Slitherine

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I'm a late joiner to the thread. There are a couple of elements that I have noted in the discussion that need to be commented on. The commentary assumes a monolithic attitude of seccession by the Southern populace. This is not so. Major elements of the southern populace were disenfranchised from voting and felt little or no loyalty to The South.

There was no "one man, one vote" in the civil war. Most states defined elgibility to vote by ownership of real property. As a consequence, the poor, hard-scrabble had no say-so in the state conventions for seccession. The poor whites felt little constraint at leaving camps at the drop of a hat. Ella Long in Desertion in the Civil War and Bessie Meyers' Rich Man's War, a dissertation on desertion of Alabama troops, (both books back in print after 50 years) reference this issue as a major reason why the South was forced to fight with over 30% (average) of it's troops on the muster as "Not available for Duty"! Any Southern force waiting at Fredricksburg for 18 months would waste away due to desertion, overstayed leaves and unauthorized furloughs.

While, their was no instance of a seceeded state trying to leave the Confederacy. Georgia, Alabama and Miisissippee all requested a return of troops from the Eastern theatre to defend the states when invaded by the Union Western armies. Long in her book points out that major regions of almost every southern state turned into outlaw havens. Confederate Conscript officers would only enter these regions with substatial troop support. One Mississippee county tried to secede from the rest of the state a la West Virginia and had to be garrisoned. The northern tier of counties in Alabama and North East Texas were notorious in support of deserters.

This was less prevalent in the North; but, western Pennsylvania and the Upper Peninsula in Michigan were deserter havens. A recent book on California in the Civil War does list the desire to dodge conscription as amajor incentive for wartime movement to the West.

Forge of Fury tries to address these feelings with periods of "Unrest" in provinces and wastage between turns. All in all, this is an acceptable generalization to simplify playing the game. However, this lack of support on the home front is a major issue to consider before modifying the game to be more historical.

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ORIGINAL: Jonathan Palfrey

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ORIGINAL: Berkut
Your argument is simply one of scale. You say people should not be allowed, if it isn't "sensible". Well, if they disagree with your definition of what is or is not "sensible" they may attempt to do so via force, ignoring the "rules" *you* have created.

First you thought I was in favour of letting anyone secede who wanted to, and you accused me of promoting anarchy. Then, when I conceded that there may be some circumstances in which secession is absurd and shouldn't be allowed, you don't seem happy with that either. There's no pleasing you, it seems.

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ORIGINAL: Berkut
Don't take things personally, it is just a discussion.

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ORIGINAL: Berkut
My only point is that concepts like those you are espousing are rather ivory tower thinking - they sound fine and noble in theory, but the real world doesn't work on theory, it works on practical application. And the "right" of self-determination is one of those that sounds pretty good until you start looking at it in detail and in specific.

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ORIGINAL: Berkut
Of course, another issue that NI illustrates is that demographics change. Majorities erode, and new majorities arise. Should we allow political upheaval each time?

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ORIGINAL: Berkut
The South did not deserve the right to self determination for several defensible, moral reasons:

1. They had perfectly fair and adequate political representation under the existing political system.

2. The purpose for their secession was an attempt to keep a large portion of their population disenfranchised for a longer period of time, and to prop up a economically obsolete planter class,

3. *They* initiated the violence related to their illegal secession and attempted to seize federal property.

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ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl
Let's be honest. What all this boils down to is "Might Makes Right!" If you have the power to shove your opinions down other's unwilling throats, then you have the ability to declare it to be "right" as well. Not defending or attacking any viewpoint..., just stating the obvious.

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ORIGINAL: Whit
There was no "one man, one vote" in the civil war. Most states defined eligibility to vote by ownership of real property.

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ORIGINAL: Whit
As a consequence, the poor, hard-scrabble had no say-so in the state conventions for secession. The poor whites felt little constraint at leaving camps at the drop of a hat. Ella Long in Desertion in the Civil War and Bessie Meyers' Rich Man's War, a dissertation on desertion of Alabama troops, (both books back in print after 50 years) reference this issue as a major reason why the South was forced to fight with over 30% (average) of its troops on the muster as "Not available for Duty"! Any Southern force waiting at Fredericksburg for 18 months would waste away due to desertion, overstayed leaves and unauthorized furloughs.

While there was no instance of a seceded state trying to leave the Confederacy. Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi all requested a return of troops from the Eastern theatre to defend the states when invaded by the Union Western armies. Long in her book points out that major regions of almost every southern state turned into outlaw havens. Confederate Conscript officers would only enter these regions with substantial troop support. One Mississippi county tried to secede from the rest of the state a la West Virginia and had to be garrisoned. The northern tier of counties in Alabama and North East Texas were notorious in support of deserters.

This was less prevalent in the North; but, western Pennsylvania and the Upper Peninsula in Michigan were deserter havens. A recent book on California in the Civil War does list the desire to dodge conscription as a major incentive for wartime movement to the West.

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Thanks for the interesting historical notes. The more we learn about the war, the more remarkable it becomes that the Confederacy prolonged the war for four years, won battles, and worried Lincoln to the extent that it did.

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ORIGINAL: Rabbitman

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Thanks for the interesting historical notes. The more we learn about the war, the more remarkable it becomes that the Confederacy prolonged the war for four years, won battles, and worried Lincoln to the extent that it did.

Totally agreed, the Confederacy seems to be looking to be more of a mess as more comes to light and it really does boggle the mind that they were able to achieve so much.

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ORIGINAL: General Quarters
That's what makes it difficult to model the war in a game. If you set up a game in which the human player has all the economic, population, transportation, naval, etc., advantages of the North, it won't be much of a challenge. But the fact is that the North was unable to bring all that strength to bear, in part for political reasons and in part because of some of the inefficiencies of having too much. The South had the tremendous home-field, short supply line advantage, and they were fighting for their homes, and they fought without shoes and without much food sometimes, and even without much in the way of weapons occasionally. But they were often able to keep the North off balance and, as late as 1864, another Chickamauga would probably have brought the defeat of Lincoln and the election of a pro-peace Congress.

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Chickamauga was one of the extremely rare battles in which the South was numerically superior...., and it 1864 that simply wasn't in the cards. The North simply had too many troops in too many places under to many competent leaders for the South to inflict an "offensive defeat" on them. Defensively they could resist in strong positions, but Robert E. Lee's days of "pulling rabbits out of hats" in the manner of Chancellorsville or Second Manassas were over.