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Suppose this happened after the US civil war ended. Northernize the South!

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  • #31
    Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
    Grant did.
    With muzzleloaders fire rate would be slower, so the casualties would be fewer. If Lee inflicts high casualty rate (with breechloaders) once... the stakes would be higher.
    No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

    To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

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    • #32
      And you can tell within 2 battles. The first battle, the South wins. By the time of the second battle, the North would be ready while the South would still be arming.

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      • #33
        Well, guess it all depends how much ammo would the South stack in those 10 years. If it is enough for few battles, Northern morale might be wary.
        No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

        To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

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        • #34
          Cartridges? Like I said, we had problems in WWI. That's the kind of war the ACW should be envisioned at. Extroplating into the past and a brand new rifle system and log train? The answer is - not nearly enough. Not even close.

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          • #35
            it also depends on the leadership. sure, grant knew to attack again and again, breaking the Army of Northern Virginia.

            but before grant there were 2-3 years of uninspired leadership, where there were 2-3 major battles-- and both sides would retreat and regroup.

            and i'm not sure if the logistics weaknesses would show up after only two battles, too. even the French could pull off more than that before getting whupped.
            There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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            • #36
              Originally posted by astralis View Post
              and i'm not sure if the logistics weaknesses would show up after only two battles, too. even the French could pull off more than that before getting whupped.
              WWI? That's after 30 years of production.

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              • #37
                no, Franco-Prussian War. there was a whole series of running battles along the French-Prussian frontier. logistics wasn't what defeated the French, it was just straight up poor generalship.
                There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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                • #38
                  The North may also just settle in for a prolonged nationwide siege via blockade, with maybe a go at cutting the Mississippi and taking new Orleans. Wreck the southern economy and try and force the South onto the offensive.

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                  • #39
                    Originally posted by astralis View Post
                    no, Franco-Prussian War. there was a whole series of running battles along the French-Prussian frontier. logistics wasn't what defeated the French, it was just straight up poor generalship.
                    They were not also chewing ammo in a life and death struggle.

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                    • #40
                      i dunno...the french lost 140,000 men in 9 months of combat. 25,000 frenchmen died in the siege of paris.

                      the Union lost 140,000 men in four years of combat.

                      seems pretty life or death for the french, anyway. given how they were throwing lives away i'm not sure they were exactly conserving on ammo!
                      There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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                      • #41
                        Two different kinds of war as you already stated. The Franco-Prussian War is nowhere close to the blood baths of WWI which is the type of war being envisioned for your ACW.

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                        • #42
                          OoE, is this what you are thinking?

                          Essentially France was fighting a "limited" war. They inflicted in total 100,000 casualties on the Germans in the entire war. That's all the bullets they had to shoot, all the rounds they had to fire...and a lot of their provincial armies WERE running into ammo shortages, IIRC, and that was over the course of 6-7 months.

                          The Confederates would've been shooting that much at Bull Run. Six months of ammo expenditures in one afternoon. Hell, even if they are shooting HALF that much I imagine they are going to have problems.
                          "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

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                          • #43
                            Essentially yes.

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                            • #44
                              Originally posted by astralis View Post
                              i dunno...the french lost 140,000 men in 9 months of combat. 25,000 frenchmen died in the siege of paris.

                              the Union lost 140,000 men in four years of combat.

                              seems pretty life or death for the french, anyway. given how they were throwing lives away i'm not sure they were exactly conserving on ammo!
                              Yes but the South in this scenario is not Prussia. Give the either side a highly trained and drilled Prussian army and it doesn't matter if its 1861 or 1871- the other side losses after First Bullrun.

                              Census data- north/south white-slave (northern advantage)

                              1850- 14/5.8 white-3.2 slave (8.2 million)
                              1860-19.7/ 7.2 white- 3.9 slave(12.7 million)
                              1870- 25.3/ 9.5 white-4.8 slave (15.8 million) *est population if no ACW.
                              Last edited by zraver; 01 Aug 13,, 16:15.

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                              • #45
                                GVChamp,

                                the war would be WWI-like in intensity of fervor but not rate of fire. an 1870s style breechloader fires roughly 6-8 shots a minute, compared to 15-20 shots for a WWI style rifle.

                                a springfield musket can fire 3 shots a minute. so yeah, the logistics nightmare is considerably worse but not impossibly worse, IMO. especially because the south would also be improving her industrial and logistics infrastructure over those 10 years.

                                The Confederates would've been shooting that much at Bull Run
                                i doubt it. it's not as if the franco-prussian wars was some sort of sitzkrieg where everyone dicked around. most of the battles were ferocious events where the ratio of dead/wounded to the overall number of combatants was as high if not higher than the ACW counterparts. in the end there's only so many rounds a minute you can fire, after all-- even assuming (rightly) that the ACW counterparts were not half as well trained as the professional French/Prussian armies.
                                There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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