Except For A Couple Of Lost Cigars, The South May Have Won The Civil War.

[karlunity]

Except for a couple of lost cigars, the South may have won the Civil war.

We all know that a CSA officer lost a copy of Lee's battle plan right before Antietam and these were found and given to McClellan before the battle. As a result, while Lee still won that battle, he did not destroy McClellan as was his aim and had Lee taken McClellan by surprise as was his intent, he may well have done.

Well, what I did not know was that the British PM Lord Palmerston had decided to offer mediation. "History of the English Speaking Peoples" Vol 4 "The Great Democracies" page 217 Churchill reports that had mediation been refused, Britain and France may well have recognized the CSA.
He prints a speech of Gladstone Chancellor at the time. "The people of the South ...have done more. They have made a Nation." This is before he was told the Palmerston had changed his mind.

It was the fact that McClellan got his army out of Antietam that changed his mind.

The new PC history books will tell you that it was the Emancipation Proclamation that changed Palmerston's mind but Churchill points out that the ruling class in England, a class he was born into in 1875, and his family had long been a part of, felt that the Emancipation was a political sham...that if the goal of the war was to end slavey, why not free all the slaves including those in Union control? (ibid page 216)

Upon such little things as a pack of lost cigars to the fate of nations hang.

karl

[FC]

That's interesting.

[expensivepeter]

I myself was wondering if the battle plan was drawn out on the cigar wrappers.