1859: California joins the Confederacy

[God_of_Belac]

I don't remember which one of the Confederate commanders was a drunk, but California's secession would make the Confederates take this campaign a lot more seriously (though not much more). I'm not saying it would affect the overall outcome of the war, but I do believe a crushing Confederate victory in New Mexico Territory would force the Union to pay more attention to that front. Wars cost manpower and the Union has to divert manpower from somewhere to bring them into the frontier. The most obvious solution is to concentrate heavily on California.

Not at all. This wouldn't change the fact that if Virginia fell, the Confederacy was dead. The Confederacy would conquer California while the forces that otherwise could oppose them were dying in the Wilderness, and after Lee surrendered Lincoln would send troops west to retake anything that had been lost.

 

[Ace Venom]

This wouldn't change the fact that if Virginia fell, the Confederacy was dead. The Confederacy would conquer California while the forces that otherwise could oppose them were dying in the Wilderness, and after Lee surrendered Lincoln would send troops west to retake anything that had been lost.

Of course not. That was inevitable as long Lee screwed up every time he went North. But you have to admit that Confederate victories in the west that actually allowed an entire territory to be opened up would be an embarassment. Just because a supply line is long doesn't mean it's not a supply line. Cut it and California falls.

 

[Street_Disciple]

AFter researching the topic, I found another interesting note, most of the National Army was stationed west of the Missouri River's longitude and most of those troops were in, you guessed it, California or guarding all access to the Golden State. Sam Grant's last peacetime duty station was in Southern California as a matter of fact. The first "aggressive" act of Union troops in the Civil War was to secure California's gold fields and smelting operations and the route from California to St. Joseph, Missouri known as the California trail, or the Pony Express route. The telegraph line from the East and Washington DC direct to San Francisco also ran right along side it. One week after Ft Sumter, the Federal Garrison marched out of Ft Levenworth, forty miles away and occupied St. Joseph for the remainder of the war. They also commandeered the rail link from St Jo to St Louis and thence to Washington. With all this security, coul the coast to coast line really be taken out of Union hands. The confederates failed at it in OTL...WI in ATL???