Doing an Alternative History of the Civil War

[william the wie]

I'm using the following postulates.

That the people then understood the situation they were in better than anybody looking back.

That the really big missed opportunity for the south happened in the 1820s to 1850s when the various attempts to supply the gold fields of GA, NC and TN from Mobile bay failed. Therefore I postulate a successful attempt.

My question therefore is what was needed in the way of portages get to Athens GA?

 

[Snouter]

Is English your second language?

 

[william the wie]

nope, just trying to figure out the portages from Mobile to Athens.

 

[whitehall]

Actually the "people", at least in the South never understood the issues. They only knew what they read in the newspapers and the papers were more propaganda than fact. There were poor farmers in Virginia who probably never had a slave or read a paper or knew what was going on when Union general "Black Dave" David Hunter obeyed drunken Grant's order to "make waste the Shenandoah Valley" and burned barns and killed livestock and hanged people who resisted. The Union based papers praised "Hunter's raid" and that's how it went down in the history books. Generals who engaged in such conduct during the 20th century would be incarcerated or shot.

 

[william the wie]

Actually the "people", at least in the South never understood the issues. They only knew what they read in the newspapers and the papers were more propaganda than fact. There were poor farmers in Virginia who probably never had a slave or read a paper or knew what was going on when Union general "Black Dave" David Hunter obeyed drunken Grant's order to "make waste the Shenandoah Valley" and burned barns and killed livestock and hanged people who resisted. The Union based papers praised "Hunter's raid" and that's how it went down in the history books. Generals who engaged in such conduct during the 20th century would be incarcerated or shot.

The skewing of tariffs and playing fast and lose with interstate commerce was well understood in AL by my 8 great great grandfathers and two great grandfathers, none of whom owned slaves.

 

[oldfart]

nope, just trying to figure out the portages from Mobile to Athens.

Look up the Tennessee--Tombigbee waterway.

 

[william the wie]

Been trying to do that but that like the Erie and Chicago canals there have been a lot of minor iterations and a couple of major iterations. Unlike the more famous canals complete reroutings with explanations of why they happened I have yet to find.

 

[ABikerSailor]

nope, just trying to figure out the portages from Mobile to Athens.

Use Google maps, and you can trace the route that way. From what I saw on the map, you're gonna have a portage regardless of if you use the river to the east or the river to the west, of probably 30 miles or so.

And that's just to get from the closest waterway TO Athens.

 

[william the wie]

nope, just trying to figure out the portages from Mobile to Athens.

Use Google maps, and you can trace the route that way. From what I saw on the map, you're gonna have a portage regardless of if you use the river to the east or the river to the west, of probably 30 miles or so.

And that's just to get from the closest waterway TO Athens.

Thanks, what I really worry about is that the Erie changed intake radically prior to being made obsolete by lower cost Canadian canals either very early in the last century or very late in the 19th century. The Michigan- Mississippi canals exists in three versions going back to the 1830s.

I'm fairly certain that some attempt(s) to build a canal in the 1820-37 canal bubble happened but I have no idea what they are called. That was confirmed by a quick check of the Tenn-Tom website.