alternatehistory.com

31 December

Debate begins over the Wheeling Triangle - the small section of Virginia north of the Mason-Dixon Line which is to go to the Union - and over whether Maryland should be joined with Delaware.
At about the same time, similar discussion is going on about the Missouri Strip - the current arguments for incorporating it into Arkansas are doing well.


2 January, 1863
The Spirit of Carolina leaves Charleston, making for Wydah in Dahomey. She is not carrying very much in the way of cargo.

4 January
Aleksandr Wielopolski, head of civil administration for Congress Poland, has known about the increasing unrest in Poland for months. As part of an attempt to head it off (and thus achieve reform for the Polish position within the Russian Empire, something he has been hoping for for decades), he takes the drastic measure of ordering the conscription of all young Polish activists into the Russian Army.
If conscripted, these young men would not be civilians until the year 1883 - Russian army conscription is for two decades - and the news spreads like wildfire.


9 January
At an urgent crisis meeting in an estate, representatives of the Polish "White" and "Red" factions discuss the unrest. There is considerable tension, but if there is one conclusion that comes out of the discussion it is that the factions must control the uprising or it will happen without them - with Wielopolski's decision, reform is probably impossible now.
A date is agreed on, which is deliberately just long enough for the news to spread and preparations to be made... and which also happens to be a symbolic date, though by the nature of such things there are symbolic dates all over the calendar. The date's description, in code, is "Seventy years".


13 January
James Mason is formally appointed ambassador to the Court of King James after a much-appreciated winter at home. He will travel there on the Alabama, as the Confederacy does not yet have any other large ships capable of cruising (the Charleston is in the dockyards being reconstructed).
Any attempt to wow the British population with the Alabama is onto a hiding to nothing as the ship was originally built there.

14 January

The four great ironclad frigates of the American War - Warrior, Black Prince, Defence and Resistance - sail into Portsmouth. Their armour is visibly battered with shot in many cases, and they are met as returning heroes.

16 January

In a speech, the Duke of Cambridge stresses the importance of a standing army for a colonial power such as the United Kingdom. He makes the point that, if the army were 50,000 men smaller, then the crisis reinforcement to Canada would have been impossible and the war would have likely been lost (an exaggeration, but not much of one).


18 January

Mass demobilization in the Americas - Canadian militia, Confederate troops and Union troops are being disbanded and sent home. They have been for months, but this day is the peak of the trend.

20 January

The second tranche of defence guns arrive in Hawaii, making Pearl Harbour a much more difficult prospect to attack. The test firing impresses Kamehameha IV, though he is somewhat amused by a vent piece blowout at an inopportune time.


23 January

Uprisings break out all across Poland. In truth the influence of the Reds and the Whites on procedings has been minor up to this point, but they did manage to ensure the rage came to a head all across the country at roughly the same time.

Of much greater importance is the issue of weapons - by the afternoon, at least two thousand Polish rebels are armed with rifles more modern than the Russian Army, and several thousand more will follow over the next few days.



EDIT: moved Mason's appointment here.