Dixie Forever: A Timeline
- Thread starter JJohnson
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I wonder if the Confederacy has pursued a state sponsored military industrial program? I'd imagine that if they win later in the war like here than they'd realize the importance of having a large arms industry and the government could sponsor the creation of arsenals and powder factories. Going by historical examples, I'd imagine Confederate organization would be a lot more centralized with one big powder factory as opposed to several smaller ones.
Chapter 39: The Serbian Spark for the Great War
JJohnson
Banned
The Serbian Spark
Again, in mid-1912, Serbia was moving into Albania and Russia was doing nothing to restrain it, while the Serbian government would not guarantee to respect Albania's territorial integrity, and suggested there be some frontier modifications. In June the council of ministers was sent an ultimatum: Germany and the United Kingdom would be notified of their actions and be asked for support if the Serbians didn't withdraw. As a show of unity and strength, the Austrians sent their chancellor, Karl von Stürgkh, and Germany's Foreign Minister, Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter in an open-top automobile into Bosnia, touring the city, then into the claimed Albanian territory. The Archduchess Elisabeth Amalie, daughter of Archduke Karl Ludwig, decided to join them, telling her four children goodbye, and that she was going on a little trip through the empire.
The ultimatum worked and the Serbians withdrew, but a young Serbian named Gavrilo Princip and six of his co-conspirators was not going to cooperate. So the German-Austrian group was making their trip into a congratulatory lap in Albania, before returning through Sarajevo.
Latin bridge, where the conspirators shot the victims
On June 28th, the trio were in Sarajevo when the six conspirators lined the route, and made their move. Elisabeth Amalie was shot first, then Karl, and finally Alfred, twice. The driver was hit in his right arm, but managed to speed off to the hospital to try to save the three. Princip and his conspirators were caught within the next 48 hours, and headlines around Europe relayed the news.
US Presidents
While Grover Cleveland lost his second election to Benjamin Harrison, he won re-election against him, becoming the only non-consecutively elected President in the US. After his election, McKinley won election in 1900 handily against the Democrat William Jennings Bryan, and began implementing his agenda. His ticket was aided by the addition of a man named Theodore Roosevelt, a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy and hero of the Philippine War, a rising Republican star.
The United States began allowing African-Confederate immigration to the north to help fill factory jobs, where they could earn a slightly higher wage than was customary in the Confederacy, leading to black emigration to Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh, while New York, especially New York City, refused to allow blacks into the state, as did New England. Under McKinley, anti-lynching laws from a renewed Loyal League, which was against black immigration into the United States, were passed. During the Philippine War, McKinley ordered the War Department to commission black officers above the rank of lieutenant under pressure from black leaders in the US. McKinley would visit Confederate memorials in the Confederate States and was received well by black Confederates, and his visits were considered instrumental in providing social pressure in the south to cause the passage of the third amendment to the Confederate Constitution, which said "The right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude by any Confederate State." Its passage in 1905 was a milestone in the Confederacy, though states in the Deep South (GA, SC, AL, MS) would make efforts to use other means to deny the right to vote, some states, notably Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, and New Mexico would allow black voting.
McKinley's administration would finally see Utah become a state in 1902. The United States would begin its Open Door Policy, to revive the American economy, and the US would send troops in to the Boxer Rebellion to aid the European powers.
US Troops in China in Peking
McKinley's term of office would be cut short in 1903 when he was shot by a Polish-American communist/socialist (depending on the paper reporting), Leon Czolgosz, in September 21, at the twice delayed Pan-American Exposition.
McKinley's assassination
Due to this, Vice-President Roosevelt became President in September 1903. McKinley's term is often marked as the end of the post-war Republican dominance, as the rising Progressive Party began siphoning votes from both Democrats and Republicans at this point, forcing both parties to try to adopt Progressive policies to win votes back. Grover Cleveland's Bourbon Democrats were a growing part of the Democrats, but would be shut out of the party following the nomination of William Jennings Bryan and his faction of the party.
Soon, in 1904, the Republicans would face three challenger parties - the Progressives, the Democrats, and the Conservative Party. Roosevelt would win in 1904, largely on personal popularity and sympathy for McKinley, but his second election would be less sure from the Republican part, but he managed to gain enough votes to get the nomination and win by a large margin in the north, though he would soon leave the Republican party after election and join the Progressive Party, as the progressive vote was largely responsible for his election this time.
McKinley's election was secured at 296-13 in the electoral college, while Roosevelt's in 1904 was 295-14 (West Virginia and Maryland dissenting). In 1908, with Progressives and Conservatives in the play, Roosevelt won all but five states. It was in 1912 that he would lose. Woodrow Wilson, a progressive whose family moved out of the Confederacy for Maryland in 1865, captured the Democrat platform and quite a lot of progressive votes with his platform. Roosevelt had chosen La Follette as his successor; he might have chosen Taft, but he was picked to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and was quite happily serving as Chief Justice. When La Follette's campaign seemed to be wavering from Roosevelt's more progressive views, TR threw his hat in the ring for an unprecedented third term under the Progressive Party.
Aside from Republicans and Democrats, Progressives, Conservatives, and even Social Democrats (with Eugene Debs as their candidate) would campaign for the Presidency. The Social Democrats would use the image and later writings of Abraham Lincoln as their cause and campaigned on bringing socialist programs like welfare in from Germany, and would campaign on bringing the Confederacy back into the Union even at gunpoint if necessary, but the image of Lincoln still hadn't recovered, and not even Roger Ransom, their VP candidate, could help.
Had the Republicans and Roosevelt not split, maybe they could have won, but in the end, Wilson won 182-146-38 (Dem, Progressive, Republican), and became President.
List form:
1888 - Cleveland (D)
1892 - Harrison (R)
1896 - Cleveland (D)
1900 - McKinley (R)
1904 - Roosevelt (R)
1908 - Roosevelt (R)
1912 - Wilson (D) (26th)
Confederate Presidents
In 1903, James Longstreet, the son of the general of the same name, won election in the Confederacy, with Hoke Smith as his Vice President. Smith's uncle was Robert Hoke, a general in the War for Southern Independence, and a later railroad executive. Longstreet's election was heavily
His father, General Longstreet, as present for his inauguration in March, 1904:
General Longstreet passed away in September, and had a state funeral, attended by many veterans of the War for Southern Independence and many state and federal officials, and even many Union veterans who had fought against him.
Gettysburg's 25th Anniversary (1888)
Widely attended by many of the officers and men who had fought a quarter century prior, advanced in years, and mildened in sentiment, over 85,000 men attended the reunion from fifty states between the two nations. Even President Garfield from the US and President William Allen from the CS attended. The four-day event even had souvenir coins minted by both the US and CS Mints, half dollars that the men exchanged between each other.
US version of the half dollar (front)
US version of the back, reissued in 1938. This back was common to both countries, but had 'Deo Vindice' for the coins minted in the CS.
Men from both sides meeting and shaking hands, having not seen each other for 25 years.
The four-day program:
July 1: Veterans Day: picnics and parades, including men meeting on either side of some of the fences, shaking hands and hugging, faces buried in each others' shoulders.
July 2: Military Day: speeches from current Secretaries of War recommending modernizing both the US and CS navies and armies to prevent further European expansionism in the western hemisphere and if not, for both the US and CS to 'acquire' European colonies to get them out of the west. Several monuments to Union and Confederate leaders were unveiled, including the Virginia Monument, with a statue of General Lee:
Men from both armies paraded through the streets, side-by-side, the gray and the blue, celebrating their valor and honor together. The first time both the Union and Confederate flags would be side-by-side in peace.
July 3: Civic/Governors' Day: various speeches by men from the Confederacy and Union, and 90 unit reunions, including one recommending a Gettysburg Peace Memorial dedicated to the 25 years of peace between the two nations.
Peace Memorial, dedicated in 1913, on the 50th anniversary of the battle
July 4: Independence Day: President Garfield and President Allen both gave speeches at the reunion which would later be printed in the papers.
Garfield: We commemorate the valor and honor with which the men of both our nations fought and even died on this battlefield. May we all work together to be brothers together, and enemies nevermore, dedicated to peace here in America between the Union and Confederacy.
Allen: We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in commerce, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten—except that we shall not forget the splendid valor of the men of both our nations.
President Allen, while in service of the Army
In attendance:
Union: Brig. Gen. William F Smith, Maj. Gen. John C Robinson, Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton, Brig Gen Henry J Hunt (artillery), et al
Confederate: Fitzhugh Lee, George Washington Custis Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, Brig Gen Beverly H Robinson, et al
Confederate Census
The 1900 population of the nation had grown to 32,379,960, giving the Confederates a House of 400 members, apportioned:
Alabama 23
Arizona 2
Arkansas 18
South California 13
Cuba 29
Durango 5
Florida 7
Georgia 28
Hawaii 2
Jefferson 3
Kentucky 28
Louisiana 17
Mississippi 20
Missouri 34
New Mexico 2
North Carolina 25
Oklahoma 5
Puerto Rico 12
Rio Grande 12
Santo Domingo 6
Sonora 4
South Carolina 17
Tennessee 26
Texas 38
Virginia 24
For 1900-1909, Congress set the immigration quota to 2,261,697 persons, opening immigration to both Japan and China for the first time, but only 5% of the total quota (113,085) and that they cannot immigrate to Hawaii or more than 1/4 to South California. The remainder of immigration was designated for Europe, especially the United Kingdom and Germany, two of the already largest ethnic origins in the Confederacy.
Notable here are the census questions regarding first language and second language, introduced in 1880 after the acquisition of Cuba and Puerto Rico. All three Caribbean islands were nearly 100% Spanish in 1880's census, and now, 20 years later much of their growth was in mainlanders coming to the islands, opening schools, starting businesses, building railroads, roads, buildings, etc. Now Cuba was only 85% Spanish-first; Santo Domingo 78%; and Puerto Rico 89%. About 1/3 of the natives of each island declared English as a second language. German and French were the close second for most spoken non-English language in the Confederacy and were both growing in use and popularity.
Aluminum Industry
Aluminum is a very common element, often in the form of bauxite. To recover it, it has to be treated chemically to get aluminum oxide, and then be reduced to metallic aluminum. A Frenchman named Paul Heroult invented a way in 1886 by using electrolysis to get aluminum. The biggest source of bauxite was Jamaica. So the Confederates, eager to get this metal, built a chemical plant in the island State of Cuba, so they could produce aluminum oxide from the bauxite coming in from Jamaica. It was then shipped to Texas, where electricity was cheap, so that it could undergo electrolysis and become aluminum.
Instead of flaring off the natural gas from the Texas oil wells, the Confederates began gathering it into pipelines and burning it in turbines to make cheap electricity to make aluminum. Almost everywhere the Confederates found natural gas, an aluminum plant would be built. In 1904, the Confederates in Texas began the CAC (Confederate Aluminum Company) in Austin, TX, and it produced the cheapest aluminum on earth. In 1906, the Wright Aviation Company would be using that cheap aluminum to build aluminum gasoline engines, and soon aluminum airplane bodies (aluminum skin over aluminum frames). By 1912, aviation was just a hobbyist industry and few saw its commercial or military application in the Confederacy.
Wireless Technology
Guglielmo Marconi was in Bologna, Italy at the age of 20 (1894), and was inspired by his teacher, Augusto Righi, and reports of the detection of radio waves by a German scientists named Heinrich Hertz. Marchini, building experimental equipment in his attic, discovered that the radio waves his transmitter was emitting were being received a few feet away by his receiver; this was in December of 1894. He soon set up telegraph keys and discovered he could transmit Morse code wirelessly! Soon he set up a transmission tower the following summer, and even through the hills, he was able to receive Morse code two miles away!
Marconi wrote to the head of the Italian Ministry of Post and Telegraphs, Pietro Lacava, asking for funding for further development. He got no response. So Marconi spoke to a friend of the family who worked at the Confederate States Consulate in Bologna, Carlo Gardini. His friend sent a letter of introduction to the ambassador for Italy to the Confederacy, Annibale Ferrero, who arranged a meeting with Thomas Edison in Nashville. Edison immediately insisted on having Marconi bring all his research and technology to the University of Nashville and pursue development there, with the promise that all patent rights would be his where applicable.
So Edison took Ferrero to meet the University's Chair of the Physics Department, John Henry Poynting, who had immigrated to Tennessee from London about a decade prior, and had worked with Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell there. Maxwell's theory on electromagnetics was a huge breakthrough in science, the second great unification in physics since Newton, it would later be said. Over the past few decades, Nashville had grown to become an important center for Confederate science, so it was the perfect place for Marconi to work.
Marconi arrived in 1896, and anglicized his name to William Marconi, often called 'Billy' by his friends. Edison himself paid for him to come. Marconi brought his radio telegraphy equipment and demonstrated transmissions over five miles, and even into the Great Smoky Mountains in the east of the state on a separate demonstration. Financial support poured in. The Confederates realized the importance this would represent to marine communications and even to trains. So Marconi set up with generous funding of railroad and even newspaper executives, setting up the Marconi Marine Telegraphy Company (MMTC) in 1897, and built transmission towers in New Orleans in 1897, then Havana, Savannah, Charleston, and San Juan in 1898. By year's end, he had successfully demonstrated wireless telegraphy between Miami and New Orleans, and between New Orleans and San Juan, then all the gulf cities in 1899. In 1901, Marconi set up towers in Saint Luke Cape, South California (OTL Cabo San Lucas), San Diego, and Los Angeles, Honolulu, and then proved wireless communications between those cities in 1902.
At this point, Billy was demonstrating successful communication ship-to-shore for up to 1,000 miles during favorable conditions at night. By 1910, MMTC was providing ship-to-shore, ship-to-ship, and shore-to-shore telegraphy service in North America, Europe, Australia, Hong Kong, South America, and Japan, and in all Confederate States.
Again, in mid-1912, Serbia was moving into Albania and Russia was doing nothing to restrain it, while the Serbian government would not guarantee to respect Albania's territorial integrity, and suggested there be some frontier modifications. In June the council of ministers was sent an ultimatum: Germany and the United Kingdom would be notified of their actions and be asked for support if the Serbians didn't withdraw. As a show of unity and strength, the Austrians sent their chancellor, Karl von Stürgkh, and Germany's Foreign Minister, Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter in an open-top automobile into Bosnia, touring the city, then into the claimed Albanian territory. The Archduchess Elisabeth Amalie, daughter of Archduke Karl Ludwig, decided to join them, telling her four children goodbye, and that she was going on a little trip through the empire.
The ultimatum worked and the Serbians withdrew, but a young Serbian named Gavrilo Princip and six of his co-conspirators was not going to cooperate. So the German-Austrian group was making their trip into a congratulatory lap in Albania, before returning through Sarajevo.
Latin bridge, where the conspirators shot the victims
On June 28th, the trio were in Sarajevo when the six conspirators lined the route, and made their move. Elisabeth Amalie was shot first, then Karl, and finally Alfred, twice. The driver was hit in his right arm, but managed to speed off to the hospital to try to save the three. Princip and his conspirators were caught within the next 48 hours, and headlines around Europe relayed the news.
US Presidents
While Grover Cleveland lost his second election to Benjamin Harrison, he won re-election against him, becoming the only non-consecutively elected President in the US. After his election, McKinley won election in 1900 handily against the Democrat William Jennings Bryan, and began implementing his agenda. His ticket was aided by the addition of a man named Theodore Roosevelt, a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy and hero of the Philippine War, a rising Republican star.
The United States began allowing African-Confederate immigration to the north to help fill factory jobs, where they could earn a slightly higher wage than was customary in the Confederacy, leading to black emigration to Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh, while New York, especially New York City, refused to allow blacks into the state, as did New England. Under McKinley, anti-lynching laws from a renewed Loyal League, which was against black immigration into the United States, were passed. During the Philippine War, McKinley ordered the War Department to commission black officers above the rank of lieutenant under pressure from black leaders in the US. McKinley would visit Confederate memorials in the Confederate States and was received well by black Confederates, and his visits were considered instrumental in providing social pressure in the south to cause the passage of the third amendment to the Confederate Constitution, which said "The right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude by any Confederate State." Its passage in 1905 was a milestone in the Confederacy, though states in the Deep South (GA, SC, AL, MS) would make efforts to use other means to deny the right to vote, some states, notably Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, and New Mexico would allow black voting.
McKinley's administration would finally see Utah become a state in 1902. The United States would begin its Open Door Policy, to revive the American economy, and the US would send troops in to the Boxer Rebellion to aid the European powers.
US Troops in China in Peking
McKinley's term of office would be cut short in 1903 when he was shot by a Polish-American communist/socialist (depending on the paper reporting), Leon Czolgosz, in September 21, at the twice delayed Pan-American Exposition.
McKinley's assassination
Due to this, Vice-President Roosevelt became President in September 1903. McKinley's term is often marked as the end of the post-war Republican dominance, as the rising Progressive Party began siphoning votes from both Democrats and Republicans at this point, forcing both parties to try to adopt Progressive policies to win votes back. Grover Cleveland's Bourbon Democrats were a growing part of the Democrats, but would be shut out of the party following the nomination of William Jennings Bryan and his faction of the party.
Soon, in 1904, the Republicans would face three challenger parties - the Progressives, the Democrats, and the Conservative Party. Roosevelt would win in 1904, largely on personal popularity and sympathy for McKinley, but his second election would be less sure from the Republican part, but he managed to gain enough votes to get the nomination and win by a large margin in the north, though he would soon leave the Republican party after election and join the Progressive Party, as the progressive vote was largely responsible for his election this time.
McKinley's election was secured at 296-13 in the electoral college, while Roosevelt's in 1904 was 295-14 (West Virginia and Maryland dissenting). In 1908, with Progressives and Conservatives in the play, Roosevelt won all but five states. It was in 1912 that he would lose. Woodrow Wilson, a progressive whose family moved out of the Confederacy for Maryland in 1865, captured the Democrat platform and quite a lot of progressive votes with his platform. Roosevelt had chosen La Follette as his successor; he might have chosen Taft, but he was picked to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and was quite happily serving as Chief Justice. When La Follette's campaign seemed to be wavering from Roosevelt's more progressive views, TR threw his hat in the ring for an unprecedented third term under the Progressive Party.
Aside from Republicans and Democrats, Progressives, Conservatives, and even Social Democrats (with Eugene Debs as their candidate) would campaign for the Presidency. The Social Democrats would use the image and later writings of Abraham Lincoln as their cause and campaigned on bringing socialist programs like welfare in from Germany, and would campaign on bringing the Confederacy back into the Union even at gunpoint if necessary, but the image of Lincoln still hadn't recovered, and not even Roger Ransom, their VP candidate, could help.
Had the Republicans and Roosevelt not split, maybe they could have won, but in the end, Wilson won 182-146-38 (Dem, Progressive, Republican), and became President.
List form:
1888 - Cleveland (D)
1892 - Harrison (R)
1896 - Cleveland (D)
1900 - McKinley (R)
1904 - Roosevelt (R)
1908 - Roosevelt (R)
1912 - Wilson (D) (26th)
Confederate Presidents
In 1903, James Longstreet, the son of the general of the same name, won election in the Confederacy, with Hoke Smith as his Vice President. Smith's uncle was Robert Hoke, a general in the War for Southern Independence, and a later railroad executive. Longstreet's election was heavily
His father, General Longstreet, as present for his inauguration in March, 1904:
General Longstreet passed away in September, and had a state funeral, attended by many veterans of the War for Southern Independence and many state and federal officials, and even many Union veterans who had fought against him.
Gettysburg's 25th Anniversary (1888)
Widely attended by many of the officers and men who had fought a quarter century prior, advanced in years, and mildened in sentiment, over 85,000 men attended the reunion from fifty states between the two nations. Even President Garfield from the US and President William Allen from the CS attended. The four-day event even had souvenir coins minted by both the US and CS Mints, half dollars that the men exchanged between each other.
US version of the half dollar (front)
US version of the back, reissued in 1938. This back was common to both countries, but had 'Deo Vindice' for the coins minted in the CS.
Men from both sides meeting and shaking hands, having not seen each other for 25 years.
The four-day program:
July 1: Veterans Day: picnics and parades, including men meeting on either side of some of the fences, shaking hands and hugging, faces buried in each others' shoulders.
July 2: Military Day: speeches from current Secretaries of War recommending modernizing both the US and CS navies and armies to prevent further European expansionism in the western hemisphere and if not, for both the US and CS to 'acquire' European colonies to get them out of the west. Several monuments to Union and Confederate leaders were unveiled, including the Virginia Monument, with a statue of General Lee:
Men from both armies paraded through the streets, side-by-side, the gray and the blue, celebrating their valor and honor together. The first time both the Union and Confederate flags would be side-by-side in peace.
July 3: Civic/Governors' Day: various speeches by men from the Confederacy and Union, and 90 unit reunions, including one recommending a Gettysburg Peace Memorial dedicated to the 25 years of peace between the two nations.
Peace Memorial, dedicated in 1913, on the 50th anniversary of the battle
July 4: Independence Day: President Garfield and President Allen both gave speeches at the reunion which would later be printed in the papers.
Garfield: We commemorate the valor and honor with which the men of both our nations fought and even died on this battlefield. May we all work together to be brothers together, and enemies nevermore, dedicated to peace here in America between the Union and Confederacy.
Allen: We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in commerce, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten—except that we shall not forget the splendid valor of the men of both our nations.
President Allen, while in service of the Army
In attendance:
Union: Brig. Gen. William F Smith, Maj. Gen. John C Robinson, Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton, Brig Gen Henry J Hunt (artillery), et al
Confederate: Fitzhugh Lee, George Washington Custis Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, Brig Gen Beverly H Robinson, et al
Confederate Census
The 1900 population of the nation had grown to 32,379,960, giving the Confederates a House of 400 members, apportioned:
Alabama 23
Arizona 2
Arkansas 18
South California 13
Cuba 29
Durango 5
Florida 7
Georgia 28
Hawaii 2
Jefferson 3
Kentucky 28
Louisiana 17
Mississippi 20
Missouri 34
New Mexico 2
North Carolina 25
Oklahoma 5
Puerto Rico 12
Rio Grande 12
Santo Domingo 6
Sonora 4
South Carolina 17
Tennessee 26
Texas 38
Virginia 24
For 1900-1909, Congress set the immigration quota to 2,261,697 persons, opening immigration to both Japan and China for the first time, but only 5% of the total quota (113,085) and that they cannot immigrate to Hawaii or more than 1/4 to South California. The remainder of immigration was designated for Europe, especially the United Kingdom and Germany, two of the already largest ethnic origins in the Confederacy.
Notable here are the census questions regarding first language and second language, introduced in 1880 after the acquisition of Cuba and Puerto Rico. All three Caribbean islands were nearly 100% Spanish in 1880's census, and now, 20 years later much of their growth was in mainlanders coming to the islands, opening schools, starting businesses, building railroads, roads, buildings, etc. Now Cuba was only 85% Spanish-first; Santo Domingo 78%; and Puerto Rico 89%. About 1/3 of the natives of each island declared English as a second language. German and French were the close second for most spoken non-English language in the Confederacy and were both growing in use and popularity.
Aluminum Industry
Aluminum is a very common element, often in the form of bauxite. To recover it, it has to be treated chemically to get aluminum oxide, and then be reduced to metallic aluminum. A Frenchman named Paul Heroult invented a way in 1886 by using electrolysis to get aluminum. The biggest source of bauxite was Jamaica. So the Confederates, eager to get this metal, built a chemical plant in the island State of Cuba, so they could produce aluminum oxide from the bauxite coming in from Jamaica. It was then shipped to Texas, where electricity was cheap, so that it could undergo electrolysis and become aluminum.
Instead of flaring off the natural gas from the Texas oil wells, the Confederates began gathering it into pipelines and burning it in turbines to make cheap electricity to make aluminum. Almost everywhere the Confederates found natural gas, an aluminum plant would be built. In 1904, the Confederates in Texas began the CAC (Confederate Aluminum Company) in Austin, TX, and it produced the cheapest aluminum on earth. In 1906, the Wright Aviation Company would be using that cheap aluminum to build aluminum gasoline engines, and soon aluminum airplane bodies (aluminum skin over aluminum frames). By 1912, aviation was just a hobbyist industry and few saw its commercial or military application in the Confederacy.
Wireless Technology
Guglielmo Marconi was in Bologna, Italy at the age of 20 (1894), and was inspired by his teacher, Augusto Righi, and reports of the detection of radio waves by a German scientists named Heinrich Hertz. Marchini, building experimental equipment in his attic, discovered that the radio waves his transmitter was emitting were being received a few feet away by his receiver; this was in December of 1894. He soon set up telegraph keys and discovered he could transmit Morse code wirelessly! Soon he set up a transmission tower the following summer, and even through the hills, he was able to receive Morse code two miles away!
Marconi wrote to the head of the Italian Ministry of Post and Telegraphs, Pietro Lacava, asking for funding for further development. He got no response. So Marconi spoke to a friend of the family who worked at the Confederate States Consulate in Bologna, Carlo Gardini. His friend sent a letter of introduction to the ambassador for Italy to the Confederacy, Annibale Ferrero, who arranged a meeting with Thomas Edison in Nashville. Edison immediately insisted on having Marconi bring all his research and technology to the University of Nashville and pursue development there, with the promise that all patent rights would be his where applicable.
So Edison took Ferrero to meet the University's Chair of the Physics Department, John Henry Poynting, who had immigrated to Tennessee from London about a decade prior, and had worked with Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell there. Maxwell's theory on electromagnetics was a huge breakthrough in science, the second great unification in physics since Newton, it would later be said. Over the past few decades, Nashville had grown to become an important center for Confederate science, so it was the perfect place for Marconi to work.
Marconi arrived in 1896, and anglicized his name to William Marconi, often called 'Billy' by his friends. Edison himself paid for him to come. Marconi brought his radio telegraphy equipment and demonstrated transmissions over five miles, and even into the Great Smoky Mountains in the east of the state on a separate demonstration. Financial support poured in. The Confederates realized the importance this would represent to marine communications and even to trains. So Marconi set up with generous funding of railroad and even newspaper executives, setting up the Marconi Marine Telegraphy Company (MMTC) in 1897, and built transmission towers in New Orleans in 1897, then Havana, Savannah, Charleston, and San Juan in 1898. By year's end, he had successfully demonstrated wireless telegraphy between Miami and New Orleans, and between New Orleans and San Juan, then all the gulf cities in 1899. In 1901, Marconi set up towers in Saint Luke Cape, South California (OTL Cabo San Lucas), San Diego, and Los Angeles, Honolulu, and then proved wireless communications between those cities in 1902.
At this point, Billy was demonstrating successful communication ship-to-shore for up to 1,000 miles during favorable conditions at night. By 1910, MMTC was providing ship-to-shore, ship-to-ship, and shore-to-shore telegraphy service in North America, Europe, Australia, Hong Kong, South America, and Japan, and in all Confederate States.
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Hoping to see University of Louisiana alumnus Albert Baldwin Wood make an appearance soon. He invented a pumping system to clear rainwater out of low-lying parts of New Orleans.
Speaking of Louisiana, I wonder if General Sherman ever revisited what became Louisiana State University Agricultural and Mechanical College. He resigned his position for what later became known as LSU A&M (or just LSU) because of Louisiana's secession.
Will there be a list of CS Presidents up to the Great War?
Will there be a list of CS Presidents up to the Great War?
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Chapter 40: War is Coming
JJohnson
Banned
The Calm Before the Storm
There was a tense calm in Europe; a match had been lit and was about to kindle a fire. In response to the actions of the Serbian, both Germany and Austria-Hungary ordered partial mobilizations of their armies, calling up their reserves for training purposes. In Bosnia, the Austro-Hungarians did nothing to stop anti-Serbian riots near Serbia, which led to several dozen Serbian injuries. In response to the assassinations, Austria-Hungary and Germany made a series of demands of the Serbians:
-Suppress any publications from 'inciting hatred and contempt of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy' or are 'directed against its territorial integrity.'
-Suppress any societies or organizations such as the Black Hand or 'The People's Defense'
-Remove anti-Austro-Hungarian propaganda from schoolbooks and public documents
-Give up to a joint German-Austro-Hungarian commission members of the Black Hand or other organizations which funded the assassination or participated in the assassination for an open and public trial
-Cease moving arms and explosives across the border to those hostile to the Austro-Hungarian authorities
Austria-Hungary gave two weeks for Serbia to comply; on the fortnight in July after the deaths, its reply was a solid 'no.' The United Kingdom offered to mediate the dispute, upon personal application by Kaiser Heinrich I, who thought the matter wasn't worthy of a war, despite some of the belligerence in his government's cabinet. The UK was slow to act, taking a week to come up with a reply to the Kaiser.
In France, with their alliance with Serbia, mobilized its own military, marching 1/2 to the French-German border and the other half to the Belgian border. Napoleon IV asked Belgium for permission to march through their territory in the event of war with Germany. Tsar Nicholas II put his military on alert, which while not a full mobilization, looked like a military declaration of war. In Germany, newspapers reportedly had evidence that the French Prime Minister Poincaré was pushing Russia into war with Germany with the intent of dismembering Germany and Austria-Hungary amongst themselves, which only inflamed the situation more.
In Paris, Wilhelm von Schoen, the German ambassador to France, told Philip Berthelot, political director of Quai d'Orsay, that "to my simple mind, France's attitude was inexplicable if it did not aim at war." The British ambassador to France, Sir Francis Bertie, suggested a conference between France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia to avoid war, but was rejected by the French. It was Napoleon IV's opinion that Germany was not ready for war, and that France stood a good chance to regain Alsace-Lorraine and its national honor, and to him, his father's honor. It as well known that Kaiser Heinrich I had not increased the size of Germany's army in over a decade to appease the British, and if he struck at the right time, he believed, he could gain a swift victory with minimal cost in lives and munitions.
It would be the Serbians who would take the first move. Serbia declared war on Austria-Hungary on the 27th of July; since France was likely to distract Germany, and Austria-Hungary faced Russia, the nation's leaders believed that the distracted empire could be defeated and their dream of a united south-Slavic nation could be realized. Serbians crossed into Bosnia, intent on reaching the capital, Sarajevo and winning a quick little war.
Austria-Hungary was informed of the declaration, and within six hours, declared war on Serbia, notifying the other European nations and requesting they remain out of the conflict. Within 12 hours, France declared full mobilization and positioned its armies on the border of Alsace-Lorraine and on the border of Belgium.
On the 30th, Nicholas sent a message to Heinrich informing him of his partial mobilization against Austria-Hungary, and asking him to do his utmost for a peaceful solution. Upon hearing of this, Heinrich replied, "Then I must mobilize too." The German ambassador in St. Petersburg informed Nicholas that Germany would mobilize if Russia did not cease all military preparations at once, including those it had previously assured Russia that it did not see as a threat against Germany, or a cause for German mobilization. The German military attaché in Russia reported that the Russians appeared to be acting out of fear, but "without aggressive intentions."
Nicholas first ordered a general mobilization, then after getting an appeal for peace from Heinrich, cancelled it as a sign of good faith. The cancellation led to furious protests from Sukhomlinov, Sazonov, and Russia's top generals, all urging Nicholas to reinstate it. Under strong pressure, Nicholas gave in and ordered a general mobilization on July 30th. Russia's general mobilization was the first of the general mobilizations, and came at a moment when the German government had not yet even declared a state of war.
France had reiterated her support for Russia, and both France and Russia believed that Britain would remain neutral long enough that they could force Germany and Austria-Hungary to the peace table. Nicholas and Heinrich wrote a series of letters to each other (the so-called "Nicky and Henry correspondence") where the two proclaimed their desire for peace, and trying to get the other to back down. Nicholas wanted the mobilization only against the Austrian border, hoping to prevent war against the German Empire, but his army had no plans for a partial mobilization, so he took the fateful step on the 31st of July of confirming the order for general mobilization, despite being strongly counseled against it.
Germans under Kaiser Heinrich continued to try to get Austria-Hungary to stop in Belgrade and urge Britain to help them try to maintain the peace, but when news of Russia's general mobilization came in to Berlin, the German Chancellor instructed the ambassador in Vienna "that all mediation attempts be stopped."
The German ambassador to France urged Paris not to take any action to offer his country an excuse to mobilize against the country. German troops were ordered to pull back 6 miles from the French-German border as a sign of Germany's peaceful intentions. British Prime Minister Asquith wrote to their ambassador to Germany of the deteriorating situation. The Austrian Crown Council decided on July 31 to continue the war against Serbia, and to ignore the dangers of the Russian mobilization, expecting German support and British neutrality. Nicholas wrote to Heinrich that the Russian general mobilization was not aimed as a prelude to war.
The French ambassador to Berlin delivered an ultimatum to the Chancellor telling him that if Austria-Hungary didn't stop its mobilization, then France would attack Germany. One of the German generals soon asked for permission to order general mobilization and was refused; the partial mobilization on the western front remained, but was certainly not enough troops to face the French. Germany's mobilization called for the main thrust of the army through Alsace-Lorraine, as going through Belgium would tip Britain against Germany, and Heinrich was as anglophile as his father, Friedrich III.
On August 1, 1912, a British offer to guarantee French neutrality was sent and promptly accepted by Heinrich; this would limit the war to just an eastern front. Heinrich ordered German forces to strike Russia alone, but got fierce protests from Moltke, as France's forces were already moving into Luxembourg and were on the border with Belgium (other reports placed them already in Belgium). Most of Germany's forces were in Alsace-Lorraine and Moltke let the Kaiser know they couldn't shift them rapidly enough to the north or east. Once the mobilization was complete, Heinrich ordered the army to redeploy to the east, as the British were going to guarantee French neutrality. Moltke replied "Now it only remains for Russia to back out, too." He persuaded the emperor to start shifting troops north to Rhineland and Westphalia.
In Paris, the Prime Minister had announced France had mobilized and delivered an ultimatum to Germany to renounce its alliance with Austria-Hungary, or face a French attack. In response to reports of French troops invading Luxembourg and Belgium, plus the French ultimatum, German mobilization as authorized on August 1, with Heinrich signing the mobilization orders. By 7 PM, German troops were on the trains heading north.
On the morning of August 2, French troops took control of Luxembourg, as a preliminary to the invasion of Germany and entry into Belgium. The British government promised that same day to protect Germany's coast from French attack. The foreign secretary Edward Grey gave Britain's firm assurance of protecting Germany with its navy to German Ambassador Karl Max, Prince Lichnowsky. Lichnowsky's account stated, "I felt the battle was won. Everything was settled. In truth a great country does not wage war by halves. Once it decided to fight the war at sea, it would necessarily be led into fighting it on land as well." Within the British Cabinet, the widespread feeling that France would soon violate Belgium's neutrality and destroy Germany as a power (and valuable trading partner with Britain) led to the increasing acceptance that Britain would be forced to intervene.
A French ultimatum was delivered to Belgium the same day, requesting free passage for the French army on the way to Germany. King Albert of Belgium refused the request of the French to violate his country's neutrality. On August 3, France declared war on Germany, and on the 4th on Belgium. This violated Belgian neutrality, the status to which Germany, France, and Britain were all committed by treaty; French violation of Belgian neutrality provided a casus belli for Britain's declaration of war.
Later on August 4, a member of the French legislature spoke up that French invasion of Belgium and Luxembourg were violations of international law, but argued that France was in a state of necessity and necessity knows no law. Raymond Poincaré
At 7 PM on August 4, British Ambassador Sir Edward Goschen delivered Britain's ultimatum to French Foreign Secretary Raymond Poincaré demanding a commitment by midnight (5 hours) to go no further in French violation of Belgian neutrality. Poincaré rejected the ultimatum and Goschen demanded a meeting with him. Somehow the telegram never arrived, and on August 4th, Great Britain declared war on France. They expected a limited conflict of rapid movements like in the Franco-Prussian War, wherein the British could use their naval strength primarily.
Finally, on August 6, Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia. Now, Europe was at war.
It would later come out, about 40 years later, that the French had given secret assurances to the Serbians that if they were to declare war, France would support them militarily.
Radio Technology
Soon after Marconi's invention, wireless voice transmission followed, being called 'radio.' Its development would be let by Reginald Fessenden (inventor of the heterodyne principle), John Ambrose Fleming (inventor of the diode vacuum tube), and Lee De Forest (inventor of triode amplifying vacuum tube).
Reginald Fessenden was from Quebec, Canada. He was excited to be working in the field of electricity, but didn't believe he could learn too much up in Canada. So he wrote to Thomas Edison in 1886, hoping to gain employment with him as an unskilled technician. He was persistent and got a job in 1886 at Edison Machine Works in Nashville, laying underground cables. His work there impressed Edison and he got invited to work in Edison's laboratories as a junior technician in 1887.
Edison Machine Works, Nashville
In 1892, Fessenden left to take a post as a professor of electrical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. There at Georgia Tech, he was free to pursue his own research, and keep any patent rights he might earn. He did cause somewhat of a stir in hiring and teaching blacks there at night, but it was important to his development of what he would call the heterodyne principle, where two signals combined to create a third signal. James Henry Davis, called 'Jim Limber' by the first President Davis, was working nearby and was a bright man, and the two worked well together. With their combined work, Fessenden would create a rotary-spark transmitter in 1900, and demonstrated successful wireless, but barely understandable, voice transmission over a mile distant.
Later that year, Fessenden was hired by the Confederate Weather Bureau to work for them, providing him a lab and equipment expenses, and promising him all patents for his inventions. Fessenden's terms including them hiring and paying James Davis, a black man, which they surprisingly agreed to do. The Weather Bureau put Fessenden and his equipment at Roanoke Island, NC, where he successfully demonstrated wireless voice communication 50 miles distant to a station beyond Buxton. Fessenden and Davis continued working on wireless voice transmission, using faster and faster rotary-spark transmitters, but this approach would soon be made obsolete by vacuum tube devices. But it would be Fessenden's heterodyne principle leading to hi-fi radio and later TV.
John Ambrose Fleming was born in Lancaster, England, 1849. His father was a minister, and he studied under James Clerk Maxwell at Cambridge. In 1897, Fleming held the Pender Chair as a professor of electrical engineering at University College in London. His invention of the diode vacuum tube in 1904 would go on to make most modern electronics possible, including television and computers. While remaining in London, Fleming acted as a consultant to Edison's companies (starting in 1882), and Marconi's company (starting in 1899). In 1907, he took a temporary leave of absence from his duties at University College to take a four-year post as 'Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering' at the University of Nashville, under encouragement from both Edison and Marconi. He taught graduate students, engaged in research, and continued consulting for both Edison and Marconi's businesses.
Due to Fleming's Confederate patents on his diode vacuum tube, he had more than enough financial success to pursue his engineering and scientific career and research without worrying about money. After the death of his first wife, Clara, in 1917, he would go on to marry Hannah Mae Luther in 1923 in Alabama.
Lee De Forest was born in Iowa, but his father took the position of President of the Talladega College in Alabama in 1879, a school for black Confederates, when he was 6, bringing him south. His family kept their US citizenship and lived in Alabama temporarily. Though his father, a minister, wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, Lee was much more excited about science and the revolutionary inventions coming out each year. In 1891, he declined to attend a boys' school his father wanted for him to attend so that he could go to Nashville. Continuing his education at the University of Nashville, he earned a BS in Physics. He then got his doctorate in Physics from Georgia Tech in 1899 at the age of 25. De Forest became an experimenter and promoted his inventions.
Most of the companies he started went bankrupt and left his investors with nothing, but he did come up with one very important invention - a derivation of the diode vacuum tube. He had built a Fleming diode with an anode, cathode, and a grid-pattern wire between the two, acting as an amplifier - the triode vacuum tube. This invention would become essential to all future electronics before solid state came along.
Arcades
In imitation of the fashionable London Burlington Arcade, several cities in the Confederacy developed similar arcades, covered passages filled with shopping venues.
Richmond Arcade, 1872
The most famous is the Richmond Arcade, a two-floor open-air shopping passageway, featuring high-end shops, would be the inspiration for similar arcades in Atlanta, Charlotte, Montgomery, Nashville, Houston, Dallas, San Diego, and elsewhere, and was the forerunner of the modern shopping mall.
Draining the Swamp
A young inventor from New Orleans, Albert Baldwin Wood, graduated from Tulane University with a BS in Engineering in 1899. Right out of his studies he was hired by the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans to try to improve the city's drainage. He invented 'flapgates,' and other hydraulic devices, most notably an efficient low-maintenance, high-volume pump which included the wood screw pump (1909) and the wood trash pump (1910), and would spearhead swampland reclamation and development for New Orleans development. Wood's colleagues in New Orleans would come from the Dutch Quarter, what amounted to a 'Little Holland' in the city, looking like a piece of the Netherlands in the deep south.
Wood spent much of his career in New Orleans, but would consult and design the drainage, pumping, and sewage systems for other cities, such as Atlanta, Richmond, San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Baltimore. He even consulted on projects in India, Egypt, China, and Canada, and back in the Netherlands, helping reclaim land from the Zuider Zee. Some of his pumps would go on to be in continuous use for over 80 years without need of repairs; new pumps would continue to be built from his designs.
Wood at a dedication for some of his pumps in New Orleans
Wood's children, Lydia Anne, Robert Edward, Thomas Jonathan, and Sarah Elizabeth, succeeded him. His company provided instructions and assistance in French and English, as French competency is a required component of graduating from school in Louisiana.
Jacksonville's Great Fire (1901)
A tragic fire engulfed downtown Jacksonville when a mattress factory caught fire and took most of downtown with it. An architect from the north, Henry J Klutho, was contracted to help rebuild the southern town. Klutho studied the 'Chicago School' of architecture, creating a version of the 'Prairie Style,' and his designs would reshape Jacksonville, and inspire the neighborhoods of Springfield, Riverside, and Avondale, and soon, South Jacksonville, East Jacksonville, New Berlin, and North Jacksonville. Beyond this redesign of Jacksonville's Downtown, Klutho's designs would be emulated and copied in other small but growing downtowns all the way to Hawaii and Guam and the Washington Islands, becoming a key style of building. Nowhere in the Confederacy would any 'brutalist' or other overly-simplistic or abstract architecture gain traction. Architects would continue to be required to create attractive houses and walkable downtowns across the Confederacy. Fred Kloeppel, a German immigrant to Jacksonville, would go on to create many of the still-standing hotels of the town, such as Hotel George Washington, Hotel Lee (originally the Carling), Hotel Jackson, and others, copies of which would soon appear across the South, even in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Santo Domingo.
Buildings in Jacksonville:
Confederate Presidents (1910)
Lt. Gen. Thomas Jonathan Jackson, called "Stonewall," lived a long life, living well into his 80s, living long enough to see his son, Thomas, become President of the country he helped create.
General Jackson, 1910.
Thomas Jackson, wearing a 1890-pattern uniform for the army before more modern versions were adopted.
Jackson was a Democrat, and the Populist party candidate, Henry A. Pritchard, faced off in a heated campaign.
Henry Pritchard
Pritchard's campaign involved continued rumors and off-record remarks of wanting to remove blacks from North and South Carolina to Santo Domingo or Liberia, which would go on to hurt his party's chances in the Congressional elections as well. Jackson campaigned on military preparedness and maintaining Confederate neutrality; the CS hadn't been in a war since 1879 and Jackson hoped to keep it that way. In 1910, enforcement of the voting amendment was spotty, but in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, South California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Rio Grande, Durango, blacks were able to vote, provided that they were over 21, had paid taxes, were not on any form of charity or assistance, and had not been jailed within the last 5 years. Other states in the Confederacy did not enforce the amendment much, if at all, so voting by blacks in the rest of the Confederacy was essentially on a county-by-county basis or town-by-town basis.
With name recognition, a dashing figure, and a beautiful wife (Sarah Anne), Jackson easily won his election in 1909 to take office in 1910. At 325-144 (419 House members, 50 Senators from 25 states, so 469 total), victory was not in doubt.
Confederate First Lady, Sarah Anne Jackson
There was a tense calm in Europe; a match had been lit and was about to kindle a fire. In response to the actions of the Serbian, both Germany and Austria-Hungary ordered partial mobilizations of their armies, calling up their reserves for training purposes. In Bosnia, the Austro-Hungarians did nothing to stop anti-Serbian riots near Serbia, which led to several dozen Serbian injuries. In response to the assassinations, Austria-Hungary and Germany made a series of demands of the Serbians:
-Suppress any publications from 'inciting hatred and contempt of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy' or are 'directed against its territorial integrity.'
-Suppress any societies or organizations such as the Black Hand or 'The People's Defense'
-Remove anti-Austro-Hungarian propaganda from schoolbooks and public documents
-Give up to a joint German-Austro-Hungarian commission members of the Black Hand or other organizations which funded the assassination or participated in the assassination for an open and public trial
-Cease moving arms and explosives across the border to those hostile to the Austro-Hungarian authorities
Austria-Hungary gave two weeks for Serbia to comply; on the fortnight in July after the deaths, its reply was a solid 'no.' The United Kingdom offered to mediate the dispute, upon personal application by Kaiser Heinrich I, who thought the matter wasn't worthy of a war, despite some of the belligerence in his government's cabinet. The UK was slow to act, taking a week to come up with a reply to the Kaiser.
In France, with their alliance with Serbia, mobilized its own military, marching 1/2 to the French-German border and the other half to the Belgian border. Napoleon IV asked Belgium for permission to march through their territory in the event of war with Germany. Tsar Nicholas II put his military on alert, which while not a full mobilization, looked like a military declaration of war. In Germany, newspapers reportedly had evidence that the French Prime Minister Poincaré was pushing Russia into war with Germany with the intent of dismembering Germany and Austria-Hungary amongst themselves, which only inflamed the situation more.
In Paris, Wilhelm von Schoen, the German ambassador to France, told Philip Berthelot, political director of Quai d'Orsay, that "to my simple mind, France's attitude was inexplicable if it did not aim at war." The British ambassador to France, Sir Francis Bertie, suggested a conference between France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia to avoid war, but was rejected by the French. It was Napoleon IV's opinion that Germany was not ready for war, and that France stood a good chance to regain Alsace-Lorraine and its national honor, and to him, his father's honor. It as well known that Kaiser Heinrich I had not increased the size of Germany's army in over a decade to appease the British, and if he struck at the right time, he believed, he could gain a swift victory with minimal cost in lives and munitions.
It would be the Serbians who would take the first move. Serbia declared war on Austria-Hungary on the 27th of July; since France was likely to distract Germany, and Austria-Hungary faced Russia, the nation's leaders believed that the distracted empire could be defeated and their dream of a united south-Slavic nation could be realized. Serbians crossed into Bosnia, intent on reaching the capital, Sarajevo and winning a quick little war.
Austria-Hungary was informed of the declaration, and within six hours, declared war on Serbia, notifying the other European nations and requesting they remain out of the conflict. Within 12 hours, France declared full mobilization and positioned its armies on the border of Alsace-Lorraine and on the border of Belgium.
On the 30th, Nicholas sent a message to Heinrich informing him of his partial mobilization against Austria-Hungary, and asking him to do his utmost for a peaceful solution. Upon hearing of this, Heinrich replied, "Then I must mobilize too." The German ambassador in St. Petersburg informed Nicholas that Germany would mobilize if Russia did not cease all military preparations at once, including those it had previously assured Russia that it did not see as a threat against Germany, or a cause for German mobilization. The German military attaché in Russia reported that the Russians appeared to be acting out of fear, but "without aggressive intentions."
Nicholas first ordered a general mobilization, then after getting an appeal for peace from Heinrich, cancelled it as a sign of good faith. The cancellation led to furious protests from Sukhomlinov, Sazonov, and Russia's top generals, all urging Nicholas to reinstate it. Under strong pressure, Nicholas gave in and ordered a general mobilization on July 30th. Russia's general mobilization was the first of the general mobilizations, and came at a moment when the German government had not yet even declared a state of war.
France had reiterated her support for Russia, and both France and Russia believed that Britain would remain neutral long enough that they could force Germany and Austria-Hungary to the peace table. Nicholas and Heinrich wrote a series of letters to each other (the so-called "Nicky and Henry correspondence") where the two proclaimed their desire for peace, and trying to get the other to back down. Nicholas wanted the mobilization only against the Austrian border, hoping to prevent war against the German Empire, but his army had no plans for a partial mobilization, so he took the fateful step on the 31st of July of confirming the order for general mobilization, despite being strongly counseled against it.
Germans under Kaiser Heinrich continued to try to get Austria-Hungary to stop in Belgrade and urge Britain to help them try to maintain the peace, but when news of Russia's general mobilization came in to Berlin, the German Chancellor instructed the ambassador in Vienna "that all mediation attempts be stopped."
The German ambassador to France urged Paris not to take any action to offer his country an excuse to mobilize against the country. German troops were ordered to pull back 6 miles from the French-German border as a sign of Germany's peaceful intentions. British Prime Minister Asquith wrote to their ambassador to Germany of the deteriorating situation. The Austrian Crown Council decided on July 31 to continue the war against Serbia, and to ignore the dangers of the Russian mobilization, expecting German support and British neutrality. Nicholas wrote to Heinrich that the Russian general mobilization was not aimed as a prelude to war.
The French ambassador to Berlin delivered an ultimatum to the Chancellor telling him that if Austria-Hungary didn't stop its mobilization, then France would attack Germany. One of the German generals soon asked for permission to order general mobilization and was refused; the partial mobilization on the western front remained, but was certainly not enough troops to face the French. Germany's mobilization called for the main thrust of the army through Alsace-Lorraine, as going through Belgium would tip Britain against Germany, and Heinrich was as anglophile as his father, Friedrich III.
On August 1, 1912, a British offer to guarantee French neutrality was sent and promptly accepted by Heinrich; this would limit the war to just an eastern front. Heinrich ordered German forces to strike Russia alone, but got fierce protests from Moltke, as France's forces were already moving into Luxembourg and were on the border with Belgium (other reports placed them already in Belgium). Most of Germany's forces were in Alsace-Lorraine and Moltke let the Kaiser know they couldn't shift them rapidly enough to the north or east. Once the mobilization was complete, Heinrich ordered the army to redeploy to the east, as the British were going to guarantee French neutrality. Moltke replied "Now it only remains for Russia to back out, too." He persuaded the emperor to start shifting troops north to Rhineland and Westphalia.
In Paris, the Prime Minister had announced France had mobilized and delivered an ultimatum to Germany to renounce its alliance with Austria-Hungary, or face a French attack. In response to reports of French troops invading Luxembourg and Belgium, plus the French ultimatum, German mobilization as authorized on August 1, with Heinrich signing the mobilization orders. By 7 PM, German troops were on the trains heading north.
On the morning of August 2, French troops took control of Luxembourg, as a preliminary to the invasion of Germany and entry into Belgium. The British government promised that same day to protect Germany's coast from French attack. The foreign secretary Edward Grey gave Britain's firm assurance of protecting Germany with its navy to German Ambassador Karl Max, Prince Lichnowsky. Lichnowsky's account stated, "I felt the battle was won. Everything was settled. In truth a great country does not wage war by halves. Once it decided to fight the war at sea, it would necessarily be led into fighting it on land as well." Within the British Cabinet, the widespread feeling that France would soon violate Belgium's neutrality and destroy Germany as a power (and valuable trading partner with Britain) led to the increasing acceptance that Britain would be forced to intervene.
A French ultimatum was delivered to Belgium the same day, requesting free passage for the French army on the way to Germany. King Albert of Belgium refused the request of the French to violate his country's neutrality. On August 3, France declared war on Germany, and on the 4th on Belgium. This violated Belgian neutrality, the status to which Germany, France, and Britain were all committed by treaty; French violation of Belgian neutrality provided a casus belli for Britain's declaration of war.
Later on August 4, a member of the French legislature spoke up that French invasion of Belgium and Luxembourg were violations of international law, but argued that France was in a state of necessity and necessity knows no law. Raymond Poincaré
At 7 PM on August 4, British Ambassador Sir Edward Goschen delivered Britain's ultimatum to French Foreign Secretary Raymond Poincaré demanding a commitment by midnight (5 hours) to go no further in French violation of Belgian neutrality. Poincaré rejected the ultimatum and Goschen demanded a meeting with him. Somehow the telegram never arrived, and on August 4th, Great Britain declared war on France. They expected a limited conflict of rapid movements like in the Franco-Prussian War, wherein the British could use their naval strength primarily.
Finally, on August 6, Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia. Now, Europe was at war.
It would later come out, about 40 years later, that the French had given secret assurances to the Serbians that if they were to declare war, France would support them militarily.
Radio Technology
Soon after Marconi's invention, wireless voice transmission followed, being called 'radio.' Its development would be let by Reginald Fessenden (inventor of the heterodyne principle), John Ambrose Fleming (inventor of the diode vacuum tube), and Lee De Forest (inventor of triode amplifying vacuum tube).
Reginald Fessenden was from Quebec, Canada. He was excited to be working in the field of electricity, but didn't believe he could learn too much up in Canada. So he wrote to Thomas Edison in 1886, hoping to gain employment with him as an unskilled technician. He was persistent and got a job in 1886 at Edison Machine Works in Nashville, laying underground cables. His work there impressed Edison and he got invited to work in Edison's laboratories as a junior technician in 1887.
Edison Machine Works, Nashville
In 1892, Fessenden left to take a post as a professor of electrical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. There at Georgia Tech, he was free to pursue his own research, and keep any patent rights he might earn. He did cause somewhat of a stir in hiring and teaching blacks there at night, but it was important to his development of what he would call the heterodyne principle, where two signals combined to create a third signal. James Henry Davis, called 'Jim Limber' by the first President Davis, was working nearby and was a bright man, and the two worked well together. With their combined work, Fessenden would create a rotary-spark transmitter in 1900, and demonstrated successful wireless, but barely understandable, voice transmission over a mile distant.
Later that year, Fessenden was hired by the Confederate Weather Bureau to work for them, providing him a lab and equipment expenses, and promising him all patents for his inventions. Fessenden's terms including them hiring and paying James Davis, a black man, which they surprisingly agreed to do. The Weather Bureau put Fessenden and his equipment at Roanoke Island, NC, where he successfully demonstrated wireless voice communication 50 miles distant to a station beyond Buxton. Fessenden and Davis continued working on wireless voice transmission, using faster and faster rotary-spark transmitters, but this approach would soon be made obsolete by vacuum tube devices. But it would be Fessenden's heterodyne principle leading to hi-fi radio and later TV.
John Ambrose Fleming was born in Lancaster, England, 1849. His father was a minister, and he studied under James Clerk Maxwell at Cambridge. In 1897, Fleming held the Pender Chair as a professor of electrical engineering at University College in London. His invention of the diode vacuum tube in 1904 would go on to make most modern electronics possible, including television and computers. While remaining in London, Fleming acted as a consultant to Edison's companies (starting in 1882), and Marconi's company (starting in 1899). In 1907, he took a temporary leave of absence from his duties at University College to take a four-year post as 'Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering' at the University of Nashville, under encouragement from both Edison and Marconi. He taught graduate students, engaged in research, and continued consulting for both Edison and Marconi's businesses.
Due to Fleming's Confederate patents on his diode vacuum tube, he had more than enough financial success to pursue his engineering and scientific career and research without worrying about money. After the death of his first wife, Clara, in 1917, he would go on to marry Hannah Mae Luther in 1923 in Alabama.
Lee De Forest was born in Iowa, but his father took the position of President of the Talladega College in Alabama in 1879, a school for black Confederates, when he was 6, bringing him south. His family kept their US citizenship and lived in Alabama temporarily. Though his father, a minister, wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, Lee was much more excited about science and the revolutionary inventions coming out each year. In 1891, he declined to attend a boys' school his father wanted for him to attend so that he could go to Nashville. Continuing his education at the University of Nashville, he earned a BS in Physics. He then got his doctorate in Physics from Georgia Tech in 1899 at the age of 25. De Forest became an experimenter and promoted his inventions.
Most of the companies he started went bankrupt and left his investors with nothing, but he did come up with one very important invention - a derivation of the diode vacuum tube. He had built a Fleming diode with an anode, cathode, and a grid-pattern wire between the two, acting as an amplifier - the triode vacuum tube. This invention would become essential to all future electronics before solid state came along.
Arcades
In imitation of the fashionable London Burlington Arcade, several cities in the Confederacy developed similar arcades, covered passages filled with shopping venues.
Richmond Arcade, 1872
The most famous is the Richmond Arcade, a two-floor open-air shopping passageway, featuring high-end shops, would be the inspiration for similar arcades in Atlanta, Charlotte, Montgomery, Nashville, Houston, Dallas, San Diego, and elsewhere, and was the forerunner of the modern shopping mall.
Draining the Swamp
A young inventor from New Orleans, Albert Baldwin Wood, graduated from Tulane University with a BS in Engineering in 1899. Right out of his studies he was hired by the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans to try to improve the city's drainage. He invented 'flapgates,' and other hydraulic devices, most notably an efficient low-maintenance, high-volume pump which included the wood screw pump (1909) and the wood trash pump (1910), and would spearhead swampland reclamation and development for New Orleans development. Wood's colleagues in New Orleans would come from the Dutch Quarter, what amounted to a 'Little Holland' in the city, looking like a piece of the Netherlands in the deep south.
Wood spent much of his career in New Orleans, but would consult and design the drainage, pumping, and sewage systems for other cities, such as Atlanta, Richmond, San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Baltimore. He even consulted on projects in India, Egypt, China, and Canada, and back in the Netherlands, helping reclaim land from the Zuider Zee. Some of his pumps would go on to be in continuous use for over 80 years without need of repairs; new pumps would continue to be built from his designs.
Wood at a dedication for some of his pumps in New Orleans
Wood's children, Lydia Anne, Robert Edward, Thomas Jonathan, and Sarah Elizabeth, succeeded him. His company provided instructions and assistance in French and English, as French competency is a required component of graduating from school in Louisiana.
Jacksonville's Great Fire (1901)
A tragic fire engulfed downtown Jacksonville when a mattress factory caught fire and took most of downtown with it. An architect from the north, Henry J Klutho, was contracted to help rebuild the southern town. Klutho studied the 'Chicago School' of architecture, creating a version of the 'Prairie Style,' and his designs would reshape Jacksonville, and inspire the neighborhoods of Springfield, Riverside, and Avondale, and soon, South Jacksonville, East Jacksonville, New Berlin, and North Jacksonville. Beyond this redesign of Jacksonville's Downtown, Klutho's designs would be emulated and copied in other small but growing downtowns all the way to Hawaii and Guam and the Washington Islands, becoming a key style of building. Nowhere in the Confederacy would any 'brutalist' or other overly-simplistic or abstract architecture gain traction. Architects would continue to be required to create attractive houses and walkable downtowns across the Confederacy. Fred Kloeppel, a German immigrant to Jacksonville, would go on to create many of the still-standing hotels of the town, such as Hotel George Washington, Hotel Lee (originally the Carling), Hotel Jackson, and others, copies of which would soon appear across the South, even in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Santo Domingo.
Buildings in Jacksonville:
Confederate Presidents (1910)
Lt. Gen. Thomas Jonathan Jackson, called "Stonewall," lived a long life, living well into his 80s, living long enough to see his son, Thomas, become President of the country he helped create.
General Jackson, 1910.
Thomas Jackson, wearing a 1890-pattern uniform for the army before more modern versions were adopted.
Jackson was a Democrat, and the Populist party candidate, Henry A. Pritchard, faced off in a heated campaign.
Henry Pritchard
Pritchard's campaign involved continued rumors and off-record remarks of wanting to remove blacks from North and South Carolina to Santo Domingo or Liberia, which would go on to hurt his party's chances in the Congressional elections as well. Jackson campaigned on military preparedness and maintaining Confederate neutrality; the CS hadn't been in a war since 1879 and Jackson hoped to keep it that way. In 1910, enforcement of the voting amendment was spotty, but in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, South California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Rio Grande, Durango, blacks were able to vote, provided that they were over 21, had paid taxes, were not on any form of charity or assistance, and had not been jailed within the last 5 years. Other states in the Confederacy did not enforce the amendment much, if at all, so voting by blacks in the rest of the Confederacy was essentially on a county-by-county basis or town-by-town basis.
With name recognition, a dashing figure, and a beautiful wife (Sarah Anne), Jackson easily won his election in 1909 to take office in 1910. At 325-144 (419 House members, 50 Senators from 25 states, so 469 total), victory was not in doubt.
Confederate First Lady, Sarah Anne Jackson
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JJohnson
Banned
I kind of skipped past the whole tribunal thing from the treaty, but Sherman would have been tried along with John Turchin. I can come up with that list, sure.
Chapter 40.5: Presidents So Far (Part 1)
JJohnson
Banned
US Presidents:
1864 - Lincoln (R); 16
1868 - Hancock (D); 17
1872 - Grant (R); 18
1876 - Grant (R)
1880 - Hayes (R); 19
1884 - Garfield (R); 20
1888 - Cleveland (D); 21
1892 - Harrison (R); 22
1896 - Cleveland (D); 23
1900 - McKinley (R); 24
1904 - Roosevelt (R); 25
1908 - Roosevelt (R)
1912 - Wilson (D); 26
Gallery:
1864 - Lincoln (R); 16
1868 - Hancock (D); 17
1872 - Grant (R); 18
1876 - Grant (R)
1880 - Hayes (R); 19
1884 - Garfield (R); 20
1888 - Cleveland (D); 21
1892 - Harrison (R); 22
1896 - Cleveland (D); 23
1900 - McKinley (R); 24
1904 - Roosevelt (R); 25
1908 - Roosevelt (R)
1912 - Wilson (D); 26
Gallery:
Chapter 40.5: Presidents So Far (Part 2)
JJohnson
Banned
CS Presidents:
1862 - Jefferson Davis (D)
1868 - John C Breckinridge (D)
1874 - George Washington Custis Lee (D)
1880 - Gustavus Woodson Smith (P)
1886 - William Allen (P)
1892 - Fitzhugh Lee (D)
1898 - John Wesley Frazer (P)
1904 - James Longstreet (D)
1910 - Thomas J Jackson II (D)
1862 - Jefferson Davis (D)
1868 - John C Breckinridge (D)
1874 - George Washington Custis Lee (D)
1880 - Gustavus Woodson Smith (P)
1886 - William Allen (P)
1892 - Fitzhugh Lee (D)
1898 - John Wesley Frazer (P)
1904 - James Longstreet (D)
1910 - Thomas J Jackson II (D)
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CS Presidents:
1862 - Jefferson Davis (D)
1868 - John C Breckinridge (D)
1874 - George Washington Custis Lee (D)
1880 - Gustavus Woodson Smith (P)
1886 - William Allen (P)
1892 - Fitzhugh Lee (D)
1898 - John Wesley Frazer (P)
1904 - James Longstreet (D)
1910 - Thomas J Jackson II (D)
View attachment 443189
Who's that Yankee spy on the right?
JJohnson
Banned
Lol. I was trying to find a colorized no-beard picture of TJ Jackson, but apparently that means he's in Union blue. I switched it up.Who's that Yankee spy on the right?
Speaking of Uniforms, if anyone's capable of that, are there any gray WW1-style uniforms someone would be willing to draw or has drawn for the CS? And would anyone be willing to do some coin/bills for this timeline? There's an upcoming monetary change I was considering about the same time as the US.
On the map, the only changes I could see to get to 1910 would be:
-Utah is a state (1904)
-Bechuanaland is merged into South Africa
-Tunisia and Libya are Italian colonies and the northern areas of Tunisia themselves are quickly becoming majority Italian
-Neukamerun is added in as part of Kamerun (attached)
-Kenya, Tanganyika stay as they are, as does Rhodesia
-other African borders are essentially OTL; Spanish Morocco and Tangier are united as Spanish Morocco.
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This is interesting. Here it is France that violates Belgian neutrality. On paper, it's a good strategy since it bypasses the border defenses and would allow France to attack the Rhine Province. This would certainly cause issues for German industry. On the other side, this version of Russia hasn't suffered the humiliation of the Russo-Japanese War. This is bound to catch up with Russia in this war.
And due of butterflies Russia might avoid revolutions and civil war. It just depends what kind of ruler Nicholas II is. He was born in 1868 so he might be different person as in OTL. And it is very possible that him has health heir unlike in OTL.
Russia's political situation here is different. I wouldn't completely discount the possibility of revolution. It took massive desperation on the part of Germany to incite revolution in Russia in OTL. The circumstances here aren't the same. It is critical for Britain to keep German ports open to allow for both Germany and Austria-Hungary to receive imported goods and war materials. Plus British, Dominion, and colonial troops have to have a way into central Europe.
If Italy declares for the Entente, then Germany and Austria-Hungary are in a bad position. Even still, Italy's circumstances are different here. They have more colonies and Britain really needs to protect the path between Gibraltar and the Suez Canal. Getting Italy to flip with the understanding they can reclaim Savoy and Nice after the war would be a major diplomatic coup. Entente control of the Mediterranean would be very bad for Britain, but even worse for Germany and Austria-Hungary. That's not even counting the wild card the Ottomans are here even with an alliance with France. I suppose France is guaranteeing the Ottomans a reconquest of Egypt along with an Ottoman recognition of Sudan being French. Japan is another wild card.
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Don't know if he went there in person, but he did give LSU two cannons from the Battle of Fort Sumter. They're on campus near Tiger Stadium. Awesome piece of history even if you're not a rebel.
I don't think that it would happen, Savoy and Nice are French speaking (Nissard is part of the Languedoc familly) and they are on the other side of the alpes so difficult to defend or administrate for Italy. Italy is not really interested by these territories they want trieste, Dalmatia, etc. Italy economy is also connected to the French one, France is protected by the Alps.
Italy could choose the German side but it would be really unlikely they have many reasons to choose the French side.
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