[MarkSheppard]

Originally Posted by lukerduker123

More than a few things make no sense.

I wrote something six years ago on TL 191's inconsistencies: LINK to it, to avoid cluttering up this thread.

I actually might use the 1976 SPI "Dixie" as some inspiration for the timeline; as it aligns closely with my thoughts in many ways:

The Course of the Battle...

On 2 July 1863, the Army of the Potomac, under the command of General Meade, suffered a disastrous defeat at the battle of Gettysburg. The Army of Northern Virginia, under General Lee inflicted some 38,000 casualties upon the superior Northern army. After the Republican loss of the '64 presidential election, President McClellan negotiated an armistice with the Confederacy, which eventually led to the Treaty of Halifax in 1865. As a result of the weakened state of the two Americas, sectional forces in the far west asserted themselves, and. by 1876, the Western American Republic was a recognized independent nation An uneasy peace prevailed in America through the CSA-French partition of Mexico, into the industrialization of the South, through the years of non-intervention as Imperial Germany triumphed in the Great War and up to the point of the worldwide economic depression of the thirties.

It was a time of stress and disorder for both nations, with millions out of work and subterranean swells of radicalism. The shaky governments attempted to deflect the wrath of their peoples onto some exterior scapegoat. 1936 saw the rise of People's Capitalism in the United States, a home-brewed response to the twin tides of Communism and Fascism and the economic hemorrhaging of the Great Depression. "Shares" were issued to every U.S. citizen, and Southern holdings in the U.S. were nationalized. The CSA strongly protested. The small Federal holdings in the CSA were seized. Border incidents flared up. The South threatened to organize a force for a punitive strike across the border. The USA hastily mobilized to meet the threat.

Obstinacy and hysteria won its usual victory over common sense and reason: a major war erupted between the two Americas. The Western Republic wisely declined to get involved. The CSA was better organized and prepared for the war CSA forces crossed the border in strength and made twin drives in the direction of Omaha and Detroit. Federal forces were poorly positioned and sluggish to respond to the CSA thrusts.

Nevertheless, by the seventh week of the war, the situation stabilized into a slugging match along the Missouri River and in central Illinois-Indiana. Both sides were committed to nothing more than holding actions in the easily defended eastern front. A vigorous CSA offensive in the tenth week turned the USA flank at St. Louis and resulted in the virtual destruction of a Federal Army Corps. Quick exploitation of the resultant gap allowed the CSA to cut the Union forces in two. But the over-extension of the salient put the CSA spearhead in a precarious position about 100 kilometers south of Chicago.

Time was running out for both armies Neither side could sustain the conflict at full pitch for very long. At the end of the fourth month, the CSA accepted favorable terms from the USA. including return of nationalized property, trade concessions, reparations (in hardgoods). and destruction of the Missouri Fortified Line in return for Southern withdrawal from the U.S. and a reduced tariff on goods transported down the Mississippi.