What would Union soldiers have sounded like in the Civil War?

Northerners speak english, south speak hipster english and brits speak gay english

>>1549756
I like to imagine that the Bostonian and New York accents haven't changed much. A midwestern farmer probably had a bit of a nordic accent considering almost all of them came from Scandinavia and Germany.

>>1550683
New York accents had to have changed with the immigration of the Jews and Italians. There's no way New Yorkers were pronouncing coffee as 'cawfee' in the 1860s.

>>1550697
alright you win

Like Arthur Miller
[battle cry of freedom intensifies]

>>1550697
Did the average soldier even drink much coffee in the 1860s?

>>1550697
How did they pronounce gween tee?

>>1550711
As far as I know it was a frontier drink mostly consumed in the Western states. But I only know California and western American history so I don't know the drinking habits of the Eastern seaboard

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>>1549756
Is anybody else sick of seeing the face of this overrated war criminal posted on /his/? Of all the cool Union pics you could choose to start a thread, why pick that asshole?

>>1550736
>not liking uncle bill

>>1550736
All is fair in War my boi

>>1549756
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU4gGEL5c8g

>>1550724
>>1550711
Coffee was a hugely important commodity to soldiers. Confederates used to use chicory (an old french tradition) in lieu of coffee to make a bitter, dark drink. But there are plenty of journals that have survived detailing many times the desire for coffee, or mentioning the day's coffee. It was used to soak hard tack too, IIRC.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/10/29/mf.coffee.confederacy/

>>1549756
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKiBTSOWVZA

not northern or about accents but also may be of interest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6jSqt39vFM

>>1550765
why's it so spooky

>>1550683
Personally I think that northern city accents are closer to what it was during the 1860's. It didn't get swarmed by Jews and Italians like New York and it didn't screw off and turn into its own accent like the Midwest.

>>1550755
Cheers for the info, anon.

I may as well ask this here: has anyone read the memoirs of Grant and Lee? Are they any good in terms of information as well as entertainment?

>>1550736
No, and you're a little bitch for getting so pissy about it

t. North Carolinian

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anyone have the large post similar to pic related that explains why the south DID secede over slavery?

>>1550809
Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant is acclaimed
I'd imagine the language is a bit archaic though

>>1550736
Get over it. Making war brutal as possible makes it as short as possible.

>>1550998

>burning food supplies and harassing women

>"hurr hes just being practical!"

Sherman is the biggest meme of the war

>>1551004
Maybe they shouldn't have seceded then :^)

>>1551008

>say general is shitty and over rated

>"lol they shouldnt have seceded then!"

get the fuck off my board you stupid fucking memer. You not only know dick about history, but you are too stupid to understand a basic sentence and have no reading comprehension

>>1551019
>don't secede
>don't get shot
It's that simple

>>1550742
>liking a general that didn't win battles

>>1550683
>Germany
>nordic accent

Nope. Germans don't have that faggoty singsongy accent like the Danes and Swedes.

>>1550736
>Is anybody else sick of seeing the face of this overrated war criminal posted on /his/?
FUCK YES

Bat shit crazy faggot couldn't win a fucking battle to save his life.

His butt buddy Grant made his career for him.

Fucking Sherman was too stupid to actually win a fucking battle.

He just kept side-stepping Hood on the way to Atlanta every time Hood challenged him.

He never even attacked Atlanta. He starved it out by siege.

Every time he gave battle on his invasion of the South he got his ass kicked by inferior numbers.

>>1549756
A lot of them were Irish, so they sounded like Irish. Iirc, most of the union rank and file were immigrants in general.

>>1550767
Probably just the warble from the old recording. In reality, just sounds like an extended Indian war hoop.

>>1550995
I live for that stuff, it's fascinating to see how language changes over time.
Hell, I have a book that documents the daily life of Civil War soldiers almost solely by citing the mountains of letters sent home by said soldiers, many of whom were borderline illiterate and spelled things out phonetically, which can make it fun to figure out what the hell they're saying.

They probably sounded like a bunch of faggots

They sounded like hillbillies. Go to rural Ohio or PA and you'll hear it. Lincoln had a noticeable twang. Slave narratives described most Yankee soldiers as indistinguishable from southern white trash.

>>1550765
One of my favorites. The situation between southerners and the rest of the US is so interesting following the Civil War.

>>1550809
Grant's is nothing but self boasting propaganda while Lee's is nothing but Muh Honor. Sherman's is pretty good because he's an autist and Longstreet is probably one of the most objective.

>>1552471
Lee is my favorite precisely because of muh honor. He was probably the most noble person in either side of the war and he fought with the bad guys

>>1552477
I'd love to see a timeline where Virginia knocked off its finicky shit at the start of the war and went Union. A Union military with Lee and Norfolk would be a massive steamroll by land and sea.

Unfortunately we probably wouldn't have gained such a modernized ironclad navy out of it, but then again who knows, the South's naval head was all about them future ships. I suppose the question is whether they could have logistically built a Merrimack/Virginia without Virginian steel and shipyards.

>>1551028
>Implying that most southerners had a choice whether to fight or not

>>1552561
Well modernization efforts didn't really start until the 1880's, so I think that would have happened regardless, I think.

But I agree, I wonder if either side would've developed iron clad ships at that time if Virginia had been Union.

>>1552620
Really? I could have sworn the CSA had a few monitors in the Mississippi. I always assumed once the kinks in the initial ironclads' designs were figured out, both sides just started cranking them out.

I doubt the Union would have initiated it without everyone freaking out about that mystery project being built in Norfolk, they were feeling pretty good about having the Cumberland and friends pretty much up until the Virginia blew it apart.

>>1552650
The Old Navy was well respected and fairly innovative but it was small, and following the Civil War by the mid 1870's the Navy only employed about 7,000 men while most ships were on reserve and by the 1880's many of their vessels were archaic.

I wonder how our naval history would change if we had never developed iron clads during the civil war, but I honestly don't think it would be all that different, maybe it just takes an extra decade or something before the Navy becomes the strongest in the water.

>>1552708
I'm sure it would have happened soon enough; anyone with the economy to manage it was looking enviously at La Gloire and the Warrior.
What was it that prompted the US to expand its navy? Was it specifically the arms race with the South or possibly the strain caused by enacting the Anaconda Plan? I know they resorted to arming merchant ships for the blockade pretty early on.

>>1552868
No I don't think so, it was much later. I'm not sure what the reason why was, and it may have just been a realization that the navy was future of power projection

>>1552561
Virginia wouldn't have gone union. Jefferson's grandson (blanking on his name atm) gave a great speech why they had to secede that explained the whole thing.

>>1552973
Well they certainly postured about it for a while. It makes sense that they didn't, Virginian colonists literally invented the Southern nobility neofeudalism the Confederacy is famous for.

>>1552941
>I'm not sure what the reason why was
Mahan's book and Teddy Roosevelt. The Navy was actually pretty small and in serious disrepair until The Great White Fleet made its circumnavigation. Our showing globally made Congress loosen their purse strings and an actual fleet was formed.

>>1553149
>Mahan's book
Is there a single book that has been as influential on militaries and governmental military policy across the globe as Mahan's?

>>1553173
What book is this?

>>1553216
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Influence_of_Sea_Power_upon_History

The book quite literally caused many of the events that led up to WWI and the Russo-Japanese War.

>>1552114
>wahhhhh he didn't win according to my particular set of criteria therefore he's a shit general

Hood wasn't able to save Atlanta from Sherman therefore Hood is a shit general. Lee didn't win the war therefore he's a shit general. Jackson got killed by friendly fire therefore he's a shit general. Grant didn't win decisive battles against Lee early in his Virginia campaign therefore he's a shit general

See how stupid this line of reasoning sounds?

>>1552114
But did he succeed in his objective?

>>1553234
Not him, but I also think Sherman is overrated as fuck. I don't hate him or think he was a "bad" general by any means nor do I think he was a war criminal. However he was pretty much humiliated early in the war before having his career saved by Grant. He only gained command of his own Army after the south was more or less destroyed and all he had to do was March his much larger army at Hood. Yet Hood still managed to outmaneuver and beat him at pivotal points. He was not a good general by any stretch of the imagination.

Inb4 muh logistics

>>1553133
>southern nobility neo feudalism

When will this meme die

>>1553133
>neofeudalism
>neo

You leftards just can't help yourself can you? Stop putting "neo" everywhere, this isn't the Matrix.

>>1553326
When it stops being true. Within a century of colonization Virginia was a virtual England with a small oligarchy of planters who governed Virginia via the House of Burgesses, a literal country club that also decided how to run the state. There was no cultural center beyond the nominal town of Williamsburg, with the majority of the population living on the plantations which were essentially company towns obviously governed by the landowner. Besides the slave/indentured servant population who could be compared to English peasants, you also had craftsman, carpenters, blacksmiths and the like who all lived on the plantation and rarely left it. The planters themselves rarely had occasion to leave the plantations beyond attending the House of Burgesses, as they were all largely claimed along rivers so that ships could make a few stops and then go straight to Britain to sell the tobacco.

>>1553326
I don't think you'll find many people claiming Sherman was some kind of military genius apart from his realization that total war was the most effective way to beat the confederacy. I'm a big fan of his and I'd never claim he was some Napoleon level military genius.

Grant on the other hand I consider to be a genuinely great general

>>1553384
>apart from his realization that total war was the most effective way to beat the confederacy.
The war was won in the East, not in the West where Sherman was.

>Grant on the other hand I consider to be a genuinely great general
Grant wasn't great. When you look at his military accomplishments, they are nothing special. He was just an above average general.

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>>1549756

Depends on where the soldiers were from and where they were serving.

Men in the Army of the Potomac were mainly from New England and the Eastern sea board. New England's accent was basically the same then as it is today, and Bostonian's/Massachusetts soldiers would have sounded like they do today. American born soldiers from up-state New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, etc, would have had a mostly "normal" American accent with a slight rural twang. American born soldiers from New York city spoke with a distinct accent that sounds quite a bit different than the New York accent today, almost like a spin-off of the New England accent.

Irish and German born soldiers would obviously have very thick Irish and Bavarian or Prussian accents, respectively. Many of these soldiers (particularly the Germans) spoke no English and had to actually be given orders in their native language.

Soldiers from the Western armies, in contrast, would have less difference in accents, but it was still present. Men from the lower North and Mississippi valley regions would have sounded like slightly less heavy accented Southerners, and men from the upper North would have sounded like very rural "normal Americans."

Men from Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and other "Southern" states would have sounded like their nearest Southern counterparts.

>>1550711
So much so that it was the most popular item of trade between soldiers. Northerners would trade coffee for tobacco any chance they could and vice-versa.

The Union briefly produced a Sharps Carbine with a coffee grinder in the butt.

>>1553419
The Civil War was literally won in the west. The collapse of Confederate order and control in the West is what weakened the ANV to the point of ineffectual resistance, the 40 days and Petersburg just broke the Camels back.

Sherman is very overrated though.

>>1553436
>The collapse of Confederate order and control in the West is what weakened the ANV to the point of ineffectual resistance
No, the lack of manpower is what broke the ANV. The Union army was constantly growing while the Southern army was constantly shrinking. It wasn't due to a lack of money, either, since almost 100% of men in age served in the Southern army. It was just a victory of attrition.

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>>1553443
I agree that lack of manpower is what broke the ANV, my claim is that the loss of access to the Western states is really what caused that lack of manpower, not the actual battles the ANV fought in. There were still many men in the Western states who had either gone home after a 90 day term, or deserted and left after their state was conquered, or for other reasons, that could have been used in the ANV.

IIRC, i've seen numerous claims about the percentage of Southern men in the Confederate army and personally I think it was closer to 85% of the fighting age population, and that doesn't even mean those men were all in the Confederate army at the same time. It's also important to remember that 2/3rds or so of the Confederate forces were tied up either defending random useless shit in backwater areas or working with the Home Guards. There was still a large amount of man power in the South even with the losses they suffered and the Confederates could have continued to pump men and supplies into the ANV if they had not lost control of 3/4ths of their territory.

I also like to think that if the West had not fallen by 1864, the Confederate government would likely have been able to simply move to Atlanta or some other city in the Western Confederacy to continue the fight if Richmond had fallen.

The Eastern theater was critical only in the symbolic sense, strategically it only mattered very little.

>>1553363
If you actually think the south was still like that during the confederacy than your an idiot. The "oligarchy" in the south was no different than the "oligarchy" in the north.

>>1553496
I doubt it was entirely identical, but it did spawn from that and would have a number of grandfathered similarities. This is only a generation or two after Jefferson and Washington and such, after all.

>>1553511
Well when both the confederacy's president and vice president came from modest rural backgrounds, it's hard to call it anything reassembling feudalism. Hell the secessionist cause in general was a middle class phenomenon with a majority of wealthy southerner scared (rightly) that secession would endanger their property. Most of the rich voted Constitutional Union prior to the war.

>>1552078
Bavaria

>>1549756
It's likely that Americans living in the 19th century over a large geographical area sounded more similar other than today.

>>1550736
>>1551004

You might not like it , but sometimes a cold heart is needed in the heat of war.

dont call it a meme, morality is feeble in the face of war

I've long suspected that all Americans sounded a bit more Southern or "country" a few generations back.

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>>1550736
>War
>Crimes

Still, when you think about it, it was not really a "war" since it was a still just a military action against a bunch of traitors, well organized, but still just traitors. Hence there was no declaration of war, and no peace treaty. Even Jefferson Davis talked about this, saying the Confederacy simply "vanished" in 1865. Can't commit war crimes against a nation you never declared war on nor recognized as existing, more like ruff police work.

>>1555040
>not really a war

Just because the union couldn't recognize the CSA for political reasons, doesn't mean it wasn't a war you autist. They had multiple terms of surrender with the various confederate armies during the conclusion of the war, Sherman and Johnston actually reconvened over a few days during the surrender of the army of Tennessee.

Also
>british traitors whining about traitors

>>1552114
I WILL WIN BUT NEVER FIGHT

THAT'S THE ART OF WAR

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>>1555040
It was legally a war.

When the Union declared a blockade of Southern ports in 1861, it became a war under international law between the United States and the CSA as a belligerent.

This is actually why CSA diplomats were allowed to maintain an official embassy in the United Kingdom and France, as well as enabling them to purchase arms, ammunition, and supplies, in the open. This was also the basis of why the Confederates were not tried as traitors after the war (with the notable exception of the Southern commander of Andersonville Prison).

So, under official international maritime law, the Civil war was a war, just between a recognized nation and an unrecognized belligerent.

That all being said, the North never really committed anything that would violate international war crime treaties in the 1860's. The POW camps and cavalry raids came close, but the South was doing both of things and to a much more harsh degree than the North.

>>1554443
Just because you can do thing, or that thing may be more expedient, doesn't always make it right.

I personally do not agree with Sherman's actions and I believe they reflect poorly on the Government, but I do agree that they ended the war quicker than would have otherwise been the case.

>>1552114
Supreme excellence comes from breaking your enemy's resistence without fighting him.

t. Some fucking coward

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>>1550736
all war is a crime