Why not?

[Keeler]

Did cabinet members have much of an impact on war aims? Did they put pressure on certain objectives over others? I don't know that they did. I know a bit more about the Union, though, so maybe it happened in the Confederacy?

I don't know how many Union generals it would have taken to hang Edward M Stanton, but I am certain more than a few were willing to find the answer.

There is a really, really old PC game called No Greater Glory (1991!), which some of us probably remember. When you picked your cabinet, you had to balance your cabinet members ratings against what region they were from and whether they were moderate or radical. If you loaded up on good cabinet members from one region or one faction, your loyalty in other regions suffered, which could lead to riots and other nastiness. It was a simple but effective way to give the player a risk-reward option.

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[DrPostman]

I remember No Greater Glory. Not a great game but that feature made it more interesting.

[minipol]

I would really like such a feature in the game. If these cabinet members ratings could also be randomized, it would totally be awsome. To me it would make the game more historical as we now do not have the same political restrictions as in real live or at least not in the same extent. This and loads more stats and top 10's would make the game more interesting. When do they start on CWIII

[tripax]

So we have a nice pool of (12) Confederate politicians that could feasibly have been in the cabinet. Do we have a Union list?

If we use "decisions", I think it works best if each politician is a candidate for only one position, rather than for all positions. There are other ways to do it.

For instance, we could create a set of regions that are "remote" from all other regions that represent each cabinet seat. Then put a stack of politicians in a region for candidates and allow movement between the regions. Then create events based on who is in which region/seat. Does that make sense? Doing this would require editing the map, which would be a bit harder, I think.

@minipol: We haven't talked about it (or anything) in a while but I gave up on scraping the log files for battle stats when the format of the log files changed, have you stuck with it? Is it still working?

[Captain_Orso]

Who knows? When Lincoln made his first call for soldiers, he didn't know who would respond. Illinois and Indiana could have easily elected peace-Democrats in response to occupation and stopped sending troops/supplies, why not?

The question is not "why not" the question is why. No states could have elected anybody in response to an invasion, that's not how government works in the US.

What you are describing is the government and population of an invaded state taking a stance of complacency. For what reason? To what end?

The logic behind Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania --the tactical goal was to take Harrisburg-- was that he expected the governor to panic at having the state capital taken, and demand the military to counter this with the utmost expedience. Lee expected the AoP to force march from northern Virginia --where he thought they were still camped-- and be exhausted and strung out when they arrived so that he could destroy each group piece meal.

If there could be any reasonable exception of any other reaction, then for Lee to invade the North would have been suicide for the South with Richmond open to practically unopposed attack by the AoP.

In 1860 a little under 10% of Illinois lived in Chicago, 1% in Peoria, 1% in Quincy, and no other city had over 10,000 people. Urban support for the Union would have been high, but Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, and Minnesota were so rural, I don't think "scream bloody hell" would have necessarily been the outcome of occupation.

No, you appear to think the reaction of the state government would be, "naaa, so what". Please provide a reasoning behind this.

The game misses this because NM regresses to 100 over time, so sustained occupation of a state effects the use of the force pool, but not NM.

The game does not give nor take NM for a successful invasion. If there were no 'resilience' rule, there would still be no change to NM.

While a lot of money was spent to protect Lexington, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cairo, and St. Louis, why would their loss have been worse than Nashville or Memphis? Their loss was certainly contemplated by the North and by Northerners.

I'm not saying they necessarily would, only that I believe the North expected it far less. It's a little line how in 61' the press and public expected the Federal government to prosecute the war with invasion of the South. Opinions of newspapers and the public in general is nearly always reactionary, unrealistic and populist. Opinions are reduced to catchword as Lincoln himself demonstrated when he told McDowell ".. you are all green alike", which completely ignored the fact that most of the Southern troops were more accustomed to using firearms and fighting for and on their own home soil.

The South knew they were outnumbered. The knew they could not expect to hold the North off of their soil at all points at all times. I don't believe the North thought quite so.

I agree that the ability to destroy buildings would be an interesting idea, possibly a good one.

Maybe, I think you are overestimating the reliance of the soldiers on canned beef. Most of Chicago's beef probably didn't end up in Eastern soldier bellies, but I don't know.

I'm not thinking of the war economy alone, but the economy in general. Cattle is a kind of natural resource. Without the ability to process it, not only does the economy of those raising the cattle take a hard hit, but the trade in the East as well. Plus the demand in the East not being satisfied causes inflation and dissatisfaction among the public.

This point gets a bit off topic, but the war economy was based on the different side's ability to borrow, not on the productive capacity of its cities as is modeled in the game. Losing (temporary) control of a city wouldn't really affect the war economy, I think. It is pretty easy to rebuild factories, so even their destruction wasn't critical for borrowing. It could be critical for armament, of course - I haven't figured out how critical domestic war supply was, but domestic government income generation (via taxes or whatever) was very small compared to domestic and foreign borrowing, for instance.

The government is run on taxes and funds it can raise through the sale of bonds. Loans from financial institutes are used as a buffer for this. The better the economy is working the more taxes can be collected and the more money is available for the public and financial institutes to purchase bonds and the cheaper loans are. There is a direct affect on the governments ability to spend money on the military by the status of the economy.

Demonstrating that the North would win reduced the willingness of people to borrow to support the South since Southern debt may not have been repaid by a United government, but Northern debt very likely would have been repaid if the South had won independence, even if it occupied Chicago during the war.

The Federal government would have to honor debts and bonds in any case. Losing the war would mean only that the seceded states would not be part of that equation. The Confederacy was working completely on deficit spending. How well they would have recovered had they gained their independence can only be speculated.

[Captain_Orso]

tripax bit off topic but if south could destroy northern factorys in pittsburgh and middle-states the union would have to stop fighting or attacking at least because they work tools had been then taken away from them. Yes war economy globaly is ruined in the loan money but how many would still loan money to union if they lost the heartlands and looked to lose the war and u never would get your moneys back?

The Federal government would have to honor debts and bond in any case. There is no way they could tell the banks and general public that because they had to let the Southern states secede, that those debts would not be honored. Those would be grounds for impeachment.

[Captain_Orso]

Maybe suspend NM normalization if any Union state capital were in CSA hands? And I'm not talking border states or the Far Western states like Nebraska or Colorado. Or have a list of major Northern cities that have an event fire if they fall. The event would give the Union player a timetable to retake the city by or face an NM loss similar to some of the Eastern events.

I think the idea of national resilience is in general okay, but it could be improved upon. Instead of having 100 be the middle-point toward which it leans the middle-point might shift depending on certain situations. For example, if a nation capital were moved it might shift downward for that faction representing the fact that faction was forced to do so. For the North having certain cities and/or a number of cities in Confederate hands could shift the middle-point lower for as long as they remained under Confederate control. For the North to control all of the major cities on the Mississippi River might shift the middle-point lower for the South.

[Captain_Orso]

If a state were to "scream bloody murder" due to having their city captured..... wouldn't that INCREASE national morale? Because they'd be MORE of a reason to fight.

There is a difference between defending your homeland and fighting for some ideal you didn't agree with in the first place.
That's why I said that the penalty already exists- you no longer get the production from the towns you lost.

In general I would agree that locally an invasion probably would spur a more determined resistance, but maybe less so on the nation level. For the South it could strengthen their resolve and morale by demonstrating how Confederate forces could invade the North. Realistically it would depend on the outcome of such an invasion. The more important the location being captured the greater the impact.

FYI- Pittsburgh's foundries were destroyed in the Civil War - the Allegheny Arsenal blew up. Work at the arsenal continued, and within a year everything was replaced.
Based on that, no destruction of industry should be permanent. Because in real life, destruction of industry is not permanent (no matter how much you blow up, Pittsburgh is still surrounded by rivers and coal and a lot of people).

From what I've read the impact of the lab in the Allegheny Arsenal was limited and by no means the destruction of the entire arsenal.

What you are referring to with "Pittsburgh's foundries were destroyed in the Civil War" I have no idea. Do you have some references? I'd be interested in reading up on that.

[Keeler]

So we have a nice pool of (12) Confederate politicians that could feasibly have been in the cabinet. Do we have a Union list?

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[Captain_Orso]

Havi, that's just fine, but I would prefer the resources for the South rather than the Foreign Entry. Maybe AI giving over control of the British and French Navy or forcing a lift of the blockade. Better yet how about the South offer up chunks of Texas and the SouthWest at a huge NM Penalty for Mexican entry? Maybe risk Texas joining the Union :P as this deal expires!

Anything would be fun to play with however ahistorical... but would add some flavor and free up other fronts.

I don't think we'll ever see the CS player in control of French and British forces again. Those nations had their own agendas and it was just too unrealistic.

One might have a couple of cooperation RGD's though which could greatly raise local interest in certain areas for maybe 6 months or a year on the basis of diplomatic efforts by the South.

[minipol]

@minipol: We haven't talked about it (or anything) in a while but I gave up on scraping the log files for battle stats when the format of the log files changed, have you stuck with it? Is it still working?

After my initial release of the program, there was 0 interest on the forum. I didn't see the point in continuing development.
And as you said, Ageod should consider whether they want other people using the logfiles to provide features they don't.
If they do, they could easily change how the info is logged with battle markers and extra info for tools to easily parse the info and provide more stats etc.
It's another way of modding, and I hope they see the value in it or program the extra stats and top 10 or whatever in CWIII.
If they don't, they should allow us to use the info or even write a seperate logfile with the stats.
It would make it even easier for us to use the input to mod, and it wouldn't interfere with their logfiles.

[tripax]

The question is not "why not" the question is why. No states could have elected anybody in response to an invasion, that's not how government works in the US.

What you are describing is the government and population of an invaded state taking a stance of complacency. For what reason? To what end?

The logic behind Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania --the tactical goal was to take Harrisburg-- was that he expected the governor to panic at having the state capital taken, and demand the military to counter this with the utmost expedience. Lee expected the AoP to force march from northern Virginia --where he thought they were still camped-- and be exhausted and strung out when they arrived so that he could destroy each group piece meal.

If there could be any reasonable exception of any other reaction, then for Lee to invade the North would have been suicide for the South with Richmond open to practically unopposed attack by the AoP.

Just to be clear, I was wondering what would happen if the Confederacy had occupied the entire state of Illinois and Indiana, something that can happen in the game even if it could never happen in real life. In the war, Northern occupation forces sought to enforce Union sovereignty over the Southerners. I don't know the law exactly, but I believe that elections were suspended in Union controlled succeeded states. Lincoln did seek to return democracy to some occupied southern areas when it benefited the Union cause, for example the North's 10% plan and Lincoln's proposed allowing the Virginia State Representatives to meet to dissolve Virginia's contribution to the Confederate army. I do not know if a Southern occupation force would have sought to exert sovereignty over the Northern soil, but the South may well have allowed a controlled state to hold an election. I know this is far into the hypothetical, but I still think "why not?"

No, you appear to think the reaction of the state government would be, "naaa, so what". Please provide a reasoning behind this.

Occupation of a state like Illinois would have been nearly impossible. "Bloody hell" was certainly screamed when Morgan crossed the Ohio River into Indiana and then Ohio; tens of thousands of militia rose in Indiana and Ohio in response to Morgan's Raid, and Morgan's force (of 2,460 and some artillery) had to go around many of the small towns it approached.

But this game allows quit a different level of invasion. If Forrest and Price had led two corps of 3 divisions with a cavalry division under Morgan and a dozen batteries of captured artillery in support crossed the Mississippi from St. Louis into Illinois, Illinois would scream "blody hell". If this force proceded to destroy state militias and whatever federal forces were sent to oppose them and proceeded to occupy the state, I think the state's political will could have collapsed.

The game does not give nor take NM for a successful invasion. If there were no 'resilience' rule, there would still be no change to NM.

Doesn't the game gives/takes NM when cities are occupied and units are destroyed. This is sufficient, I think. By the way, a resilience rule like you propose where the regression is not always to 100 depending on the situation sounds interesting.

...The South knew they were outnumbered. The knew they could not expect to hold the North off of their soil at all points at all times. I don't believe the North thought quite so.

Yes and no. Northern Generals certainly imagined Southern forces to be quite their equal. In the game it is possible to muster a Confederate Armies that outnumber their Union counterparts in a theater.

I'm not thinking of the war economy alone, but the economy in general. Cattle is a kind of natural resource. Without the ability to process it, not only does the economy of those raising the cattle take a hard hit, but the trade in the East as well. Plus the demand in the East not being satisfied causes inflation and dissatisfaction among the public.

I'm very curious about the amount of food sent east during the war. Do you have any sources about this. Railroads connection Chicago to the East were under a decade old at the outset of the War and were frequently blocked by construction or bad weather. Although mixed rail, canal, and Great Lakes shipping routes existed earlier, less than 5,000 people lived in Chicago in 1840. So while I agree that the permanent loss of Chicago would have been a big deal, I think Eastern economies would have been quite resilient to the loss of Chicago.

The government is run on taxes and funds it can raise through the sale of bonds. Loans from financial institutes are used as a buffer for this. The better the economy is working the more taxes can be collected and the more money is available for the public and financial institutes to purchase bonds and the cheaper loans are. There is a direct affect on the governments ability to spend money on the military by the status of the economy.

I'm not sure how you are differentiating between the "sale of bonds" and "loans from financial institutes".

I didn't know this before, but looking at the literature on bond prices and greenback value (references below), research seems to suggest that bond prices did depend on how the war was going because if the war was going well then it would end more quickly and thus cost less so total debt would be less and the chance of default would be less. I don't see in those papers any discussion of the war's effect on the economic capacity of the nation, but I read them very quickly. This may be because the South didn't successfully destroy Northern productive capacity and it may be because productive capacity was cheap and easy to repair.

The Federal government would have to honor debts and bonds in any case. Losing the war would mean only that the seceded states would not be part of that equation. The Confederacy was working completely on deficit spending. How well they would have recovered had they gained their independence can only be speculated.

I'm not sure what you mean "deficit spending". Fundamentally, I agree with what you are saying.

The Federal government would have to honor debts and bond in any case. There is no way they could tell the banks and general public that because they had to let the Southern states secede, that those debts would not be honored. Those would be grounds for impeachment.

It was certainly possible that the government would default on some of its bonds and that is not grounds for impeachment.



I'm certainly very interested in this subject, and I may be far off base in my suppositions. Let me know if I missed any points and let me know what you think.

references:
Roll, Richard. "Interest rates and price expectations during the Civil War." The Journal of Economic History 32.02 (1972): 476-498.

Willard, Kristen L., Timothy W. Guinnane, and Harvey S. Rosen. Turning points in the Civil War: views from the greenback market. No. w5381. National Bureau of Economic Research, 1995.

[tripax]

Ok, 12 candidates for Union. Also I see 5 cabinet positions: State, War, Navy, Treasury, and Attorney General. I do not see the Secretary of the Interior or the Postmaster General. Also actual members such as James Speed (and wasn't his brother Joshua a candidate for a position at some point) or William Fessendon aren't in that list. By the way, reading about bond rates I just learned that Fessendon's ascension to Secretary of the Treasury likely lowered bond rates (and thus lowered inflation) as much as or more than many most major military victories.

Still, its a great start.

[Keeler]

Ok, 12 candidates for Union. Also I see 5 cabinet positions: State, War, Navy, Treasury, and Attorney General. I do not see the Secretary of the Interior or the Postmaster General. Also actual members such as James Speed (and wasn't his brother Joshua a candidate for a position at some point) or William Fessendon aren't in that list. By the way, reading about bond rates I just learned that Fessendon's ascension to Secretary of the Treasury likely lowered bond rates (and thus lowered inflation) as much as or more than many most major military victories.

Still, its a great start.

From Wikipedia:

Lincoln's Cabinet

Secretary of State

William H. Seward (1861–1865)

Secretary of the Treasury

Salmon P. Chase (1861–1864) William P. Fessenden (1864–1865) Hugh McCulloch (1865)

Secretary of War

Simon Cameron (1861–1862) Edwin M. Stanton (1862–1865)

Attorney General

Edward Bates (1861–1864) James Speed (1864–1865)

Postmaster General

Montgomery Blair (1861–1864) William Dennison (1864–1865)

Secretary of the Navy

Gideon Welles (1861–1865)

Secretary of the Interior

Caleb B. Smith (1861–1862) John P. Usher (1863–1865)

Davis' Cabinet

Secretary of State

Robert Toombs February 25, 1861 – July 25, 1861
Robert M.T. Hunter July 25, 1861 – February 18, 1862
William M. Browne February 18, 1862 – March 18, 1862
Judah P. Benjamin March 18, 1862 – May 10, 1865

Secretary of the Treasury

Christopher Memminger February 25, 1861 – July 18, 1864
George Trenholm July 18, 1864 – April 27, 1865
John H. Reagan April 27, 1865 – May 10, 1865

Secretary of War

LeRoy Pope Walker February 25, 1861 – September 16, 1861
Judah P. Benjamin September 17, 1861 – March 24, 1862
George W. Randolph March 24, 1862 – November 15, 1862
James Seddon November 21, 1862 – February 5, 1865
John C. Breckinridge February 6, 1865 – May 10, 1865

Attorney General

Judah P. Benjamin February 25, 1861 – September 17, 1861
Wade Keyes September 17, 1861 – November 21, 1861
Thomas Bragg November 21, 1861 – March 18, 1862
Thomas H. Watts March 18, 1862 – October 1, 1863
Wade Keyes October 1, 1863 – January 2, 1864
George Davis January 2, 1864 – April 24, 1865

Secretary of the Navy

Stephen Mallory March 4, 1861 – May 2, 1865

Postmaster General

John H. Reagan March 6, 1861 – May 10, 1865

[minipol]

There might be a way to implement this. Some games allow for settings to be changed (inifiles, or some sort of text file).
What if you had a piece of software outside the game where you could make decisions on the cabinet, and depending on your choices,
certain general ratings or factory output or whatever was changed in the settings files.
Then you load the game and the changes take effect.

The trigger to start the external software could be set by an in game event.
Maybe other events regarding politics could be added.
Not sure if we can easily adjust settings or simulate other effects.

[tripax]

@Keeler: Great! I'm sure a few more can be added. Also we'd need to figure out which politicians have what effects, what effects are possible, how to simulate a universe that induces the player to make realistic cabinet moves, making sure the changes are balanced, etc.

@minipol: Unit and element statistics are loaded on startup and only change in game with experience - but I don't think cabinet members should affect those anyway. The game does write to disk and load from disk when running turns, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to hijack that process. I don't think it is necessary, though. Events and decisions already give enough of a mechanic to make cabinet members plausible.

For instance, factory output is easy enough to mimic, just create an event that gives (or takes away) WS, $, or whatever. Loyalty shifts can happen by event, and things can be somewhat probabilistic. The trigger would be selecting an decision for switching a particular cabinet member with another member. The option would have a similar mechanic to the setting premium for volunteers decision. You'd have an image for each cabinet seat with an option to switch. If you click on it, you will have choices to switch. When you make a switch, an event fires. The event can fire just once or each round.

[havi]

so where are u? where s my cabinet?