alternatehistory.com

14 September

Large numbers of Union troops are put on furlough home. This is largely a money saving measure - the Union economy is under severe stress, and not only are these men grumbling about low - and devalued - pay, but they are also needed at home being productive in the first place. (Grain being the Union's main money export at the moment.)
The choice of troops to send home may or may not be influenced by their partisan leanings. Certainly some generals have tried to get a sense for the party loyalties of their men, though none of this has taken place in the armies of either Grant or McClellan.

15 September
Vanderbilt daringly stops off at Athens to check on the news, and the captain is somewhat disquieted to discover that there has been an armistice in place in the Trent war for two and a half months.
(In retrospect, he does remember that the crew of the coal ship he captured seemed especially outraged...)
Discussion takes place overnight about the best course of action, as some among the bridge crew fear that they are now technically guilty of piracy. In the end, the decision is made to head to a neutral port - and one of the few powers they are both confident of reaching and confident of being in the good graces of is Russia.
The 37th parallel enters the discussion at Havana. It is a proposed northern border for the Confederacy in the trans-Mississippi, though if this line is extended all the way to the Pacific it is in fact slightly north of the proposed Confederate State of Colorado (southern California) which had petitioned overwhelmingly pre-war to be split into a separate state.

17 September
Billy, a slave working at the Gosport Naval Yard, makes a two-mile swim under cover of evening to reach the Royal Navy frigate Immortalite.
Over the next few days, the Virginian local authorities will attempt to secure his return; the only reply by Captain George Hancock (and the post captain of the Chesapeake Bay squadron) is a resonding no. (Virginian accusations that the Chesapeake squadron starts operating closer to the shore in subsequent weeks are difficult to prove.)
Billy will later take the surname Hancock. While still technically a slave while on board Immortalite, he is sent across to the next ship to head to Bermuda and is thus emancipated within about a week of his swim.

18 September
A clandestine meeting in London takes place, coordinating planned activities by groups in the area of Russia that was annexed in the Partitions of Poland (and Lithuania). Two factions are present - the Whites and the Reds.
Broadly, the Reds want an armed uprising against Russia to re-establish Poland, and they want the end of serfdom, and dislike the idea of compensating landlords, while the Whites want the end of Serfdom but would prefer compensation for landlords and are ambivalent about the idea of an armed uprising against Russia - preferring to win over diplomatic support.
The idea is floated of getting assistance from King Frederick III of Prussia, though the Reds reject this at first - it takes the arguments of one White faction member to point out that armed uprising is pointless without actual weapons, and further that the whole reason agitation is taking place is the opposition to conscription - thus, by definition, those who feel most strongly about the immediate issues are unarmed and untrained.
In an attempt to gain commonality between the two sides, Zamoyski undertakes to purchase several thousand good rifles under the cover of being a purchasing agent for the Confederacy - this is itself intended to appear as a cover for the job of purchasing agent of the Union if the person he is speaking to at the time is suspicious about his credentials, unless they are a British official in which case he will attempt to appear to be what he is pretending to be rather than to appear to be someone pretending to be someone else. (His description leads to much head scratching.)


19 September
The results of the Mexican Plebiscite are in, with a substantial majority reported for Maximilien; as such a packet steamer is sent to convey the news to France and thence to Austria.
Vanderbilt transits the Bosphoros.

21 September
A privately owned vessel, the Steamcloud, attempts to exit New York. As Liffey orders her to heave to, the paddle steamer instead accelerates and comes close to ramming the British frigate.
Steamcloud is stopped by shell fire from two gunboats and the Liffey disabling her paddle boxes, and the incident becomes an ongoing issue. In particular, Mayor Wood uses it as a key rhetorical point - stressing his opposition to the Trent war and to the Civil War, lambasting the government in Washington for letting this state of blockade continue, and indeed blaming them for everything up to and including malfeasance of duty and embezzlement (he asks how many of his audience believe that as much tax money as the Government took in, they should have had an actual functional navy!)


22 September
In the early hours of the morning, Vanderbilt docks at Sevastopol. Now on safe ground, the captain writes a letter to Lloyds of London explaining where the missing merchant ship is - still on an uninhabited Cycladean island.
Also on this date, rioting takes place in Annapolis - some shouting that the parole camps should be emptied with the armistice, others demanding the state be transferred to the Confederacy. Much reference is made to the Continental Congress and the Annapolis Convention.
Troops manage to keep a lid on the situation without any deaths, though at one point a serious attempt is made to incite a massacre - the protestors in question trying to invoke echoes of the Boston Massacre by harranguing a sentry, throwing objects and insults. (The troops avoid reacting with force, though it is reportedly a near thing.)
Interestingly, prints very reminiscent of Revere's famous engraving (with the colours changed and a Maryland backdrop) are found in stacks in a basement - this is one reason it is believed the whole incident with the sentry was planned from the start.


23 September
Palmerston gives an impassioned speech at Portsmouth in defence of the Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom, of which he was a key member. He uses the events of the Trent War as his example, pointing out how expensive the North America and West Indies squadron is and how long it took to defeat the forts of Hampton Roads as positives - as the forts were (as he explains) poorly built, then a well built fort system would buy the Royal Navy precious days to concentrate and to defend the attacked port instead of merely letting the navy be destroyed at anchor. ("The only way that any enemy may destroy our fleets in their full force").
He allows that the fort network is expensive, but uses it mainly to pivot to the point that a destroyed London Docks, a destroyed Portsmouth Royal Dockyards, a destroyed Liverpool or Bristol or Edinburgh or Dublin or Cardiff, is far worse than the mere expense of being up to date with modern weapons.