Just how unstable and self destructive was the Confederacy?

[Bilbo]

What if instead of trying to gain ground from the United States by moving into Arizona and New Mexico the CSA uses its comon border with Mexico to launch an aggressive war?

At the end of the Mexican - American war the Democrats had decided they wanted to basically claim most of not all of Mexico and were not happy with the here 1/3 of their nation we did claim. "Southern honor" may demand a rematch and I seriously doubt that Mexico even with French support will last long against the kind of forces the CSA demonstrated it could field during the Civil War.

[Serafina]

What makes you think that they could do that?

Even if the South somehow gets a cease-fire and retains its independency, their armies will be battered.
They have nearly no industrial capacity and few if any monetary reserves.

Remember, they do not only need to beat the mexican army and eventual allies (if they have any), but also supply their troops and garrission conquered territory.

The South did not display great capabilites in these areas, and it will be in an even worse shape after surviving the Civil War.

We also need to consider the political situation: Would the southern populace support such a war?
Would the single states support it?
And could they risk the North intervening while they are campaingning in Mexico?

[Bilbo]

What makes you think that they could do that?

Even if the South somehow gets a cease-fire and retains its independency, their armies will be battered.
They have nearly no industrial capacity and few if any monetary reserves.

Remember, they do not only need to beat the mexican army and eventual allies (if they have any), but also supply their troops and garrission conquered territory.

The South did not display great capabilites in these areas, and it will be in an even worse shape after surviving the Civil War.

We also need to consider the political situation: Would the southern populace support such a war?
Would the single states support it?
And could they risk the North intervening while they are campaingning in Mexico?

I admit I am making the assumption that the CSA survives because the war lasts no more than 6 months. Beyond that and it takes an insane amount of handwaving to explain why the North would suddenly stop fighting.

As for support from the States. Yes there would be plenty. The southern states even before the Civil War gave support to people like Walker to tried create his own little empire in Central America. Governors and Senators in fact screamed quite loudly when the Federal Government used the army or navy to stop these little actions. I can easily see a first step being an organization of states making an offer to buy Cuba, which upon rejection, launching an invasion. If this is sucessful then it would wet southern appetite and Mexico would be there with lots of the raw materials the south needed to survive.

If there is anything that would stop a move into Mexico it would be the planter class in the CSA. Cuba is good because it brings in a massive new influx of slaves and promotes their lifestyle further. Mexico does not do this. An invasion of Mexico, in theory at least, would profit the businessman and those willing to start such enterprises. That might be far too much like a yankee for the southern gentleman back on his plantation to accept.

[Guardsman Bass]

I admit I am making the assumption that the CSA survives because the war lasts no more than 6 months. Beyond that and it takes an insane amount of handwaving to explain why the North would suddenly stop fighting.

As for support from the States. Yes there would be plenty. The southern states even before the Civil War gave support to people like Walker to tried create his own little empire in Central America. Governors and Senators in fact screamed quite loudly when the Federal Government used the army or navy to stop these little actions. I can easily see a first step being an organization of states making an offer to buy Cuba, which upon rejection, launching an invasion. If this is sucessful then it would wet southern appetite and Mexico would be there with lots of the raw materials the south needed to survive.

If they could hold on to it. The US got away with taking northern Mexico (basically, the half of Mexico lost in the Mexican-American War) because the population of Mexicans was fairly low across a wide area, and there was a large American colonial presence in California, Texas, etc. But in the rest of Mexico, aside from the northern border states, they'd have an extremely hard time holding on to the territory against guerrilla attacks (particularly those from the Mexican Liberals, who were historically backed by the Union during and after the Civil War), and Mexico more or less had no rail at all in the mid- to late-1860s.

[Bilbo]

I admit I am making the assumption that the CSA survives because the war lasts no more than 6 months. Beyond that and it takes an insane amount of handwaving to explain why the North would suddenly stop fighting.

As for support from the States. Yes there would be plenty. The southern states even before the Civil War gave support to people like Walker to tried create his own little empire in Central America. Governors and Senators in fact screamed quite loudly when the Federal Government used the army or navy to stop these little actions. I can easily see a first step being an organization of states making an offer to buy Cuba, which upon rejection, launching an invasion. If this is sucessful then it would wet southern appetite and Mexico would be there with lots of the raw materials the south needed to survive.

If they could hold on to it. The US got away with taking northern Mexico (basically, the half of Mexico lost in the Mexican-American War) because the population of Mexicans was fairly low across a wide area, and there was a large American colonial presence in California, Texas, etc. But in the rest of Mexico, aside from the northern border states, they'd have an extremely hard time holding on to the territory against guerrilla attacks (particularly those from the Mexican Liberals, who were historically backed by the Union during and after the Civil War), and Mexico more or less had no rail at all in the mid- to late-1860s.

Of course, while I think the south could conquer Cuba due to its location and hold it the same might not be said for Mexico. The CSA may invade and make gains but holding those gains would be another story. The main point I feel is tha the CSA would not really take into consideration the difficulties of controlling the territory, that sort of long term planning was not a strength they demonstrated during the Civil War.

[RedImperator]

Wait a minute--when did the Confederacy gain the naval capacity to support an invasion of Cuba?

[Samuel]

Wait a minute--when did the Confederacy gain the naval capacity to support an invasion of Cuba?

Better question- when did the Spanish loss the will to defend their territory? We only took it because our navy was better and crushed theirs... that and the island's rebellion weakened defenses.

[CmdrWilkens]

What if instead of trying to gain ground from the United States by moving into Arizona and New Mexico the CSA uses its comon border with Mexico to launch an aggressive war?

At the end of the Mexican - American war the Democrats had decided they wanted to basically claim most of not all of Mexico and were not happy with the here 1/3 of their nation we did claim. "Southern honor" may demand a rematch and I seriously doubt that Mexico even with French support will last long against the kind of forces the CSA demonstrated it could field during the Civil War.

Not gonna happen...period.

The one things the Confederates NEVER demonstrated was the ability to sustain logistics over a long campaign in enemy territory. The only reason Lee's army didn't starve was that they could raid the countryside of PA and MD because once they moved north of the Potomac he simply didn't have the forces to effectively both perform surveillance (though they were thrown away anyway) and screen his supply train so the later was very vulnerable and without the covering help of the Blue Ridge probably woudl have been nipped. Likewise the attacks in to Kentucky petered out and most of the other counter-offensives in the West never covered significant distances.

Mexico, paticularly where Confederate troops could invade, presents no such screens to logistics tails AND it presents a huge distance over which supplies must be moved as forage would not be paticularly plentiful (it would be available but not as a sole source). On top of that French sponsorship of Mexico was more important to them than normalized relations with the Confederate States so it would likely involve a French boycott and or blockade of the CSA (and with the French actively working against them it might bring the Union back on to a war footing).

Simply put the CSA had more than a fair share of deent field generals but very few superior supply and commisarry officers without even considering that the South didn't then, and likely wouldn't in the years immediately after the war with the North, have the capacity to feed itself let alone an army on the march. Rationing and inflation were already increasing mortality at home and would doubtless increase with a foreign adventure without any of the morale benefits of "fighting for the defense of the state" or other such memes that could be used to keep public support alive. Instead there would be widespread shortages much as there were in the later parts of the war but without anything else to prop up flagging morale. In those circumstanes North Carolina and possibly Virignia as well would almost certainly have left and one or the other might have sued for re-admittance to the Union.

[CmdrWilkens]

Of course, while I think the south could conquer Cuba due to its location and hold it the same might not be said for Mexico. The CSA may invade and make gains but holding those gains would be another story. The main point I feel is tha the CSA would not really take into consideration the difficulties of controlling the territory, that sort of long term planning was not a strength they demonstrated during the Civil War.

1) The South can't transport an Army to Cuba.

2) Supply the Army even if they could transport it there would drain resources further since Cuba would be (with soldiers stationed there) a net importer of food.

3) Interfering with Spanish control would certainly incite reprisals which, given the Confederate lack of an oceangoing Navy could be severe.

[Serafina]

Besides, what would these conquests be good for?

Gaining more slaves and/or farming land does not solve the Confederations problem - they do not have any industry.

And gaining resources (coal, iron and others) is useless without industry.
Mei
The Confederacy may actually be worse off, even if they conquer parts of Mexico and Cuba:
Their resources will be even more stretched, making industrializing even harder.
And they will have lost a lot of political goodwill, negting the chance of anyone else helping their industial progress.

Remember: To compete with the USA and become a modern first-world country, they need industry. Not slaves, not farms, not territory - but industry and the resources to fuel it.

If they can not do that (and it does not look good for them). then they will stay what they were:
A mere supplier of resources, forever dependent on others and the current market prices, with nearly no capability to produce or develop technology on their own.
In other words:
A third-world country.

[Knife]

I'm having a hard time seeing Texas survive as either a state in the Confederacy, or as a independent Republic either without a strong Union backing it against Mexico. A weak Confederacy or as an independent nation makes a sweet low hanging fruit for Mexico to come back up and take.

[Serafina]

Another idea:

Just how weakened would the USA be without the South? Supposing that the Confederacy either survives as an independent nation or gets annexed by another one.

[Setzer]

The loss of some seaports as well as north to south shipping along the Mississippi might cause some trouble.

[Knife]

The loss of some seaports as well as north to south shipping along the Mississippi might cause some trouble.

I'm not so sure, you'd have the northern stretch of the Mississippi, plus parts of the Ohio, plus they started heavily on cannals around that time, mainly in the north, plus most major railroads went east and west to denote materials coming from Atlantic seaboard ports inland to factories. Pretty much, internal north/south transportation was not that big a deal to the North as a entity. Individual cities or regions? sure.

[Guardsman Bass]

I'm having a hard time seeing Texas survive as either a state in the Confederacy, or as a independent Republic either without a strong Union backing it against Mexico. A weak Confederacy or as an independent nation makes a sweet low hanging fruit for Mexico to come back up and take.

Maybe eventually, but keep in mind that Mexico was pretty weak in the 1860s, having just come off La Reforma (a period of more or less civil war between the "Liberal" and "Conservative" factions in Mexico over the shape of the government from 1858-1861), and with an unpopular French-imposed monarch sitting in the country with French military support for most of the period. Moreover, the Union was supporting the Mexican government-in-exile during the Civil War under Benito Juarez, and the latter is unlikely to do anything that might antagonize them.

My guess would be that Texas would be one of the first to crawl back into the Union.

Just how weakened would the USA be without the South? Supposing that the Confederacy either survives as an independent nation or gets annexed by another one.

Assuming they lose it (and it's possible that they might hang on to New Orleans, seeing as how it was captured early on), then they've more or less lost a major internal transportation system in the form of the Mississippi. That would be a blow, but it would also act as a massive spur towards further development of the rail network (which would probably also be accelerated by the need of the Union to potentially patrol and fight a war across a vast stretch of border).

[Sea Skimmer]

1) The South can't transport an Army to Cuba.

They can hire random merchant ships and it will work fine. The US Army and Navy made numerous successful coastal attacks in the US Civil War with improvised fleets. That is exactly how the US went and invaded Cuba in 1898 as it was. Amphbious operations aren’t so hard when you don’t need to land much in the way of heavy equipment. Men, wagons and field pieces can land from large ships boats, while horses are simply driven over the side of the ship and allowed to swim to shore. Some will drown, but allowances are made for that in planning.

2) Supply the Army even if they could transport it there would drain resources further since Cuba would be (with soldiers stationed there) a net importer of food.

It would be expensive, everything about this would be expensive, but if the south had the will, something I do not think they ever would have, then the costs are not completely out of reach.

3) Interfering with Spanish control would certainly incite reprisals which, given the Confederate lack of an oceangoing Navy could be severe.

If the Confederates take control of the five ironclads historically built for them in Europe, and ideally at least two more ordered say 1863 and delivered not long before the attack on Spain, they could very well think about engaging the entire Spanish Fleet. I’m also assuming historic orders for commerce raiders, most seized by the British under pressure from the US, turn into orders for a couple more heavily armed and wooden or composite hulled frigates and corvettes.

The Spanish only first launched an ironclad in 1863, and only had four in service by the end of 1865. Three more followed by 1873, after this Spain built only one battleship before the predreadnought era and it was not completed in time for the historic war with the US. IN the meantime, one of the ironclads blew up, and a second lasted only seven years in service owing to highly deficient structural strength. Other then these ironclad battleships the Spanish navy had hardly more then a half dozen screw frigates and screw corvettes to cover its still planet spanning empire.

[Sea Skimmer]

Assuming they lose it (and it's possible that they might hang on to New Orleans, seeing as how it was captured early on), then they've more or less lost a major internal transportation system in the form of the Mississippi. That would be a blow, but it would also act as a massive spur towards further development of the rail network (which would probably also be accelerated by the need of the Union to potentially patrol and fight a war across a vast stretch of border).

It seems highly unlikely to me that the South would block the Mississippi to traffic in peacetime. They have no rational reason to do that when they can make a fortune taxing trading through the Port of New Orleans. Historically those kinds of import/export taxes were the main manner in which the US government was funded until the 1890s. I addition by allowing trade to continue, the South can constantly threaten the US government with closing it back down. I do agree that railroad construction will accelerate.

[Pelranius]

The problem with threatening to close New Orleans and the Mississippi trade is that if America calls the Rebels' bluff, they'll have no choice but to back down. Playing poker in international relations when you're the guy with the bad hand and two chips left is a very bad idea. And Washington will probably be smart enough to realize that the Rebs can't cash their checks.