And someone from the British empire (Canada) to be able to choose sides? Do we recognize the south and declare war on the union. Do we support the Union with our natural abhorrence of slavery? - I would be willing to be that player.

what about my border state of maryland

Maryland... depends on your personal loyalty I guess. The state was officially Union, but there was quite a bit of Confederate sympathy and slave ownership.
Obi, I'm interested in playing... though I have no idea how to tie the Civil War theme into a game of Dip :)

Kentucky was the same way, TWA. We were officially Union in the end but it was a bitter issue and the Commonwealth stayed neutral for a very long time.

Yeah, same with Missouri, where the Governor apparently wanted to secede but the state congress wouldn't allow it. And of course, West Virginia wouldn't exist if not for the war.

Here's a great Wiki article covering Kentucky's role in the Civil War and her attempts to stay neutral despite aggresion from both sides putting camps in her sovereign territory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_in_the_American_Civil_War

It would be fun to speak as a personality from the civil war. Abe Lincoln vs. Jefferson Davis, Sherman,Grant, McClellan (sp?) vs Jackson and Lee. If this gets going and I get to play the part of the British, I am going to have to find out the personality of the British PM of the time.

The irony is that Davis and Lincoln might sound a lot alike on paper as far as dialect/accent goes. They were both from Kentucky originally, although Davis moved to Louisiana when he was 3 and Lincoln moved to Indiana when he was 8, both sets of parents were from the same region and they would have gotten their accents from their parents. The two really would sound similar unless one really exaggerated Davis' country accent to make it sound more Mississipppi/Louisiana/deep south rather than Kentucky.

My wife's parents are 100% West Virginian, my wife has no accent whatsoever. I think people get their accent from their peers/school. I'm no expert though.

In Lincoln's day, there was no preschool and much of grade school was homeschooled in rural America. the late 20th century was very different from early 19th Century as far as education is concerned.

I'm also a Marylander. Here is more in depth explanation of what I know about Maryland's loyalty in the Civil War. At the lead up to the war, Maryland had remained relatively neutral in the squabbles over the expansion of slavery and state's right, which makes since knowing that Maryland's black population was equally divided about half and half between slave and free, compared to 90%+ slave in most Confederate states and 100% free obviously in Northern states. There was quite a bit of sympathy for the Southern cause in the beginning, with the state giving Lincoln only 2% of the vote in 1860. Then, a week after the siege of Fort Sumter began, there was a pro-Confederate riot in Baltimore in which rioters were shot upon by Union troops, though admittedly those rioters had attacked the soldiers with "bricks, paving stones, and pistols." That was the first bloodshed in the Civil War and Southern sympathizers compared it to the Boston Massacre, made ironic by the fact that many of the Union troops that did the shooting were from Massachusetts. A Marylander living in Lousiana at the time then made a song about it called "Maryland, My Maryland" which became known as the Marseillaise of the South. However, I would like to point out though that despite all this Southern sympathy, Maryland was not mostly pro-secessionist. It might have been close though without Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus (No one seems to ever mention though that the Constitution allows that in case of rebellion, or that the Confederacy put that same clause in their Constitution, haha). In addition to that almost 80% of Marylanders that fought in the Civil War fought for the Union side. Not only that, but during General Lee's Maryland campaign leading up to Antietam, the local Marylanders' reaction to the Confederate army was cool disdain and the vast majority showed outright hostility.

Hope you don't mind the wall of text.

Threadkiller.

The main reason Maryland didn't secede was that the state legislators suspected of 'disloyalty' were all arrested and imprisoned (without trial, of course, since they had committed no crime).

I'm sure you have the same opinion of Jefferson Davis, who did the same thing in Richmond, Petersburg, the Carolina coast, and eastern Tennessee.

Nah, it's all good when the Confederates do it.

"PROCLAMATION.

[FEBRUARY 27, 1862.]
Whereas the Congress of the Confederate States has by law vested in the President the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in cities in danger of attack by the enemy:
Now therefore I, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, do hereby proclaim that martial law is extended over the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth and the surrounding country to the distance of 10 miles from said cities, and all civil jurisdiction and the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus are hereby declared to be sus-pended within the limits aforesaid.
This proclamation will remain in force until otherwise ordered
In faith whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal, at the city of Richmond, on this twenty-seventh day of February, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two.

JEFFERSON DAVIS."

LOlllersk8s.

Well, I thought this was a dead-end thread...guess not? :)

I'd suggest either a short series of games WebDip World Cup style (ie, one Public Press, one Gunboat, one live, and one Standard) and that'd allow a fair share of North/West players and South/Midwest players to join, 12 a side, 3 to a game.

England, Russia, and Germany=Union.
Turkey, Italy, and Austria=South
France=Europe (This is where we can get out Euro players in.)

It'd be a stab-free game between the Sides, Union vs. Confederacy, and then France, ie, the Euro player can change sides at will according to offers he gets, really just try and work out the best deal for himself.

Enlist for sides below, according to residence, of course :p

Union (up to 12):
obiwanobiwan

Confederacy (up to 12):

Europe/Outside USA Players (up to 4):

As a native Californian I'd like to enlist for the Union. Everyone forgets that we marched all the way across the Mojave to decisively stop the Confederates in New Mexico. :)

I know we did, er, our previous Californians did, haha...

The California Cavalry forever! :)

Union (up to 12):
obiwanobiwan
Bigmac3000lbs

Confederacy (up to 12):

Europe/Outside USA Players (up to 4):

Didn't SoCal try to secede and was generally pro-South?

"Didn't SoCal try to secede and was generally pro-South?"

I don't know about SoCal trying to secede, but there were partisans of both sides in significant numbers. Bar brawls (and at least one gunfight in downtown San Bernardino) over the war were a fairly common occurrence, and several hundred Californians went east to fight for the Confederacy in addition to the California regiments that fought for the Union. My county had a significant Mormon population at the time, and they were undoubtedly still pissed over the Mormon War.

I have lived in New Jersey, Maryland, Oregon, and Washington. Although two of them were not quite states when the war occurred, I'm still thinking this puts me on the Union side.

Erm...Oregon was a state.

You are correct. For some reason I was thinking it was still a territory. Derp.

Officially California fought for the Union, but yeah, SoCal had some Confederate sympathies, and actually had some trying to secede from the Union, with others on the side of the Union...

So it was a free for all for a while, and then eventually some Los Angelinos and Northern Californians secured SoCal.

And the Philadelphia Brigade, apparently, if almighty Wikipedia is half-accurate here, was originally named the California Brigade, and was mde up of a mix between Californians and Philadelphians, and fought at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and the Grandaddy of them all, Gettysburg.

:)