers conscripted into the Confederate army. When wool supplies ran short—largely because Union forces captured most of the major woolproducing areas early in the war—the Confederate Congress authorized quartermasters to impress whatever supplies they could find. The Confederate Congress also allowed the Quartermaster Department (under the auspices of the Bureau of Foreign Supplies) to regulate and control most blockade runners. In early 1864 the Confederate government prohibited private shipments of cotton, tobacco, and other staple crops; required that private blockade runners devote half of all cargo space to the war department; and prohibited luxuries from entering the South. The Confederacy had essentially nationalized much of its foreign commerce.
History Learner
Well-known member
Except Maxmillian was rejected by the Liberals for being a Monarch and supported by foreigners, while he alienated the Conservatives during his reign; this is why his regime rapidly went down hill as soon as France started pulling support. France, in response to events in Europe, will still have to do so and that leaves no one but the C.S.A. for Max to turn to. We also don't have to speculate on this too much, given we know Vidaurri and other Northern Mexican strongman either directly offered to join the C.S.A. or considered it.
Britain has no power projection capabilities and the U.S. from the start was opposed to Maxmillian, given they already supported the Liberals and his status as a foreign imposed Monarch was a humilation given it directly contravened the Monroe Doctrine and made him suspect by default. Meanwhile we know the C.S.A. was directly planning to slowly take over the economy of Mexico and thinking long term about it; Maxmillian has no leverage, and the Confederates have a lot of cash to throw around while the domestic elites are already estranged from the Monarch.