Before I reply to any of these quotes I just want to tell Red, Bravo. Thank you for this work of art.
I truly cannot say that I have read many stories that have been this excellent and true to purpose.
The country “has safely passed the turning-point in the revolutionary movement against slavery,” cheered Secretary Seward, who also took heart in Lincoln’s long coattails, which thanks to the enemy’s disorganization had carried Republicans to a 4/5ths majority in both Houses of Congress and control over every State of the Union, virtually obliterating the enemies of the administration. The referendums about Black suffrage also passed,
It's heartening to see so much of the pain and effort have some sort of vindication. Even if it's rooted more in the follies of their enemies than in the full conversion of the people. It's still impressive and it's very good that Lincoln is alive to enjoy that landslide victory and the coattails it brings.
Because the ideological range of all the candidates, ranging from consummate Radicals to embarrassed racial opportunists, in any other context would make for a fractious mess of a congress. But because Abe is still around, Seward, there remains direction and influence from the heights of the party to wrangle the junior congressman into a productive body.
Under another president, or even if some tragedy were to render Lincoln incapable of executing the office (while remaining alive) those knives are going to come out.
Someone mentioned earlier in the thread that the effective legitimization of political violence would have consequences down the line for labor struggles. But I think it would also be wise to remember, especially after a fratricidal Civil War, that the line between allies and enemies within the same party can be thin as well. I could see certain anti-corruption measures getting zealous in order to take advantage of ongoing scandals, rival cliques within the party.
And given the nature of the post-war political environment, the fault lines are going to shift. As much of a smear the obvious quasi-secesh/reconciliationist talking points were during the war, the people and the interests they represent that espoused them won't be going anywhere. And strange times making for even stranger bedfellows. The Ohio Model might find some traffic with the same people who becried Pendelton as out of touch. Yesterday's defeatist is tomorrow's pragmatist, so long as they can hold on in the meantime for the dust to clear.
If Lincoln's plans for tackling patronage and spoils go far enough, the Lincolnite center of the Republican Part will clip off its wings. Likely after his presidency, but still.
Is it weird that I find this funny in a metaphysical/metatextual sense?
I can see Johnson stewing away in his country home...
Staring at the fire place, thinking back to that speech where he yelled "Who am I Judas to?" and asking out loud in an empty room,
"Can you hear me Red, did I play my part well? Is it over now? Can I rest?"
Please like the update and share any thoughts you might have!
Oh I'm sharing them. This was a privilege to read, and I'm sorry to have taken so long to catch back up.
By 1865, the Junta had lost control of the South, only able to project power in the immediate vicinity of the armies of Northern Virginia and Georgia.
I wonder how Grant feels about everything that's happened in the South, especially with Sherman and so forth. OTL, the south had famine conditions and mass death, so it's not
too different. But the added year, the fact that every overture he made to lessen the death didn't work, and then to finally have it all crumbling down in front of him. I can't help but imagine that Grant feels a great weight of responsibility for not ending the war sooner.
Thinking that he could have pushed harder or assumed control of the Susquehanna earlier that maybe some of the thousands of people could have been spared. You know, be consumed by the maybes of all his decisions. Because committing to a siege condemned the South to a long roast rather than a quick burn. It exposed to the countryside to a modern chevauchee. Scores of thousand of people dead for a "sound strategy".
“enough to feed our Southern brothers and all the workers of Europe
Someone's been talking to their penpal.
“you, sir, are merely an ordinary citizen accused of the crime of treason, for Georgia has no government recognized by US authority,
I don't know if the phrasing was on purpose, but I do think it's interesting that he didn't say Federal Authority, Union Authority, but US authority. The conception of a unitary state is starting early.
This assured that the Civil War would be the deadliest conflict in American history, and one of the bloodiest in the history of the world. Over 650,000 Union soldiers died in the struggle to maintain the nation, and a further 500,000 Confederate soldiers, most of disease. Famine, anarchy, and disease, extending beyond the end of the war, all claimed some 100,000 civilians in Union-areas, while over 500,000 thousand Confederate civilians died. The 1.8 million people that died in the war represented 5.8% of the US population, and, staggeringly, over 10% of the Confederate population and over 40% of its White males of military age. The war had further reduced the South to an “economic desert,”
Dear god.
A former slave named Uncle Stephen made the same point with less eloquence but just as deep a feeling. “It’s mighty distressin’ this war,” he told Yankee soldiers, “but it ’pears to me like the right thing couldn’t be done without it.”
I think there's more poetry in the simple words, it's more honest to what happened. God is necessary to soothe the conscience of White America, that what they undertook was right and worth it, but I think the sober, grounded, clear-sightedness of the Freedmen is a good contrast.
A lot of death and a lot of pain happened, that didn't have to happen, but had to happen.
They were not settled in the North either, where William Lloyd Garrison tried to dissolve the American Anti-Slavery Society by declaring that its work was completed, only for Frederick Douglass and Wendell Philipps to take over it and adopt a new motto: “No Reconstruction Without Negro Suffrage.”
I do think it's a bit humorous, and I don't fault the man for saying "my work is done", with an Amendment passed, and entire war over the issue, it's hardly
premature. It's just that as one struggle withers away, its roots sprout anew, another fruit more bitter but all the same in shape.
The American Civil War was over, but it remained to be seen whether the United States could win the peace in the new Reconstruction Era.
I'm now reminded that you have made no promises about the reconstruction era, at least none that I can remember. So we're officially out of the foregone conclusion stage of the narrative.
The original plans was for a quick, more radical war and then onto Reconstruction. Five years later, and we're just starting now. But I do not regret it. While the project grew much bigger than I could have expected or hoped, it did result in a very detailed account of a more radical Civil War. I take special pride on the focus I've given to Black agency, social issues, and the politics of the era, compared with other TLs that have a mostly military focus.
I can say that I have always loved the political chapters. They're far more gripping, because the stakes are more human I think, so I'm very eager to see the new phase of the story.
You can guess, too, that the idea of a coup was not there yet.
Yes, and as you say later, it makes for a great twist. I do think it was a shame that Davis died the way he did, not that he didn't deserve it, but I'm surprised at how the Junta was able to keep order long enough to carry it out after executing Breckenridge where everyone could see.
But I will say no more.