QuoteReplyTopic: If Lee had won at Antietman Posted: 06-Apr-2008 at 18:16
Lets say the north had not found Lee's battle plans and Lee won a decisive victory at Antietam. Lincoln would not have been able to free the slaves. Could this have gotten the British and French to enter on the side of the South? How much would this have helped the South? The Brittish and French had world empires, so there would be a limit to how much military support they could give. I would think most of it would be naval. The Union army grew to 500,000 soldiers by the end of the war. So they would have probably had to bring 100,000 men to North America to be really effective which would be very difficult and expensive to do.
Would Lincoln have expanded the war and invaded Canada if Britan and France came in?
Would he order an all out naval war?
Would the north build more ironclads and send them against the Brittish and French.
I don't think England would have ever come into the war on the side of the Confederacy. By the time of the American Civil War, England had already established a formidable beachhead in India, whose cotton was better, and cheaper. There was too much resistance from the labor unions in England for the government to relay any support to the South as well. Without England, Napoleon III would have never supported the Confederacy either. No England, no France, Antietam really doesn't matter in the long run. As Shelby Foote said, if the South had ever stood a real chance, the North would have simply pulled the other arm from around its back (the one it was using to establish industry and new states in the West) and smacked them with both hands.
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