Until Every Drop of Blood Is Paid: A More Radical American Civil War

[Red_Galiray]

I must admit that I'm somewhat worried. Was the update bad? After almost 2 days it doesn't have even 50 likes, whereas other updates usually reach 70 in the same time. I'm sure that many of you were expecting an account of the battle, but I think it was necessary to talk about this too, and it only fit here. Please like the update, and if it's been bad, I'm open to criticism and advice.

There are exacerbating factors potentially awaiting for veterans of both sides; Union troops will tend to be from areas that never saw any fighting so their civilian neighbours won't understand the butchery, while Confederates will be on the losing side, and so could potentially face accusations of cowardice from civilians Southerners who would blame them for their defeat.

Yes... I wonder if an earlier understanding of PTSD can be reached on account of this. Also, Black civil rights and emancipation are likely to be seen as conquests of the Civil War, and after going through so much suffering and sacrifice, I can't see the soldiers simply rolling over and allowing the Slave Power to claim dominance again.

There were a lot of veterans associations and soldier's homes established after the war. I've done a bit of civil war reenacting at the one in Milwaukee (near Miller Park Stadium, its part of the VA's grounds).

The Grand Army of the Republic often talked against Confederate statues and the Lost Cause. Something like that, but in stereoids.

That was some damn good writing! Keep up the good work!

Thanks!

In order to have a better post war America, it will take more than a few good presidents; it will also need a pro civil rights Supreme Court to ensure that no roll backs happen. Maybe Lincoln pulls a William Howard Taft and is nominated to be an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court, or perhaps even Chief Justice after Salmon Chase dies during the 1870s (if he still gets the post that is).

I actually have Lincoln become Chief Justice in 1861 in my Triumphant timeline.

If anybody has any judges that would be the stalwart defenders we need, please mention them! Even some Lincoln judges, like David Davis, showed at most wavering commitment to them IOTL. As for Lincoln, did he want to be Chief Justice? I can see that, but I don't remember him mentioning anything of the sort in the books about him I've read. Of course, the Civil War was his main preoccupation. I know Stanton desired to be in the Court.

Washington wasn't perfect either, and people revere him; I think LIncoln will still go down in history well here, but perhaps like FDR - - FDR is a solid 3rd at worst in most historians' eyes, and some put him 1 or 2, because of the Depression and WW 2. Lincoln's mistakes will likely look better by comparison than, say, FDR's treatment of Japanese-Americans, too. Or, if not, his mistakes will be seen the same way, just sort of glossed over.

I can see many people supporting the extralegal measures and civil rights violations because they were done in the name of the most just of causes - slave emancipation. But the "Lincoln is a tyrant" idiots will probably be emboldened.

If we look at the English Civil War and especially the colonial theatre, that war was literally the prequel of the American Civil War.

ITTL, this is even more of the case given the radicalization that is happening on both sides.

I actually don't know much about the English Civil War except for the basics.

That story was quite got. Gives a reminder of how hellish the war actually is on the ground, and shows how an 'I just want to go home' greenhorn gets radicalized into utter hatred for the CSA.

Deserves a threadmark.

Thanks! I think I'll continue writing these little stories and then combine them into just one threadmark.

It'll be interesting to see how all of these radicalized soldiers shape up as a constituency during reconstruction.
The irony of war weary soldiers somehow ending up the most in favor of a lengthy, thorough reconstruction would be incredible to see. I imagine it'd work out that way just out of sheer spite and fear, from and of having to experience all this horror or doing so again.

Edit: Oops, posted right on top of a new update.

I guess this means I'm supposed to say "First".

I'd imagine that they wouldn't stand for their achievements to be undone. But naturally there will be others who couldn't care less.

Come on, Reynolds, stop the traitor Lee and give America's Ulysses a chance to show Johnny Reb what for!

This time, Unconditional Surrender will be their only choice.

The Confederate traitors ITTL are going to be disfranchised en masse, not just the top dogs anymore. Or, such thing could become unnecessary because...the South would go Paraguay in the end.

Many Radicals were curiously enough against disenfranchisement, because they believed it was hypocritical to preach equality and democracy while at the same time disenfranchising large swathes of the South.

At the rate things are going Paraguay in the south would be a good outcome for the region. If we thought Sherman had free reign before there shall be no tree without one of his neckties now.

The march won't be just in Georgia.

Great update, showcasing the increasing radicalisation of the Union cause at their darkest moment. Were the quotes about the guillotine in Ohio etc. OTL?

Thank you! No, those I made up. They are in response to the greater scale and number of atrocities. The North here is similar to Paris just before the Terror, when they thought the Austrians were coming to exterminate them.

Another great update! You're continuing to do a great job weaving the military and political developments together

Thank you! I'm afraid that those who enjoy the military aspect may get bored of an update dedicated entirely to the political and social side though.

I think I already said this before, but it does seem like in the civil war here, comparisons to the French Revolution,seem to be a bit frequent. Does leave me wondering how that'll affect American historiography on the French Revolution. While I generally detest comparisons between two states that have centuries to millenniums separating them, I wouldn't be surprised if, going off the comparisons between the two, the start of the civil war would be compared to August 10 which led to the king being deposed, starting what some call the second revolution, and it seems like the civil war is also referred to as the second American revolution.

Might be a result of me watching Revolutions and getting superficially interested in the French Revolution I think a more positive portrayal is possible.

I have to say, one thing I really like about this timeline is the way it is written. Way to many are either just endless regurgitation of minutia, lists of dates of events, or slightly goofy prose writing. This is one of the few where it really feels like something I would be reading in a University level course about the Civil War. There is something about the overall tone of the writing, the 'focus' of each chapter being about certain aspects of the war, and that odd meandering quality that I find is common in pop-academic writing.

Thank you. I'm glad you enjoy my writing style. What do you mean, though, by "odd meandering quality"?

In the Old Roman sense/spirit of the title, I don't think it's up for debate. Lincoln has definitely crossed into "rei gerundae causa" territory.
Come time for the war to end and reconstruction to start, there are going to be a lot of senators and representatives who remember this time vividly and I'm more than sure they will be pursuing amendments to weaken the presidency, I'd guarantee it.
Lincoln might not be a pushover, but once he's at the end of his rope or there's someone new as president all the veteran legislators are going to see to it that a repeat of this can never happen.

I don't think a weaker Presidency would be inherently bad, in special because if the President remains so powerful a President opposed to Reconstruction could easily gut it.

All hope is with Reynolds now. We'll see if he can pull a rabbit out of the hat

This will be the decivise battle. Even more important than Gettysburg.

What just happened in this chapter was an absolute decimation of the political opposition in the North in response to a national crisis. Much of it wasn't directly organized by Lincoln, and the mob violence definitely **isn't** his primary responsibility, but history will see that second suspension of Habeas Corpus as a moment of incitation. That was the go-ahead moment to exclude, remove, and attack the opposition on a massive scale.

The February Orders would probably be as infamous as any law of the French Revolution, seen as the start of an American Terror. A complex legacy, to say the least.

Just caught up to this TL. Can't wait to see what happens next.

Thank you! It's comments like yours that motivate me to write. Next update is finally the battle.

 

[Drunkrobot]

I don't think a weaker Presidency would be inherently bad, in special because if the President remains so powerful a President opposed to Reconstruction could easily gut it.

Two opposing schools might develop, to either create a new axis in the post-Reconstruction political sphere or to be grafted onto another, more central one: Either permanently reduce the powers of the Presidency, perhaps having the effect of making the House Majority Leader more of a Prime Minister-like role, or keep the President powerful while checking that power with accountability laws and with a new, more democratic election system, like the French system.

 

[generalurist]

I must admit that I'm somewhat worried. Was the update bad? After almost 2 days it doesn't have even 50 likes, whereas other updates usually reach 70 in the same time. I'm sure that many of you were expecting an account of the battle, but I think it was necessary to talk about this too, and it only fit here. Please like the update, and if it's been bad, I'm open to criticism and advice.

I can't put my finger on any concrete criticisms, and intellectually I know it has some significant political developments and further show the radicalization happenign. But somehow it just doesn't grab my interest much.

I guess "moderates being extremely salty about how Lincoln is handling the war, but ultimately failing to stop him" is something we've seen and discussed plenty already recently (at least, feels like it to me), so it doesn't feel like much new has been revealed about the story.

 

[Tjakari]

Was the update bad? After almost 2 days it doesn't have even 50 likes, whereas other updates usually reach 70 in the same time.

Absolutely not.

But it might not pull in the "I've studied every major battle of the civil war" crowd. It's politics, and for a certain demographic I'd assume that they might feel that this is "all butter with no bread".
I eat this stuff up and this was one of the most exciting updates you've put out.

Also, the lack of likes might be because of some unspoken contention with the events in the update. Lincoln laying down the hammer and the North descending into Jacobins and Girondins probably grates against some people's expectations or sensibilities, hence no likes.
You'd have to compare the views on the thread before and after your post to have an idea of how many people read .

 

[Drunkrobot]

It's politics, and for a certain demographic I'd assume that they might feel that this is "all butter with no bread".

We need to get politics out of our American Civil War counterfactual discussion forums.

Spoiler

I'm joking.

 

[Unknown]

Ironically, guess who opposed the internment of the Japanese IOTL? None other than J. Edgar Hoover, of all people...

 

[DTF955Baseballfan]

If anybody has any judges that would be the stalwart defenders we need, please mention them! Even some Lincoln judges, like David Davis, showed at most wavering commitment to them IOTL. As for Lincoln, did he want to be Chief Justice? I can see that, but I don't remember him mentioning anything of the sort in the books about him I've read. Of course, the Civil War was his main preoccupation. I know Stanton desired to be in the Court.

I can see many people supporting the extralegal measures and civil rights violations because they were done in the name of the most just of causes - slave emancipation. But the "Lincoln is a tyrant" idiots will probably be emboldened.


Thanks! I think I'll continue writing these little stories and then combine them into just one threadmark.

The Court would be a great place for Stanton if it doesn't crush his ability to be an asset to the nextg President. Some of Grant's Attorney Generals might work, though I wonder if Amos Ackerman would even survive; given his support of black civil rights afterward, he had to have soe concept of that before, and I wonder if he might not get drummed out of the Confederate Army TTL and lynched or something.

Yes, just like FDR has his "worst President ever" critics, too - I mean, knock him down a few pegs if you think the US would have gotten out of the Depression faster without him if you want, but some people go way overboard.

I'm woncdering if I could do a little something from what my ancestors would have done - it'd be a lot shorter, just a few paragraphs from the POV of 3 men, 2 who fled West Virginia to Ohio in 1862 (mentioned before) and one who as far as we can find registered for the draft in 1863 but never got drafted. I might PM it to you and you can insert it into yours if you want.

 

[sarna2]

Thank you. I'm glad you enjoy my writing style. What do you mean, though, by "odd meandering quality"?

By that, I mean the large amount of quotations and asides about specific anecdotal events which litter the manuscript. In more academic textbooks, these tend to be regulated to either more concentrated primary sources or a single aside, while in "pop-academic' (i.e. the type of thing most people will read on the mass market) there is a tendency to fill out entire chapters with small anecdotal events, conveying a sense of ongoing events by weight of overwhelming testimonial.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

Excellent update, and I think far more important to the timeline than most of the posts about the actual battles are. This kind of political climate will do far more to determine the shape of post-war America than the specifics of the campaigns.

 

[m0585]

A superb chapter, as always. It's interesting to see the political forces at work behind the battles.

 

[Wolttaire]

It probaly becuase this chapter just has a much darker overtone over all the good guys aren't acting like the good guys, the great guys are threanting to kill people, lincoln acting semi tyrant like, WHile as usual was a very very good chapter people may have been said and forgot to click the like button or clicked away cause tone and gradduly come back and re read it the next couple days

 

[TheTexasRanger]

The chapter on the actions of Confederate partisans on Unionists and vice versa was really good. Makes me wonder how the German-Texans are faring during all this.

 

[Prince Daemon Targaryen]

This will be the decivise battle. Even more important than Gettysburg.

May I suggest that to make for maximum drama, there's a Cedar Mountain-type battle in a Pennsylvania city that makes things look even more dire than before, but then Reynolds wins a massive victory like two weeks later after mass panic

 

[Vinization]

Come on, Reynolds! Make your fellow Pennsylvanians proud!

 

[MarshalofMontival]

Is it bad that I want to see Lee try one of his high-risk high-reward gambles and get his ass handed to him thanks to Reynolds instilling some Old Regular-type discipline and steadiness under fire? Turning a double somersault and coming down on both flanks and the rear at the same time doesn't do you much good if the other fellows keep their cool and remember to aim low and fire in volleys.

 

[Ironshark]

Is it bad that I want to see Lee try one of his high-risk high-reward gambles and get his ass handed to him thanks to Reynolds instilling some Old Regular-type discipline and steadiness under fire? Turning a double somersault and coming down on both flanks and the rear at the same time doesn't do you much good if the other fellows keep their cool and remember to aim low and fire in volleys.

maybe Reynolds catches lee right in a flanking attempt?
it would be funny if jackson [hes still alive right] expects to go right thorugh the union flank like OTL chancellorvile then he sees a whole corps of union boys lined up for Him.

 

[Legosim]

Thank you! I'm afraid that those who enjoy the military aspect may get bored of an update dedicated entirely to the political and social side though.

Nah, don't worry about the lack of likes and such. Not every update can be super exciting stories of industrialized warfare, you're doing a spectacular job at laying the groundwork for other stuff too

 

[DanMcCollum]

I don't think a weaker Presidency would be inherently bad, in special because if the President remains so powerful a President opposed to Reconstruction could easily gut it.

Well, to be fair, it's not just Reconstruction either. We know, due to the power of hindsight, that the second half of the 19th century is a period of labor agitation and concentration of wealth by robber barons. A stronger presidency - especially during an era when when the Republicans, by and large, favored the interests of big business and leaned more classically liberal - could be disasterous to the labor movement and effectively radicalize it much further than happened in OTL. Its easy to cheer for a strong presidency when that President is fighting for the rights of freedmen. Its much more difficult when that same President is declaring martial law and sending in the army because those same freedmen just declared a strike in an Alabama coal mine.

 

[Jack Doe Obviously]

In reaction to these events, Chesnuts from all over the country denounced Lincoln as a “despot . . . who disregards the Constitution in the name of fanatism” and prosecuted a war “for the benefit of Negroes and the enslavement of Whites”. Horatio Seymour, the defeated 1862 candidate for the New York Governorship, said that emancipation was “bloody, barbarous, revolutionary" and that he would never accept the doctrine that that the loyal North lost their constitutional rights when the South rebelled.” Representative Cox, an Ohioan like Vallandigham, charged Lincoln with taking actions “unwarranted by the Constitution and laws of the United States”, which constituted “a usurpation of power never given up by the people to their rulers.”

The suspension of civil liberties, Lincoln concluded, was “constitutional wherever the public safety does require them.” Using a “homely metaphor”, the President said that such excesses would not continue in peace-time, and saying that they would was like saying “that a man could contract so strong an appetite for emetics during temporary illness, as to persist in feeding upon them through the remainder of his healthful life.”

I'm worried about the precedent this will set for civil liberties in the long term.

An editor told a Catholic meeting that the President “would be dammed if he believed they would go and fight for the nigger,” while a Chesnut speaker said that slave emancipation would bring thousands of freed Blacks to "fill the shops, yards and other places of labor" soldiers had left behind, thus forcing “the poor, limping veteran” to “compete with them for the support of our families."

Easy solution. If your black and were freed after the start of the civil war by the union and aren't a mother supporting children or under the age of 16 your automatically drafted.

 

[Anacostia Pol]

Easy solution. If your black and were freed after the start of the civil war by the union and aren't a mother supporting children or under the age of 16 your automatically drafted.

A plan of that nature would likely be counter to the desires of staunch abolitionists and Radicals. It would also hasten the Red Summer of 1919 by a few decades.