Lost Cause: Fall of the Confederate States of America, 1916

The Kiat

The Kiat

I kind of give away the war's ending with the title. Following other Great War scenarios, this time I'll be taking more a political look at the war. Namely, the end of it, the dissolution of the CSA, how is ended and why it ended. I'm just outlining it at the moment.



Prelude

Sergeant James Rutherford, son of a North Carolina shipwright, spent the past three years regretting not taking his father’s advice. When the war broke out, Rutherford’s father tried to convince him to enlist in the Confederate States Navy. Growing up along the Carolina Coast, it was almost a given that all the young men would volunteer for the Navy when war came. Instead, he enlisted in the Confederate States Marine Corps when he turned eighteen at the start of 1914. Little did he realize that the disaster at Grand Bahama, coupled with the Yankee blockade of Cuba, would mean he would not be fighting in some exotic paradise. Instead, the 8th Regiment was sent to the Potomac Front, a desolate piece of Earth that was his home for the past two years.

As August 1916 arrived, he expected it to be a month like any other. The Yankees push south, the Confederates push them back north. Little changed in Virginia since the Union pressed all the way to the Rappahannock early in the war. Rutherford was present during the blood letting at Fredericksburg, a battle that made him a non commissioned officer. In the trenches just south and west of Chancersville, his unit awaited orders for another push. With so many officers dead, the Sergeant from North Carolina found himself in effective command of his platoon, a unit with twenty-four combat ready Marines.

He was awaken on August 8, to a loud commotion in the trenches. He woke quickly, grabbing his rifle and donning his gas mask, expecting yet another raid by the Union. Instead, as he left his make-shift barracks, he encountered an unimaginable scene; entire platoons packing up their gear and climbing out of the trench. Climbing out, in the wrong direction. He managed to catch a buddy of his, Gregory Milton from the 37th Tennessee Division. When he asked what was going on, all Milton said was that the war was over.

Over? Rutherford might not be privy to all the strategic conferences in the Army of Northern Virginia but he would like to think himself smart enough to know when a war ended. When he pressed, his friend explained. Governor Harold Wilson asked for an armistice with the Union and under the terms, all Tennessee units were to return home and disarm. The news struck him like a fist wearing brass knuckles. Tennessee quit the war? Just like that? Part of Rutherford was furious over the seeming betrayal of the Confederate States. Another part of him was envious his friend; no matter how vile the politics in Tennessee, the man survived the Great War and gets to go home. There was little he could do except shake the man’s hand and wish him the best of luck. Not all soldiers around Chancersville were as understanding as Rutherford.
 
NHBL

NHBL

Interesting...

This holds promise--lots of promise. It's also the logical progression of states rights going to extremes...
 
The Kiat

The Kiat

In its fifty year history, where did the Confederate States of America go wrong? Given the number of problems the country faced during its short existence, one might as well ask where they did not go wrong? The biggest difficulty facing the Confederate States were the States themselves. Where as the United States are a federation of autonomous republics that are nominally subordinate to the Federal Government, the Confederate States tried to make their central government subordinate to the States. For fifty years States and the Confederate Congress fought a tug-of-war over who controlled what. So protective were the States of their individual rights, that the Confederate Constitution specifically forbade Congress from interfering with the institution of slavery.

That did not preclude the States from changing their own status. In 1892, a series of reforms swept each of the States resulting in the 1893 Slave Codes. Congress might not be able to outlaw slavery but that did not stop the States from doing so. Most of the Confederate States abolished slavery while other enforced strict codes as to what constituted slave work and what constituted white man’s work. Alabama, Cuba, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina restricted slavery to agricultural field. Cuba extended their slave codes to allow slaves to be used in the service industry and until 1916 could be seen laboring in Havana and Jacksonville resort hotels.

What brought about the decline in slavery was the expansion of the franchise. Most of the States had universal manhood suffrage by 1890, extending the vote to those men who were not fortunate enough to be born into large plantation owning families. As many of these men moved to the industrializing centers of the Confederacy in search of work, they found themselves competing for jobs with slaves. When their respective States did nothing to aid them, the voting underclass swept new assemblymen into the State Assemblies, ending a conservative monopoly that started with the Confederate States’ founding.

The status of laborers in bondage was not as big of a concern to Montgomery as was the insistence by various governors that they, and not the Confederate President, was commander-in-chief of their States’ armed forces. During the first two years of the Great War, there was a solid partnership between governors and president. All knew that the Yankee Menace was a greater threat to their existence than each other. Nominally, both parties cooperated in the war effort, each State coming to the aid of its neighbor. There were exceptions, of course. Units from Sonora, Chihuahua, Durango, Jefferson and even Texas were not exactly welcomed in Tennessee or Virginia. And many of the Mestizo soldiers in these racially mixed units found it difficult to cope when on shore leave in the eastern C.S.A., a land with a strict racial caste system in place.

In a few cases, such as during the Battle of the Tennessee River, reinforcements could have tipped the battle in Confederate favor. It was not until defeat became a distinct possibility did the other States ease their restrictions on who could and could not fight on their side. More important problems struck the Confederate armies than that of race. Not all of the States used the same small arms as standard issue amongst its units. For example, a South Carolinian division might be equipped with Enfield rifles with a .303 round where as an Arkansas division might us Hatford rifles with their 30-06 cartridge. Not having the right size round available in the middle of a fight usually meant death for the luckless soldier.

Oddly enough, resistance tended to occur mostly when the Confederate Congress tried to impose uniformity on the States. In the instance of railroad gage, attempts by Congress to create a standardized gage were resisted by the western States, even though the Confederate Constitution clearly granted Congress the right to standardize measurements. Standardization did occur but because the State Assemblies came to an unofficial agreement where each State would use the same standard. Quarrels such as this deeply annoyed Confederate Congressmen who wondered just why they were being sent to Montgomery. When Congress did finally standardize the railroad, it was to the gage that all the States already used.

Confederate citizens were equally suspicious of their Congress and saw increases in power as a threat to their own liberty. Yet, they had little difficulty in handing over more and more power to their governors. In some cases, States bordered on totalitarian. Especially when it came to legislating the relations between race. Some States also went as far as to dictate what their citizens could and could not drink. A temperance movement in the Deep South saw Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Georgia go dry by 1895. The Carolinas, Arkansas and the Indian Territories soon followed. This was a boon to the blooming tourist industry in Cuba, which had absolutely no limits on alcohol.

Criticism against the operations of the Confederate States by no means meant the United States were a paragon of virtue. However, compared with the dysfunctional family that served as their southern neighbor, the United States were a well oiled machine. Though many of the United States raised volunteer units and had their National Guard called up, the Federal Government ran the war without interference. If the War Department wanted to mount an offensive, if did not need to consult the Governor of Nevada as to whether or not it could use their units. If they needed revenue, they could issue bonds or raise taxes without attempted nullification by States, or failing that filibusters in Congress by their delegations.

Was the cause of death in the Confederate States really ‘death by States’ Rights’? The examples given are of the more extreme instances. However, the struggle between States and Congress over who had the final say did handicap the Confederate Congress. Had it the authority the United States Congress had, it could have prosecuted the Great War with greater effect. Given the demographics of both countries, Confederate defeat was likely inevitable simply because the Union had a greater reserve of manpower.

Numbers over Confederate fighting strength have always been misleading. In 1913, they had a theoretical reserve of seven million men between the ages of 18 and 35. In reality, half could be counted upon to be in use. The other half were required to operate war industries, which in some States were for white men only by law. The border States did deploy black laborers in constructing trenches and fortifications as well as other non-essential and noncombatant roles, freeing up soldiers for front-line duty.

In States were slavery was still legal, the States required their own reserve of manpower to ‘police’ the countryside. They feared that if too many men left home for the war, the slaves might take it into their heads to cause trouble. It was rather difficult to fight a war against a superior foe while trying to keep nearly a third of the population either in bondage or ‘in their place’. Being one-third of the population and not allowed in the Army, that deprived the Confederate States of two million potential soldiers. Blacks did see combat in gray in the western States, where many freedmen settled after slavery was abolished in the States of their birth. Sonora had such a mixture of races that no one race could easily claim to be in the majority. Those colored units remained in their home States, defending the border. The only black soldiers to see a large degree of combat in the Great War served in blue. The most feared of these were the Buffalo soldiers, fighting as dismounted cavalry in Tennessee. They were not feared because they were stronger or more cunning but because their fighting spirit and battle record shattered Confederate notions of what a black man could and could not do.

Only when the war turned sour in 1915, did the States amend their laws and for the first time allowing women into the work place. They freed men in munition plants and textiles mills for service at the front. Even blacks were allowed into heavy industry in States that allowed slavery. Steel mills in eastern Tennessee were predominately staffed with black workers by the start of 1915, with only a few white men who were too old for combat remained to supervise. By 1916, there was serious talk in the Confederate Congress about allowing black soldiers to serve on the front, a suggestion that met with instant resistance in the Deep South, States not yet touched by the realities of modern warfare.

Tensions began to rise between those States that suffered as a result of Union invasion and those States that did not. Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas and Cuba resented the obstruction of conservative old men who could not seem doom when it stood on the horizon. As a slave State, Cuba was even willing to allow its population of freedmen to volunteer for service in Cuban units. With Cuba blockaded, the only placed the new units would be serving was at home. With Cuba blockaded, there was little the other States or Congress could do to stop them. With that mind set developing, the governors of Tennessee and Virginia were poised to take matters into their own hands.
 
The Kiat

The Kiat

The First Nail
The first nail was hammered into the coffin of the Confederate States on August 1, 1916. To the horror of Confederate readers and joy of the Union subscribers, yet to the shock of none, newspapers in both country announced in bold type that Memphis surrendered. After a three month siege, the last bastion of Confederate strength in western Tennessee fell. The Chattanooga Times called it the last stand of the Army of Tennessee. In reality, any army by that name was a paper fiction by the summer of 1916. What was left of its cohesion collapsed with the western half of its namesake.

The hero of the hour in Union papers was the commanding officer of XXXIV Corp, a unit within the First Army created in 1915, Lieutenant General Samuel Arnold. Arnold lobbied for the capture of Memphis during the run up to the Battle of the Tennessee River. He was a strong proponent of the divide and conquer philosophy, believing the best way to beat the Confederate States was to cut it in half along the Mississippi, capturing the major ports and crossing of that river. When interviewed on the day of Memphis’s surrender, he praised the bravery and sacrifice of his soldiers and ended his speech by declaring ‘onward to Vicksburg’.

As Arnold began to plan the invasion of the Deep South, his commanding officer, General John Pershing, continued to press Confederate forces in Tennessee. Following the fall of Nashville in the previous year, the Tennessee government relocated to Chattanooga, where the governor swore to continue the fight until the Yankee was driven from their sacred soil. A year later, the attitude of Governor Harold Wilson changed from defiant to worry and depression. With half his State in ruins, he desperately sought a means to save the other half.

In Montgomery, western Tennessee was considered expendable. The east was not. Chattanooga formed the northern edge of the Confederate industrial heartland, a region that ran from Atlanta to Jackson and responsible for the bulk of Confederate arms. The Great War saw the Confederate navy crushed at Grand Bahama, when a communication error caused the British western Atlantic squadrons to arrive late at the rendevous. When they arrived, they found half the expected Confederate fleet sunk or crippled and the United States Marine Corp preparing to land on the island.

Unfortunately for the Confederacy, Britain’s Home Fleet narrowly avoided a similar fate in the North Sea when the German High Seas Fleet attempted to divide and conquer. The battle was a strategic draw even though the Germans annihilated a British battlecruiser squadron and its escorts with next to no loses. Cautious admirals on both side of the sea prevented any follow up attack. Afterwards, Britain was forced to call in reinforcements from the western Atlantic, leaving defense of its colonies in the Carribean to the Royal Canadian Navy, a military force that performed beyond expectations when it stopped an attempted American landing near Halifax.

With supplies from Britain arriving sporadically, and supplies from France not at all, the Confederate States were determined to hold on to its industrial capacity no matter the cost. In March 1916, the first Union bombers began to fly over Chattanooga, targeting the city’s steel mills and munition plants. The early bombers proved ineffective at the best of times, and a death trap at the worst, such as the morning of April 13, when a Union flight was ambushed by the Confederate Air Corps. Most of the bombing campaigns did little more than score propaganda coups, such as the first and only bombing of Montgomery on May 2.

By August 1, Pershing was prepared for one more push towards Chattanooga. Even with fewer soldiers than he planned, his twenty-seven divisions would easily break through the fragile Confederate line. Even if they failed to march into Chattanooga, they would secure land close enough for heavy artillery to rain down twelve inch shells on the city. On the other side of the front, Wilson knew there was little he could do to stop the advance. He cabled Montgomery, as well as other State capitals, pleading for any reinforcements. The only aid he received was in the form of a recently raised North Carolina division, comprising of raw recruits and a few veterans. It would do little to stop the battle-harden U.S. First Army.

Before taking office, Wilson practiced as a lawyer. He was well versed in Constitutional law and knew that only Congress had the authority to ratify treaties and that States were not allowed to sign treaties with other countries. However, as the State’s Attorney General reminded him, it said nothing about cease fires. When Anthony Beaumont made the suggestion, Wilson wanted to arrest him for his treasonous thought. After he calmed down, the governor saw that his chief legal advisor was essential correct.

However, what would come after a cease fire? Wilson doubted Pershing would simply cease fighting because he asked. He would want something in return. Wilson wondered what he had to offer, aside from the State itself. Tennessee was divided neatly between agriculture in the west and industry in the east. The food that fed the workers came from lands already occupied. Other States and the Congress were not as forthcoming with aid as Wilson hoped. If the war continued, he saw the risk, however remote, that famine could sprout in his State. In all of its history, Americans, north and south, never starved. He did not wish for Tennessee to be the first.

In the evening of August 1, he brought Beaumont’s suggestion before the secretaries of his State. Without aid from other States, Tennessee had no chance of staying in the war for much more than another month. In that time, untold number of Tennesseans would die. And for what? What exactly where they dying for? The war waged for so long that many in his cabinet could give no answer. Tennessee lost the ability to form more regiments and divisions, even if it started conscripting from its black population.

It was agreed reluctantly to send a delegation to First Army HQ in Manchester, a town half way between Nashville and Chattanooga. Their task would be unprecedented in American history; they would seek a cease fire separate of the rest of the country. The biggest challenge facing the peace delegation was not crossing Union lines but rather escaping their own. Flying the Tennessee flag and flashing the governor’s seal would be enough to impress a Tennessee unit but it did little to convince a Captain in command of an Alabama company to allow him to pass. Over the past month, a number of soldiers deserted and the officer was instantly suspicious of these men who attempted to reach enemy lines.

The delegation managed to convince the Alabaman captain that they were part of a plan to exchange wounded prisoners. It was a weak cover story but one with years’ of legitimacy. A number of exchanges were agreed upon as well as four hour cease fires to retrieve wounded. Despite his name of ‘Black Death’ Pershing, he was not so merciless as to refuse humanitarian gestures, just proved that the Confederates honor the agreement by not trying to slip spies over the line. Explaining their way past a Union major proved far easier. The major’s greatest problem was quelling the rumors that sprouted after the ‘peace negotiators’ arrived.
 

Berat2beti

Letting one state go for a caese fire is basically del-legitimizing the Confederacy in everyones eyes. Ofcourse considering the title thats expected, how are the Californian and Virginia fronts?
 
The Kiat

The Kiat

I don't think they will simply "let it go" but there's little Montgomery can do about it anyway. Obviously, Wilson is about to open a flood gate.
Virginia is almost as bad off as Tennessee and out west the front is a little more dynamic and a lot more inside the CSA. And a simple map of the CSA at the start of the war.:

US-CS.png
 
The Kiat

The Kiat

omrk said:
Is this timeline a follow up to your Hostile Water timeline?
Click to expand...

Yes it is.

Whanztastic said:
I kind of like it but the full TL-191 route CSA (Mexican and Cuban expansion) is a bit disappointing.
Click to expand...

What route? Cuba was acquired in a treaty with Spain that gave the US Florida and allowed it to purchase Cuba...since with all its other colonies in revolt Spain needed the money and the crown didn't believe it could keep the Americans out even if they ejected Jackson from it (eventually I'll write 32nd State) and the southwest is a result of more demanding terms at the end of the Mexican War.
 
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