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I was idly flipping about the map today in an on-going scenario, looking at the "deep south" areas the Yankee invaders have not yet reached to see what their level of support was there and hence what information they are receiving about my troop movements, garrisons, etc. Imagine my surprise to discover that 100% of the population across the Carolina and Georgia low country, the black belt of Georgia, Alabama, the Mississippi Delta, etc. support the Rebels.

I imagine this must be some quirk of the engine. Obviously about 1/3 to 1/2 of the population of those regions did not support the CSA. And that part of the population was an important source of espionage for the Yankees. Now perhaps the purpose of this is to prevent the USA from getting information before its troops are in the region to receive it, and I can understand that. But I hope that when there are Yankee troops nearby to report to, the (mostly black) Unionist elements of the southern population will come out of hiding and USA support will rapidly rise in those areas. This will allow the USA some intelligence in those areas. I did notice, by the way, that the areas of the south where white Unionists were most active - the mountain regions of western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and northern Alabama - do report significant USA support in the game.

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Gray_Lensman wrote:Agreed. This particular item is not always accurate in many areas, but trying to come up with "fair" assessments of the local support is rather arcane. If you want to have a whirl at it and provide me with the rationale of any changes, I would be glad to consider making some changes where necessary.

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=8321

and just to be fair, I did the same for the Copperhead regions of the North:

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=8358

As you can see, this is an area that I felt was not well represented in AACW. Unfortunately for me, I am not a modder.

I agree with the points made in the threads Le Ricain refers to. It is difficult to model this sort of thing. I'm thinking maybe using a system similar to the martial law/freedom of the press "loyalties" mechanism to restrict loyalties within a certain range in some areas.

The areas both posters mentioned were those with large pro-Union (or pro-Confederate) white populations, thus they reported large opposition totals in the elections of 1860 and 1864. However, blacks couldn't vote but their political opinions had weight - they provided intelligence and recruits to the Union forces. I would also restrict the loyalty of southern regions that had large black populations to a range reflecting the fact that few southern blacks were loyal to the Confederacy.

Perhaps the lower loyalty could be conditional, only changing if units of the invading army were present in the state or reasonably close. So the "butternut country" of southern Indiana or the Union loyalists of eastern Tennessee/northern Alabama or the blacks of the South Carolina and Georgia low country would only become active supporters of their side and start furnishing intelligence and recruits when a force of their side was close. Maybe you could have an event that fires when CSA or USA forces enter a particular state or broad region (subdivision of a state, or possibly larger multi-state region like southern Appalachia) that locks loyalties in that region within a particular range for the duration of their presence plus a couple of months and provides a certain number of recruit companies to the invading side, either each turn or all at once on the first arrival in the area (assuming that most volunteers would come forward as soon as they could). Then only the most hard-core Unionist areas of the south - eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama and Arkansas - would have strong enough Union loyalties that they would remain pro-Union even in the absence of USA forces.

Can these areas raise rebel units? Either pro-southern in southern Indiana or pro-Union in Tennessee? Because I think historically they did, at least in the mountain south. Is there the possibility of this in the game? I've only ever seen pro-CSA rebels spring up in regions controlled by northern armies near the front, or pro-USA rebels recapture northern towns captured by CSA raiders.

I'd be happy to go through and give you some idea of the black population of different southern regions if you think it useful.

So, in an idle hour, I've been going through getting census figures for the counties of the south in 1860. I've come up with a list for those counties that were 50% or more black and another for those between 33% and 50% black. Now, I notice that counties are not the same as regions Is there any list anywhere of which counties make up each region? Or do I just have to figure it out for myself?

And just on a personal note, looking at Le Ricain's list of white Unionist stongholds, I would add Page County, Virginia. The Confederate war memorial in the county seat of Luray has the names of dozens of Page County boys who were actually wearing blue when they were killed. This was sort of a dirty little secret when I was growing up but now I think most folks there are rather proud of having been rebels against the rebels...

To add to this discussion and aforementioned related threads, I found the following links on the 1860 Election by county.

http://cenantua.wordpress.com/2008/11/23/county-by-county-popular-vote-for-the-1860-presidential-election/

http://alpha.furman.edu/~benson/docs/pres1860.htm

These maps are not the easiest to interpret, but with some effort and analysis, I think you can see the specific counties in each state, and who they voted for.

Hope these help.

Do you have anything on the vote for secession? This is a little harder to quantify as there weren't any "secession" and "union" party label attached to candidates, but for those states that had separate elections to secession conventions it would be really handy to know what the vote was for unionist candidates.

Anybody know about this?

TheDoctorKing wrote:Do you have anything on the vote for secession? This is a little harder to quantify as there weren't any "secession" and "union" party label attached to candidates, but for those states that had separate elections to secession conventions it would be really handy to know what the vote was for unionist candidates.

Anybody know about this?

Just found this for Texas:
http://www.texasalmanac.com/politics/secession.html

Tennessee:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Tennessee_Convention_of_1861

Virginia:

http://www.newrivernotes.com/va/vasecesh.htm

Alabama:

http://www.csawardept.com/documents/secession/AL/

Mississippi:

http://www.csawardept.com/documents/secession/MS/index.html

Louisiana

http://www.csawardept.com/documents/secession/LA/index.html

Georgia:

http://www.csawardept.com/documents/secession/GA/

Please note that in the actual referendum on secession, Georgia actually voted against the motion, but the results were altered for secession.

http://www.csawardept.com/documents/secession/FL/index.html

Very interesting, thanks.

I notice that in several cases, like that of Chattahoochee Co. Georgia, an area with large pro-Union support still managed to elect pro-Secession representatives. Similarly with the Virginia election results: my own county, Page, reported only 4 Unionist votes but ultimately dozens of Page County men (in a county with a population of only about 8,000) served in the Union army and the mountain community was strongly Unionist and Republican for years to come.