Confederates terrorist bombing the North at the same time that Blacks and Confederates are beating each other up.
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
I would be interested in seeing an ethnographic map of the Ottoman Balkans. Due to Greek, Bulgarian and Serb emigration and Turkish immigration, it would be a lovely mix of Greek. Bulgarian, Serb, Albanian, Turk and so forth. OTL Southern Bulgaria through into Macedonia would be VERY interesting to look at.
As would I, though I’m not sure how I’d even begin to go about making that. There was a really good map estimating Muslim v Christian populations in the OE in pre-1877 borders that I have a saved copy of but now am not able to find the link to.
The stretch of the Balkans from around Edirne to Skopje would be WAY more Turkish; north of the Balkan Mountains you’d probably still have the mix of Bulgarians and Turks side by side, with a large Muslim but Bulgar-speaking population on the banks of the Danube. Bear in mind that at this point lots of Muslims in this area were ethnically Greek, Bulgarian/Macedonian, or South Slav/Bosnian, who simply did not practice the Orthodox faith of their ethnic neighbors but very much did not see themselves as Turkish whatsoever.
I'm wondering what the Americas would look like in the short term, territorially, if the Bloc Sud had won on all fronts? I suppose it depends on how quickly they won, doesn't it? Still:
- CSA would I suspect at least reincorporate WV into Virginia, take Maryland and Delaware as new states, maybe try for the southern parts of Missouri, take the New Mexico territory, and possibly attempt to fully annex what would become Sequoyah
- Mexico takes no territory from the USA except for maybe some extremely minor border adjustments with California
- Centro annexes Nicaragua, placing the canal under their control (and by extension that of Mexico, which is their real territorial acquisition)
- Chile...what, takes slightly more Peruvian coastline, adjusts some mountain passes with Bolivia and Argentina, and stops the USA from making any Pacific bases that threaten them? Maybe they get their own base in the Galapagos?
- Brazil annexes the Mesopotamia region, Uruguay, or both, and possibly takes some borderlands from Peru and/or Bolivia
Does this sound about right? Also where would this alt-Mount Vernon take place? And I wonder what the long-term effects would be of all this?
- CSA would I suspect at least reincorporate WV into Virginia, take Maryland and Delaware as new states, maybe try for the southern parts of Missouri, take the New Mexico territory, and possibly attempt to fully annex what would become Sequoyah
- Mexico takes no territory from the USA except for maybe some extremely minor border adjustments with California
- Centro annexes Nicaragua, placing the canal under their control (and by extension that of Mexico, which is their real territorial acquisition)
- Chile...what, takes slightly more Peruvian coastline, adjusts some mountain passes with Bolivia and Argentina, and stops the USA from making any Pacific bases that threaten them? Maybe they get their own base in the Galapagos?
- Brazil annexes the Mesopotamia region, Uruguay, or both, and possibly takes some borderlands from Peru and/or Bolivia
Does this sound about right? Also where would this alt-Mount Vernon take place? And I wonder what the long-term effects would be of all this?
The only way the CSA gets all this land is if their September Offensive makes it all the way to Boston, which is extremely implausible given their half-assed logistics.
For a maximalist Bloc Sud project that sound about right, plus the CSA basically making the Caribbean their playground
But also, this
Ireland Unfree
"...particular irony that at a moment of profound escalation in the political conflict over Ireland, it was perhaps the most conciliatory figure in all of Irish nationalism who held the fate of his mother country in his hands.
William O'Brien is a character who has appeared frequently in this book, both the most aggressive agrarian agitator of his day and one of the most brilliant Irish parliamentarians; he was a Parnellite, a sympathizer of Dillon, and a man eager to mend bridges during the IPP's near-fatal split in the 1890s. At the turn of the century he had eclipsed all others for a brief moment as the most powerful figure in Irish nationalism, and subsequently his fingerprints lay on some of the most important Irish legislation of the previous twenty-five years, not just the Government of Ireland Act that had precipitated 1914's crisis but the Land Act, the Local Government Act, and countless other measures that had brought real local democracy, workers' rights, and economic decentralization to the island. What had ailed him as the 1910s advanced was his belief that Unionists could be not only drawn towards but included within a broader non-sectarian definition of Irish nationalism and brought to a final settlement to transfer all parliamentary control of Ireland to an entity in Dublin if their fears could be addressed, a belief viewed as woefully naive if not treasonous by Devlin and the AOH.
With the Quit Westminster abstentionist mantra having won the day after the Football Crisis, however, it was O'Brien who was still in the Commons in London, and thus O'Brien who again became the central Irish protagonist in Parliament as Redmond voluntarily withdrew himself. This meant that, while O'Brien and his All-for-Ireland League did not have the most support amongst the Irish electorate, they were there, and the ailing Redmond's IPP was not. Crucially, also, the math in Westminster had changed dramatically with the IPP's abstention. While all the MPs had technically not resigned, that was only a necessity to trigger a by-election; sans the IPP, the Nationals and what remained of what were once called the Tories were closer to an outright majority of the House of Commons that lacked either Redmond's MPs or Griffith's abstentionist Sinn Fein on their own.
The 1914 elections had returned 288 Nationals to the Commons and 10 "New Conservatives" under the moderate, aristocratic Balfour; together, they held 298 seats reliably. The Liberals of Chamberlain, who cut a much less radical figure than his father, had provided qualified support for this minority administration on a small list of questions related to Ireland and India, which had greatly moderated the Cecil ministry to the point that Carson and Craig openly questioned their continued participation in the National Party, viewing Cecil as "having abandoned Ulster for the consensus of the mob." The Liberals held 235 seats, which when combined with the 67 seats of Redmond gave them, in theory, the ability to defeat Cecil's government at their pleasure on any question. The left-wing Social Democratic and Labour Party, which spent most of its time invested in internecine feuds between its reformist and revolutionary wings, held 58 seats but was no sure thing to defeat the Nationals considering their lack of party discipline and their leader George Barnes' fear that a new election would see their numbers reduced in favor of the Liberals.
Redmond's abstention had, in some ways, effectively called the bluffs of both Chamberlain and Cecil. In the case of the former, the son of the People's Joe had wagered that a united British front in Westminster against the various "Irish parties" was sufficient to not only temper the more reactionary instincts of those in Cecil's orbit but also predicated on the belief that Redmond desired to keep the moral high ground after the Curragh Mutiny and the hideously unpopular Ulster Revolt and would thus only bring down a British government - which the IPP had never on its own done before even with the numbers to do it - if following the lead of the Liberals, as in 1910. As for Cecil, while the Prime Minister had deeply conservative and traditional ideas pertaining to Ireland, he too believed that his friendship with F.E. Smith, soon to be made Lord Birkenhead, frightened Redmond enough to prevent the IPP from gambling on a Nat-Tory majority that would unequivocally swing in favor of Ulster. What neither had predicted was Redmond's declining influence within his own party and the popularity of figures like Griffith and Devlin to the AOH and other Irish mass politics movements, to say nothing of the emerging advocacy of outright republican figures such as Padraig Pearse.
The winter of 1916-17 thus left Britain "dancing on the edge of a knife," in mathematical terms literally. The absence of the IPP and Sinn Fein together left Westminster 71 MPs short; by-elections over the past two years had previously seen two Liberal seats go to the Nationals and two National seats go to the Liberals, a net result of zero that left the math the same. That absence, however, left the National-New Conservative unofficial coalition one seat shy of a majority of the remaining seats, meaning that any single MP missing from any vote from another party meant they would have a majority for that day, with potentially disastrous results for Ireland. This was Redmond's gamble, in many ways with his hand forced by Devlin and Dillon.
O'Brien and his seven fellow AFIL MPs thus held the balance of power in Westminster, and in February of 1917 he finally made his move as a chorus of voices of "full abstention" reached their crescendo, hoping to symbolically end all participation in the Commons by Irish MPs unilaterally. The schadenfreude of the moment must not have been lost on O'Brien; having been driven from the IPP by nationalists and put off by Devlin's clericalism, it was he in this moment who "now wielded the sword" over the British government, not Redmond or Devlin. The moment was ripe for O'Brien's vision of consenting, constitutional reform for Ireland. In a speech to the Commons, O'Brien became the first Nationalist leader to address the concerns of Irish Protestants - including and especially Southern Unionists who were generally viewed as more reasonable than their Ulster counterparts - rather than dismiss them as a Tory plot. "It has always been the manifesto of our League to accommodate the project of Irish liberty in three matters. That first, we must understand the apprehensions of the Ulsterman, regardless of whether we regard them as real or imagined; that second, Ireland must have full, total and unamended control over her revenues; and that third, the solution for Ireland must come by way of constitutional conventions, not by force of arms, whether in Dublin, Belfast or London." O'Brien subsequently declared that "to abstatin from Westminster would be to leave Ireland voiceless; and I will speak until I can speak no more, whether for myself or for the whole of Ireland!"
"Ireland Voiceless," as the speech came to be known, vaulted O'Brien back into the public eye in Ireland and soon polarized Irish nationalist opinion into two camps; the "Quitters" or "Abstainers" who believed in escalatory options in opposition to London that polarized public opinion across the Irish Sea, and "Remainers" who advocated a negotiated solution to the conflict. For once, O'Brien's political future was not dependent on the ossified, conservative and oft-stagnant party superstructure of the IPP, which he mocked as "more interested in sloganeering than solution." The crushing of the IRB by the Royal Irish Constabulary and Irish Army over the course of 1915-16 had left Devlin influential but without much way to enforce his discipline, and his skepticism of Republicanism left him isolated as more of the muscle of the IPP than anything else; O'Brien's determination not to allow Cecil majority control of the Commons thus saved not only Ireland from further violence and suppression, but also likely kept Ireland a monarchy in the long run.
Griffith, whose abstentionism was more ideological than opportunistic, called a vote on March 7th of the Sinn Fein central committee on "cooperation" with the AFIL, and surprisingly the cooperative spirit won out; thus, AFIL suddenly represented Griffith and his "Grattanist" camp in Westminster by proxy, giving O'Brien an even broader base to deal with. This vote occurred only four days before the by-election in Londonderry City, where the National Hercules Pakenham had resigned from Parliament to accept a command in India. On March 11th, 1917, the Liberal Sir James Brown Dougherty won in a surprise result, a massive blow to the Cecil government in moving it one seat further away from its majority and serving as a massive signal of the government's unpopularity at a time when it would otherwise be thought to have a huge advantage. Riots then erupted across Londonderry and Belfast on St. Patrick's Day, with the AOH staging massive rallies and marches around Ireland to show its continued strength. O'Brien may not have been ready to quit Westminster as Redmond, Dillon et al had done, but Ireland was certainly no stabler three years after Curragh.
The aftermath of the St. Patrick's Day uprisings, which signaled to the RIC that their project to suppress nationalist organizations had utterly failed, left an opening for O'Brien's next gambit. On the 24th, having given matters a week to settle, he announced that he would call upon the Liberals to trigger early elections or request a minority government of their own with SDLP support, the first time an MP had ever seriously proposed an alliance with the Marxist element. This surprised many, considering O'Brien's personal conservatism and hostility to socialism despite his years of agrarian advocacy and his rural housing programs having been essentially a version of state socialism. But in reality, O'Brien was simply conceding the obvious - the firm hand Cecil had given Ireland and the soft hand he had given the Curragh mutineers had left Ireland in tatters socially and economically, all in the name of defending the interests of Ulster. Three years after Curragh, Ireland and Britain in general were no closer to a solution, and all that had been resolved was deepened hatred and great loss of life.
The contours of a solution were there - if Cecil could not solve the Irish Question in Ulster's favor by force, and Redmond, Dillon and Devlin could not secure Home Rule by militant agitation, then it was time for the King to appoint a government in Westminster that could attempt to find a genuine solution to the question by conciliation. The road to the Irish Convention had thus, in the haze of the Football Crisis, Ireland Voiceless, and the St. Patrick's Day Riots, emerged for those who sought to see it..."
- Ireland Unfree
William O'Brien is a character who has appeared frequently in this book, both the most aggressive agrarian agitator of his day and one of the most brilliant Irish parliamentarians; he was a Parnellite, a sympathizer of Dillon, and a man eager to mend bridges during the IPP's near-fatal split in the 1890s. At the turn of the century he had eclipsed all others for a brief moment as the most powerful figure in Irish nationalism, and subsequently his fingerprints lay on some of the most important Irish legislation of the previous twenty-five years, not just the Government of Ireland Act that had precipitated 1914's crisis but the Land Act, the Local Government Act, and countless other measures that had brought real local democracy, workers' rights, and economic decentralization to the island. What had ailed him as the 1910s advanced was his belief that Unionists could be not only drawn towards but included within a broader non-sectarian definition of Irish nationalism and brought to a final settlement to transfer all parliamentary control of Ireland to an entity in Dublin if their fears could be addressed, a belief viewed as woefully naive if not treasonous by Devlin and the AOH.
With the Quit Westminster abstentionist mantra having won the day after the Football Crisis, however, it was O'Brien who was still in the Commons in London, and thus O'Brien who again became the central Irish protagonist in Parliament as Redmond voluntarily withdrew himself. This meant that, while O'Brien and his All-for-Ireland League did not have the most support amongst the Irish electorate, they were there, and the ailing Redmond's IPP was not. Crucially, also, the math in Westminster had changed dramatically with the IPP's abstention. While all the MPs had technically not resigned, that was only a necessity to trigger a by-election; sans the IPP, the Nationals and what remained of what were once called the Tories were closer to an outright majority of the House of Commons that lacked either Redmond's MPs or Griffith's abstentionist Sinn Fein on their own.
The 1914 elections had returned 288 Nationals to the Commons and 10 "New Conservatives" under the moderate, aristocratic Balfour; together, they held 298 seats reliably. The Liberals of Chamberlain, who cut a much less radical figure than his father, had provided qualified support for this minority administration on a small list of questions related to Ireland and India, which had greatly moderated the Cecil ministry to the point that Carson and Craig openly questioned their continued participation in the National Party, viewing Cecil as "having abandoned Ulster for the consensus of the mob." The Liberals held 235 seats, which when combined with the 67 seats of Redmond gave them, in theory, the ability to defeat Cecil's government at their pleasure on any question. The left-wing Social Democratic and Labour Party, which spent most of its time invested in internecine feuds between its reformist and revolutionary wings, held 58 seats but was no sure thing to defeat the Nationals considering their lack of party discipline and their leader George Barnes' fear that a new election would see their numbers reduced in favor of the Liberals.
Redmond's abstention had, in some ways, effectively called the bluffs of both Chamberlain and Cecil. In the case of the former, the son of the People's Joe had wagered that a united British front in Westminster against the various "Irish parties" was sufficient to not only temper the more reactionary instincts of those in Cecil's orbit but also predicated on the belief that Redmond desired to keep the moral high ground after the Curragh Mutiny and the hideously unpopular Ulster Revolt and would thus only bring down a British government - which the IPP had never on its own done before even with the numbers to do it - if following the lead of the Liberals, as in 1910. As for Cecil, while the Prime Minister had deeply conservative and traditional ideas pertaining to Ireland, he too believed that his friendship with F.E. Smith, soon to be made Lord Birkenhead, frightened Redmond enough to prevent the IPP from gambling on a Nat-Tory majority that would unequivocally swing in favor of Ulster. What neither had predicted was Redmond's declining influence within his own party and the popularity of figures like Griffith and Devlin to the AOH and other Irish mass politics movements, to say nothing of the emerging advocacy of outright republican figures such as Padraig Pearse.
The winter of 1916-17 thus left Britain "dancing on the edge of a knife," in mathematical terms literally. The absence of the IPP and Sinn Fein together left Westminster 71 MPs short; by-elections over the past two years had previously seen two Liberal seats go to the Nationals and two National seats go to the Liberals, a net result of zero that left the math the same. That absence, however, left the National-New Conservative unofficial coalition one seat shy of a majority of the remaining seats, meaning that any single MP missing from any vote from another party meant they would have a majority for that day, with potentially disastrous results for Ireland. This was Redmond's gamble, in many ways with his hand forced by Devlin and Dillon.
O'Brien and his seven fellow AFIL MPs thus held the balance of power in Westminster, and in February of 1917 he finally made his move as a chorus of voices of "full abstention" reached their crescendo, hoping to symbolically end all participation in the Commons by Irish MPs unilaterally. The schadenfreude of the moment must not have been lost on O'Brien; having been driven from the IPP by nationalists and put off by Devlin's clericalism, it was he in this moment who "now wielded the sword" over the British government, not Redmond or Devlin. The moment was ripe for O'Brien's vision of consenting, constitutional reform for Ireland. In a speech to the Commons, O'Brien became the first Nationalist leader to address the concerns of Irish Protestants - including and especially Southern Unionists who were generally viewed as more reasonable than their Ulster counterparts - rather than dismiss them as a Tory plot. "It has always been the manifesto of our League to accommodate the project of Irish liberty in three matters. That first, we must understand the apprehensions of the Ulsterman, regardless of whether we regard them as real or imagined; that second, Ireland must have full, total and unamended control over her revenues; and that third, the solution for Ireland must come by way of constitutional conventions, not by force of arms, whether in Dublin, Belfast or London." O'Brien subsequently declared that "to abstatin from Westminster would be to leave Ireland voiceless; and I will speak until I can speak no more, whether for myself or for the whole of Ireland!"
"Ireland Voiceless," as the speech came to be known, vaulted O'Brien back into the public eye in Ireland and soon polarized Irish nationalist opinion into two camps; the "Quitters" or "Abstainers" who believed in escalatory options in opposition to London that polarized public opinion across the Irish Sea, and "Remainers" who advocated a negotiated solution to the conflict. For once, O'Brien's political future was not dependent on the ossified, conservative and oft-stagnant party superstructure of the IPP, which he mocked as "more interested in sloganeering than solution." The crushing of the IRB by the Royal Irish Constabulary and Irish Army over the course of 1915-16 had left Devlin influential but without much way to enforce his discipline, and his skepticism of Republicanism left him isolated as more of the muscle of the IPP than anything else; O'Brien's determination not to allow Cecil majority control of the Commons thus saved not only Ireland from further violence and suppression, but also likely kept Ireland a monarchy in the long run.
Griffith, whose abstentionism was more ideological than opportunistic, called a vote on March 7th of the Sinn Fein central committee on "cooperation" with the AFIL, and surprisingly the cooperative spirit won out; thus, AFIL suddenly represented Griffith and his "Grattanist" camp in Westminster by proxy, giving O'Brien an even broader base to deal with. This vote occurred only four days before the by-election in Londonderry City, where the National Hercules Pakenham had resigned from Parliament to accept a command in India. On March 11th, 1917, the Liberal Sir James Brown Dougherty won in a surprise result, a massive blow to the Cecil government in moving it one seat further away from its majority and serving as a massive signal of the government's unpopularity at a time when it would otherwise be thought to have a huge advantage. Riots then erupted across Londonderry and Belfast on St. Patrick's Day, with the AOH staging massive rallies and marches around Ireland to show its continued strength. O'Brien may not have been ready to quit Westminster as Redmond, Dillon et al had done, but Ireland was certainly no stabler three years after Curragh.
The aftermath of the St. Patrick's Day uprisings, which signaled to the RIC that their project to suppress nationalist organizations had utterly failed, left an opening for O'Brien's next gambit. On the 24th, having given matters a week to settle, he announced that he would call upon the Liberals to trigger early elections or request a minority government of their own with SDLP support, the first time an MP had ever seriously proposed an alliance with the Marxist element. This surprised many, considering O'Brien's personal conservatism and hostility to socialism despite his years of agrarian advocacy and his rural housing programs having been essentially a version of state socialism. But in reality, O'Brien was simply conceding the obvious - the firm hand Cecil had given Ireland and the soft hand he had given the Curragh mutineers had left Ireland in tatters socially and economically, all in the name of defending the interests of Ulster. Three years after Curragh, Ireland and Britain in general were no closer to a solution, and all that had been resolved was deepened hatred and great loss of life.
The contours of a solution were there - if Cecil could not solve the Irish Question in Ulster's favor by force, and Redmond, Dillon and Devlin could not secure Home Rule by militant agitation, then it was time for the King to appoint a government in Westminster that could attempt to find a genuine solution to the question by conciliation. The road to the Irish Convention had thus, in the haze of the Football Crisis, Ireland Voiceless, and the St. Patrick's Day Riots, emerged for those who sought to see it..."
- Ireland Unfree
Actually responding to my own post, since going through the early war again on thread 1.
The posting on thread one on October 22, 2022 specifically mentions Phoenix twice in regards to capturing Tucson. Basically, Pershing moved west from far Southern California, and got to Tucson from Yuma, the capture of Tucson captured the railroad running south (east) from Phoenix and thus completely isolated Phoenix from both the Confederacy to its east and Mexico to its south. The idea that there isn't any rail running EW from Phoenix north of the line running down to Tucson seems *quite* reasonable. If that area would have been reasonable for a Railroad, the United States wouldn't have made the Gadsden Purchase! (Phoenix is almost at the same latitude as Amarillo, but the largest "city" on that axis between them is probably Roswell, which no one would have heard of without the UFO sightings)
This is why Pershing marched on Tucson and not Phoenix - taking the former by its geographic nature isolates the latter. Also, the highlands north of Phoenix would more or less roughly fall within the US borders, or close to them, and that removes any offensive threat of Phoenix anyways.
The primary question about proposed CSA gains is do they attempt to extend the Arizona Territory to the west to give the Confederates a Pacific Port. Not sure if the parallel between US New Mexico and CS Arizona is far enough north to gain Los Angeles or would San Diego be the only city south of that. San Diego being Confederate would instantly make them a Pacific player. Of course to do that, the question is what does Mexico gain. They already have Centro as a puppet, would they be OK with simply expanding their puppet to include Nicaragua?
The Bloc’s best case as outlined above seems implausible.
This wasn’t OTL WWII, where it took 2-3 years for Allied industrial and organizational superiority to turn the tide and the Axis completely ran the table for the first 18 months.
The US brought its advantages in industrial output, manpower, and organization to bear and started throwing the Confederates back within four months of the ball dropping.
The best case for the Confederacy is that the US bobbles on the Susquehanna and they have Philadelphia under their guns by December 1913, the US as yet has no progress out west, and they flinch and sign over half of Maryland.
Any excessive demands at the negotiating table that lead to the resumption of hostilities will see Philadelphia gutted, but American material superiority push the Confederates back across the Susquehanna within months, and then the war proceeds as it did with maybe a six month delay and even more American vengefulness.
It’s a very tight needle to thread; the gap in war-fighting potential between the two is huge at this point, so either the Confederates achieve a knock-down blow and then ask for something reasonable, or the US stands back up and starts trading blows again, which ends in only one way.
This wasn’t OTL WWII, where it took 2-3 years for Allied industrial and organizational superiority to turn the tide and the Axis completely ran the table for the first 18 months.
The US brought its advantages in industrial output, manpower, and organization to bear and started throwing the Confederates back within four months of the ball dropping.
The best case for the Confederacy is that the US bobbles on the Susquehanna and they have Philadelphia under their guns by December 1913, the US as yet has no progress out west, and they flinch and sign over half of Maryland.
Any excessive demands at the negotiating table that lead to the resumption of hostilities will see Philadelphia gutted, but American material superiority push the Confederates back across the Susquehanna within months, and then the war proceeds as it did with maybe a six month delay and even more American vengefulness.
It’s a very tight needle to thread; the gap in war-fighting potential between the two is huge at this point, so either the Confederates achieve a knock-down blow and then ask for something reasonable, or the US stands back up and starts trading blows again, which ends in only one way.
I'm not sure if it was ever indicated that the Railroad went north of Phoenix or not. (it either doesn't or it connects to Flagstaff, nothing else makes economic sense).
Still waiting to see whether Arizona ends up as its own state, part of New Mexico or whether that area "reorganizes" into states with OTL boundarie.
Even if Philadelphia falls, unless the Confederacy can crack New York and the Railroads running Albany to Buffalo, I just don't see it. And frankly they'd have an easier time heading north from Kentucky to Cleveland to cut the country in half instead.
(This is functionally the equivalent of WWI where the Entente can ship anything they want to the Russians through the Dardenelles, and where most of the other Russian disadvantages are handwaved away)
In order to make the Caribbean their playground, they'd have to take over Haiti. I'm thinking that that all by itself would likely qualify for a Vlad Tepes award....
Probably, especially since Mexico had to be convinced to join the war after the balloon already went up
I agree.
The bolded just needs two fairly plausible PODs to work - the breakthrough on the Susquehanna (perhaps a worse defense at Harrisburg opens the door to a Confederate breakout behind Lancaster on the left bank of the river, opening the pathways towards Reading and Philadelphia) and the US failing to establish its bridgeheads in Kentucky in Sept/Oct of 1913, especially across from Cincy, which were so critical to the Licking Offensive and Kentucky River Offensive the following winter/spring and basically boiled down to the US being able to prevent several key bridges being blown in time by the CSA. But a maximalist demand at that point by the CSA would, indeed, steel the American spines to continue.
Exactly. Still no way to actually win, win. Just get a favorable settlement.
Economic vassalization probably works at first, but eventually Spain is going to have something to say about that (and Mexico is likely to be more sympathetic to Madrid long term than Richmond depending on how a postwar Confederate government drunk on victory behaves. Recall how poorly Forrest's Northern Expedition to hunt Porfirio Diaz went over, and that was with him ostensibly helping Max out!)
Of course, a CS-favorable settlement in a war that Richmond starts with a sneak attack is a truce, not a peace.
Basically a guarantee that the US arms itself to the teeth and destroys the Confederacy in round two, likely well within a decade.
And that war ends with the US annexing huge swathes of the country, ethnically cleansing the shit out of them, shattering the rest, and standing over the ruins with a cannon pointed at them for a few decades.
not pretty.