Illusions


   What the raid on the Roebling Bridge had done, in a very dramatic way, was bring the war home to the civil population of the United States. Not since Washington had the population of a major American city been subjected to the horrors of war. By the summer of 1900, Washington had been largely forgotten and the Confederates had given up shelling it in favor of tactical targets closer to the front lines. It is also noteworthy that, despite it’s importance as a capital, Washington was, at that time, a medium sized city at best and of little economic value to the US. The fact was simply that most of the American population did not live there and it seemed as far off a place as Fashoda when they read about it in the newspapers.
Suddenly, if the enemy wanted to kill you, they could just drop right out of the sky and do it. They no longer had to get by your army and this was a frightening prospect to most people who knew little of military matters. The truth was far less dramatic and, in fact, it was in many ways the exact opposite of what it appeared to be. In the summer of 1900, the Allies were winning one headline after another. The problem with this is that winning battles is far more important and, here, the Entente had a clear advantage.
Their armies were not exactly winning but, they were making far better progress than the allies. The wonder weapons, that grabbed entire pages in the newspapers, had really not managed to even make a dent in changing the actual situation. That was why military planners were far less optimistic, and far more cautious, about their uses. The fact was, that up till now, no strategists were even sure if these new weapons would be of any value at all. Sure, their future potential was realized but, in order for that to happen, first, you have to actually have a future. By mid 1900, there were some who suspected that their nations might not. Some even craved that possibility.
The word civilization was invented by the Romans. It’s meaning, more or less, was a human society that was based on people living in cities. At the time, when Rome first began to be a prominent player in the politics of their region, the differences between city dwellers and those who chose the rural life were vast. The new found power of the cities, and the revolutionary capabilities that these organizations enabled, created new ideas to go along with them. This created new problems and it was one that the Roman solution for was to “civilize’ the rural folks. The events of the 19th century bare some resemblance to the mechanisms that were turning in the time that Rome transitioned from republic to empire.
While the emergence of the Roman Empire was the ultimate result of city life coming to dominate other forms of human lifestyles, ie the very invention of the city itself, it took several millennia before an equally powerful invention came along and caused yet another substantial shift that, yet again, favored the city rat over the country mouse. This invention did not begin in the 19th century but, it was most certainly at the very heart of this war. It was the industrial revolution, something that had its groundwork laid in the middle ages and began sprouting by the 17th century. At the dawn of the 20th, it had become unstoppable and it’s ceiling was yet to be seen. It also caused massive social disruptions that most people, of the Victorian World, never truly understood and, indeed, few people even do today.
The Industrial Revolution caused a fundamental demographic shift. People were leaving their farms and rural lives, in record numbers, and migrating to the big cities which promised better jobs, pay, and lifestyles that looked far more interesting. The result of all this was a change in the basic needs, for a lot of people, and very quickly. It appeared to many that the old rules were no longer working and, they had no idea why. In many ways this perception seems to have had merit and, in others, it did not. What is undisputable was that, in this time of social chaos, soap box, street corner, pundits were offering a wide variety of solutions and, most of them, for the right price.
Over time, these new ideas began to coalesce into a few distinct camps where they began to organize and grow. Some of the terminology of this era, such as left and right wing political leanings, are still with us today. Some of the very movements are still with us as well, even if the conditions that spawned them are long since gone. There were really only two things that all of these new philosophies seemed to agree on. The first was that there needed to be a new way of doing things. The second was that the guys who did it the old way needed to be gone. It was the answers to the questions of what and how that divided these schools of thought.
On the other side of the equation, the people who represented the old way, were not about to go willingly. It is human nature to root for the underdog and due to this factor it makes them, the Emperors and Kings, the Presidents and Industrialists, look like bad guys. The only problem with this view is that just because someone is on top, does not automatically make them evil and/or stupid. The Victorian age was a very autocratic one and, for the world at large, it was one that actually worked. One might despise dictators and absolute power but, the monarchs, along with the systems that maintained their power, had actually managed to keep the peace for nearly a century. That was an accomplishment that is quite rare in human history. The majority of their subjects also prospered in this same time period.
This might prompt the question of exactly why was there so much unrest? The answer seems to go right back to the age old rural versus city conflict that has been waged since humans first started settling down in permanent homes. Most of the monarchs of the time, no matter where you looked, were evolutions of governments formed to run rural, agrarian, societies. This was most certainly true of European, Chinese, and Japanese cultures. Ironically, the two that were not were African and Indian. In the 19th century, neither of these civilizations ruled themselves so they played little in the global power struggles of the time. The most dominant was, of course, European and most of their troubles can be traced right back to one thing. Nations that embraced industrial ideas and technologies, and worked at incorporating them into their infrastructure, faired much better than those that did not.
The wild card in all of this was the very same thing that Woseley reported to the Salisbury cabinet in his statistical analysis regarding the causes of the war. This was the United States. The Americans were Europeans in all but name, yet, their geographical circumstances had allowed them to accomplish something that was impossible in Europe. They had largely discarded the political system that was based on heretical castes and reinvented the older system that was once favored by European city states, the Republic. The original revolutionaries of the 18th century had actually thought that their revolution would spread beyond the confines of North America and liberate the world (or at least Europe which was all they truly cared about).
While it is a little know fact today, this almost happened. The French Revolution was a direct consequence of the American. At the same time, in the power vacuum that was 18th century Germany, many new republics sprang into existence. They were all emulating the Americans. They also destroyed themselves. The ironic twist is that France did not produce a republic but a dictator. This man was Napoleon and some of his first actions were to stomp the new German republics flat. It was quite disheartening to many of the American revolutionaries like, for example, Thomas Jefferson who was an avid supporter of both France and Napoleon. Then came 1861.
The birth of the Confederate States seemed as if the experiment in republicanism had completely failed. The argument that was being made, by many autocrats, was that a mass of people could not effectively govern themselves and the American 61 seemed to prove this. It was not something that they knew, it was more of a feeling. It was very obvious because, by the time of the war, it was undisputable that America was no longer playing it’s democracy card. The name of the game was now too beat everyone else at their own game. To put it in a word, the United States had become motivated by revenge.
This was not something that was ever lost on the Confederate States even if it took some time for her allies to notice. It was only one of many things that was quite ironic about the CSA. For one thing, her people arguably maintained the attitude that the USA had lost. Her people felt as if they were the rightful inheritors of the republican traditions despite the fact that they were inarguably the largest slave holding state left in the modern world. Of course, to classical eyes, that is not as much a contradiction as it is to modern ones. Both Athens and Rome, the inspiration for the current democracy, had the institution of slavery at their peak. Unfortunately for the CSA, they were not living in the classical world.
Despite the fact that it was quite obvious that slavery was in it’s death throes, at the dawn of the twentieth century, it seemed to matter very little. Even if slavery had become quite rare, just the fact that it legally existed, on the books, was enough to complicate nearly every aspect of life in the Confederacy and that included her military and foreign affairs. Again, the only reason for this seems to have been nothing more than an overwhelming sense of pride. In this much, from rich to poor, the white citizens of the Confederacy seemed to be in complete agreement. They simply did not wish to admit that they had been wrong. This was at a time when even the most staunch Home Party stalwart had to recognize that slavery was no longer economically viable and, even a case could be made, that it never had been.
The most ironic thing about the situation was that slavery had simply been a bi product of the most overwhelming factor that had driven everything in that region since the Europeans first arrived. It was not economy since the resources of the land were minimal at best. It was not the social factors even if they were what immediately drew in the eye. One word could describe almost all human activities in the region for several centuries and that was, security. It was the single most important factor that started with the British Empire, then transferred to the United States, and then eventually to the people who actually lived there in the form of the Confederate States.
The original large scale use of slaves was by the British. This was directly due to their absolute critical need of pine tar that was mostly found in South Carolina. Their primary source, Finland, had been compromised by a war between Russia and Sweden. Without it, microbes that thrived in tropical waters, where their ships now routinely traveled, would eat the ships hulls and destroy the British fleet. Then, the region was required as a buffer zone to protect the more prosperous colonies to the north.
This was the situation inherited by the United States only they lacked the power of the British Empire. What had been a buffer for Britain was, to the young American nation, an open invitation to invasion by larger, predatory, countries that had already proven that this was exactly what they intended. The only way the Americans could fortify their nearly non existent southern border was to thoroughly populate the region but, once again, it was resource poor.  It made attracting colonists difficult in the best of times.
That was how the plantation system grew up. It was the only way to make the region economically viable but, still, the area suffered from what it always had since the British first discovered their need for pine tar. It was the lack of a manual labor force and, both pine harvesting and the plantation economies, required exactly that. This made slave labor critical and placed a demand on the trade which effected regions way beyond North America. A little understood situation, even today, was that Africa was recovering from the collapse of a major empire (much like Europe had after the fall of Rome) and the sudden demand for slaves only retarded their recovery as it drove hostile factions in the sub-Saharan region into outright war in order for some groups to cash in on the new gold mine.
What it also did was put the Confederacy in an awkward situation from the very first day of it’s existence. It’s strategic situation was unalterable since this was largely geographic. It’s economy was all but impossible without a labor force that it’s allies and enemies, alike, found repugnant. At the same time this economic reality made it’s social system highly chaotic and that required an autocratic authority to keep it in line while, at the same time, it maintained it‘s democratic government. It was a giant balancing act, on a high wire, that was essential, because, all of it was required to maintain the economy which, going right back to the start, was directly tied to it’s security.
This was not just a problem for the CSA. It’s very existence made the USA vulnerable to not only an ideological debate but, more importantly, to it’s physical security as well. Events seemed to have proven that. When viewed in these terms it is quite understandable why the USA chose the path that it did, one that unquestionably led to the outbreak of the war. It also had far more subtle implications for the rest of the world that, in the end, were far more powerful. We’re only now just coming to terms with this.
As long as the United States seemed successful, it represented a certain measure of hope to people all over the world. This might seem an overstatement but, you have to remember, that this was a world where the majority of humanity could not even hope for having any say in the course of larger events that shaped their lives, not to mention, their very survival. Even if it were not entirely true, the idea that you could go to this place called America, and possibly have some kind of say, was a powerful one for many. It had to be lingering in the back of peoples minds as they formed little groups to agitate for change. Now, this seemed to be not entirely dead but, somehow, different.
At the same time, the Confederacy was a boon to the autocrats of the world where they saw a system that was similar to their own, and prospering, despite it’s physical handicaps and chaotic domestic life. In fact, it could be easily argued that the problems faced by the CSA, were all too similar to states like Austria Hungary and Imperial Mexico. You could even make a case that it was very similar to China and, even in many ways, to Czarist Russia. While it would go to far to say that the Confederacy was some kind of role model, it most definitely was a case that someone like Franz Joseph or Nicholas Romanov would point too and say, “see, see what happened to the Americans.”