The Second Washington
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Md139115
Banned
Alright, I'm going to apologize now. What I intended for Chapter 2 has turned into such a gigantic mass that I am going to split it up and post half of it tonight, and the other half (now chapter 3), sometime within the next two weeks (hopefully). I hate doing this, because it leaves you all in the dark about what the heck is really going on just a little bit longer.
Chapter 2
Md139115
Banned
Chapter 2: The Executive Mansion, Washington D.C.
July 4, 1865
Lee placed his hands behind him on the buffet table and stretched, all the while gazing at the room around him. He dimly recalled hearing an old story about Abagail Adams hanging up laundry here, but it was hard to reconcile that to this grand hall before him. Maybe grand was not the right word. There were multiple mansions and hotels in America that had much more extravagant parlors than the East Room, and to a European ambassador, it looked positively rustic. Despite that though, Lee had been here before Adele Douglas had managed to renovate it, and he was most pleased with the change from the rotting mess before. Working from a limited budget, and bereft of the traditional resources from the Continent, she had managed to create a distinctly American great hall through a combination of pale blue paint, gilt accents, and two graceful brass chandeliers.
Beneath those chandeliers right now was a most lively waltz. The generals, senators, and great statesmen of the republic were twirling the night away with their wives or dates. Although Lee was a good dancer, his wife, who was over gossiping with James and Maria Longstreet, would never have managed to keep up. Lee was deeply saddened by this. It was a shame, his wife had more fire and spirit in her than he did; she just was trapped in the shell of a failing body. He had already promised another waltz and a few quadrilles to several of the other general’s wives though, so the night would not be utterly lackluster for him.
After grabbing his third helping of oysters, Lee made his way over to his wife, who was listening in rapt fascination.
“Dear, I really think you need to hear this!”
“Pardon me, General Lee, I was just telling your wife about some of our more creative measures to make up for a deficit in light artillery.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, you see we were stuck fighting the French in the foothills of Oaxaca and found ourselves facing a dug in adversary with solid artillery placements. Our few light horse guns were driven off and we couldn’t get anything heavier into position, the existing roads were so bad, so we were stuck, quite literally, between the rocks and a hard place.”
“Hmm...”
“Now this had happened once before, and by time the engineers regraded the road enough to get the artillery up, the French had abandoned the position and moved on to the next hill. So the boys got their dander up and set to work figuring out how they could force the position without artillery. Now, we had plenty of coconuts actually, and the boys were drinking the milk since the water wasn’t that good. So someone figured out that if you drilled out a hole, drank the milk, flipped it upside down over the fire to dry it out, and filled it up with gunpowder, it made a half-decent grenade!”
“I’m sorry, what?!”
“Yes! We liberated a few percussion shell fuses and some canister shot from the artillery, used them to make up a few hundred grenades and distributed them to the second wave of the assault. The Frogs never knew what hit them! Oh, good evening general.”
The last part was directed to General McClellan, who had just walked up with his wife Mary.
“So what exactly is going on here?”
“General Longstreet was just regaling us with some… developments… the Army of the Rio Grande made in fighting against an entrenched enemy in tropical conditions.”
“You should recall this sir,” said Longstreet. “I sent all the details on those coconut grenades up with my after-action report to the War… Er… Is everything alright, sir?”
McClellan had turned bright red. His right eye had started twitching, but that somehow did not diminish the fact that he was staring hard enough at Longstreet to boil blood.
“YOU IDIOT! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA THE HELL YOU PUT ME IN! I’VE SPENT THE LAST SIX MONTHS TRYING TO TALK THE DAMN SECRETARY OUT OF HIS DAMN PLAN TO INVESTIGATE YOUR DAMN COCONUTS!
“Sir, I…”
“I DON’T GIVE A FLYING S… (McClellan remembers that he is in the presence of ladies) I don’t care about your opinion Colonel Longstreet. What I care about is trying to get men, money, and supplies available to the field! Not off in Florida by the hundreds investigating what the optimum-sized coconut is and how to breed and grow them! If you really want men to have grenades, invent your own and sell it to us!
“Yes… sir” replied a rather shell-shocked Longstreet.
McClellan slipped into a perfectly charming and calm demeanor like a well-worn shoe, and said:
“Ladies, I am so very sorry for that rude outburst I committed. The fatigue of this position is enough to drive a man mad. I hope you can forgive me, and you too General Lee.”
Before Lee had a chance to reply, Maria Longstreet swung and delivered a magnificent slap across McClellan’s face, then grabbed her husband’s arm and dragged him out of the room much like one would drag a sack of potatoes. Of course the entire room had stopped dead in its tracks to watch this spectacle, and it was a good 30 seconds before the band launched into the Military Polka and festivities began to resume.
McClellan finished checking to see if all his teeth were still there and finally said: “General Lee, it appears I am now persona non gratia at this affair – for good reason. Unfortunately, I cannot just leave. You see, the whole reason I walked over here was to ask if in a little bit you could excuse yourself and come upstairs to the library with me.”
“Sir?”
“Like everything else in Washington, general, things are a little bit different just beneath the surface. A ball is not merely a ball, but it is also an excuse for the politicians to decide the affairs of the nation without looking like they are. I’m afraid that there are a few more affairs than usual that need to be settled tonight, and they directly concern us, so I could use some reinforcements.”
“Yes, sir I will, but you really must excuse me sir, I promised this dance to Myra Hancock, and I’m already late.”
**************
Lee was rather glad when he finished the last of the obligatory dances and could peel off and join McClellan. The reason for that was he had succeeded in stepping on the feet of every last one of his partners, and he wished to retreat from the field before he became a complete laughingstock. He couldn’t help it, some of the shrapnel of McClellan’s explosion had stuck in his mind and wouldn’t leave.
‘Colonel Longstreet? So they are going to go back to a smaller army. Shame, I had hoped that it would only be a one-rank reduction across the board from the volunteers to the regulars, but it looks to be a two or more drop. That’s what? A lieutenant general with three or four major generals, eight brigaders and 30,000 man force? And those grenades? There may be something to that. I know the Brits tried using them against me but they were just glass bottles stuffed with gunpowder. Most, thanks be, failed to go off, but what if you made a better fuse for them? That might revolutionize warfare in trenches and make it more difficult to defend, and I thought that’s where war was going with the rifle… This is madness. War has changed so much in the last ten years with all these railroads and rifled cannon and ironclads, yet it looks like we are not going to learn anything from this.
He met McClellan at the door to the main hall and started walking to the formal stairs at the west end of the mansion, but McClellan put his hand on Lee’s shoulder and steered him towards a door just off to the right of the East Room entrance. Upon opening, it revealed a staircase to the second floor. McClellan and Lee entered, with McClellan walking over the staircase, placing his feet on the first rung to be roughly the same height as Lee. He spoke:
“I prefer to go up this way if you don’t mind. It’s more private and I can warn you about what’s going on without anyone else listening.”
Lee, having experienced orders of magnitude in discomfort with each passing second, looked at McClellan with a fixed gaze and said: “General McClellan, with all due respect sir, I am not a cloak and daggers person, nor do I have any desire to get mixed up in politics. Respectfully, if this is not of critical importance, I would like to rejoin my wife and the other guests.”
McClellan gave a half-hearted smile that looked more like a frown when his drooping mustache was added in.
“General Lee, I know all of that and respect you for it – Hell, everyone respects you for it. Problem is, this is critical. We may have won the war, but we are on the knife’s edge of losing the peace.”
“Sir?”
“What I am about to tell you must not be repeated except to me or the Cabinet.”
“You are beginning to worry me, sir.”
“Several of the… ah… Southern… members of the Administration are deeply unhappy with the way the war has concluded. They were hoping to gain either Cuba or the Bahamas, or both, in a peace deal, so as to restore balance in Congress. Of course, we didn’t get Cuba and DuPont’s fleet got Freeport but not Nassau. Compare that with you dropping practically all of Canada in our laps…
“Oh no…”
“Yes, as things stand, if the U.S. takes the territory that everyone thinks it deserves, we’re looking at the long-term ratio of free states to slave states going from two-thirds to three-quarters if not seven-eighths. Hence the problem.”
Lee was deeply troubled. No fan of the abolitionists, he only now realized that he may have just given them the greatest piece of ammunition in the nation’s history to crush him and his friends. At the same time though… would America really give up the spoils of her greatest triumph just because we can’t get our act together? What does that say about us?
Lee looked at McClellan, having concealed all these thoughts and emotions behind a neutral façade, and said: “I see the problem general, but I don’t understand how I am supposed to be part of the solution.”
“Can you at least agree that losing all that we gained in Canada would be bad for America?”
“Well… I have to confess, I can see where they are coming from… but we do have the opportunity here to secure our northern border and protect ourselves from the British once and for all.”
“And if we don’t take it?”
“Those people would redeploy their men and guns away from Halifax and New Brunswick to the St. Lawrence cities, expand their fortifications to much greater in-depth defenses, and keep a standing army of 40,000 in Canada until the millennium… not to mention however many irregulars they recruit among the Canadians… (Lee’s brow knots and his voice drops to a low murmur) In response, we would need to build a defensive line of our own to protect New England, New York… (his finger moves through the air as if he is mentally counting states off a map) Ohio… Michigan… Minnesota…”
Lee sits on the step and sighs profoundly.
“General McClellan, I am sorry sir. Having successfully brought the fight to the major Canadian cities, I doubt they would renew the Rush-Bagot treaty. In that case, geography and politics favor the British. From a core along the St. Lawrence, supported by railroads, they could strike anywhere from Portland to Detroit and possibly Milwaukee in the opening stages of a war, then pull back behind nigh impenetrable walls by time we reacted. Since none of those states on the border are going to tolerate the possibility of being burnt to the ground, we would have to build a string of forts of our own, with about 70 to 80,000 men just to staff them all. Add in our other obligations, we would be looking at a permanent army up over 100,000 men.”
“We wouldn’t have to worry about employment then.” McClellan said, grinning.
“We wouldn’t have to worry about money, either. We’d all be taxed unto perdition to pay for it.”
“I thought you supported a larger force?”
“I support a larger force that we can rapidly deploy in response to an enemy’s designs, sir. We would have three-quarters of the army sitting static and useless at all times in this case. Then when it came time to advance, we would take most frightful casualties until we either prevailed or retreated… or they ran out of ammunition.”
“Spoken like an engineer.”
“Thank you, sir. But may I be frank?”
“Of course.”
“We… are victors, and we have earned every right to rest on our laurels. But that does not excuse us from ignoring the changes this war has wrought. America has endured in the isolation that Washington desired for so long because we were a minor power on the fringe of the civilized world. Now that we have proven otherwise, I fear more trouble will come to these shores. We need an actual army, not a bunch of cavalry companies chasing down Indians, and we need to keep abreast of the latest technology, because our defeated opponents will most certainly be now.”
“This about the coconuts?”
“Yes and no. I agree that it’s a ridiculous idea on their use in particular, but we probably should try to investigate how to construct a proper grenade, and an independently firing torpedo, and even better skirmish tactics.”
“And I actually do agree with you. The problem is that is a lot of bucks (rubbing his fingers together for emphasis) that Congress is not going to want to give us. Now if we had Canada; that is a larger tax base that we can get some revenue out of with only a few of your cavalry companies. If not, your proposed army in situ is going to eat up all our budget.”
“I thought it would be easier to move a larger sum into such research if the overall budget is larger.”
“You’d think, but if Congress and future administrations want protection and tiny budgets, they’ll be watching us like vultures. Hell, they already are. You should have seen Secretary Lane when I asked him for another four balloons to fill out the observation corps. Man sized me up for a straightjacket.”
McClellan smiled at the joke, then his face fell again.
“In all seriousness, General Lee, slavery is a serious issue, but I don’t want to lose Canada. Problem is I’m ‘a damnyankee who doesn’t know the first thing about what’s really at stake.’”
“So you want me to support you.”
“They’ll listen to the Hero of Québec… I hope.”
“Let’s try.”
The two men walk up the stairs to the second floor.
July 4, 1865
Lee placed his hands behind him on the buffet table and stretched, all the while gazing at the room around him. He dimly recalled hearing an old story about Abagail Adams hanging up laundry here, but it was hard to reconcile that to this grand hall before him. Maybe grand was not the right word. There were multiple mansions and hotels in America that had much more extravagant parlors than the East Room, and to a European ambassador, it looked positively rustic. Despite that though, Lee had been here before Adele Douglas had managed to renovate it, and he was most pleased with the change from the rotting mess before. Working from a limited budget, and bereft of the traditional resources from the Continent, she had managed to create a distinctly American great hall through a combination of pale blue paint, gilt accents, and two graceful brass chandeliers.
Beneath those chandeliers right now was a most lively waltz. The generals, senators, and great statesmen of the republic were twirling the night away with their wives or dates. Although Lee was a good dancer, his wife, who was over gossiping with James and Maria Longstreet, would never have managed to keep up. Lee was deeply saddened by this. It was a shame, his wife had more fire and spirit in her than he did; she just was trapped in the shell of a failing body. He had already promised another waltz and a few quadrilles to several of the other general’s wives though, so the night would not be utterly lackluster for him.
After grabbing his third helping of oysters, Lee made his way over to his wife, who was listening in rapt fascination.
“Dear, I really think you need to hear this!”
“Pardon me, General Lee, I was just telling your wife about some of our more creative measures to make up for a deficit in light artillery.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, you see we were stuck fighting the French in the foothills of Oaxaca and found ourselves facing a dug in adversary with solid artillery placements. Our few light horse guns were driven off and we couldn’t get anything heavier into position, the existing roads were so bad, so we were stuck, quite literally, between the rocks and a hard place.”
“Hmm...”
“Now this had happened once before, and by time the engineers regraded the road enough to get the artillery up, the French had abandoned the position and moved on to the next hill. So the boys got their dander up and set to work figuring out how they could force the position without artillery. Now, we had plenty of coconuts actually, and the boys were drinking the milk since the water wasn’t that good. So someone figured out that if you drilled out a hole, drank the milk, flipped it upside down over the fire to dry it out, and filled it up with gunpowder, it made a half-decent grenade!”
“I’m sorry, what?!”
“Yes! We liberated a few percussion shell fuses and some canister shot from the artillery, used them to make up a few hundred grenades and distributed them to the second wave of the assault. The Frogs never knew what hit them! Oh, good evening general.”
The last part was directed to General McClellan, who had just walked up with his wife Mary.
“So what exactly is going on here?”
“General Longstreet was just regaling us with some… developments… the Army of the Rio Grande made in fighting against an entrenched enemy in tropical conditions.”
“You should recall this sir,” said Longstreet. “I sent all the details on those coconut grenades up with my after-action report to the War… Er… Is everything alright, sir?”
McClellan had turned bright red. His right eye had started twitching, but that somehow did not diminish the fact that he was staring hard enough at Longstreet to boil blood.
“YOU IDIOT! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA THE HELL YOU PUT ME IN! I’VE SPENT THE LAST SIX MONTHS TRYING TO TALK THE DAMN SECRETARY OUT OF HIS DAMN PLAN TO INVESTIGATE YOUR DAMN COCONUTS!
“Sir, I…”
“I DON’T GIVE A FLYING S… (McClellan remembers that he is in the presence of ladies) I don’t care about your opinion Colonel Longstreet. What I care about is trying to get men, money, and supplies available to the field! Not off in Florida by the hundreds investigating what the optimum-sized coconut is and how to breed and grow them! If you really want men to have grenades, invent your own and sell it to us!
“Yes… sir” replied a rather shell-shocked Longstreet.
McClellan slipped into a perfectly charming and calm demeanor like a well-worn shoe, and said:
“Ladies, I am so very sorry for that rude outburst I committed. The fatigue of this position is enough to drive a man mad. I hope you can forgive me, and you too General Lee.”
Before Lee had a chance to reply, Maria Longstreet swung and delivered a magnificent slap across McClellan’s face, then grabbed her husband’s arm and dragged him out of the room much like one would drag a sack of potatoes. Of course the entire room had stopped dead in its tracks to watch this spectacle, and it was a good 30 seconds before the band launched into the Military Polka and festivities began to resume.
McClellan finished checking to see if all his teeth were still there and finally said: “General Lee, it appears I am now persona non gratia at this affair – for good reason. Unfortunately, I cannot just leave. You see, the whole reason I walked over here was to ask if in a little bit you could excuse yourself and come upstairs to the library with me.”
“Sir?”
“Like everything else in Washington, general, things are a little bit different just beneath the surface. A ball is not merely a ball, but it is also an excuse for the politicians to decide the affairs of the nation without looking like they are. I’m afraid that there are a few more affairs than usual that need to be settled tonight, and they directly concern us, so I could use some reinforcements.”
“Yes, sir I will, but you really must excuse me sir, I promised this dance to Myra Hancock, and I’m already late.”
**************
Lee was rather glad when he finished the last of the obligatory dances and could peel off and join McClellan. The reason for that was he had succeeded in stepping on the feet of every last one of his partners, and he wished to retreat from the field before he became a complete laughingstock. He couldn’t help it, some of the shrapnel of McClellan’s explosion had stuck in his mind and wouldn’t leave.
‘Colonel Longstreet? So they are going to go back to a smaller army. Shame, I had hoped that it would only be a one-rank reduction across the board from the volunteers to the regulars, but it looks to be a two or more drop. That’s what? A lieutenant general with three or four major generals, eight brigaders and 30,000 man force? And those grenades? There may be something to that. I know the Brits tried using them against me but they were just glass bottles stuffed with gunpowder. Most, thanks be, failed to go off, but what if you made a better fuse for them? That might revolutionize warfare in trenches and make it more difficult to defend, and I thought that’s where war was going with the rifle… This is madness. War has changed so much in the last ten years with all these railroads and rifled cannon and ironclads, yet it looks like we are not going to learn anything from this.
He met McClellan at the door to the main hall and started walking to the formal stairs at the west end of the mansion, but McClellan put his hand on Lee’s shoulder and steered him towards a door just off to the right of the East Room entrance. Upon opening, it revealed a staircase to the second floor. McClellan and Lee entered, with McClellan walking over the staircase, placing his feet on the first rung to be roughly the same height as Lee. He spoke:
“I prefer to go up this way if you don’t mind. It’s more private and I can warn you about what’s going on without anyone else listening.”
Lee, having experienced orders of magnitude in discomfort with each passing second, looked at McClellan with a fixed gaze and said: “General McClellan, with all due respect sir, I am not a cloak and daggers person, nor do I have any desire to get mixed up in politics. Respectfully, if this is not of critical importance, I would like to rejoin my wife and the other guests.”
McClellan gave a half-hearted smile that looked more like a frown when his drooping mustache was added in.
“General Lee, I know all of that and respect you for it – Hell, everyone respects you for it. Problem is, this is critical. We may have won the war, but we are on the knife’s edge of losing the peace.”
“Sir?”
“What I am about to tell you must not be repeated except to me or the Cabinet.”
“You are beginning to worry me, sir.”
“Several of the… ah… Southern… members of the Administration are deeply unhappy with the way the war has concluded. They were hoping to gain either Cuba or the Bahamas, or both, in a peace deal, so as to restore balance in Congress. Of course, we didn’t get Cuba and DuPont’s fleet got Freeport but not Nassau. Compare that with you dropping practically all of Canada in our laps…
“Oh no…”
“Yes, as things stand, if the U.S. takes the territory that everyone thinks it deserves, we’re looking at the long-term ratio of free states to slave states going from two-thirds to three-quarters if not seven-eighths. Hence the problem.”
Lee was deeply troubled. No fan of the abolitionists, he only now realized that he may have just given them the greatest piece of ammunition in the nation’s history to crush him and his friends. At the same time though… would America really give up the spoils of her greatest triumph just because we can’t get our act together? What does that say about us?
Lee looked at McClellan, having concealed all these thoughts and emotions behind a neutral façade, and said: “I see the problem general, but I don’t understand how I am supposed to be part of the solution.”
“Can you at least agree that losing all that we gained in Canada would be bad for America?”
“Well… I have to confess, I can see where they are coming from… but we do have the opportunity here to secure our northern border and protect ourselves from the British once and for all.”
“And if we don’t take it?”
“Those people would redeploy their men and guns away from Halifax and New Brunswick to the St. Lawrence cities, expand their fortifications to much greater in-depth defenses, and keep a standing army of 40,000 in Canada until the millennium… not to mention however many irregulars they recruit among the Canadians… (Lee’s brow knots and his voice drops to a low murmur) In response, we would need to build a defensive line of our own to protect New England, New York… (his finger moves through the air as if he is mentally counting states off a map) Ohio… Michigan… Minnesota…”
Lee sits on the step and sighs profoundly.
“General McClellan, I am sorry sir. Having successfully brought the fight to the major Canadian cities, I doubt they would renew the Rush-Bagot treaty. In that case, geography and politics favor the British. From a core along the St. Lawrence, supported by railroads, they could strike anywhere from Portland to Detroit and possibly Milwaukee in the opening stages of a war, then pull back behind nigh impenetrable walls by time we reacted. Since none of those states on the border are going to tolerate the possibility of being burnt to the ground, we would have to build a string of forts of our own, with about 70 to 80,000 men just to staff them all. Add in our other obligations, we would be looking at a permanent army up over 100,000 men.”
“We wouldn’t have to worry about employment then.” McClellan said, grinning.
“We wouldn’t have to worry about money, either. We’d all be taxed unto perdition to pay for it.”
“I thought you supported a larger force?”
“I support a larger force that we can rapidly deploy in response to an enemy’s designs, sir. We would have three-quarters of the army sitting static and useless at all times in this case. Then when it came time to advance, we would take most frightful casualties until we either prevailed or retreated… or they ran out of ammunition.”
“Spoken like an engineer.”
“Thank you, sir. But may I be frank?”
“Of course.”
“We… are victors, and we have earned every right to rest on our laurels. But that does not excuse us from ignoring the changes this war has wrought. America has endured in the isolation that Washington desired for so long because we were a minor power on the fringe of the civilized world. Now that we have proven otherwise, I fear more trouble will come to these shores. We need an actual army, not a bunch of cavalry companies chasing down Indians, and we need to keep abreast of the latest technology, because our defeated opponents will most certainly be now.”
“This about the coconuts?”
“Yes and no. I agree that it’s a ridiculous idea on their use in particular, but we probably should try to investigate how to construct a proper grenade, and an independently firing torpedo, and even better skirmish tactics.”
“And I actually do agree with you. The problem is that is a lot of bucks (rubbing his fingers together for emphasis) that Congress is not going to want to give us. Now if we had Canada; that is a larger tax base that we can get some revenue out of with only a few of your cavalry companies. If not, your proposed army in situ is going to eat up all our budget.”
“I thought it would be easier to move a larger sum into such research if the overall budget is larger.”
“You’d think, but if Congress and future administrations want protection and tiny budgets, they’ll be watching us like vultures. Hell, they already are. You should have seen Secretary Lane when I asked him for another four balloons to fill out the observation corps. Man sized me up for a straightjacket.”
McClellan smiled at the joke, then his face fell again.
“In all seriousness, General Lee, slavery is a serious issue, but I don’t want to lose Canada. Problem is I’m ‘a damnyankee who doesn’t know the first thing about what’s really at stake.’”
“So you want me to support you.”
“They’ll listen to the Hero of Québec… I hope.”
“Let’s try.”
The two men walk up the stairs to the second floor.
Md139115
Banned
Hello all.
This thread is not dead, but it will be on hiatus a little while longer. School and all that. I do have the next three chapters planned out, just don't have the time at present to write them all down.
In the meantime, if there are any questions, please feel free to ask them.
This thread is not dead, but it will be on hiatus a little while longer. School and all that. I do have the next three chapters planned out, just don't have the time at present to write them all down.
In the meantime, if there are any questions, please feel free to ask them.
I like how this has been set up so far; US got to beat up some other nations so slavery issue was once again postponed; Still... South at this point is never going to give up slavery due to their ideological standpoint. Will there be attempts at Southern Expansion to rectify that?
Curious to see how the influx of French Catholics plays out on this.
You've set up a very interesting moral quandary here, watched.
You would need Jamaica, Bermuda, Cuba, Porto-Rico, and large parts of Mexico to maintain Senate balance.
Also the North just gained massive strategic depth. And the main advantage the South had at the beginning of the Civil War, ie the better troops just disappeared with all those new veterans in the North.
Md139115
Banned
True... but the North has suffered seriously from the British blockade and the attack on Boston. In contrast, the South has been badly damaged in its agricultural base (a lot of Deep South plantations have been burnt and slaves freed), but significant investment has been made in Southern railroads and industry (in order to support operations in Mexico and the Gulf). If a Civil War breaks out now, much of the South's logistics issues OTL would not exist.
Yeah but just because the effort might be doomed to fail doesn't mean there wouldn't be voices calling for it or perhaps even an attempt by the administration to at least do some expansion to stave off the impending explosion just a few more years.
You are right, with the campaign along the coast and in Mexico there would have been additional investment. With almost definitely a second 'Springfield Armory' somewhere in the South.
On the other hand all the fort sumter was probably completed with some haste, and it is now fully supplied and stocked.
Oh they will try, and the Brits will love to hand over Cuba instead of Canada.
-But Mexico is off limits as an Ally, for now.
-The North and any Officer with a brain will demand Canada, as will most comon people in the South as it was the big victory.
-Spain hasn't lost badly enough to start handing over territory. They lost men, too many, and maybe an army or two but no territory. So yes they want peace, but they aren't going to hand over Cuba and Porto-Rico. And once the peace deal is signed you can't declare war again for quite a bit.
I thought of a second Louisiana Purchase but then for Cuba, but the Congress(the North) would never go for it. Nor would the Spanish now that blood has been spilled and their honour is involved.
Final thought they could try 'Anschluss' with Mexico, though they would still have to introduce the institution of Slavery to the new lands. Something their freedom fighter Ally and his army might object to.
Eh, if they're holding onto Canada thats at least the beginning of an Ameriwank
Md139115
Banned
Everyone, I'll be honest, I'm not sure if or when I'll be continuing this timeline.
To be fair, although I think there is a good story buried in here, I'm not terribly happy with how the character personalities are coming out, nearly all of them strike me as a little-too dimensional. It also is a bit difficult to write, as each update requires a ton of research.
I also, on a lark, started up an ASB timeline based on the Great Emu War, and have found that that is phenomenally easy to write, to the point where the point where the words are just flying off my fingers onto the page.
I do have the next update about a third of the way done, and was working on an organization chart for the U.S. Army in the recent war, so if I can muster the will to complete them, I probably will.
Just not sure when that will be.
To be fair, although I think there is a good story buried in here, I'm not terribly happy with how the character personalities are coming out, nearly all of them strike me as a little-too dimensional. It also is a bit difficult to write, as each update requires a ton of research.
I also, on a lark, started up an ASB timeline based on the Great Emu War, and have found that that is phenomenally easy to write, to the point where the point where the words are just flying off my fingers onto the page.
I do have the next update about a third of the way done, and was working on an organization chart for the U.S. Army in the recent war, so if I can muster the will to complete them, I probably will.
Just not sure when that will be.
I don't think there's anything bad or wrong about your characterizations. It's your story, they're your characters. As long as they don't do anything completely impossible or totally out of character, it's the reader's problem of not liking the character. I've been in your place before -- just leave it for a bit and let the subconscious percolate. You might come back to it with more ideas and plot than you can handle!
Chapter 3
Md139115
Banned
Well everyone, having finally gotten on Winter Break, I decided this poor timeline of mine needed some love. So, here is the next update, and sparks are going to fly!
Chapter 3: The Executive Mansion, Washington D.C.
July 4, 1865
McClellan and Lee came out in the Clerk to the President's office, just off of the library. Behind the desk sat the clerk, Adlai Stevenson, a fresh faced 30 year old already balding. Leaning against the far wall was President Douglas's 16 year old son Robert. Muffled yelling could be heard from behind the library door.
"General McClellan, how nice to see you again, and General Lee, sir, it is an honor to meet you." Said Stevenson, getting up to shake hands.
"Thank you, the honor is mine. I always wanted to meet the hand that wrote all those letters to me demanding that I rout the enemy without so much as a single splinter wound among our men." Replied Lee.
Adlai blushed. "Sir, I..."
"Relax Mr. Stevenson, very few of the letters were that bad, and I can't hold those that were against you. We all have orders to follow, even if they seem strange or ridiculous. Now, I believe that our presence is expected?"
"It is General, but I would be a bit cautious in your approach..."
"What he means is that no one in there is in a good mood, and very few are in a simply bad mood. We've heard some nasty screaming matches out here, and that was before Joe brought up another dozen bottles of champagne from downstairs." Interjected Robert Douglas.
"Thank you for the warning, but I find it difficult to believe it is as bad as you say," replied Lee, as he took a step to the door.
McClellan put a hand on his shoulder. "Actually General Lee, speaking from experience, in this situation, discretion may be the..."
Suddenly, from behind the door was heard sharp yells and the sound of glass shattering. The four men outside lunged at the door, practically ripping it off its hinges.
The vista that greeted them in the doorframe was as follows: At the head of a large oaken table was standing President Douglas, who had reading spectacles on and looked like he had just been bent over staring at the large map of North America in front of him. The gas lamps reflecting on the windows behind him rather dramatically highlighted the gray streaks in his hair. On the left side of the table was Vice President Breckenridge, who was staring in rage down the table with his hand clenched around a half full goblet of champagne, Secretary of the Treasury Herschel Johnson, a large, portly mutton-chopped man who was looking shocked around the room with bloodshot eyes, and Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory, a reedy, luxuriously bearded man who was just staring at the door with a half-grin that clearly indicated that he had had far too much champagne. On the right side of the table, opposite their Southern counterparts, sat Secretary of State Horatio Seymour, who was just shaking his head in horror, Attorney General Edwin Stanton, who had turned bright red and seemed about ready to spontaneously combust, and Postmaster General Horatio King, who was just sitting there, impeccably dolled up, with a reserved, pursed frown on his face, as though he had just been told that one of his horses would have to be put down. What the whole room was focused on was the other end of the table, closest to the door. There on the left was a sitting Jefferson Davis, bright red in the face, hair matted and suit stained by a great draught of sherry, with the remains of the crystal goblet the sherry had been in moments before in his lap. On the right was the Secretary of the Interior, Joseph Holt, who was standing in a fiery rage and curiously seemed to be missing a crystal goblet in front of him.
Davis turned to see the newcomers to the room, put a very tight smile on his face, and in a clenched voice said:
“General McClellan, how nice to see you, and General Lee! How wonderful it is to see you! Tell me, how would you feel about serving as my second…”
Holt bellowed: “IF WE’RE DOING THIS, I DEMAND PISTOLS AT TEN PACES!”
“ENOUGHHHHH!!!!” screamed Douglas from the end of the table slamming his hand down for emphasis. “NO DUELS, NOT NOW, NOT EVER! Goddamn you all, this is supposed to be the U.S. government, not a bunch of feckless baboons!” He looked up at the newcomers. To Lee, the look in his eyes was astounding. He had only seen it once before after Cerro Gordo, when a private missing his jaw had looked like that at anyone who might be kind enough to put a bullet in his brain.
No one said anything for about three seconds. Breckenridge finally broke the silence.
“Regardless of what some of the men in here are, the fact remains. Take Canada, you lose the South. Simple as that.”
“Why are you making these threats?!” said King.
“I’m not making threats! I don’t want this to happen! Of course I want a world where everything from the North Pole to the Rio Grande is under the Stars and Stripes, but IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!”
Seymour looked across the table at Breckenridge. “But why not? Just because Canada is north of Missouri doesn’t automatically mean it would become dozens of free states. At best, we’d get two or three free states out of it right now, and the rest would be territories, and as I recall, Dred Scott said that anyone can take their slaves into any territory of the United States without any problems. If we want to get technical, it’s entirely possible that all Canada west of Hudson Bay could become slave states!”
“Hah!” yelled Johnson. “Horatio, if you believe that, then there’s a nice little property called the Taj Mahal I’d like to sell you!”
“You know, Secretary Seymour,” this from Stanton, who instead of looking at Seymour was staring down the Vice President, “he is right. There is no way that any sort of labor-intensive farming is possible in the cold Canadian wilderness. Come to think of it, you could say the same about the Dakotas or the Rockies, and from all the reports on the utter hell that is Arizona crossing my desk, I very much doubt that you can farm there either. I daresay the only territories left in the whole country right now that you could use slaves in are Nebraska, Colorado, and the Indian Territory. That’s a lot of land that will eventually become free states anyway…”
Breckenridge jumped up out of his seat to say something, but before he could, Davis yelled down from his end of the table: “Hold on now! Before we go for round 4 or 5 or whatever we’re at now, we might as well entertain the two generals who we dragged from the party to be here.”
Douglas, with some small look of relief crossing his face, said “Yes, yes, of course. Adlai, Robert, thank you, that’ll be all. General McClellan, General Lee, please join us.” And with that, he walked over to a mound of books by the far window, and managed to liberate two chairs from underneath of them, setting them besides his. Lee and McClellan graciously took the seats, and Adlai and Robert left, trying to close the door behind them. Drinks were offered; Lee declined and McClellan took a small brandy.
“So, General Lee,” said Douglas, “you were in Québec for a good two months. Is there anything you can tell us about the Québécois that might be useful? For instance, is there a nationalist movement that we could set up as a puppet state of some kind? “
“There is, or at least there was, a couple of years ago. To be honest though, from the few discussions on that topic I had with those people that chose to stay behind in the city, it sort of died out when the British promised at the end of this war to unite East and West Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia into a single Canadian dominion with its own government and parliament. One gentlemen actually told me that it would be akin to the British deciding to agree to all our demands in 1775. Honestly, I’m worried that any nationalist movement would be against us if we do not bring them into the union.”
“So any puppet state…”
“Would probably be more under the control of London or Paris than here. The only way you can secure our northern borders, gentlemen, would be by bringing the country under our control and allowing millions of Americans to move there. They would rapidly outnumber the natives and we would easily assimilate them. Let them stay independent or part of Britain, and you just guarantee a hostile foe sitting to our north, constantly poised to strike all the towns along the Great Lakes.”
“What if we let Britain keep it, but demand that all its fortifications be torn down and no new fortifications or standing army be kept there?” replied Johnson.
“You cannot stop Canadians from owning guns, you cannot stop them from forming “hunting clubs,” you cannot guarantee that they aren’t hiding a few cannon or barrels of gunpowder under some barns in the countryside, and there is honestly no point at all in tearing down the existing fortifications because with maybe the exception of London or Halifax, there is no Canadian city whose defenses are not already based around the tremendous natural fortifications the Creator chose to endow them with.
Lee sat back, then raised his eyebrows as an idea came to him.
“Actually, come to think of it, you can force them to tear down their walls, but you cannot stop them from deciding to build 30 foot tall row homes on top of the old foundations that just magically happen to have 10 foot thick loadbearing walls.
My point is, Mr. Secretary, anyone with intelligence can, with adequate preparation, either use Canada as a springboard to attack Detroit or Buffalo, or hold the country long enough for tens of thousands of troops from Britain to arrive. This was not appreciated on either side suitably prior to the recent conflict, but it certainly is now. From this day forward, if you want to take any city in Canada, you would have to do so within two weeks of hostilities beginning, otherwise, trying would cost you tens of thousands of American lives. Look at what happened to me. I had the advantage of surprise, and I still lost around 15,000 men.”
“Damn it.”
Davis spoke up, “So then you advise us to take it in the negotiations?”
“From a purely military standpoint, yes, I do. However, I was under the impression that our diplomatic party was already embarked for Lisbon.”
Seymour replied: “You’re right, they are. But the British have graciously allowed us to use the transatlantic cable to Halifax they laid last year. Now obviously they’re listening in, so we can’t send anything more than a basic reply, but Secretary Mallory (nodding in his direction) has been kind enough to detail the Wampanoag...”
“FASTEST DAMN SHIP ON EARTH SHE IS! 18 knots under full sail and steam and ain’t nothing on earth comes close! Why if I had her and her sisters three years ago, I would have sank every damn British ship afloat and stolen the queen’s crown from London itself!” yelled Mallory, jumping out of his seat. The rest kept on smiling at him until he finally sat back down with a ludicrous grin stuck on his face.
“Anyhow… with the Wampanoag running messages between here and Lisbon, we can keep abreast of what is going on in the talks and send instructions accordingly. If everything is timed right, as in we get the details of a proposal from them on the cable and she happens to be in port here ready to go, we can get a detailed list of instructions and replies to Ambassador Morgan and the rest of the party in 8 or 9 days. It works so well that the Mexicans have posted some officers from their navy to her to ferry over their communications, with our permission of course.”
“Shame we cannot just send a coded message back by telegraph.”
“That was one of Britain’s rules. No coded messages.”
“Hmmm.”
“Back to the issue…” said Davis. “Without Canada, we are going to be living in fear of invasion from the north, but with Canada, the Union splits apart. Can we possibly gain Canada, or at least a significant chunk of it, and some territory to our south to balance things out?”
“Believe me, I’ve tried!” said Seymour. “Juarez doesn’t want to sell anything with the possible exception of the Baja Peninsula, Spain has made quite clear that it is not parting with any territory, and we can’t reasonably claim it, and France would empty our whole damn treasury just for Martinique or Guadeloupe. The only real way is to trade what we won in Canada for British territory elsewhere, and the blasted Brits are treating Canada as an all-or-nothing deal!”
“What do you mean?”
“Well if we take only East Canada, then they’ll give us everything else since they can’t defend the lot without Québec. If we only take West Canada and let them keep East Canada, then they’ll just give us all of Rupert’s Land and British Columbia and everything else to the west since they still can’t defend it. If we take just New Brunswick, then they have to give us Nova Scotia as well, and vice versa.
Look, the damned-a-thousand-times-over Brits are seeing what just happened as some sort of duel of honor that they lost clearly and fairly. They fully expect to be signing over all of Canada to us and are going to think that our attempts to trade bits and pieces of it are flat-out ridiculous. They’re also canny enough to know that this is going to seriously mess up our domestic affairs, and are probably going to leak to the press that they offered it all to us and we refused if we try any funny business.”
McClellan looked at Seymour strangely: “Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, sir, I find it really hard to believe that the British actually want to hand off one of their largest colonial dominions to us.”
“Well of course they don’t really want to, but Palmerston’s death and the collapse of the government sort of took the wind out of their sails a little.”
All eyes turned towards Lee, who smiled bashfully. As the story went, on the morning of April 12th, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal had just sat down for the morning debate when the messenger bearing the news of Quebec’s fall burst into the chamber. The moment the Prime Minister read it, he apparently suffered a fatal heart attack on the spot; allegedly directly across the aisle from the spot where his predecessor had his mortal stroke some 87 years prior.
“But you are right in that the British will attempt to hold onto Canada, just that they are going to drive a hard bargain for us and make it so that we pay. Keep in mind that if we don’t take it, or are perceived as not getting the full value of it, we’ll still have problems, this time from the North.”
Davis leaned in: “So then what IS the value of Canada? Money-wise?”
Breckenridge looked at his fellow Southerner: “I like where you’re going with this, Davis. The hand of war fell harshly on both North and South alike. If we make the British pay to get Canada back, in addition to our already extant claims for damages on the high seas and coastal raids, that’s going to be a truly substantial sum of money, more than enough to stabilize our debts, give the dollar some backing again, and get our economy back on track.”
Johnson joined in: “Heck, we can even use it to establish a giant compensation fund for all those Americans to have suffered damages. The Bostonian and Mississippian alike can use it for their rebuilding, and almost all that wealth is going to go into the hands of our craftsmen and industries, spreading around the benefits to the whole country!”
Lee was about to say something, but Stanton beat him to it: “Wait… wait… wait… let me get this straight. You hold Canada in your hands, and you want to sell it b-b-BACK TO THE BRITISH?!! DEAR G-D, MAN! YOU HAVE HERE A CHANCE THAT WILL NEVER COME AGAIN IN OUR LIFETIMES! THE WHOLE CONTINENT UNITED! THE WHOLE G-D--N F----ING CONTINENT UNITED AND YOU’RE GOING TO THROW IT AWAY FOR SOME MONEY?!!!!
“WE CAN’T HOLD ON TO IT!”
“WE CAN’T HOLD ON WITHOUT IT! GOOD G-D, DO YOU SERIOUSLY THINK THAT THE NORTH IS GOING TO FORGIVE ANY OF US IF WE TRADE AWAY THEIR SAFETY!”
“IT WAS NEVER PART OF THE PLAN TO TAKE CANADA! ALL WE WANTED WAS CUBA AND THE BAHAMAS!” screamed Breckenridge.
President Douglas moved to speak, but Lee spoke first: “Gentlemen! Honored gentlemen, please! I’m sorry, but I have to ask, if the plan was not to take Canada, then why send so many troops north? Why approve my mission?”
Breckenridge looked at Lee with raised eyebrows and tight lips. “Well, General Lee, I was hoping I’d get a chance to ask you about that, you see (pulling out a bounded document from a pile of papers before him), I have here a copy of your proposal. I’d like to draw your attention to your proposed objective, specifically these sentences: ‘It is my belief that these maneuvers will enable us to find and occupy a solid defensive position between the British Expeditionary Force and their base of supply. If this is achieved, I intend to, if practicable, defeat the British forces in the field, and lay siege to the city of Québec.’ Now General Lee, I have one question for you…”
Breckenridge leaned forward with an angry stare. He must have been a terrifying lawyer in court, Lee thought.
“What exactly do those words ‘if practicable’ mean in your mind? Because to any normal, sensible person, they mean ‘I’m going to cautiously and prudently move forward, and if a good opportunity arises without an extreme amount of risk, I’ll take it,’ and not ‘I’m going to charge headlong into the most insane military position in history, risking the complete annihilation of half my men in the process, all on some hope that my opponent has taken complete leave of his senses!’”
Lee sat there, stunned; for that matter, so was the rest of the room. Holt finally spoke up: “Well… it worked, didn’t it?”
“Yep, and now we have the most monumental clusterf—k in the history of American politics on our hands.”
“I told you this was gonna end badly,” drawled Mallory. “I told you all that there was no way in Hell we could beat the Spanish Armada, let alone the whole g-damn Royal Navy and git those islands! But noooooo! You had to ignore me and push ahead with your damn plans to spark this damn war! Ya happy now?!”
The table was silent for half a second too long for Lee’s peace of mind.
“Gentlemen… what does he mean by ‘your plans to spark this war?’”
McClellan looked at him with shock then growing horror. The rest of the table suddenly refused to make eye contact…
Chapter 3: The Executive Mansion, Washington D.C.
July 4, 1865
McClellan and Lee came out in the Clerk to the President's office, just off of the library. Behind the desk sat the clerk, Adlai Stevenson, a fresh faced 30 year old already balding. Leaning against the far wall was President Douglas's 16 year old son Robert. Muffled yelling could be heard from behind the library door.
"General McClellan, how nice to see you again, and General Lee, sir, it is an honor to meet you." Said Stevenson, getting up to shake hands.
"Thank you, the honor is mine. I always wanted to meet the hand that wrote all those letters to me demanding that I rout the enemy without so much as a single splinter wound among our men." Replied Lee.
Adlai blushed. "Sir, I..."
"Relax Mr. Stevenson, very few of the letters were that bad, and I can't hold those that were against you. We all have orders to follow, even if they seem strange or ridiculous. Now, I believe that our presence is expected?"
"It is General, but I would be a bit cautious in your approach..."
"What he means is that no one in there is in a good mood, and very few are in a simply bad mood. We've heard some nasty screaming matches out here, and that was before Joe brought up another dozen bottles of champagne from downstairs." Interjected Robert Douglas.
"Thank you for the warning, but I find it difficult to believe it is as bad as you say," replied Lee, as he took a step to the door.
McClellan put a hand on his shoulder. "Actually General Lee, speaking from experience, in this situation, discretion may be the..."
Suddenly, from behind the door was heard sharp yells and the sound of glass shattering. The four men outside lunged at the door, practically ripping it off its hinges.
The vista that greeted them in the doorframe was as follows: At the head of a large oaken table was standing President Douglas, who had reading spectacles on and looked like he had just been bent over staring at the large map of North America in front of him. The gas lamps reflecting on the windows behind him rather dramatically highlighted the gray streaks in his hair. On the left side of the table was Vice President Breckenridge, who was staring in rage down the table with his hand clenched around a half full goblet of champagne, Secretary of the Treasury Herschel Johnson, a large, portly mutton-chopped man who was looking shocked around the room with bloodshot eyes, and Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory, a reedy, luxuriously bearded man who was just staring at the door with a half-grin that clearly indicated that he had had far too much champagne. On the right side of the table, opposite their Southern counterparts, sat Secretary of State Horatio Seymour, who was just shaking his head in horror, Attorney General Edwin Stanton, who had turned bright red and seemed about ready to spontaneously combust, and Postmaster General Horatio King, who was just sitting there, impeccably dolled up, with a reserved, pursed frown on his face, as though he had just been told that one of his horses would have to be put down. What the whole room was focused on was the other end of the table, closest to the door. There on the left was a sitting Jefferson Davis, bright red in the face, hair matted and suit stained by a great draught of sherry, with the remains of the crystal goblet the sherry had been in moments before in his lap. On the right was the Secretary of the Interior, Joseph Holt, who was standing in a fiery rage and curiously seemed to be missing a crystal goblet in front of him.
Davis turned to see the newcomers to the room, put a very tight smile on his face, and in a clenched voice said:
“General McClellan, how nice to see you, and General Lee! How wonderful it is to see you! Tell me, how would you feel about serving as my second…”
Holt bellowed: “IF WE’RE DOING THIS, I DEMAND PISTOLS AT TEN PACES!”
“ENOUGHHHHH!!!!” screamed Douglas from the end of the table slamming his hand down for emphasis. “NO DUELS, NOT NOW, NOT EVER! Goddamn you all, this is supposed to be the U.S. government, not a bunch of feckless baboons!” He looked up at the newcomers. To Lee, the look in his eyes was astounding. He had only seen it once before after Cerro Gordo, when a private missing his jaw had looked like that at anyone who might be kind enough to put a bullet in his brain.
No one said anything for about three seconds. Breckenridge finally broke the silence.
“Regardless of what some of the men in here are, the fact remains. Take Canada, you lose the South. Simple as that.”
“Why are you making these threats?!” said King.
“I’m not making threats! I don’t want this to happen! Of course I want a world where everything from the North Pole to the Rio Grande is under the Stars and Stripes, but IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!”
Seymour looked across the table at Breckenridge. “But why not? Just because Canada is north of Missouri doesn’t automatically mean it would become dozens of free states. At best, we’d get two or three free states out of it right now, and the rest would be territories, and as I recall, Dred Scott said that anyone can take their slaves into any territory of the United States without any problems. If we want to get technical, it’s entirely possible that all Canada west of Hudson Bay could become slave states!”
“Hah!” yelled Johnson. “Horatio, if you believe that, then there’s a nice little property called the Taj Mahal I’d like to sell you!”
“You know, Secretary Seymour,” this from Stanton, who instead of looking at Seymour was staring down the Vice President, “he is right. There is no way that any sort of labor-intensive farming is possible in the cold Canadian wilderness. Come to think of it, you could say the same about the Dakotas or the Rockies, and from all the reports on the utter hell that is Arizona crossing my desk, I very much doubt that you can farm there either. I daresay the only territories left in the whole country right now that you could use slaves in are Nebraska, Colorado, and the Indian Territory. That’s a lot of land that will eventually become free states anyway…”
Breckenridge jumped up out of his seat to say something, but before he could, Davis yelled down from his end of the table: “Hold on now! Before we go for round 4 or 5 or whatever we’re at now, we might as well entertain the two generals who we dragged from the party to be here.”
Douglas, with some small look of relief crossing his face, said “Yes, yes, of course. Adlai, Robert, thank you, that’ll be all. General McClellan, General Lee, please join us.” And with that, he walked over to a mound of books by the far window, and managed to liberate two chairs from underneath of them, setting them besides his. Lee and McClellan graciously took the seats, and Adlai and Robert left, trying to close the door behind them. Drinks were offered; Lee declined and McClellan took a small brandy.
“So, General Lee,” said Douglas, “you were in Québec for a good two months. Is there anything you can tell us about the Québécois that might be useful? For instance, is there a nationalist movement that we could set up as a puppet state of some kind? “
“There is, or at least there was, a couple of years ago. To be honest though, from the few discussions on that topic I had with those people that chose to stay behind in the city, it sort of died out when the British promised at the end of this war to unite East and West Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia into a single Canadian dominion with its own government and parliament. One gentlemen actually told me that it would be akin to the British deciding to agree to all our demands in 1775. Honestly, I’m worried that any nationalist movement would be against us if we do not bring them into the union.”
“So any puppet state…”
“Would probably be more under the control of London or Paris than here. The only way you can secure our northern borders, gentlemen, would be by bringing the country under our control and allowing millions of Americans to move there. They would rapidly outnumber the natives and we would easily assimilate them. Let them stay independent or part of Britain, and you just guarantee a hostile foe sitting to our north, constantly poised to strike all the towns along the Great Lakes.”
“What if we let Britain keep it, but demand that all its fortifications be torn down and no new fortifications or standing army be kept there?” replied Johnson.
“You cannot stop Canadians from owning guns, you cannot stop them from forming “hunting clubs,” you cannot guarantee that they aren’t hiding a few cannon or barrels of gunpowder under some barns in the countryside, and there is honestly no point at all in tearing down the existing fortifications because with maybe the exception of London or Halifax, there is no Canadian city whose defenses are not already based around the tremendous natural fortifications the Creator chose to endow them with.
Lee sat back, then raised his eyebrows as an idea came to him.
“Actually, come to think of it, you can force them to tear down their walls, but you cannot stop them from deciding to build 30 foot tall row homes on top of the old foundations that just magically happen to have 10 foot thick loadbearing walls.
My point is, Mr. Secretary, anyone with intelligence can, with adequate preparation, either use Canada as a springboard to attack Detroit or Buffalo, or hold the country long enough for tens of thousands of troops from Britain to arrive. This was not appreciated on either side suitably prior to the recent conflict, but it certainly is now. From this day forward, if you want to take any city in Canada, you would have to do so within two weeks of hostilities beginning, otherwise, trying would cost you tens of thousands of American lives. Look at what happened to me. I had the advantage of surprise, and I still lost around 15,000 men.”
“Damn it.”
Davis spoke up, “So then you advise us to take it in the negotiations?”
“From a purely military standpoint, yes, I do. However, I was under the impression that our diplomatic party was already embarked for Lisbon.”
Seymour replied: “You’re right, they are. But the British have graciously allowed us to use the transatlantic cable to Halifax they laid last year. Now obviously they’re listening in, so we can’t send anything more than a basic reply, but Secretary Mallory (nodding in his direction) has been kind enough to detail the Wampanoag...”
“FASTEST DAMN SHIP ON EARTH SHE IS! 18 knots under full sail and steam and ain’t nothing on earth comes close! Why if I had her and her sisters three years ago, I would have sank every damn British ship afloat and stolen the queen’s crown from London itself!” yelled Mallory, jumping out of his seat. The rest kept on smiling at him until he finally sat back down with a ludicrous grin stuck on his face.
“Anyhow… with the Wampanoag running messages between here and Lisbon, we can keep abreast of what is going on in the talks and send instructions accordingly. If everything is timed right, as in we get the details of a proposal from them on the cable and she happens to be in port here ready to go, we can get a detailed list of instructions and replies to Ambassador Morgan and the rest of the party in 8 or 9 days. It works so well that the Mexicans have posted some officers from their navy to her to ferry over their communications, with our permission of course.”
“Shame we cannot just send a coded message back by telegraph.”
“That was one of Britain’s rules. No coded messages.”
“Hmmm.”
“Back to the issue…” said Davis. “Without Canada, we are going to be living in fear of invasion from the north, but with Canada, the Union splits apart. Can we possibly gain Canada, or at least a significant chunk of it, and some territory to our south to balance things out?”
“Believe me, I’ve tried!” said Seymour. “Juarez doesn’t want to sell anything with the possible exception of the Baja Peninsula, Spain has made quite clear that it is not parting with any territory, and we can’t reasonably claim it, and France would empty our whole damn treasury just for Martinique or Guadeloupe. The only real way is to trade what we won in Canada for British territory elsewhere, and the blasted Brits are treating Canada as an all-or-nothing deal!”
“What do you mean?”
“Well if we take only East Canada, then they’ll give us everything else since they can’t defend the lot without Québec. If we only take West Canada and let them keep East Canada, then they’ll just give us all of Rupert’s Land and British Columbia and everything else to the west since they still can’t defend it. If we take just New Brunswick, then they have to give us Nova Scotia as well, and vice versa.
Look, the damned-a-thousand-times-over Brits are seeing what just happened as some sort of duel of honor that they lost clearly and fairly. They fully expect to be signing over all of Canada to us and are going to think that our attempts to trade bits and pieces of it are flat-out ridiculous. They’re also canny enough to know that this is going to seriously mess up our domestic affairs, and are probably going to leak to the press that they offered it all to us and we refused if we try any funny business.”
McClellan looked at Seymour strangely: “Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, sir, I find it really hard to believe that the British actually want to hand off one of their largest colonial dominions to us.”
“Well of course they don’t really want to, but Palmerston’s death and the collapse of the government sort of took the wind out of their sails a little.”
All eyes turned towards Lee, who smiled bashfully. As the story went, on the morning of April 12th, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal had just sat down for the morning debate when the messenger bearing the news of Quebec’s fall burst into the chamber. The moment the Prime Minister read it, he apparently suffered a fatal heart attack on the spot; allegedly directly across the aisle from the spot where his predecessor had his mortal stroke some 87 years prior.
“But you are right in that the British will attempt to hold onto Canada, just that they are going to drive a hard bargain for us and make it so that we pay. Keep in mind that if we don’t take it, or are perceived as not getting the full value of it, we’ll still have problems, this time from the North.”
Davis leaned in: “So then what IS the value of Canada? Money-wise?”
Breckenridge looked at his fellow Southerner: “I like where you’re going with this, Davis. The hand of war fell harshly on both North and South alike. If we make the British pay to get Canada back, in addition to our already extant claims for damages on the high seas and coastal raids, that’s going to be a truly substantial sum of money, more than enough to stabilize our debts, give the dollar some backing again, and get our economy back on track.”
Johnson joined in: “Heck, we can even use it to establish a giant compensation fund for all those Americans to have suffered damages. The Bostonian and Mississippian alike can use it for their rebuilding, and almost all that wealth is going to go into the hands of our craftsmen and industries, spreading around the benefits to the whole country!”
Lee was about to say something, but Stanton beat him to it: “Wait… wait… wait… let me get this straight. You hold Canada in your hands, and you want to sell it b-b-BACK TO THE BRITISH?!! DEAR G-D, MAN! YOU HAVE HERE A CHANCE THAT WILL NEVER COME AGAIN IN OUR LIFETIMES! THE WHOLE CONTINENT UNITED! THE WHOLE G-D--N F----ING CONTINENT UNITED AND YOU’RE GOING TO THROW IT AWAY FOR SOME MONEY?!!!!
“WE CAN’T HOLD ON TO IT!”
“WE CAN’T HOLD ON WITHOUT IT! GOOD G-D, DO YOU SERIOUSLY THINK THAT THE NORTH IS GOING TO FORGIVE ANY OF US IF WE TRADE AWAY THEIR SAFETY!”
“IT WAS NEVER PART OF THE PLAN TO TAKE CANADA! ALL WE WANTED WAS CUBA AND THE BAHAMAS!” screamed Breckenridge.
President Douglas moved to speak, but Lee spoke first: “Gentlemen! Honored gentlemen, please! I’m sorry, but I have to ask, if the plan was not to take Canada, then why send so many troops north? Why approve my mission?”
Breckenridge looked at Lee with raised eyebrows and tight lips. “Well, General Lee, I was hoping I’d get a chance to ask you about that, you see (pulling out a bounded document from a pile of papers before him), I have here a copy of your proposal. I’d like to draw your attention to your proposed objective, specifically these sentences: ‘It is my belief that these maneuvers will enable us to find and occupy a solid defensive position between the British Expeditionary Force and their base of supply. If this is achieved, I intend to, if practicable, defeat the British forces in the field, and lay siege to the city of Québec.’ Now General Lee, I have one question for you…”
Breckenridge leaned forward with an angry stare. He must have been a terrifying lawyer in court, Lee thought.
“What exactly do those words ‘if practicable’ mean in your mind? Because to any normal, sensible person, they mean ‘I’m going to cautiously and prudently move forward, and if a good opportunity arises without an extreme amount of risk, I’ll take it,’ and not ‘I’m going to charge headlong into the most insane military position in history, risking the complete annihilation of half my men in the process, all on some hope that my opponent has taken complete leave of his senses!’”
Lee sat there, stunned; for that matter, so was the rest of the room. Holt finally spoke up: “Well… it worked, didn’t it?”
“Yep, and now we have the most monumental clusterf—k in the history of American politics on our hands.”
“I told you this was gonna end badly,” drawled Mallory. “I told you all that there was no way in Hell we could beat the Spanish Armada, let alone the whole g-damn Royal Navy and git those islands! But noooooo! You had to ignore me and push ahead with your damn plans to spark this damn war! Ya happy now?!”
The table was silent for half a second too long for Lee’s peace of mind.
“Gentlemen… what does he mean by ‘your plans to spark this war?’”
McClellan looked at him with shock then growing horror. The rest of the table suddenly refused to make eye contact…
Ooops, Lee is going to be pissed as hell now. First you accuse him of exceeding his orders and squandering his men, and then you reveal that it was you that started the fight in the first place.