alternatehistory.com

Update's done. More footnotes will be added tonight.

Part One Hundred Thirteen: The Waves of War Cross the Atlantic

The British Blockade and the MacDonough Affair:
In both conflicts between the British and French in the 19th century, the British relied in large part on their naval superiority to blockade the French coastline. The British continued to use the blockade as part of the overall New Coalition strategy in the Great War. The British blockade of the western French coast was largely successful through the first half of the war. With the size of turn of the century warships, the British Atlantic fleet concentrated its forces on cutting off the ports at Brest, La Rochelle, and Bordeaux.

The blockade of France and Germany put a large strain on British-American relations and sparked a diplomatic incident that almost brought the United States into the Great War. On February 2nd, 1908, an American merchant convoy sailing from New York to Le Havre with the destroyer USS MacDonough[1] as escort was intercepted in the Channel by a British squadron. The British squadron escorted the American fleet to Portsmouth and the ships were searched. Despite the convoy carrying foodstuffs, the British seized the cargo as contraband. The United States received news of the seizure on the 5th. The media as well as Navy Secretary Talbott urged President Roosevelt to take the seizure of the convoy and the MacDonough as a hostile action and declare war. However, President Roosevelt stopped short of a war declaration and demanded that the convoy to be allowed to leave British waters.

After President Roosevelt's demand, ambassador to London John Hay spent the next weeks negotiating with British government officials. The British maintained that as part of the blockade the ships and their cargo were legally seized. Hay eventually arranged for the MacDonough and the ships to be relinquished, but the British officials stood firm on the convoy's cargo being seized with no compensation for the company involved in the convoy. While Roosevelt accepted the resolution, tensions between Britain and the United States remained high from then until the entrance of the United States into the Great War. The MacDonough Affair also led to further preparations for the war in the United States, including improved maintenance of forts along the Great Lakes and a greater naval presence shift to the Caribbean.


The Trading Dilemma:
The New Coalition's blockade of France and Germany was felt harshly in the United States as American exports shrank during the Great War. At the turn of the twentieth century, Great Britain, Germany, and France were the three largest trading partners of the United States[2]. Trade with those three countries made up over two fifths of total United States trade on the eve of the Great War. However, when the Great War began, United States exports dropped significantly as France and Germany were cut off from much American trade.

The Great War particularly affected the American agricultural trade. With young Russian men being sent off to fight in Poland and Hungary and Great Britain put on a war-time footing, global grain production fell overall. Russia's entry into the war led to Britain relying more on the United States, Argentina, Mokoguay, and Australia for its food imports. The war's effect in the United States was increased prices and profits for wheat and cattle production and an economic boom in the Great Plains and on the Upper Mississippi. During the beginning of the war, these states profited from American neutrality. However as the British stepped up the continental blockade, the agricultural boon began to subside. While the blockade swung many people in the Mid-Atlantic to support American entry into the war, the more rural states were divided. Heading into the 1908 election campaign, American neutrality was by far the foremost issue in the public discussion.


The End of the Fremont Republicans:
For decades, the Republican Party had presented itself as the party of freedom and of Fremont, and with this the party was dominant for much of the post-National War era. However, the rise of the Populist and later Progressive Party in the 1890s led to a crisis within the party. In the 1904 presidential election, the party had its worst showing since its inception and the first time since 1856 where the party received less than 100 votes in the electoral college. However, the Republican Party remained influential at the Congressional and state levels. Speaker Joseph Gurney Cannon maintained Republican control of the House through the McKinley administration and the early years of the Roosevelt administration. However, the issues for the Republican Party came to a head after the results of the 1906 midterm elections.

The 1906 Congressional elections struck a major blow to the Republican Party. While the Republican representation in the House had been declining since 1900, the party had maintained still maintained a majority that kept Cannon as speaker. With the 1906 elections and the admission of Shoshone, Pahsapa, and Washington, however, the Republican party lost a majority in the House. This generated a brief crisis at the beginning of the 60th Congress over how the Speaker would be elected, but it was soon resolved that the plurality party would still elect the Speaker if no party held a majority of seats. But while Cannon remained Speaker, the influence of the Republicans slipped further, with the Democrats and Progressives coming together to overcome the Republican plurality to pass bills. While the older Fremont era Republicans still played a large role in government, the loss of the House majority in 1906 and further defeat in 1908 led the Republican Party in a new direction in the next years.

That new direction began with opposition to American entry into the Great War, as it was already one of the major positions where the Republicans were at odds with both the other major parties. Former president William Jennings Bryan and New York Representative Oswald Garrison Villard spearheaded the expansion of the American Anti-Imperialist League in 1908 as promoting general American neutrality[3]. The Anti-Imperialist League gained traction later for opposition to the invasion and annexation of California. In the 1910s, Bryan and others such as Rhode Island senator Nelson Aldrich continued to influence the direction of the party as it became more conservative. The Republicans bounced would finally bounce back in the 1910s and 1920s amid a conservative backlash against perceived Irish and Ibero Catholic influence.

[1] Named after Thomas MacDonough, commander of US naval forces in the Battle of Plattsburgh in the War of 1812.
[2] In OTL the US's top three trade partners at the time were Britain with $837 million, Germany with $450 million, and Canada with $270 million. My estimates are that ITTL total US trade in 1905 is $3.5 billion, with Britain making up about $600 million, Germany making up $450 million, and France making up $400 million.
[3] The Anti-Imperialist League was started in 1903 after American involvement in the First Mexican War and the coup in Mesoamerica that returned Porfirio Diaz to the presidency.