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One might also have considered Jacksonville, Florida. Florida was just beginning to open up, and it would have been a boost for that "new frontier" to establish a capital there, which would have, at the same time, been pretty centrally located.
I wonder if any cities in Texas would have performed well as the Confederate capital. I believe Houston was captured early and was later recaptured by rebel forces, but that sequence of events may have been changed had it been capital. At the time of Lee's surrender there was still an army numbering approximately 50,000 in Texas.
According to Trudeau the Confederate Trans-Mississippi department (which included all the rebellious states west of the River, not just Texas) had 36,000 men under arms in March of 1865 with many in a state of poor moral and moral getting worse. Basically Kirby Smith had to give up because his local commanders were cutting their own surrenders and his soldiers just started going home and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it. As he said himself "Soldiers, I am left a commander without an army---a general without troops."
I think that New Orleans would have been chosen if the South chose an agressive western expansion policy. Also remember that political power in the CSA would probably be a lot less centralized then in the USA. This would make it's capital a lot less relavent.
I'm quite familiar with the geography of those cities, having lived in two of them.
I referred to them as "coastal" locations, as opposed to "inland" (such as Chattanooga, Montgomery, Atlanta) for the reason that they afforded easy access to the sea via reliable navigable waterways.
Here's what you said (bold italics added for emphasis):
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88
In 1850, there were only six cities in the Confederacy that had populations over 10,000. All but Richmond were on the coast: New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, Charleston, Norfolk.
While the various Federal attempts at taking Charleston failed one must keep in mind they were side operations. I think had the Federals put the kind of resources into taking Charleston they put into taking Richmond, Vicksburg or Chattanooga the city would've fallen pretty quickly.
The city is a trap if defended against a well executed combined naval and army assault as was shown during our rebellion against Britain. I can envision Grant (with an army of the quality of the Army of the Tennessee) and Porter taking the place without inordinate difficulty.
Of course were Charleston the capitol that would also mean the Rebels might place their most reliable resources there as well.....so who knows. But in any event I think Richmond was a far more defensible place than Charleston.
NOLA would be protected enough from attack and was the largest.
New Orleans was quite vulnerable as was shown by it's early fall. Not a particularly easy place to defend against a naval power. And had the British been ably led it would've fallen in 1815.
The capture of Mobile Bay and the subsequent fall of Mobile itself show what could happen to a well defended coastal city when the Federals decided to put a proper push on it.
Here's what you said (bold italics added for emphasis):
I try to keep my posts down to 5,000 words or less, and everybody else understood how "on the coast" contrasted with "inland". I felt no need to insult everyone else's intelligence, by going on with a paragraph or so defining something as elementary as how "on the coast" contrasts with "inland", in the general context of the economic development and maritime transport.
You can go to your deathbed railing about this, I don't care.
While the various Federal attempts at taking Charleston failed one must keep in mind they were side operations. I think had the Federals put the kind of resources into taking Charleston they put into taking Richmond, Vicksburg or Chattanooga the city would've fallen pretty quickly.
The city is a trap if defended against a well executed combined naval and army assault as was shown during our rebellion against Britain. I can envision Grant (with an army of the quality of the Army of the Tennessee) and Porter taking the place without inordinate difficulty.
Of course were Charleston the capitol that would also mean the Rebels might place their most reliable resources there as well.....so who knows. But in any event I think Richmond was a far more defensible place than Charleston.
I'll stick with Charleston
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