They’ve really played the long game for their comeback but in more ways than one the ghosts of the confederacy are haunting the US to this day. This is more than LARPing for many of those people.
I believe it was a transitional time for warfare. Muskets weren’t much better than earlier technology, their strength was that you didn’t need much training at all to use them as opposed to a bow or sword.
In earlier wars, if often came down to whoever broke and fled first, a smaller army fighting for beliefs rather than a Lord could beat a bigger army.
But they undervalued newer technology that could cause havoc by relatively untrained people. It wasn’t the same as WW1 where this really showed, but it was definitely on the way.
There’s a story that says that a Northern quartermaster didn’t want repeating rifles because he didn’t want his troops wasting bullets.
More likely the repeating rifles were more expensive and heavier.
There’s definitely an argument to that logic. 10 bullets in one person may as well be 1. People don’t fall down instantly so a volley is likely to do little to a column of troops like Napoleon liked to use.
But I know pretty much nothing about the American civil war, and it sounds like the north was able to produce far more than the south. So probably a bad decision.
Forgotten Weapons did a video, not too long ago, on why advanced weapons like the Henry repeating rifle weren’t adopted by the Civil War U.S. Army. Just like today, in time of conflict a lot of people try to get military contracts. Just like today, a lot of those people have poor, unworkable, or under-developed ideas. The rifle-musket with the Minie bullet was very effective. The thinking was “We have something right now that works, is reliable, and we can already mass-produce; switching to something that maybe doesn’t work, we have no idea of reliability, and no way to produce at useful scale is a bad idea — oh, and we don’t have hindsight to tell us which to pick.” The CSA, by contrast, had little choice but to pay anyone who looked like they could deliver arms. Aside from Griswold & Gunnison, it resulted in many failed contracts and few, generally poor-quality weapons.
Good reply. Thanks
I’ll definitely look that up. It makes sense, I think my semi-guesswork wasn’t too far off the mark.
Great reply!
If you want to binge a great documentary, Ken Burns’ The Civil War is phenomenal.
I’ve always been a little fascinated by it. I’m not from US so it was never part of my education. Most of my knowledge on that era comes from videogames and cowboy movies.
Thank you for the recommendation.
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A coworker once told me that the South was doomed because the North had a larger industrial base. I said that sounded like wisdom in English, but it was a joke in Vietnamese.
The south was doomed because a significant portion of their labor hated them. They also had terrible industrial capacity, no international legitimacy, and no asymmetric advantage.
It’s a lot more like when Cambodia invaded Vietnam than when America did.
The north Vietnamese had China and the Soviet Union backing them. The US south had basically nobody.
https://richardpoe.substack.com/p/how-the-british-caused-the-american
Many people believe that the British government actively pushed the south to secede in order to weaken the US.
Not to mentioned the U.S. deployed something like 2.7 million people to Vietnam over the years. ~58,000 U.S. soilders died. Somewhere between 1-3 million people died in the war. Everyone lost that war. With deaths between 95%-98% not being U.S. troops though… It’s hard to argue when someone says the U.S. didn’t lose. We should have never been there, it was horrible… but any proud boy I meet in a bar who knows the numbers is going to call that a win… Because they don’t care about anything other than how many “bad people” died, and they consider anyone who looks/talks/acts different, bad people.
Apples and oranges.
Vietnamese had been fighting for twenty years against the French and Japanese. The South thought they would achieve victory with a few battles.
North Vietnam also had industrial bases in the Soviet Union AND China supplying and funding them. It’s not like they were all paddy farmers.
More importantly the US wasn’t waging “war” against the “North”. They were waging a genocidal destruction campaign against all Vietnamese, mainly in the US controlled South as a means to keep the region destabilized and prevent it from emerging as an economic competitor in the sphere of UDSSR/China.
So if you were Vietnamese in the North or South, Rice farmer or of another profession, chance was US being out to kill or subdue you, so resistance was the only option.
So weak, stupid, and with a rigid mindset?
https://richardpoe.substack.com/p/how-the-british-caused-the-american
I’ve seen this idea from several sources. The British figured that American ‘Manifest Destiny’ would mean annexing Canada eventually. It didn’t cost the Brits a lot to stir up Southern resentments against the North. So they South got played.
It took a while but that’s looks like exactly what they are trying to do.
I suppose when that industrial output needs to cross an ocean. Not so much when it just needs to cross a river.
Half men, heh.
100% dumbass
Half horse.
“My mom’s my mom, my dad’s a horse, the two of them had intercourse, I’m traumatized by their divorce.” - Half Horse / Half Man
