LOL — don’t let being “out of (your) knowledge base” slow ya down –i never do, and yet my fridge stays full anyway, so…

no, seriously, you have to work the Crimean War into that –the first time (not counting a few feudal-era sub-national fractious odds and ends) that Frenchmen and Englishers fought a war not against each other but in alliance against a third party. It ended only a decade and change before the Franco/Prussian War. i think the F/P War might –very broadly and probably very wrongly –answer your “maybe it would have???” query, when you note, during the fighting of it, the chirping of crickets from the once and future partner across the Channel.

***

got to agree with Louie above –despite Sherman’s dazzling blitzkreig, the war was a classic war of attrition. What Sherman did was knock a merciful year or two out of the final phase.

That’s not to minimize his effort at all –for as we’vbe said above, as long as the thing was ongoing, something could’ve saved the south –maybe the copperheads.