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.
So… Not unlike Putin now? Hunh. No wonder they don’t want history taught in school.
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.
Please cite sources, or I will be forced to remove this for conspiracy theory/misinformation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties#Deaths_caused_by_the_American_military
For official U.S. military operations reports, there was no established distinction between enemy KIA and civilian KIA. Since body counts were a direct measure of operational success, U.S. “operations reports” often listed civilian deaths as enemy KIA or exaggerated the number. There was strong pressure to produce body counts as a measure of operational success and enemy body counts were directly tied to promotions and commendation.[36][37][38][39] The My Lai massacre was initially written off as an operational success and covered up.[40][37] Sometimes civilian casualties from airstrikes or artillery barrages against villages were reported as “enemies killed”.[36][37][41] All individuals killed in declared free-fire zones, combatants or not, were considered enemy killed in action by U.S. forces.[42] This might partially explain the discrepancies between recovered weapons and body-count figures, along with exaggeration, although the NVA and VC also went to great lengths to recover weapons from the battlefield.[14]
Nick Turse, in his 2013 book, Kill Anything that Moves, argues that a relentless drive toward higher body counts, a widespread use of free-fire zones, rules of engagement where civilians who ran from soldiers or helicopters could be viewed as VC, and a widespread disdain for Vietnamese civilians led to massive civilian casualties and endemic atrocities inflicted by U.S. troops.[45] One example cited by Turse is Operation Speedy Express, an operation by the 9th Infantry Division, which was described by John Paul Vann as, in effect, “many My Lais”.[45]
Air force captain, Brian Wilson, who carried out bomb-damage assessments in free-fire zones throughout the delta, saw the results firsthand. “It was the epitome of immorality…One of the times I counted bodies after an air strike—which always ended with two napalm bombs which would just fry everything that was left—I counted sixty-two bodies. In my report I described them as so many women between fifteen and twenty-five and so many children—usually in their mothers’ arms or very close to them—and so many old people.” When he later read the official tally of dead, he found that it listed them as 130 VC killed.[46]
Indochina Newsletter, Issue 18, November – December, 1982, pp. 1-5 [October, 1982] - The Legacy of the Vietnam War
CHOMSKY: As far as the opinion makers are concerned, they have been doing exactly what it was obvious they would do. Every book that comes out, every article that comes out, talks about how — while it may have been a “mistake” or an “unwise effort” — the United States was defending South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression. And they portray those who opposed the war as apologists for North Vietnam. That’s standard to say.
The purpose is obvious: to obscure the fact that the United States did attack South Vietnam and the major war was fought against South Vietnam. The real invasion of South Vietnam which was directed largely against the rural society began directly in 1962 after many years of working through mercenaries and client groups. And that fact simply does not exist in official American history. There is no such event in American history as the attack on South Vietnam. That’s gone. Of course, It is a part of real history. But it’s not a part of official history.
…
QUESTION: This question of who the United States was fighting in Vietnam is pretty basic in terms of coming to any understanding of the war. But why would the U.S. attack South Vietnam, if the problem was not an attack from North Vietnam?
…
Then the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam was formed. And its founding program called for the neutralization of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. And it’s very striking that the National Liberation Front was the only group that ever called for the independence of South Vietnam. The so-called South Vietnamese government (GVN) did not, but rather, claimed to be the government of all Vietnam. The National Liberation Front was the only South Vietnamese group that ever talked about South Vietnamese independence. They called for the neutralization of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as a kind of neutral block, working toward some type of integration of the South with North Vietnam ultimately.
Now that proposal in 1962 caused panic in American ruling circles. From 1962 to 1965 the US was dedicated to try to prevent the independence of South Vietnam, the reason was of course that Kennedy and Johnson knew that if any political solution was permitted in the south, the National Liberation Front would effectively come to power, so strong was its political support in comparison with the political support of the so-called South Vietnamese government.
…
Well, why did they do it? Why was the United States so afraid of an independent South Vietnam? Well, I think the reason again is pretty clear from the internal government documents. Precisely what they were afraid of was that the “takeover” of South Vietnam by nationalist forces would not be brutal. They feared it would be conciliatory and that there would be successful social and economic development — and that the whole region might work.
This was clearly a nationalist movement — and in fact a radical nationalist movement which would separate Vietnam from the American orbit. It would not allow Vietnam to become another Philippines. It would trade with the United States but it would not be an American semi-colony.
Despite the fact that South Vietnam was America’s ally in the Vietnam War, it suffered severe damage to its land, people, and culture. The war also affected North Vietnam, but not as severely or as permanently as the South.
Thank you. I received reports about the comment, and rather than take action, I decided to ask.
Have a good day.
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
