alternatehistory.com

It's been about a week, so time for another update.


Part Forty-Nine: The Road to Recovery

Lingering Rebels:
Despite the end of the war and the surrender of most of the Confederate governments and armies, some pockets of resistance remained in the former Confederacy for years after the National War was over. The most ardent resistance rose up in the state of Chickasaw as previously mentioned. However, there were several other areas in the southern United States which faced organized partisans and guerrillas in the years following the National War. Most of the guerrilla activity in the latter half of the 1860s consisted of bushwhackers and was centered in the more rural parts of the former Confederacy.

The area of the southern Appalachians northeast of Birmingham, Alabama faced a number of attacks and violent occurrences after the National War after a small remnant of the Confederate army refused to surrender and managed to hole up in the hills. After the spirited defense by "Last Chance" Jackson in Montgomery, several soldiers in the Army of Mississippi refused to surrender to the Union and fled northward across Alabama. Settling in the hills near Birmingham, this rebel group went on a crime spree in Birmingham and the surrounding area for three years. Periodic attacks continued until 1870 when the last of the rebels led by former Confederate Brigadier General Herbert Fletcher[1] was found and rounded up by the Alabama military district.

Further remnants of the rebellion fled to the loosely settled marshes and forests of southern Florida. These bushwhacker forces were smaller and did not last as long in the dense tropical region of the Ever Glades[2]. Some small towns were founded on the coasts, but the majority of the former Confederates were killed fighting with the Seminole people who still inhabited southern Florida at the time. While the Confederate rebels managed to annoy the forts on the Florida Keys and pull off a minor shooting spree in Tampa, they mostly petered out by the middle of 1867.

While some of the most intense fighting between the army and guerrillas was in northeastern Alabama, the most notorious and longest lasting outlaws that emerged from Confederate rebels in the Ozark Mountains in southern Missouri. While the actual rebel force broke up in 1869, brothers Frank and Jesse James formed a gang and for the next eight years, terrorized the Great Plains and even sometimes crossed over into eastern California when pulling off their crimes. The James gang robbed trains and banks and kidnapped people all along the Rockies and even hired themselves out at mercenaries to the Mormons in Espejo during their war with California. Eventually after Frank James was killed in a shootout in Coffeyville, Pembina in 1885, his younger brother Jesse decided to end the gang and fled northward across the border where he was given protection by Great Britain. A few of the other members traveled with Jesse, but the others were arrested in the following months.


Election of 1868:
In the first election after the National War, the top issue was getting the southern states integrated into the Union once again. The Republicans kept Fremont and Wilmot as their candidates in the election and ran on a platform of both admitting the southern states as soon as possible while still promoting radical policies including giving constitutional rights to all blacks. The Democratic Party struggled to find a suitable candidate as Andrew Johnson declined to run for the presidency. The Democrats seemed more sympathetic to the southern states and wanted to readmit the states even if it meant sacrificing some of the freedoms that would be granted to the freed slaves. After a bitter convention in Saint Louis, the Democrats chose John Henninger Reagan of Houston[3] for president and Maryland governor William Pinkney Whyte for vice president.

In foreign policy, the wars in Europe was also a looming issue as the wars had been raging for two years. Like Russia and the Ottoman Empire, both parties in the United States advocated staying neutral in both conflicts as the Union clearly needed time to recover its economic and military situation before embarking on any foreign exploits. However, this did not stop the two parties from presenting different platforms. Reagan and the Democrats desired absolutely no part of the wars, while the Republicans wanted to provide some assistance to the French, primarily out of hatred for the British. This had a mixed reaction in the Ibero-dominated states in Cuba, Jackson, and Tejas as France was also at war with Spain. In the end, however, the Republicans won a large victory over the Democrats, continuing the Republican dominance of United States politics that would last the remainder of the century.

Fremont/Wilmot: 228
Reagan/Whyte: 48


[1] Another fictional person.
[2] The Everglades was two words for a lot of the 19th century as it was a corruption of the original 'River Glades'. ITTL it never gets condensed.
[3] A fine Texas Democrat who served as Postmaster General for the Confederacy. No relation to Ronald Reagan that I could find.