Dixieland: The Country of Tomorrow, Everyday (yet another Confederate TL)

Ok, I have a burning question. Why, if the anti Oriental party has such momentum and enthusiasm behind it, does it not simply push for new ammendments to the constitution rather than take the much riskier approach of defying the courts? It seems like a little patience would pay off because once that is accomplished, the popular anti-immigration and prohibitinist laws will be straightforward to enforce. I mean, even the CSA, nuts as it can be, has tried to respect judicial rulings.
 
I would say those are largely a means to an end. I actually don't think it's a stark ideology - if anything, it's relatively non-ideological pragmatism. Nonaligned foreign policy, heavy state support for industrialization, a pragmatic stance on race, a claim to be speaking for the "popular will". If anything, "Nationalist" might be the best way to describe Mahonism, especially with the heavy military influence. Those seem like stark ideological commitments only because of who it puts him in conflict with. Mahonism is largely defined as what it's not. You could even say National Populism (not in the Kaiserreich sense lol).
So, southern-fried Peronismo, more or less?
 
Ok, I have a burning question. Why, if the anti Oriental party has such momentum and enthusiasm behind it, does it not simply push for new ammendments to the constitution rather than take the much riskier approach of defying the courts? It seems like a little patience would pay off because once that is accomplished, the popular anti-immigration and prohibitinist laws will be straightforward to enforce. I mean, even the CSA, nuts as it can be, has tried to respect judicial rulings.

I mean, they don't even control the House of Representatives, let alone 2/3rds of the House of Representatives. They can't even pass laws, let alone a constitutional amendment.

I wouldn't say they have tremendous momentum. They probably have a narrow Senate majority if you add on the National Union party - and that's largely because the Senate is skewed towards small, National Union-friendly rural states. They narrowly won the Presidency due to good luck - an unpopular President + a third-party that ironically drained more support from Blaine than Pennoyer.
 
I mean, they don't even control the House of Representatives, let alone 2/3rds of the House of Representatives. They can't even pass laws, let alone a constitutional amendment.

I wouldn't say they have tremendous momentum. They probably have a narrow Senate majority if you add on the National Union party - and that's largely because the Senate is skewed towards small, National Union-friendly rural states. They narrowly won the Presidency due to good luck - an unpopular President + a third-party that ironically drained more support from Blaine than Pennoyer.
Oh, so they really were so far from being able to get an ammendment that they had to do something immediately to fulfill their campaign promises? I wasn't clear on whether their agenda was snowballing enough that they might be able to flip representatives and senators in the next few yearsot whether this was kind of a fleeting opportunity to take power.
 
Oh, so they really were so far from being able to get an ammendment that they had to do something drastic to fulfill their campaign promises?

Yeah. From their perspective, this narrow Senate majority and Presidency is the best they're going to get. It's not an unreasonable assumption - the Republican Party has a really damn good record of winning elections in the ITL USA. America is a two-party system, but it's one where the GOP tends to win most of the time.

Quite frankly, current Supreme Court precedent makes it REALLY hard to accomplish any of their goals without disobeying the courts - since SCOTUS has already ruled most economic intervention, including explicit immigration restrictionism, as violating the Privileges or Immunities Clause. Stuff like an 8-hour workweek and a ban on child labor? Both probably unconstitutional right now. If OTL America had Lochner, ITL America is much more aggressive than that.
 
....Oh. Nice pick,.

Still needs to be on the Supreme COurt. Chief Justice this time.
Was your comment to me or him? I noticed that the infobox had changed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, but right now in the story is where the Sr. is still alive, but the Jr is doing well...
 
For the North German Confederation, will it ever formally become the German Empire/Prussian Empire/North German Empire or will it remain this semi federal system dominated by Prussia?

And for the Southern German States, will they formally unite into the Bavarian Empire/South German Empire or become the South German Federation or something like that?
 
And I was saying that I didn't come up with the idea, the Author did, he is just going to have to give us specifics of the retcon.

AH! You posted 15 minutes after the TastySpam did the retcon-change. I didn't take notice of the time and thought you were suggesting a name for him to change it to....
 
Chapter 65 - "Rome Rule"
"Rome Rule"
The Irish Home Rule League was confronted with a tremendous crisis. The leader of the Home Rule Party, Isaac Butt, was a moderate who advocated for cooperation with the Liberal government under William Gladstone, which had just won re-election in 1875. However, in Christmas of 1877, the declaration of the Union of Rome outraged many supporters of the Irish Home Rule League, chief among them the Catholic Church in Ireland, which overwhelmingly denounced the Union of Rome, as did Catholic churches in most of the world outside of Manitoba, England, and Germany. Unfortunately for Butt, he also happened to a member of the Church of Ireland, making him a Protestant. This sparked a back-bench revolt against Butt, led by the obstructionist Joseph Biggar, who had ferociously opposed Butt. The most notorious figure who had turned against Butt was Charles Stewart Parnell, despite the fact that Parnell was also a Protestant. This change was heavily led by members of the Irish National Catholic League, which was quickly founded by Archbishop Thomas Croke to protest Gladstone's recognition of the Union of Rome - although they gained most of their support from farmers after they included provisions discouraging (mostly Protestant) landlordism and supporting the distribution of land to (mostly Catholic) tenant farmers. The result of this leadership challenge was however not to actually replace Butt, but rather to split the Home Rule League, which was never a fully organized political party, but rather something closer to a caucus. The smaller Butt faction and the larger Biggar faction simply sat apart from each other, often lobbing insults at each other.

The British parliament between 1874-1880 eventually became known as the Zombie Parliament, named after the walking dead corpses of Caribbean mythology (the name was coined by Randolph Churchill, a fierce opponent of Gladstone). Opponents of Gladstone derisively referred to his earlier proposals of Irish "Home Rule" as "Rome Rule" but with the creation of the Union of Rome, Gladstone openly celebrated his Home Rule proposal as Rome Rule. When he brought up the Government of Ireland Bill of 1878, the Irish MPs split (Butt for, Biggar against), as the Conservatives voted lock-step against. Most worryingly for Gladstone, several liberals, such as the newly elected Joseph Chamberlain, voted against the bill, but most were such new MPs, they brought few other MPs with them. Ultimately, the bill passed by 18 votes. A furious effort was made to stop the bill in the House of Lords, which was inclined to veto the bill and did so. However, the House of Lords backed down in the new 1879 Act, after Gladstone agreed to allow the 28 representative peers of Ireland to continue voting in the House of Lords - and then exclude all 101 Irish MPs to sit instead in the Irish "Second Order" (the original plan was to exclude only 80). The Irish First Order was also reformed, in order to gain the support of the Irish Representative Peers in the House of Lords, to remove any elected members. Originally, it had all 28 representative peers and 75 representatives elected by a restricted franchise, but the new First Order would simply be a body of all the Irish peers. This was accepted by the House of Lords, because the First Order would thus be almost entirely Protestant.

Amusingly, as a result of the bill, the next Parliament was to only elect 551 members, horn of the 101 Irish MPs. Amusingly, if you excluded the roughly 60 Irish MPs that belonged to the Liberal Party, Gladstone's Liberals by that itself would lose its majority in Parliament. This outraged the Conservatives, who mocked the "Zombie Parliament", and who mobilized in rage over British defeat in the Zulu War, Russian triumph in the Great Eastern War, and against Irish Home Rule. The results for the Liberal Party was an annihilation in the heartland of Britain. A crushing defeat saw the Conservatives triumph with 360 seats over 191 for the Liberals, putting Disraeli back in charge.

In contrast, Irish Home Rule wasn't even that popular in Ireland itself, as Irish radicals raged against the un-elected Protestant Peers of the Irish First Order. In the 1880 elections, the "National Parliamentary Party", led by Joseph Biggar and his proteges, Charles Stewart Parnell and John Dillon, won in a landslide on a platform of ending landlordism, crushing the Conservatives everywhere outside of Ulster. The disorganized remnants of the Liberals and Butt's moderates also flailed, crashing into a distant third and fourth. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland basically occupied a similar role as the Governor-General of places like Canada, but there was no office of the Prime Minister (as the Irish Order was explicitly not an Irish Parliament). The leader of the largest party, the NPP, however, declared himself a de facto Prime Minister, passing ambitious bills to limit land taxes for tenant farmers and rents, while denying official recognition of any properties of the Union of Rome.

Ironically, Irish Home Rule thus actually weakened Irish representation in politics. The Irish Order was more or less irrelevant because the First Order vetoed almost every reform passed by the Second Order. The Conservative government notably declined to actually reverse the Irish Home Rule bill as it had originally promised, because it actually liked what it saw from Irish politics. Protestant landlords were more or less totally safe and without Irish representation in Westminster, Gladstone's proposals to reform tenant farmers by lowering rents and allowing them to purchase the land they farmed on fell on flat ears. There was actually no reason anymore that British politics had to heed Irish concerns. In response, seeing the failure of Irish Home Rule, a national tenant strike was called by the Irish National Parliamentary Party, which quickly caught fire. Angry that the government refused to even consider modest land reforms, both the First Order government in Dublin and the Conservative government in London, many tenants immediately began refusing to pay rent to their landlords, which the Tories saw as an affront to the rule of law and thus "progress."

At this time, the French Emperor, Napoleon IV was actually pursuing his own reforms in France to ensure more egalitarian distribution of land for small farmers, who largely became smallholding farmers who strongly supported the French monarchy. A grinding agricultural recession smashed into France in the 1880's, including the introduction of the mushroom phylloxera, which destroyed almost French vines. In response, Napoleon IV called for widespread agrarian reform, which would finance tenant farmers to purchase their own lands, which was cheap due to the agricultural depression. Then in order to restore agriculture, the French government hiked grain and corn tariffs, angering both the Americans and British. The North Germans complained, but this was seen as hypocritical, as the French had only increased tariffs to directly match North German tariffs (which had been demanded by landowning Prussian junkers). Anglo-French business-people lambasted the scheme as "Catholic socialism" - an insult that Napoleon IV openly embraced. Napoleon IV's land reforms often became the model for Irish tenant farmer activists, which further caused the British commercial elite to staunchly oppose land reform as a Catholic and Socialist scheme. Although the Papacy in Avignon was set to condemn anti-rent boycotts as contrary to the rule of law and sanctity of contract, modern archives reveal that Imperial French pressure nixed that proposed Papal encyclical.[1]

The 1885 election was narrowly won by the Conservatives and only after they had allowed the young Randolph Churchill to run a campaign based on expanding the franchise. However, by 1887, the country was soon in recession due to the negative economic impacts of the Spanish-Confederate War sparking a recession in the United States. Eventually, the 1890 elections would be seen as a "war election." Irish tenants, either unwilling or unable to pay rents, finally joined the tenant strike in mass. By 1888, the vast majority of tenants in Ireland weren't paying rents, with open fighting and murder on both sides as local officials tried to enforce rents. As the Irish National Party had adopted more or less a position of denying funding to the Irish Home Rule Government (and by extension, the Irish police), the British Army was the only force that could enforce rents, which Prime Minister Churchill chose to do. Britain itself rallied behind Churchill, re-electing the Conservatives in 1890 despite the recession. However, sentiment in Ireland overwhelmingly rejected the intervention of the British Army. Open violence erupted, as the Irish Republican Brotherhood began training tenant farmers to sabotage and resist the British Army. In addition, anger at the First Order bubbled, as Irish aristocrats and landlords had to constantly dodge assassination by Irish radicals. For all intents and purposes, Ireland was now under martial law. Outraging Ireland further, Charles Stewart Parnell, one of the more moderate Irish nationalists now in charge, was arrested by British forces on adultery charges and died in prison in 1891 from kidney disease, which was immediately blamed on British soldiers. Although he had been suffering from kidney disease for years, it was alleged that the British soldiers denied him medical care, causing his death. [2] This put the much more radical Dillon in charge.

Although Prime Minister Churchill seemed to be the "Lord of Electioneering" for his ability of winning two stunning victories at the age of 36 and 41, he appeared to be slowing down for some unclear reason. As the economy recovered, Churchill appeared to be romping towards another victory in 1895. Sick and horrified by the violence, Churchill's Conservatives sought to implement their own land reforms in hopes of mollifying Irish tenant farmers. The Irish situation had developed far worse than they had hoped and although firmly believing that the rule of law had to be preserved, now believed that changing the law was the only way to stop the violence. However, by then, liberal leader Joseph Chamberlain (his political star rose after the failure of Irish Home Rule, which he had opposed) openly opposed those land reform proposals, and sided with several "Ultra-Tories" to stymie them. The two parties had ironically switched positions on land reform, though it was all positioning anyways, as Westminster didn't even have the power to implement land reform in Ireland due to home rule. In addition, besides personal health issues, the United Kingdom, while fighting the Irish Land Wars, would be romping not towards one, but two cataclysmic wars.
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[1] The OTL encylical "Saepe Nos" in 1888
[2] More or less his OTL death - the ITL British didn't kill him, but that's not what people believe.
 
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JTTough

Banned
TTL World War I.

Like with OTL Tsarist Russia, the TTL Confederacy seems ridiculously backward and reactionary. They only make reforms to the extent that it suits the needs of the ruling class, their emancipation program is ridiculously slow, and their political system is stratified, corrupt, and doesn't seem to obey the rule of law.

When World War I breaks out, they'll find themselves woefully unprepared to fight an industrial war.

Looks like most peoples' timelines of the Confederacy end up with it backward and reactionary in comparison to the saintly and forward-thinking Union.
 
Looks like most peoples' timelines of the Confederacy end up with it backward and reactionary in comparison to the saintly and forward-thinking Union.

Well...

One side doesn't put white supremacy and the right to own people into its Constitution, while the other one does. I think that is quite backward and reactionary.
 

JTTough

Banned
Well okay, it's time for another update on the first President of the post-war Confederate States of America, hopefully in a way that shines light on how they even won the Civil War. I'll add in a wikibox when I get to it after lunch.

Confederate States of America, 1867 elections

The anti-partyist ideology of the CSA prevented the formation of effective political parties, but many politicians began coalescing into general political camps. At first, this began as a split between pro-Davis and anti-Davis. However, after anti-Davis forces took a clear majority in the Confederate Congress in the 1865 elections, it quickly became obvious that the opponents of Davis agreed on little.[1]

One common interpretation is that three distinct camps splintered: one camp dedicated to defending Jefferson Davis, one camp that detested Davis for his violation of states' rights while President, and a third camp outraged at the Treaty of Paris. However, the lack of partyism meant that most politicians belonged to none of these camps, but rather followed primarily localist or cronyist interests. Their only ideological commitment, like almost all other major politicians at the time, was defending the primacy of slavery as the backbone of the nation's political and economic order. Politicians, many of them elected in Unionist regions like Eastern Tennessee or Northern Alabama, were excluded from Congress.

Contrary to public perception, the politicians protesting against the Treaty of Paris were not all fire-eaters - they actually came equally from all sides of the political spectrum, and many former fire-eaters actually softened their political stances in the aftermath of the devastation of the war. Proslavery was not a meaningful distinction when almost all major politicians were proslavery.

The 1867 election plunged this entire system into chaos, thanks to the candidacy of the Confederacy's most prominent war hero: Braxton Bragg. Bragg was beloved by Confederate veterans and much of the general public for his smashing victories at Chickamauga and Chattanooga. The surrender of the Army of the Cumberland was wildly considered the worst American defeat of the war.[2] However, Bragg was wildly despised by the Confederate political class, which largely considered those victories a fluke.

Braxton ran against Alexander Stephens, who represented many political forces opposed to the Davis Administration. Although Davis was widely unpopular, his endorsed candidate, Bragg, easily soared to a landslide victory.

A last-ditch effort to keep Bragg from the presidency through the electoral college floundered as Confederate veterans marched on the capital (moved back to Montgomery due to paranoia over the USA) to demand the electors follow the popular votes of their state. Bragg denied responsibility over the paramilitaries, but they quickly set a precedent in Dixie politics.
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[1] Pro-Davis forces barely won in 1863 and 1865 goes worse for them as CSA deaths pile on.
[2] OTL, Union forces escaped Chattanooga when Grant’s forces relieved the siege. Without his glorious victory at Vicksburg...that didn’t happen. And so a CSA army escapes surrender and a Union army doesn't. And thus Braxton Bragg of all people becomes the CSA’s most prominent war hero.

I do remember reading this in a book I saw in a used bookstore. A lot of people pretty much thought the party politics was responsible for DC getting so corrupt, and tried to avoid having parties in the CSA. Like the USA before it, parties didn't form till after independence, so I don't see how it would be avoided here either. The lucky thing here, however, is just about everyone is a Democrat, so there's more agreement, as opposed to the Federalist/Whig/Republican northern vs. Democrat/Democratic-Republican south. I can't say I've read much about Bragg other than OTL he wasn't that great a general. But then again, that's the good thing about these timelines - read them for a good story. Keep up the good work sir!
 
Well...

One side doesn't put white supremacy and the right to own people into its Constitution, while the other one does. I think that is quite backward and reactionary.
It's all a matter of perspective. I'd argue the country has done moderately alright given how backwards its societal structure was before the war of secession. Now, in about a generation, it has demolished the planter class's power, enfranchised millions of white citizens, streamlined railroad development, had a nationally formative event in the Spanish War, affirmed the integrity of the Confederacy against secessionist movements, allowed badly needed foreign investment, decreased its dependence on Cotton, started an armaments industry and naval shipyard, paved the way for a transition to a post-slavery society, allowed at least some basic rights and citizenship to free Blacks including voting, and allowed integrated military training. So far, the people have largely disapproved of political violence, which is a good sign but we'll have to see how people react to the assassination of the president.

The CSA has had a rough infancy but I think it is stronger in the 1890s and 1900s than before.
 
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It's all a matter of perspective. I'd argue the country has done moderately alright given how backwards it's societal structure was before the war of secession. Now, in about a generation, it has demolished the planter class's power, enfranchised millions of white citizens, streamlined railroad development, had a nationally formative event in the Spanish War, affirmed the integrity of the Confederacy against secessionist movements, allowed badly needed foreign investment, decreased its dependence on Cotton, started an armaments industry and naval shipyard, paved the way for a transition to a post-slavery society, allowed at least some basic rights and citizenship to free Blacks including voting, and allowed integrated military training. So far, the people have largely disapproved of political violence, which is a good sign but we'll have to see how people react to the assassination of the president.

The CSA has had a rough infancy but I think it is stronger in the 1890s and 1900s than before.

Yes, but those reforms might not be able to prepare the nation for the ultimate test: total industrial warfare.
 
One thing worth mentioning: the CSA is in store for a huge disaster that it cannot avoid: the 1900 Galveston hurricane. Not only will the storm destroy the town, but it will destroy a Galveston that has in all likelihood grown greater in importance and size than IOTL because it was one of the largest ports not destroyed by Spanish forces 15 years earlier, so there may be quite a few ships.

Whether this will have any major repercussions, I do not know, but it will be interesting to see how this event is handled and how it is viewed in both the CSA and the USA.
 
It's all a matter of perspective. I'd argue the country has done moderately alright given how backwards it's societal structure was before the war of secession. Now, in about a generation, it has demolished the planter class's power, enfranchised millions of white citizens, streamlined railroad development, had a nationally formative event in the Spanish War, affirmed the integrity of the Confederacy against secessionist movements, allowed badly needed foreign investment, decreased its dependence on Cotton, started an armaments industry and naval shipyard, paved the way for a transition to a post-slavery society, allowed at least some basic rights and citizenship to free Blacks including voting, and allowed integrated military training. So far, the people have largely disapproved of political violence, which is a good sign but we'll have to see how people react to the assassination of the president.

The CSA has had a rough infancy but I think it is stronger in the 1890s and 1900s than before.

The US South OTL, all things considered, turned out pretty well. Yeah people have complaints, but Mississippi still has a higher GDP per capita than the United Kingdom. It's an incredible turn from say, a hundred years ago.

I also wouldn't say the Union is saintly. It is somewhat richer than the OTL USA, but it's also far more nativist and is currently run by a party whose raison d'etre is literally kicking out an entire race of people lol
 
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