Well it looks as though we have an interest and a mandate, now I need to work up a timeline!
TL-191: Filling the Gaps
- Thread starter Craigo
- Start date
Well it looks as though we have an interest and a mandate, now I need to work up a timeline!
I sincerely doubt that a military coup would be able to topple Featherston, for the simple reason that 'Sarge' doesn't trust the Confederate General Staff any farther than he can throw them; from start to finish he's going to be anticipating some move by the brass to topple him and pleasantly surprised (though possibly not actively disappointed) that the Generals haven't yet handed him a chance to purge the lot of them.
I think the only real chance to topple The Snake would be if the military had thrown in with the Knight Coup (and they don't seem to have taken any active role in that, possibly because Knight knew Featherston would be watching the military the way a screw keeps an eye on the chain gang); barring such co-operation between the Party and the military, I doubt Jake Featherston is going to be shifted by anything less than a tectonic plate on collision course.
That or some very, very angry Yankees.
I tend to assume that, after the Atom Bombing of London and at least two attempted uprisings, the Canadians are likely to shift focus from the armed overthrow of the United States and focus on passive resistance, with a focus on Civil Rights & possibly the movement to create an independent Canada - owning nothing to either the old British Empire or the newly-expanded American Empire (and presumably heavily-demilitarised).
Whether or not they would be able to secure that independence is an interesting question; while the United States would undoubtedly profit from not being obliged to occupy Canada AND the Confederacy, it's possible that by the mid-to-late 1940s the Sunk Cost Fallacy (and National Pride) may demand they try to hold everything, which means that in the end they hold onto nothing (Not even their character as a Great Democracy).
Also, for what it's worth my assumption is that the United States would not necessarily annex the British holdings in the West Indies; they might prefer to maintain them as "Free Associated States" like Puerto Rico (Rather than risk taking in too many new black citizens and a white population that probably sympathises a bit more with the Confederate States of American than they really should).
I really like the name 'Cardinal Brigade' for one of the Southern Volunteer formations that fought during the Mexican Civil War; it's a doubly suitable because it has overtones of 'Cardinal importance' and a useful undertone of "Good catholic boys here, your eminence" (Whether or not the soldiers of this formation would prefer to pray at or to prey on the Church in Mexico).
For what it's worth, I actually did a write-up of Claire Lee Chennault as head of a Confederate fighting formation in Mexico (and elsewhere) known as the 'War Hawks' (With the assumption that this would be a local answer to the 'Flying Tigers' in China and the Condor Legion in Spain): It occurs to me that this name would suit your Black Staff-run volunteers rather well (as a nickname, at least) and make a workable companion to your Cardinal Brigade (Also, I would suggest using something more innocuous like 'First Laredo Volunteer Group' as official name for the Black Staff brigade - the 'JEB Stuart Volunteer Regiment' would mark out the formation as proxies of the Confederate general staff to a dangerous degree, even with the Sinclair & Blackford Administrations in office).
Having said that, 'Dixie Brigade' has an absolutely delightful swagger; my only suggestions would be that (A) the battalions of this formation each have a distinctive name (like 'Dixie Tigers' 'Dixie Eagles' 'Dixie Rams' etc) and (B) that the Redemption League - being right across the border in Texas - would almost certainly be senior partner in running the purely unofficial* Confederate volunteers during the Mexican Civil War, more specifically those from the Hard Right.
*As opposed to the 'official' volunteers run by the Black Staff & the 'officially unofficial' volunteers run by the Tin Hats.
P.S. Since I assume that there would also be Volunteer formations fighting for the Republican forces (presumably shipped in from Alta California into Baja, then across to the Pacific mainland of Old Mexico or sliding over through Chihuahua & possibly even Sonora), I'd like to suggest the name 'Continental Brigades' for this collection of progressives from across North America - it makes me a little melancholy to imagine recruits to these Brigades** being drawn from Canadians and US & CS Americans, deployed all together in a common cause, then torn to pieces as the Republicans get ground down by the Monarchists and by the indifference of the United States.
You can bet your bottom dollar that if there's any flow of Republican volunteers across the Confederate border, the Stalwarts would be making strenuous efforts to pinch off that flow (Presumably by means both blatantly & covertly violent; mental image of Tijuana & Mexicali becoming battlegrounds for some very nasty experts in skullduggery without ever quite breaking into open warfare, the United States of America being a little too close for comfort).
**These brigades presumably boasted names like 'John Brown Brigade' 'James Monroe Brigade' (The latter a nod to the sadly defunct Monroe Doctrine) and possibly even 'George Washington Brigade'.
I actually did a biographical sketch for Amos Mizell ... goodness me, AD 2015 seems so long ago!
Anyway, I did a sketch of Big Chief Tin Hat a few years ago; while one feels I may have been a little too kind to him, I still like the idea that Mizell was the Nathan Bedford Forrest of the Freedom Party - in the sense that he was a fairly nasty piece of work who was directly responsible for enabling some even nastier business and tried to quit while he was ahead (Even to the extent of making some conciliatory gestures towards the African-American population).
Since he's dealing with Dixie Hitler, rather than the KKK, of course he gets purged.
In any case I really like the notion of Mizell being the Featherston Administration's Secretary of War and the notion of his having been somehow involved with the diverse schemes of Willie Knight; I wonder if Mizell being quietly got rid of could have been the key element in (A) persuading Knight that the time had come to deal with Featherston before the snake bit old Willy himself and (B) making that coup abortive, because Knight lost a direct line to the Confederate States military.
In other words please, please, please give us the sorry sage of the Knight-Mizell Affair, because I'd dearly love to know more! (P.S. Please don't feel too beholden to the details of my original article; I'd probably add a good deal and change a few things were one to rewrite it - probably make Mizell a cavalryman who made the transition from horse to foot and quite possibly even into armour - while keeping the basic notion of a character who, for better & worse, gives us a glimpse at what Featherston might have become* had he not made the wrong enemies at Headquarters & conceived that burning sense of Betrayal in consequence).
***It would be nice to imagine Jake Featherston becoming a force for good, absent the Pompey affair, but I find it difficult to imagine him NOT becoming a part of the Hard Right in the event of a Confederate defeat in the Great War (Even in a timeline where he didn't take a leading role in that movement); he's just too likely to buy into the 'Stab in the Back' myth and too hungry to get back to soldering for me to imagine him falling in with the Radical Liberals (Who seem to be the only party as eager to avoid getting back to 'Business as usual' as they are to avert the next Great War).
On the other hand, I doubt Willy Knight (the man most likely to step up as Darling of the Right in this scenario, although I can imagine a scenario where Roger Kimball eventually weasels his way to the top) would be anywhere near as venomous as Featherston nor bite so deep as The Snake, so it's still a net win for Timeline 191.
All this makes excellent sense and I heartily agree with it; I actually did a fair bit of noodling on the CS Air Force some years ago, but failed to pull it together as a single article (or series of articles) on the Southern air force as a whole (Fears that I had the broad strokes, but not nearly enough of the specific details to make the piece sing, may well have contributed to my chickening out).
I actually leaned towards making the Confederate air service a part of the Confederate Army (on the understanding that it's primary role would have been to support ground assaults, as well as defend Confederate population centres & base areas against their Northern cousins), but your logic convinces me that making the CSAAF an independent service is the way to go.
Also, being reminded that the Confederate Citrus Company was the seedbed for a recreation of the Confederate Air Service gives me a burning desire to make jokes about lemons ... (In all seriousness, you can bet your bottom dollar that quite a bit of CS Air Force slang would somehow involve fruit, lines dating back to the days when these were euphemisms and not running jokes - bombs as 'pineapples' for instance?).
I keep trying to puzzle out what medals & decorations the US & Confederate States of America would award, before and after the Great War; Admittedly this is just part of my ongoing effort to work up a decent picture of Confederate rank insignia and other badges (i.e. for technical trades et al), which remains somewhat rudimentary at this point (If nothing else, I'm quietly convinced that Confederate States NCO chevrons will be pointing in the opposite direction from those of the USA - I'm also fond of the notion that the CS Army, like the French, puts an officer's badges of rank on the sleeve rather than the shoulder).
On an unrelated note, it occurs to me that while we know what happened to daring newshound Ophelia Clemens, we have no idea what happened to her brother Orion Clemens; I'd like to think he became a cheerfully boring San Francisco man of business like his maternal uncle and lived to a ripe old age, but this being the son of the man we call Mark Twain the odds on his having a painfully short and horrifically tragic life are frighteningly long against him - if I remember correctly, only one of his 'half siblings' from our history lived to grow old.
Honestly, doing a little research into Mark Twain's family life makes me wonder if the ghost of James Fenimore Cooper came back ANGRY.
Honestly, doing a little research into Mark Twain's family life makes me wonder if the ghost of James Fenimore Cooper came back ANGRY.
There were plenty of volunteers identifying as syndicalists, anarchists, anarcho-communists, agrarian socialists, and other libertarian-left folks who volunteered to join the fight IOTL's Mexican Revolution for the Magonistas and Zapatistas. With the TTL's Mexican Civil War being seen as a proxy war between the US and CSA, there'd be plenty more left-wing volunteers fighting alongside the Republicans, with the addition of volunteers whom may not necessarily be left wing.
Question: Saul Goldman was intended to be a TL-191 cousin of Saul Godwyn? that leave a massive butterfly what would be of the Lion in TL-191
I wonder if moving out of the swamp, would make the government to found back the purple heart far earlier than otl too
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I was thinking over the notion of making the Chief of the Tin hats Secretary of War and that made me wonder - have any of us posted an attempt at a cabinet for the Featherston Regime? (I know that G. Herbert Walker was Secretary of State and that Koenig was Attorney General, but have we any notions as to what other ministers might have held various positions?).
Actually, at this point we ought to ask ourselves what the various offices of state in the CSA would be - I’ll have to give this some thought.
Actually, at this point we ought to ask ourselves what the various offices of state in the CSA would be - I’ll have to give this some thought.
MaxGerke01
Banned
I always forget about George Herbert Walker being the CSA secretary of state.Do we know how that happened as I thought they were from Connecticut OTL ?
The Bushes (whom you're thinking of) are originally from Connecticut, while the Walkers were originally from Missouri. It's most likely the case they were Copperhead Democrats that moved down South sometime between when Walker was born in 1875 and immediately after the Second Mexican War (that is if were fully assuming the same person). This is supported by the fact that the Walkers were descended from slave owners and G.H. Walker was local party boss during his lifetime.
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I actually put together a character profile for Secretary Walker a few years ago based on much the same idea.
My notion is that Walker (I think of him as ‘G. Herbert Walker’ since that strikes me as ‘fancier’ for some reason) is a distant cousin of the Timeline-191 Bush family (Who are busy being redoubtable Yankees); he’s one of the less Evil members of the regime, being a political opportunist who still thinks like a vaguely democratic politician rather than a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, but is still a lying, cheating, spin artist of the first order (and eccentric enough to have a sideline in Occult Weirdness of the sort that inspired the Indiana Jones series*).
Looking back on my description of the character, I should probably have added some extra ‘Dubya’ goodness (Possibly by associating him with Texas, definitely by adding a rather embarrassing son & heir, very possibly by throwing in a history of “failing upwards”).
Oh, and he definitely has to be a car salesman at some point!
*Though in this he’s a piker by comparison with His Majesty King Charles XI, whom I tend to imagine as a monarch desperately in search for the ‘Joan of Arc’ type silver bullet that will allow him to eke out a win despite France’s brutally reduced national assets.
I have his very favourite ‘frenemy’ Winston S. Churchill (The two are painfully sorry they have to be allies rather than the Very Best of nemeses) describe him as “A mind that works in the 20th century but wee
My notion is that Walker (I think of him as ‘G. Herbert Walker’ since that strikes me as ‘fancier’ for some reason) is a distant cousin of the Timeline-191 Bush family (Who are busy being redoubtable Yankees); he’s one of the less Evil members of the regime, being a political opportunist who still thinks like a vaguely democratic politician rather than a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, but is still a lying, cheating, spin artist of the first order (and eccentric enough to have a sideline in Occult Weirdness of the sort that inspired the Indiana Jones series*).
Looking back on my description of the character, I should probably have added some extra ‘Dubya’ goodness (Possibly by associating him with Texas, definitely by adding a rather embarrassing son & heir, very possibly by throwing in a history of “failing upwards”).
Oh, and he definitely has to be a car salesman at some point!
*Though in this he’s a piker by comparison with His Majesty King Charles XI, whom I tend to imagine as a monarch desperately in search for the ‘Joan of Arc’ type silver bullet that will allow him to eke out a win despite France’s brutally reduced national assets.
I have his very favourite ‘frenemy’ Winston S. Churchill (The two are painfully sorry they have to be allies rather than the Very Best of nemeses) describe him as “A mind that works in the 20th century but wee
bguy
Donor
Some possible members for Featherston's Cabinet...
My head canon has always been that Edward C. L. Wiggins was Featherston's first Secretary of State. We know that Wiggins was a long time Freedom Party supporter who stayed loyal to Featherston even after the Wade Hampton assassination, and as an upper crust figure who had at least some diplomatic experience from the mission he took for the Confederate government in the First Great War, he would be a plausible Secretary of State. I imagine Wiggins voluntarily stepped down as Secretary of State at the end of Featherston's first term and was replaced by Walker.
For Secretary of the Treasury, what about Jesse Jones? He was a prominent southern financer and something of a political opportunist, who was much too conservative to be a Radical Liberal and was not part of the plantation elite (which would limit his opportunities for advancement with the Whigs) thus I could see him being drawn to a third party where he would have more opportunities for advancement. Since Jones was from Texas, I also imagine him being the Redemption League's man in the cabinet. (Featherston would have to give some high profile positions to the Redemption League, and he would probably be more comfortable with a RL man at Treasury than at State, War, or Justice.)
Assuming Jones was a Redemption League member, he was probably purged following the Knight coup attempt, so maybe Herbert Lehman (son of Mayer Lehman, one of the three brothers who founded the Lehman Brothers financial services firm) serves as Featherston's second Treasury Secretary. (IOTL, the Lehman family originally settled in Alabama and supported the South in the civil war with them moving to New York City after the war was over. In TL-191 they presumably would stay in the Confederate States, and as a Jewish family the Lehman's would probably never quite be accepted by the Whig elite which could make the family open to supporting Featherston.
For Secretary of War, I agree with the idea of Amos Mizell as Featherston's first Secretary of War. Featherston would need to reward the Tin Hats for their support, and since Mizzell fully supports Featherston's rearmament and revanchist policies and seems to have good organizational skills, he would be a logical choice for Secretary of War. Mizell also was supportive of the Confederate officer corps (there's a scene in the books where he gently rebukes Featherston for calling the generals traitors), so he would be a good choice for keeping the generals calm during the early part of Featherston's administration and thus helping to prevent any possibility of a military coup. Mizell as the Secretary of War would also explain why the Featherston Administration was very slow to purge the old guard officers. (It's noted in the books that the Freedom Party initially moved much slower than Action Francaise at clearing out the "deadwood" from their army.) I see Mizell likely getting sacked (or maybe resigning in protest) right after General Stuart is drummed out of the army, as Featherston would be fed up with Mizell protecting the old guard officers and would want someone more personally loyal to him in such an important position.
As for Mizell's replacement, I think somewhere in this thread someone named James Byrnes as the Confederate Secretary of War during the Second Great War, and he seems a good choice to me. Byrnes certainly had the organizational skills for the position, and his politics would align well with the Freedom Party. (Since we never see Featherston consulting with his Secretary of War in the books, I imagine Featherston largely had his Secretary of War responsible for the "boring" parts of running a war such as managing procurement, training, and war production (all areas that Byrnes would be good at) while Featherston handled strategy himself.)
For Secretary of the Navy how about Carl Vinson. IOTL a staunch segregationist (so he would fit in well with the Freedom Party) who supported a strong military and especially a a strong navy. I imagine he would be fairly marginalized and frustrated member of the Cabinet since the Confederate Navy and Marine Corps were probably the neglected step-children of the Confederate military during the Featherston Administration. (The Haitian Campaign might have been Vinson's brainchild as a way of showing Featherston that the Confederate Navy and Marine Corps actually serve a useful purpose.)
For Postmaster General, given the patronage that position holds it was frequently given to a political fixer/party boss type. James Byrnes was kind of the southern party boss par excellence, so he would be well suited for this position, so maybe Byrnes was originally appointed as Postmaster General, and the administrative efficiency and political skill he showed in that position is what led Featherston to tap him for the Secretary of War position in 1936.
As for who would succeed Byrnes as Postmaster General, there was a character in the novels Caleb Briggs, who was the Freedom Party Chairman in Birmingham. He stayed loyal to the party during its wilderness years and seemed to be pretty good at the nuts and bolts of running a political machine, so maybe he was made Postmaster General after Byrnes. (Briggs disappears from the novels after the 1935 Confederate midterm elections, so nothing in the canon would contradict him getting a Cabinet position after 1935.)
I imagine that if the Confederates didn't already have a Department of the Interior then Featherston would create one to administer his dam construction program, so since Featherston's internal development program seems to have been based off of the Tennessee Valley Authority, maybe John Rankin (one of the OTL co-sponsors of the TVA) as his Secretary of the Interior? IOTL Rankin was an economic populist and a hard core racist, so he fits the Freedom Party's ideology perfectly. The only issue I can see with Rankin is that he was a descendant from a plantation family, so you would expect him to be a Whig, but maybe Rankin's family's holdings were destroyed in the Red Revolt and that embittered him enough to join the Freedom Party or maybe Featherston was savvy enough to appoint a populist friendly Whig to the position to give his dam program greater political legitimacy (and thus to make the Confederate Supreme Court look even more unreasonable in striking down the legislation.)
I also imagine that if the Confederates didn't already have a Department of Agriculture then Featherston would create that department as well to show that he is doing something for poor white farmers (a key part of his base), but I don't really have any good ideas for who his Secretary of Agriculture would be either.
(Edited: to add a suggestion for the Postmaster General position.)
My head canon has always been that Edward C. L. Wiggins was Featherston's first Secretary of State. We know that Wiggins was a long time Freedom Party supporter who stayed loyal to Featherston even after the Wade Hampton assassination, and as an upper crust figure who had at least some diplomatic experience from the mission he took for the Confederate government in the First Great War, he would be a plausible Secretary of State. I imagine Wiggins voluntarily stepped down as Secretary of State at the end of Featherston's first term and was replaced by Walker.
For Secretary of the Treasury, what about Jesse Jones? He was a prominent southern financer and something of a political opportunist, who was much too conservative to be a Radical Liberal and was not part of the plantation elite (which would limit his opportunities for advancement with the Whigs) thus I could see him being drawn to a third party where he would have more opportunities for advancement. Since Jones was from Texas, I also imagine him being the Redemption League's man in the cabinet. (Featherston would have to give some high profile positions to the Redemption League, and he would probably be more comfortable with a RL man at Treasury than at State, War, or Justice.)
Assuming Jones was a Redemption League member, he was probably purged following the Knight coup attempt, so maybe Herbert Lehman (son of Mayer Lehman, one of the three brothers who founded the Lehman Brothers financial services firm) serves as Featherston's second Treasury Secretary. (IOTL, the Lehman family originally settled in Alabama and supported the South in the civil war with them moving to New York City after the war was over. In TL-191 they presumably would stay in the Confederate States, and as a Jewish family the Lehman's would probably never quite be accepted by the Whig elite which could make the family open to supporting Featherston.
For Secretary of War, I agree with the idea of Amos Mizell as Featherston's first Secretary of War. Featherston would need to reward the Tin Hats for their support, and since Mizzell fully supports Featherston's rearmament and revanchist policies and seems to have good organizational skills, he would be a logical choice for Secretary of War. Mizell also was supportive of the Confederate officer corps (there's a scene in the books where he gently rebukes Featherston for calling the generals traitors), so he would be a good choice for keeping the generals calm during the early part of Featherston's administration and thus helping to prevent any possibility of a military coup. Mizell as the Secretary of War would also explain why the Featherston Administration was very slow to purge the old guard officers. (It's noted in the books that the Freedom Party initially moved much slower than Action Francaise at clearing out the "deadwood" from their army.) I see Mizell likely getting sacked (or maybe resigning in protest) right after General Stuart is drummed out of the army, as Featherston would be fed up with Mizell protecting the old guard officers and would want someone more personally loyal to him in such an important position.
As for Mizell's replacement, I think somewhere in this thread someone named James Byrnes as the Confederate Secretary of War during the Second Great War, and he seems a good choice to me. Byrnes certainly had the organizational skills for the position, and his politics would align well with the Freedom Party. (Since we never see Featherston consulting with his Secretary of War in the books, I imagine Featherston largely had his Secretary of War responsible for the "boring" parts of running a war such as managing procurement, training, and war production (all areas that Byrnes would be good at) while Featherston handled strategy himself.)
For Secretary of the Navy how about Carl Vinson. IOTL a staunch segregationist (so he would fit in well with the Freedom Party) who supported a strong military and especially a a strong navy. I imagine he would be fairly marginalized and frustrated member of the Cabinet since the Confederate Navy and Marine Corps were probably the neglected step-children of the Confederate military during the Featherston Administration. (The Haitian Campaign might have been Vinson's brainchild as a way of showing Featherston that the Confederate Navy and Marine Corps actually serve a useful purpose.)
For Postmaster General, given the patronage that position holds it was frequently given to a political fixer/party boss type. James Byrnes was kind of the southern party boss par excellence, so he would be well suited for this position, so maybe Byrnes was originally appointed as Postmaster General, and the administrative efficiency and political skill he showed in that position is what led Featherston to tap him for the Secretary of War position in 1936.
As for who would succeed Byrnes as Postmaster General, there was a character in the novels Caleb Briggs, who was the Freedom Party Chairman in Birmingham. He stayed loyal to the party during its wilderness years and seemed to be pretty good at the nuts and bolts of running a political machine, so maybe he was made Postmaster General after Byrnes. (Briggs disappears from the novels after the 1935 Confederate midterm elections, so nothing in the canon would contradict him getting a Cabinet position after 1935.)
I imagine that if the Confederates didn't already have a Department of the Interior then Featherston would create one to administer his dam construction program, so since Featherston's internal development program seems to have been based off of the Tennessee Valley Authority, maybe John Rankin (one of the OTL co-sponsors of the TVA) as his Secretary of the Interior? IOTL Rankin was an economic populist and a hard core racist, so he fits the Freedom Party's ideology perfectly. The only issue I can see with Rankin is that he was a descendant from a plantation family, so you would expect him to be a Whig, but maybe Rankin's family's holdings were destroyed in the Red Revolt and that embittered him enough to join the Freedom Party or maybe Featherston was savvy enough to appoint a populist friendly Whig to the position to give his dam program greater political legitimacy (and thus to make the Confederate Supreme Court look even more unreasonable in striking down the legislation.)
I also imagine that if the Confederates didn't already have a Department of Agriculture then Featherston would create that department as well to show that he is doing something for poor white farmers (a key part of his base), but I don't really have any good ideas for who his Secretary of Agriculture would be either.
(Edited: to add a suggestion for the Postmaster General position.)
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MaxGerke01
Banned
Remember there was also the extensive Freedomite program to replace black sharecroppers with mechanical farm equipment and Mexican immigrants so they would probably need somebody to administer that ?
bguy
Donor
Was Walker that much of a buffoon though? From what I recall of him in the novels he seemed relatively competent. The novel even describes him as "a real diplomat" (not something anyone would ever say about Ribbentrop), and Walker showed a willingness to tell Featherston things he wouldn't want to hear (not something a careerist lickspittle would do.) As such I kind of assumed Walker was really a Whig at heart (it's mentioned he seems uncomfortable in a Freedom Party uniform) and likely a career foreign service officer who joined the Freedom Party because once Featherston took power you pretty much had to be a party member to hold any government position, and who Featherston tolerates because Walker helps give a veneer of respectability to his government in its foreign relations.
That is, in fact, my personal mental image of G. Herbert Walker - note that he does have a history with the CS diplomatic service, he just zigged when he should have zagged - I just wanted to enough twists of eccentricity and self-serving deviousness to keep him from being too standard issue (You know, it might be amusing to suggest that his obsession with the occult started only after he got a good idea of how few ***** Jake Featherston gave about just about everything except his all-consuming determination to get even with ... well it's a long list ... including the Good of the Confederate States of America; Secretary Walker would almost certainly feel in acute need of all the help he could get, resulting in some desperately weird assignments for a few useful fellows).
So instead of being a buffoon, Walker becomes a competent (indeed proficient) diplomat slowly driven bonkers by the sheer monomania of Jake Featherston & the horribly, horribly long odds against anything good coming from his all-consuming drive to revenge himself on the United States of America in particular (I don't see The Snake as blatantly insane, but he's a leading cause of mad desperation & desperate madness in others).
bguy, please allow me to compliment you on having put together this shortlist of suggestions; I'll have to look through them and see if I can come up with a mored detailed reply to this excellent effort.
Concerning the exact construction of a Confederate States cabinet, I definitely agree that there would have to be a Secretary of Agriculture (if nothing else SOMEBODY has to deal with the boll weevil crisis chewing up the CSA's key financial asset); regarding a Secretary of the Interior, perhaps we could keep the role but not the title - if I remember correctly the United States is the only country where the Secretary of the Interior is in charge of natural resources, rather than internal security, so it might be fun to show the CSA going in an entirely different direction with the title (in the classic 'Evil Twin' style).
I'm also wondering if there should be a 'Secretary of Agriculture & Labor' or a 'Secretary of Commerce & Labor' for that proper Confederate "Oh yeah, we literally used to own the working man" touch; on a more serious note, I do think the CSA (especially after the Great War) would be keen to up gun their industrial base - I tend to see Burton Mitchel as very much 'King Log' (In the sense that he wanted as little as possible to change from the Good Old Days and therefore changed as little as possible, with the usual disastrous consequences of this head-in-the-sand policy) but I do imagine he would be keen to keep the industrialists sweet (not least because they made a useful 'New Money' counterbalance to the sort of plantation Whigs who probably thought him a little below the salt) and quite possibly go so far as to appoint a cabinet secretary to foster good relations with the breed.
If not Mitchel then Featherston is definitely going to appoint someone to get on with the local 'Five-year plan' possibly adding a new office to the cabinet in the process.
Only correction I would have made to that amazing cabinet is the lack of SecWar after Mizel. Featherston was an extreme control freak, and I imagine he had direct control of the War Department either by holding the position himself or abolishing it so he could keep his eyes directly on the Army.
bguy
Donor
Agreed, and especially since our list of Confederate presidents includes populist figures like Hogg and Clark who probably would have supported creating such a department.
I went with Secretary of the Interior since that title was used by the United States government pre-POD, and the Confederates were prone to copying the US government structure. I would certainly be fine with a different name though. Since the comparable British ministry around that time was the First Commissioner of Works, maybe it should be the Department/Secretary of Works to reflect how the Confederates now tend to ape the British.
Though as a side note, there are some indications that in TL-191 the U.S. Department of the Interior does have some responsibility for domestic security as there was a scene in The Victorious Opposition where it was mentioned that President Smith was consulting with the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Interior about the situation in Kentucky after the Kentucky State Police were shut down.
Oddly enough, based on the scene in The Grapple where Featherston tells off Patton for slapping an enlisted man, I actually could see Featherston creating a Department of Labor as he did seem to have some genuine desire to protect the "little guy" (at least as long as the little guy was white) from being taken advantage of by the Confederate elite. Though such a department's powers would doubtlessly be very limited since whatever sympathy Featherston might feel for working class whites he certainly wasn't going to tolerate independent unions.
Makes sense. Of course this all means a lot of extra Cabinet slots we've got to fill.
While I can certainly see Featherston unofficially acting as his own Secretary of War (much as Jefferson Davis pretty much did in the Civil War), I think Featherston would still want an official Secretary of War under him to handle all the boring administrative details that are necessary to keep the military running while Featherston handles the more exciting things like tactical development, weapons research and grand strategy.
'Department of Works' has a ring to it, if nothing else! (Please forgive me for not knowing that 'Secretary of the Interior' pre-dated the break point in this timeline; I looked up a list of Jefferson Davis' cabinet and that of Woodrow Wilson, but didn't think to take a look at that of Lincoln or Buchanan).
Now that's interesting, but fairly logical - in a world where the United States of America has not one but TWO English-speaking rivals (each of which has a lengthy history of war against the US) on it's borders, it makes perfect sense that the department charged with managing federal lands & natural resources would be MUCH more nervous about internal security (Given the Department of the Interior is in charge of managing First Nations reservations, one can only wonder if it had something to do with those raiding forces of Comanches back at the time of the Second Mexican War - and has been used to quietly smuggle some other dirty tricks specialists onto the Government budget ever since).
Also so long as the "little guy" was marching to beat of Featherston's War Drum!
One thought that occurs to me is that "Department of Industry" might be less likely to tweak anti-Socialist/Communist nerves in the CSA than "Department of Labor" (While the Rad-Libs probably wouldn't flinch at the suggestion, I'd bet the Whigs would be keen to avoid triggering any knee-jerk reactions after the Red Rebellion ... not to mention keen to avoid handing the Stalwarts an extra stick to beat them with).
Only if we can think up enough not-quite-sinecures for those politicos to occupy!
He'd probably be careful to hire the most boring nonentity of a bean counter in the Southland for the job; I'd suggest making this a fictional character purely so we can point to him and say "He doesn't appear in the novels because he's TOO D*** BORING" if anyone asks.
"Department of Industry" would very well work with the fascist--or rather Actionist--overtones of the regime since it's more in line to what fascism is economically: a mafia, corporatist, crony capitalist system. That and Fascist Italy had a cabinet post equivalent to that IOTL. "Department of Labor" could still work, but I see it as also having sinister undertones with it perhaps being in charge of running a program of 'extermination through labor', procurement of slave labor thereof, and for whatever use blacks had in the eyes of the Featherston regime to ultimately achieve the former alongside their non-black dissident counterparts--despite the fact blacks were actively being removed from many jobs by machinery and Mexican immigrants in the books.