Chapter 50 - A Condo Divided
A Condo Divided
The impact of the American entry into the war was swift and immediate. The flood of American ironclads pouring down the Eastern Seaboard of North America quickly turned the numerical tables on the Spanish, with the American fleet, newly restocked after the Great Pacific War (albeit mostly with surplus Civil War craft) vastly outnumbered the Spanish Fleet. On the other hand, the two Spanish flagships were vastly superior to the American Navy in terms of technology, speed, and firepower, allowing them to run circles around the American fleet, dealing horrible losses. However, this necessitated breaking the blockade of Cuba and the Confederate coast, which sparked supplies flowing back into the hands of Confederate-Cuban troops, including several US-manufactured artillery guns. This proved a horrible loss for the Spanish garrisons, which quickly saw their redoubts across the island fall to Confederate forces. The remnants of the garrisons quickly fled to Santiago de Cuba to make a last stand, as Confederate and Cuban forces began digging in for a siege.
The Spaniards weren't ready to throw in the towel quite yet. The Spanish Navy was still essentially winning every confrontation at sea against the Americans, which horrified the American public and reassured the Spanish public. In response, the Americans sailed a fleet and army down the Mississippi River, under the famed engineer, General Orville Babcock. In response, the Spanish announced that all slaves in the vicinity of New Orleans would be freed if they decided to fight for the Spanish, which thousands did. In response, Governor Beauregard of Louisiana (and thus commander of the Louisiana State Militia) announced that a similar deal would be given to Confederate slaves. Of course, he had gained assurances that the Confederate government would compensate Louisiana for manumission costs, since they weren't paying it themselves. The Spanish move horrified Washington D.C. President Clay refused to accept the notion that American troops would be on the other side of freed slaves, possibly putting them back into slavery. Under American pressure, General Babcock made an ultimatum to Governor Beauregard, demanding that he respect the Spanish guarantees even if the Spanish Army were defeated. After being financially reassured, Beauregard agreed. The American-Confederate Army fought a Spanish Army in a battle famous for having freed slave auxiliaries on both sides. With their advantage in artillery largely negated by American guns and supply somewhat interrupted by American raids, the Spanish garrison eventually crumbled in the face of superior US/CS numbers, surrendering.
As the assault on Mobile was cancelled due to lack of naval superiority, the only Spanish foothold on mainland America left was Charleston. An army under "Lord Protector Jackson" marched down south, combining with the remnants of the army they had originally defeated. Jackson's combined "Christian Confederate Army" smashed into the Spanish garrison outside of Charleston. Although poorly equipped and poorly trained, Jackson's men had incredible zeal and greatly outnumbered the Spanish, who were horrified that firing volleys of fire and raking mass infantry formations with artillery shrapnel did absolutely nothing to stop their charge. Very quickly, the Spanish Army was overrun, being forced to surrender, albeit having inflicted horrible losses on Jackson's Army. Jackson himself was killed leading the charge, which turned over control of the Christian Commonwealth to his designated successor, a fellow Confederate veteran and one of the few planters that went along with Jackson's Commonwealth plan, Daniel Lindsay Russell. The final charge of Jackson would be one of the most famous scenes in postwar Confederate history. In Montgomery, Mahone sighed deeply, because he thought Jackson was a total nut and that Russell would be easier to deal with.
With the Spanish threat to the mainland Confederate States mostly ended, the Spanish were about to throw in the towel when another incident shocked the Confederate President. Louisiana and Mississippi were largely under control of CS-US troops. Due to Mahone's troops controlling Montgomery, this meant that most of the deep Southern states with the highest slave populations were directly under military control, with their legislatures essentially being held hostage. One exception to this was South Carolina (where the Christian Army held the State Legislature captive). However, Charleston was largely left in rubble due to being totally looted by Spanish forces trying to compel a Confederate surrender, as was New Orleans. Mobile was not occupied, but a fire broke out during the Spanish shelling of Mobile, which ultimately burned it to the ground. The three largest cities of the Confederacy, New Orleans, Charleston, and Mobile had all been destroyed.
Other border states, such as Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Tennessee, and Florida all had smaller slave populations (ironically, Florida's slave population went down due to an influx of Cuban refugees during the war, which the Confederacy was obligated to accept.) The final exception to this was the State of Georgia, which was notably spared much fighting. Combined with the fact that Virginia and Tennessee had all been devastated during the War of Secession (and not entirely recovered yet), the top five largest cities and centers of wealth in the Confederacy were all in Georgia, Savannah, Alexandria, Augusta, Columbus, and Atlanta (the war had ended just before Union forces marched into Georgia).
Needless to say, the Georgia political establishment was the least chastened in the country. As a result, the long-time Governor of Georgia, Robert Toombs, denounced Mahone as a Latin American-style military junta general, a tyrant, an illegal President, and worst of all to him, a miscegenationist. Georgia then declared secession from the Confederacy, copying the exact same Articles of Secession that Georgia had passed in 1861. A mixture of North Carolina refugees and the official South Carolina government in Columbia also immediately signed onto the declaration. In addition, the Florida legislature collapsed into a brawl. Secession failed, but most of the countries of Northern Florida, copying West Virginia in reverse, declared their secession from Florida as the new state of North Florida. Delegates from North Florida, South Carolina (well, half of it), North Carolina's government-in-exile, and Georgia immediately declared the "Provisional Confederate States of America", inviting Spanish intervention to protect their new nation.
Spain had no real desire to support a slaver rebellion for ideological reasons, but they figured this would be an excellent diplomatic chip to play. New Spanish armies immediately landed in Savannah, Georgia, intent on dealing the Confederacy a fatal blow. The war between the "Nationals" and "Provos" had begun, as Confederates immediately turned on each other. The Provos attacked the Nationals as miscegationists, "negro lovers", puppets of America, and "traitors to the white Southron race", while the Nationals attacked the Provos as "crypto-Catholics", "defeatists", and "traitors to the white Southron race." President Mahone immediately gave a speech, declaring that the 1861 secession was not the secession of states, but rather the secession of an "ancient Southron people" from "the foreign Yankees", who he then congratulated as "good neighbors, by the way." As such, he declared that individual states had no right to secede from the Confederacy. The speech did not convince many people. Many of the occupied states (MS and AL in particular), probably had a Provo-majority, which meant constant guerrilla attacks on National troops. Similarly, National sympathizers, smaller in numbers in Georgia, also attacked the Provos. The internal civil war often turned gruesome, as innocent civilians on both sides were targeted in reprisals and in terror attacks, by two sides that both viewed each other as race traitors.
Mahone only kept his control of these states by blatantly copying Lincoln, which at the very least helped keep American commitment. Mahone issued a Confederate Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that any state that did not erect a Nationalist government would be subject to uncompensated emancipation at the end of the war. In terror at their belief that the "Madman General" was not kidding, many Alabama and Mississippi planters declared loyalist governments that excluded them from the Proclamation, as did South Carolina (a dueling government aligned with the Christian Commonwealth in the ruins of Charleston), most of Florida outside of the North, and Governor Beauregard of Louisiana. In many ways, Mahone used planter greed against the planter class, promising the spoils of Georgia (easily the richest state in the otherwise devastated Confederacy) to loyalist slave-holding planters who were also economically suffering. In this clever way, Mahone played off both his American supporters and local planters. However, it sparked another problem for the Provisional Confederacy - slaves immediately leaving their plantations in anticipation of freedom, which was left with brutal reprisals. Many escaped slaves also took up arms, brutally ransacking, robbing, and murdering innocent whites (including Nationals!) across the PCSA. They were only a relatively small minority of escaped slaves, but they still proved a massive propaganda boost for the PCSA and also led to a total collapse in public order in the PCSA, which furthered the mass killings between Provos and Nationals. Ironically, one of Georgia's leading planters and advocates of the secession was himself almost killed by a Provo mob, when a mob of Provos tried to kill all of his slaves in fear that they were about to "revolt", and he indignantly stood against them in defense of his "property." Interestingly, only the escaping slaves saved him from being murdered, not because they particularly liked him, but because one deeply Christian slave thought it was wrong to leave any man to die like that. Different stories of both brutality and compassion, revenge and forgiveness, spread across the South, as the Spanish-Confederate war had very much expanded in scope, just weeks before it was set to end peacefully.
