TL-191 WI: More resistance against Featherston?

What if Jake Featherston is less of a direct analogue to Hitler, and actually faced more political opposition on his rise to the Confederacy, perhaps leading to a Confederate civil war rather than a united CSA waging war on the U.S.?

Huey Long's Louisiana definitely springs to mind, if he hadn't been assassinated it'd be interesting to see an AUS-type state going against the Freedom Party. Maybe he calls his Longist militia his "Minutemen"?

Maybe Willy Knight and his faction within the Stalwart Squads puts up a greater fight?

Any other possible figures in the books? Or maybe real life historical Southron figures at the time who would oppose the Freedom Party? Maybe Doroteo Arango, who's still alive in this timeline, and his followers and other Hispano-Confederados might retain control of the former Mexican states and ally with Long's Louisiana against Richmond? And then Cuba would just secede on its own.

Interesting thought. I wondered the same thing - especially since the CSA is, as a nation, a very different beast to Germany. And its people are quite different too...

Funnily enough, while I didn't have that chain of events happen, in my TL-191.5 continuation, I had a rift develop after the war. Basically, neo-Confederate diehards fight the Union in terrorist actions, but they're divided badly between neo-Freedomites and 'old Confederates', who blame Jake Featherston for losing the war and the country in one fell swoop (basically, 'if'n it wasn't for Featherston we'd still be free!'). So they end up fighting each other as much as the Union.

Do the Rad Libs stage a comeback in your continuation? Long's legacy will be seen as a positive one, as he was probably the only prominent anti-Freedom Party figure during that era.

Cuba especially seems like a logical place to fight Featherston; race lines don't exactly hold there, the place doesn't really have anything to avenge after the Great War, and the C.S.A. navy is fairly moribund. Really, you'd think a logical thing for the U.S.A to do come the second war would be cut it off from the Confederacy navally and get it to rebel.

Strategos' Risk said:

Do the Rad Libs stage a comeback in your continuation? Long's legacy will be seen as a positive one, as he was probably the only prominent anti-Freedom Party figure during that era.

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There's a gradual movement to let the South back into the Union iced the 50s and 60s, but military rule gets re asserted after a particularly violent uprising called the 'Years of Hate'. Now, though, the South is - carefully - being normalised. The Rad Lib strongholds in Sonora, Chihuahua and Cuba become Socialist strongholds - they're the only former CSA States that didn't rise up.

Longist Louisiana would be a cool counterweight against Featherston's ambitions. Having Huey Long get snuffed out before his prime as in OTL is disappointing. Suppose also Willy Knight doesn't try his half-cocked assassination plot against Featherston, and instead retreats back to Texas (home of the original Redemption League) and rallies ex-League Stalwarts there. So now you have the western C.S. in opposition against the Richmond regime, not necessarily allied to each other, but as cobelligerents.

confederate civil war

Than it could turn into a confederate civil war. It could also bring out anyone who's opposed to Featherston, and maybe bring him down.

The is always the black Marxist they could have pulled more a effective resistance I think they had arms and training and people willing to fund them in the usa.

rob2001 said:

Than it could turn into a confederate civil war. It could also bring out anyone who's opposed to Featherston, and maybe bring him down.

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Maybe a Yugoslavia-like breakdown between Featherston's Freedomites, Willy Knight's Redemptionists, the Whigs, Radical Liberals, and Blacks.

Strategos' Risk said:

Longist Louisiana would be a cool counterweight against Featherston's ambitions. Having Huey Long get snuffed out before his prime as in OTL is disappointing.

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Well, Turtledove retold WW2 so events leading up to it had to be retold as well....

aktarian said:

Well, Turtledove retold WW2 so events leading up to it had to be retold as well....

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Yeah, I know. Which is cause for an AH! And also in it Willy Knight ends up being less of an obvious parallel to Rohm.

Gaius Julius Magnus said:

Maybe a Yugoslavia-like breakdown between Featherston's Freedomites, Willy Knight's Redemptionists, the Whigs, Radical Liberals, and Blacks.

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Sounds like a solid premise for an AH! Except I don't the Whigs would get anywhere. Rad Libs would be mostly Longist Louisiana + I guess the Kingfish might get crafty and send arms to Hispano-Confederate Rad Lib holdouts in the former Mexican states and to Cuba. Heck, he might even fund the black revolutionaries, why not. Which will make it ever more entertaining once Redemptionist Texas tries to invade. Really entertaining what the Yankees (and heck, even the Mexicans) might do.