Alternative History: Post Alternative Theories Here

No, I deliberately didn't partake in anything. I called the view implied in Turtledove's counterfactual "a valid, if debatable claim a historian might make", intentionally leaving open whether I agree with the claim or not. But, I realize you need your daily fix of righteous indignation about other people's stupidity. Far be it from me to take that away from you.

Hot damn, you are one eloquent SOB, Thomas! Are you this good in German too?

No righteous indignation is involved, Thomas, and my objection is not to stupidity, it is to ignorance. The claim that slavery was doomed without Federal intervention insidiously implies that the Federal government made war on an unoffending South. The South started that war. It is not unreasoable to assume your ignorance given that you repeated such a claim--this wasn't a case of me making an assertion which you challenged, this was a case of you introducing a new topic to the discussion.



This is what you wrote, and it was unsolicited, although offered in response to my comment about how unreasonable a scenario of B52 bombers in Belgium in 1815 were. If you didn't want to be told of your ignorance, perhaps you ought to have informed yourself before making the remark. Once again, there was no "righteous indignation" (did you attend the James Carville school of forensics--is this politics to you?) and no claim of stupidity. That point of view can only be a product of ignorance, and that is what i object to. If i think at any time you are stupid, i'll be sure to point it out explicitly. I do hope, though, that you enjoy your self-righteous snit.

No it does not, because preserving the union and abolishing slavery are two separate projects. Lincoln himself was acutely aware of this. I remember reading a letter of his in history class where he says that he would introduce slavery in the North if that's what it took to save the union.

Because slavery and secession are independent points, non-ignorant people can hold the view that the war was necessary to preserve the union, but not to abolish slavery. And even if we stipulate that the South's secession was an offense in itself, you cannot use this offense to rebut the claim that slavery would have been doomed even if the secession had been successful.

I know of no evidence that Lincoln ever said that he would introduce slavery in the North (he was no more able to do that than the was able to abolish slavery). He did say that if he could preserve the Union by freeing all the slaves, he would do it; that if he could preserve the Union by freeing some of the slaves and not others, he would do that; and that if he could preserve the Union while freeing none of the slaves, he would do that. I'll go find the quote here directly.

I haven't argued that the war was necessary to free the slaves, so that's a straw man on your part. Nor have i stated that you, in your ignorance, have claimed that that were either true or false. I said that your comments partake of the line used by the apologists to the effect that war was made on the South by the Federal government in order to abolish slavery. Saying that your comments partake of a red herring used by the apologists is not saying that you mean to say that, just that the effect of what you say is the same.

I have already pointed out that slavery was a failed economic system, and had been since long before the war. Therefore, i do not accept the claim that it was a "doomed institution," which implies that it would have gone away sooner or later. Much of the animus between North and South arose from Missouri compromise, which meant that a slave state would be added for each "free" state which was admitted to the Union. Northeners justifiably accused Polk's administration of being motivated by this measure to make war on Mexico in 1845. The three-fifths compromise ensured that slave state congressional delegations weilded power out of all proportion to the number of elligible voters in their districts. The South was able to keep slavery "on life support" by constantly adding new states by two means. The first and most obvious was the effect of the thee-fifths compromise. The other was that the cotton monoculture exhausted the soil very quickly, and as a capitalist venture, slave-produced cotton only remained profitable by continuing access to new land on which the slave-driven cotton plantations could be erected. This, of course, was not as likely to be the case in the American southwest after the Mexican war, although cotton monoculture was possible there--but it still promised to produce more political power for the South. That increase in political power was never realized because the land we stole (fair and square) from Mexico was not settled quickly enough to add new states from which the South could claim their slave state spoil.

For long before the American civil war, the monocultures of tobacco and cotton, worked like latter day latifundia by slave work forces, had exactly the same impact on the broader population as has been the case in the western portion of the Roman Empire. Small holders and small craftsmen could not compete with slave labor, and they either lived in constant poverty, or they got out to find their economic futures somewhere else.

Therefore, i rebut the claim that slavery was doomed for political reasons. So long as the South was able to exploit the three-fifths compromise, and use that political power to oppose the tariff, homesteading acts and any other economic measure proposed in the Congress which would have had the effect of exposing southern slave-holders to the economic realities of their failed institution.

I'm not stating that you are an apologist for slavery in the Old South--i'm just pointing out that much of what you have said is part and parcel of the arguments offered by those who are apologists.

I have not, by the way, said that secession was an offense. Forming the Confederacy was the offense. The formation of the Confederacy, and all of their subsequent acts as though it were a sovereign nation violated all three paragraphs of Article I, Section 10:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

At the point at which a mob from Pensacola, Florida fired on Federal troops in the attempt to seize Federal property at Forts McRae and Barrancas, the final paragraph was clearly violated. Obviously, the formation of the Confederacy at Montgomery, Alabama violated the first paragraph, and the subsequent actions of that "government" violated all three paragraphs. Whether or not secession was permissible was a moot point in the face of the strong argument available to the Buchanan and Lincoln administartions based on Article One, Section ten.

Here is the quote by Lincoln about which i believe you are confused:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.

Of course, if you can provide a quote from a reliable source which supports your claim, i would acquiesce in that.

Let me try to bring this back to somewhere within the vicinity of the topic of this thread.

We cannot, of course, know how the institution of slavery would have fared if there had been no Civil War. To posit, then, that slavery would have died out on its own had there been no war is one of those implied counterfactuals I was talking about that pervade historical writing. A historian can answer that question without indulging in a fictionalized account of events, but any answer will, by necessity, be speculative. There is, however, a real difference between good speculation and bad speculation. The careful historian will weigh all of the evidence, make informed deductions therefrom, and arrive at a reasonable conclusion while acknowledging that any conclusion is still based on what amounts to intelligent guesswork.

This sounds like the kind of claim someone writing "alternative history" would make.

I remember a fringe historical theory that George Washington, during the hardships of Valley Forge, was secretly dealing with the British to have his army surrender.

You know, one can often see where such stories come from. An English professional soldier, Charles Lee, became a planter in Virginia, and then joined the Continental army when the revolution began. Washington bent over backward to accomodate Lee, and to give him responsible commands. Lee sneered at Washington behind his back, and plotted with members of the Continental Congress to replace Washington. In December, 1776, Lee, with a dozen dragoons of his personal guard, left his command and went to an inn in New Jersey several miles from where his troops were bivouaced. Early the next morning, Lee was captured by the notorious English dragoon commander Tarleton. He was exchanged for an English officer in 1778 (as Washington was marshalling his army at Valley Forge) and joined as senior commander after Washington. Washington hurried his army to catch up to Clinton's army, which was marching from Philadelphia to New York. On the night before Washington planned to attack Clinton's rear guard, Lee vociferously opposed the plan, but Washington only convened councils of war to inform his officers as a courtesy and good command management--once decided upon a course of action, he was not to be dissuaded. Therefore, despite Lee's objections, he offered the command of the attack to Lee, who refused it. So Washington gave the command to La Fayette. Later in the night, Lee came to Washington and asked to be allowed to command the attack. Washington agreed, acquiescing to military protocol.

The following day, several regiments of the Continental line were able to force Clinton's rear guard to turn and fight. One of the regiments advanced from the high ground on which they were posted (and no one knows why), and were then vulnerable to flank attacks by the English light infantry. They began to retreat in disorder. Lee had issued no commands (those regiments had gone into position based on the orders which Washington and La Fayette had issued the night before), until that regimet began to retreat, and as other troops on their flanks began to panic, Lee ordered a general retreat.

Washington rode up a few miles from the originanl position, and he was livid. He demanded to know why Lee had withdrawn, and when Lee began to hem and haw, Washington began to curse him so roundly and loudly that many of the Continentals streaming back from the scene of the disaster stopped to watch the fun. (That wasn't the first or the last time that Washington was reputed to have sworn in a manner to warm the hear's of his soldiers.) Washington and other officers around him were able to rally the troops and to turn to inflict a punishing attack on the English light infantry. However, Washington's plan to force Clinton into a pitched battle (with roughly even odds--the Americans had a good shot at routing the English, encumbered as they were with a huge train of supplies and goods looted from Philadelphia) lay in ruins. So did Lee's career.

Since that time, there has been a good deal of speculation to the effect that Lee, while a prisoner, had concerted plans with his former officer comrades to sabotage the efforts of the Continental army. No one can say if this is true or not (i know of no evidence which confirms that). But it is known that Lee lived in relative luxury during his imprisonment (at the same time as Washington's army was at Valley Forge), and was frequently visited by officers who had served with him before he emmigrated to Virginia.

I suspect that such claims are simply the Lee story transferred to Washington. You see a lot of that sort of thing in "alternative history."

Thanks, Setanta, that was interesting to read about. Some fringe theories are entertaining, but it is good to know how they originate.

Well, i can't say that's the origin, it just seems the most likely explanation to me. You can see this sort of thing most clearly in the Pearl Harbor conspiracy claims. FDR, after consulting with his secretaries of State, War, the Army and the Navy, and with General Marshall and Admiral King, sent a war warning message to the commanders in the Pacific, including but not limited to Admiral Kimmel, General Short, General MacArthur and their subordinate officers of general and flag rank. Kimmel, Short and MacArthur took no action. In fact, MacArthur took no action even after he knew Pearl Harbor had been attacked, and Japanese air forces from Formosa (what we call Taiwan), who had been socked in by fog all morning, finally were able to fly and attack the Philippines, shooting up Army Air Force planes on their air fields. Significantly, Admiral Halsey, who was at sea with a carrier task force, put his ships and crews on full wartime alert upon receipt of the war warning message. The CNO (Chief of Naval Operations) sent an alert on November 24th, and the war warning message on November 27th, 1941--more than ten days before the Pearl Harbor attack.

The conspiracy crew have used the complete lack of action on the part of Kimmel, Short and MacArthur to claim that FDR "let" the attacks take place because he could not have gone to war without it.

I remember a history classmate in college being very adamant about the claim that FDR "allowed" Pearl Harbor to happen.

My personal theory about the Pearl Harbor conspiracy nonsense is that it is based on racism, and partisan hysteria. The partisan hatred of FDR was just a side bar, though, to the basic racist hysteria which arose after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

As long ago as the 1870s, the states of the west coast began taking action against Asian minorities, especially the Japanese. Several times, the Federal government was obliged to attempt to intevene, especially in California, where the legislature was prone to passing laws restricting the economic and educational activities of the Japanese. By the time of the American embargo against Japan, anti-Japanese racism was deeply engrained in Americans. There was also a typical racist stereotype of the Japanese as inferior.

In November, 1940, the Royal Navy Air Service launched torpedo bomber attacks on the Italian fleet in the port of Taranto. They did, really, an incredible amount of damage given the air forces which they committed. In naval circles, this event had a profound effect, an effect which was certainly not lost on the Japanese Imperial Navy. Admiral Yamamoto was arguably the most respected military commander in Japan at that time. Because of the American and English embargoes on Japan, they were running out of the petroleum they needed for gasoline, aviation fuel and bunker oil (the low-grade petroleum used by ships to fire their boilers). So they had concerted a plan known as the Southern Operation, in which, using their forces on Formosa (seized by the Japanese in 1895) and French Indochina ("ceded" to Japan by the Vichy government in 1940) and primarily using the Imperial Navy, they would seize the English and Dutch colonies in the East Indies, which were rich in mineral and petoleum resources.

Any competent naval officer would understand that such an operation was seriously threatened by the U. S. Army Air Force in the Philippines, and at a greater distance by the more potent threat of the Pacific fleet based in Hawaii. Yamamoto was more than just simply competent, so sometime in 1940 (whether or not he was influenced by the RNAS attack on Taranto i could not say--he wouldn't have need that example to know what he'd need to do) he began to prepare for an attack on Hawaii and the Philippines. He began by putting the project in the hands of one of his best young staff officers, Commander Genda, for the operational planning. Somewhat later, he assigned his best young flight officer/commander, Commander Fuchida, to plan and carry out the training for the operation.

The Imperial Naval Staff was horrified by his plan. He spent most of his time breaking down their resistance, and putting all of his prestige on the line to secure approval for the attack on Hawaii. Genda got on with the operational plans, and Fuchida began the training schedule, both of them working on their projects before the plan had even been approved. Hawaii presented some unique problems. One is that the basin at Pearl Harbor is very shallow, much shallower than the depth ordinarily needed for the aerial launch of torpedos. The Japanese had the best torpedoes in the world at the time (and the United States arguably had the worst), but that wouldn't do them much good if the torpedoes ended up borrowing into the mud at the bottom of Pearl harbor. So he put his naval artificers to work to come up with a solution. This the accomplished by putting wooden rings on the torpedoes which would stop them from "porpoising" (i.e., diving deeply) as they ordinarily would have, and still dropping off shortly after they hit the water. The obvious evidence is this worked a treat for them.

The second major problem was the strength of the American battle ships. Built before or during the First World War, the American "battle-wagons" nonetheless had such heavy deck armor that the Japanese planners correctly concluded that the standard dive bomber attacks would not penetrate their armor. The Imperial Navy used "horizontal" bombers as well as dive bombers (a horizontal bomber is a high altitude bomber that flies horizontally, releasing its bomb load just as do land based bombers). So, the artificers developed wooden vanes which could be attached to 16" armor piercing shells used by their largest battleships. In the event, these worked exactly as planned to pierce the heavy American deck armor.

Genda's operational plan worked brilliantly to deliver the maximum force to a position within range north of Hawaii. Fuchida's training schedule worked brilliantly to accustom the torpedo and horizontal bomber crews to using these modified munitions, and did so without anyone knowing what the planned target would be. For all that they knew, the air crews were training to deal with American and English naval forces in the area of the Southern Operation, and "open secret" in Japanese military circles.

Finally securing approval, Yamamoto leaned on the Imperial Naval Staff, and had the six largest Japanese carriers--Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku--assigned to the newly created First Air Fleet. This left the Southern Operation with nothing but a few small carriers (three, i think), but initially, they could rely on Army air forces stationed on Formosa and in French Indochina. The only hitch in the plan was in the command of the First Air Fleet, and it would not have been immediately apparent that this was a hitch.

The Imperial Navy gave out commands on the basis of seniority. In all military establishments, there is a problem with the dynamic between merit and seniority. Systems which promote on the basis of merit risk losing officers of less than brilliant military skills because they would justifiably feel that their promotion would be slow or non-existent. Systems which promote on the basis of seniority risk putting great, braying jackasses in command at crucial times--like Admiral Parker at Copenhagen in 1801, who would have broken off the attack and accepted defeat at horrible cost had his second in command, Lord Nelson, not decided to ignore his commander's order to break off the attack. Parker commanded because he was senior to Nelson--although precious little good it did him. He was sacked after reports reached England, and Nelson was given command of his fleet.

In the Imperial Navy, promotion and command assignment were strictly on the basis of senority except in times of war, and the Imperial Navy had not been at war since 1905. The senior available sea commander was Admiral Nagumo, a battleship man. One admiral commented that Nagumo was an old school officer who knew surface maneuvers but who had no idea of the realities of naval aviation.

The diver bombers were assigned to attack the airfields while the torpedo bombers and horizontal bombers attacked the shipping in Pearl Harbor. The fighters, if they were not engaged in protecting the bombers (and largely, they didn't need to) were to stafe the air fields. I don't think i need to point out how successful the attack was.

But after that attack, the fatal decision to put Nagumo in command became apparently. Despite the repeated pleas of Genda and Fuchida, Nagumo would not launch another attack. They attempted to get him to agree by pointing out that the fleet would steam past the islands as they headed back to their operational area for the Southern Operation, and could recover the aircraft as they steamed by. Nagumo was unmoved. As a battleship man, his attitude was that he had badly punished the enemy, had suffered no losses of ships, and he was going to get out while the getting was good (this is, of course, surmise, because Nagumo didn't comment himself, and was never officially required to provide an explanation--i base my remark on the comments made by other senior Japanese naval officers after the fact).

For Americans, this disaster was especially galling. Not only had the Japanese badly damaged the Pacific Fleet (although they hadn't gotten any carriers, and seem to have ignored the "tank farms" full of fuel on the shore of Peal Harbor), but this was accomplished by a nation whom so many Americans despised. The American racist stereotype was that the Japanese were not very bright, were
myopic, small and bandy-legged "monkeys." That made the successful attack all the more humiliating. Rather accuse the President of treasonously sacrificing thousands of American lives than admit to what the Japanese has actually accomplished--one of the most meticulously planned and brilliantly executed operations in the history of naval warfare.

And, of course, it didn't hurt that so many of these jokers already despised FDR as a dangerous socialist and class traitor.

Yes, that's the one. I was wrong about the "introducing slavery to the North" part. My mistake does not affect the conclusion of my last post, however.

Yes, i have no doubt that you will presist in your ill-informed opinions.

In that case, we have no problem. Guilt by association is a game I'm not playing.



... a problem that would have gone away if the secession had been successful: No Union, no three-fifth compromise.


I fail to see how the logic of this assertion holds together. The US constitution only applies to a state if it's part of the US. If secession itself is constitutional, then the Confederacy's constituents no longer belonged to the United States, having legitimately seceded from it. Why would the US constitution still have applied to them?

I'm not ascribing guilt to you. You need to understand the use of the verb to partake. I'm not saying that you are an apologist, i'm just pointing out that the argument you are advancing happens, coincidentally, to be an argument of the apologists.

The problem which you say would have gone away was a problem for the northern states, not the southern states. I was pointing out the political value of the institution of slavery to the southern states so long as they remained a part of the Union.

It has never been determined if secession is constitutional, and it certainly hadn't been determined in the first week of January, 1861 when an armed mob of militiamen from Florida and Alabama attempted to seize Forts McRae and Barrancas. It certainly hadn't been determined in the first week of February, 1861, when the Confederate States were formed.

The problem i see in your understanding here is that the question of whether or not the states could secede had not been resolved by the time that those states took military action against the Federal government. So long as it was either unresolved or such a "right" was denied by the Federal government, the Federal goverment was justified in taking military action to defend their installations, and to subsequently take military action against states in arms against the Federal government in despite of Article One, Section ten.

In the event, after having already violated Article One, Section ten, the southerners claimed that their right of secession rested upon the provisions of the tenth amendment. The effect of their loss of the war was to make the tenth amendment a dead letter. In any quarrel which comes to a clash of arms, the loser is, de facto, in the wrong, for whatever one may allege about their "rights" in the matter, or the de jure strength of their case. If the southern states had not formed a confederacy and had not taken up arms against the Federal government, Buchanan's and Lincoln's positions would have been far weaker.

And Lincoln was always a skillful politician. Rather than call out the militia, under the provisions of Article One, Section Eight, he called for voluteers from the several states. It was on that basis in 1861 and 1862 that the Federal government was able to build the enormous military establishment which doomed the Confederate States. Almost all regiments were, officially, United States Volunteers. As in most of American history, the performance of the militia was dismal, and the performance of volunteers was nothing short of heroic.

A funny story about my little daughter in her fourth grade social studies. She was asked the question: "What was the effect of the attack on Fort Sumter?" Her written response was a brief sentence: "It burned down."

The simple answers are the best, ain't they . . .

Thomas, from the Free Dictionay dot com:

partake

v.intr.
1. To take or have a part or share; participate.
2. To take or be given part or portion: The guests partook of a delicious dinner.
3. To have part of the quality, nature, or character of something.


Look at number three. That's how im'm using it. I'm not accusing you of anything, i'm not saying you are guilty of anything.