Cross-Country Rally

For the purposes of Burnished Rows of Steel, TFSmith has created what he terms 'ralliers': men who sat out the Civil War, but would be only too ready to join a war against the British. His usage of these 'ralliers' reveals the simplistic jingoism which underlies his entire treatment of the conflict. In many cases, it also shows the superficial nature of his research, and how he lacks either the drive or the intellectual curiosity to glean more than the most facile and basic understanding of the people he uses as pawns.

Greater Scott!

A while ago, we learned that TFSmith believed that General Winfield Scott was on some sort of secret espionage mission for the Union during his time convalescing in Paris. We also learned that this belief, like many others held by TFSmith, was complete nonsense.

Since the publication of that article, a significant fact has come to my attention. Not only did Scott fail to meet Napoleon III during his brief time in Paris, but when news of the Trent Affair arrived he scuttled back to the United States so hastily that it threw out all the US minister's arrangements:

'General Scott will have arrived in the United States doubtless before this despatch; will you say to him that I last evening received a note from Mr Thouvenel, naming two o'clock to-day to receive him; at which hour I attended at the foreign office and returned his thanks, &c. Mr Thouvenel was quite disappointed at not seeing him, and said that the Emperor had promptly assented to give him a private interview. I explained at the same time that his departure for his own country had been sudden and unexpected.' (William L. Dayton, US Minister to France, to William H. Seward, Secretary of State, 11 December 1861)

Can we detect a hint of thinly-veiled anger in Dayton's message? It would be entirely understandable if we did. After all, he had taken the trouble to arrange a meeting for Scott with the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, only for Scott to high-tail it back to the States at the first threat of war. This was not just a personal insult to Thouvenel, at a time when the Union needed all the friends it could find. It also made the Union's representative to Paris look like a buffoon, and the Union's most prominent military figure of the past half century look like a coward.

Either Scott had no mission in Paris, or he lost his head and threw away his only chance to complete it. Which is the more likely?

This means "War".

It is often the case that a topic which appears to contain errors in Burnished Rows of Steel will, once examined a second time, turn out to have more errors than originally believed.

The declaration of war is one such. We have already examined how it is extremely delayed, and how the British ultimatum was allowed to expire. But even on the simple topic of the legal declaration itself TFSmith makes more than a few mistakes.

Dole, not coal

TFSmith is fairly positive about the industrial capacity of San Francisco:

'home of the Benicia Arsenal, Mare Island Navy Yard, and Union Iron Works, among other industrial facilities' (1)
'the most strongly defended and most economically developed bastion on the Pacific Rim in 1861-62, in BROS or outside of it; the realities and resources of the Benicia Arsenal, Mare Island Navy Yard, Union Iron Works, Fort Point, the Presidio, etc. are head and shoulders above the next closest, which is probably Callao' (2)
possessing 'an integrated industrial center (Benicia, Mare Island, Union Ironworks, and the Mint, for example)' (3)
'the Mother Lode and Comstock pretty much forced a level of industrialization - commercial and military - that included what became Union Iron Works in San Francisco proper, and both Mare Island and Benicia Arsenal farther up the east bay, and there was plenty of manpower, horsepower, timber, and livestock in California' (4)

Unfortunately, there is one thing that TFSmith never mentions in the course of these discussions: coal. Of the 99,818 tons of coal brought into San Francisco in 1861, 42,403 tons came from British possessions. A further 16,183 tons came from Oregon, and regrettably (as we have already seen) the Union has no railway to transport the coal and no ships left to escort coal convoys down the coast, even if Britain hadn't been blockading Puget Sound already. The domestic coal supply in California consisted only of 2,662 tons from the Cumberland company, which produces soft low-quality bituminous coal.

This coal is not just needed to forge iron for armour plates or to power the now-mastless ships of the Pacific Fleet. As per Rebels at the Gate, Captain Jeremy Francis Gilmer reported that 'The climate of San Francisco is a peculiar one, the summer months being often quite as cold as the early spring and fall... it is impossible to do business in any office in San Francisco during May June July August and September without fires.' However, we are never given any indication that the interruption of British coal imports has any effect on the industrial capacity of California, let alone that tens of thousands of civilians are burning whatever wood can be found to stay warm, or that large sections of Californian manpower are diverted into the mining industry in order to supply the deficiency.

Why does this matter? Let's compare. In chapter 15, part 1, we are told of the effect that the interruption of American wheat supplies has on Britain:

ending trade with the United States, although it had provided a surfeit of southern cotton to an already saturated market, had substantially reduced the import of wheat and corn to the United Kingdom. Although the supplies could be made up from sources in Europe, including Russia, costs were high and prices had increased in Britain and Ireland, adding yet more stress to the poor and laboring classes, with consequences as yet unknown. Palmerston’s opponents in Parliament, even the Conservatives, were willing to raise the issue, and protests had occurred in the poorest counties in Ireland and Scotland. Irish peers, among others, had raised the issue of the famine, and the possibility of rioting was understood to be very real, especially in the depth of the winter of 1862-63

US wheat amounted to 40% of the British supply at this time: despite finding alternate sources, the British suffer cost increases and is on the verge of famine and riots. British coal amounted to 40% of San Francisco's supply: there are no problems, and indeed California can ramp up its industrial production over OTL. Perhaps the Conestoga wagons being used to carry gold bullion from California to the east are carrying coal on the return journey.

California Dreaming (3)

We have seen the unrealism that permeates the descriptions of San Francisco's defences and the troops available to man those defences. This post will consider the British plans for reducing those defences, which will hopefully lead us on to our final post dealing with the actual course of the battle.

It's Always Sunny In Mexico II

In the story Mexico and the Southwest in general seem to be a land of convenience for the author. As we last saw, here the United States very ahistorically begins to devote significant resources to coaxing the French out of Mexico on a very unfavorable deal. Now though, as the story rolls into 1863, the author feels Mexico should get more credit than it did historically.

We open now, to what is apparently known as the "Rio Grande Campaign", let's watch as the author turns a sideshow into yet another advanced win for the Union:

'Lee-ve it aht, Rodney'

Burnished Rows of Steel, Chapter 9, Part 3:

Grant’s chief topographical officer, Captain Thomas Jefferson Lee, who despite his relatively low rank, was among Grant’s most valuable staff officers on the Saint Lawrence. Lee was one of those individuals – not unlike Wolseley – who would strike an observer as improbably well-suited for the task at hand.Born to American parents in 1808 in Bordeaux, Lee was fluent in French. Appointed to West Point in 1826, he graduated in 1830 and served in the artillery, engineers, and topographical engineers over the course of a 30-year-long career, including duty in Europe, service as an aide to Winfield Scott, and, most notably, with the international boundary surveys on the northern frontier in the 1840s and of the Great Lakes in the 1850s. Lee retired in 1855, but when the Anglo-American crisis came to a boil in the winter of 1861-62, he offered his services. Lee returned to the colors and had played significant roles in the crossing of the Niagara, at Limestone Ridge, and the siege of Kingston; he was ably assisted by his deputy, Lt. George W. Rose, class of 1852, another “rallier” – a Detroit merchant, Rose had served with Lee on the Survey of Northwestern Lakes and knew Upper and Lower Canada as well as any British officer. Both men were examples of the resources the Anglo-American conflict had brought into the field for the Americans, resources which in a solely civil conflict might never have appeared

Notice that we are not told that Lee never saw combat, as we would be if Lee were British. TFsmith presumably thought that 'service as an aide to Winfield Scott' would con his readers into thinking that service came during the Mexican-American War. Or perhaps he really doesn't understand what aides do. However, take particular notice of that last sentence:

Both men were examples of the resources the Anglo-American conflict had brought into the field for the Americans, resources which in a solely civil conflict might never have appeared 

Thomas Jefferson Lee's biography explains that he was 'employed on the Coast Survey, 1861‑62' and 'by the Bureau of Topographical Engineers, 1862‑63'. His obituary specifies further that his service in the latter capacity was 'in connection with the defences of Washington'.

In BROS, some of the country's few trained military officers are drafted out of the Coast Survey and the Topographical Engineers, and into staff roles with armies in the field. However, this transfer of personnel has no effect on the Union's ability to defend its coastlines or its northern border with Canada, despite this task requiring the construction of vast numbers of submarine obstacles, earthen land batteries, and masonry forts which the country had been unable to complete in peacetime. Nor does Lee's absence from the Washington defences matter, as the Confederates sit and do nothing while the Union transfer vast numbers of troops north - how very fortunate.

Once again, that hand behind the Union's back turns out to have been in use after all.

California Dreaming (2)

It's been a while since we last looked at California. If you want to remind yourself what was wrong with the land defences, check out the previous post. You may also want to check out the problems with the Pacific Northwest, as California is used to boost the numbers there.

Otherwise, let's press on.

Norfolk'in sense

At a late point in the timeline, TFSmith goes back to explain exactly how the Union attack on Portsmouth Navy Yard took place. At previous points it has been described as the Union "storming" ashore and taking the Navy Yard, and as Burnside landing at an abandoned Navy Yard to destroy the Virginia.

As it turns out, it is both. There is so much wrong with the way Norfolk and environs are handled that it is hard to put it all down.