Okay it took me a little longer than I thought but as I said, here's the new update. Hope you guys enjoy!
Discord and Disunion: 1849-1857
Prelude to war and death—Kansas
While Mexico suffered greatly during the course of the “American invasion,” the United States only began to experience its own discord in the days and months following the resumption of peace in 1849. President Polk’s failure to take Tejas and Alta California from Mexico cost his party dearly at the polls. The Whig candidate, Speaker of the House Robert Charles Winthrop, handily beat Democrat Lewis Cass, as well as former president Martin Van Buren, who ran under the banner of the Free Soil Party. The stress he undertook during the course of his single term seemingly took its toll on Polk, exacerbated by the blame heaped upon him by many Americans for the nation’s loss. Upon his return to his native Tennessee in June 1849, he abruptly contracted illness and died.
Upon assuming his presidential duties, Robert Winthrop faced a nation with a near empty treasury. The Mexican-American War had cost tens of millions of dollars, effectively forcing the U.S. economy into default. The “Third” Bank of the United States made extreme overtures to remain solvent, defaulting on many loans made during the 1840’s, only to become the object of pure loathing by the general populace.[1] Rioters in Boston, New York City and Baltimore all chanted one thing, “death to the Bank!” and they were not too keen to wait for the Bank’s charter to expire in 1861.
The Panic of 1850, as the U.S.’s economic woes came to be called, only served to stoke the fires of sectional violence erupting all over the western frontier. The South, nearly devoid of land to expand its “peculiar institution” further west, began calling for the overturning of the Missouri Compromise and the allowance of future territories to decide for themselves whether they desired to enter the union free or slave. Northerners flatly refused to allow slavery to expand northward. Attempts by Congress to compromise the glaring divide between North and South made little headway, with debates becoming protracted quagmires in Congress. By 1852 the violence out west had become an all-out war in all but name.
At the core of the violence was the territory of Kansas, whose settler population neared the majority needed for admission into the Union. Hoping to bypass the constraints of the 1820 Compromise by popular sovereignty, new settlers began to flood into the territory from neighboring Missouri and other southern states, threatening Northerners at musket-point that Kansas would be slave territory no matter what. Undeterred by these threats, “Free Soilers” from New England and the Midwest trekked into Kansas Territory as well with the hopes of beating the slavers at their own game and ensuring slavery remained south of the Compromise line. When territorial elections were scheduled, Pro-slavery militants threatened violence if Free Soilers ran for office. For their part many Free Soilers refused to back down in the face of these threats, and before long bands of armed men on both sides began attacking settlements all over the territory.
Amid all the nation’s troubles, it came to no surprise that the Democrats edged out Winthrop and the Whigs in November 1852, with former Kentucky Congressman and Mexican-American War veteran William Butler becoming the 12th President of the United States. To the nation’s dismay, Butler proved to be more inept at dealing with the country’s multiple crises than Winthrop was. To Butler’s credit, forces beyond his power to control were about to be unleashed on the United States. The chaos unwinding out west was suddenly compounded by a new element: the Comanche along the frontier with Mexico.
The Comanche had their own motivations for raiding into American territory, ranging from a need to preserve their traditional economy, to seeking justice against American settlers treading onto their lands.[2] Mexico City’s own Comanche envoy in Bexar also made strides to incentivize Comanche encroachments into American territory, “better that the
indios range northward rather than into Mexican territory.” Regardless, in the spring of 1853 numerous bands of Comanche raiding parties ventured east, attacking deep into Texas, even venturing as far as Arkansas and the western bank of the Mississippi.
The Comanche raids caused thousands of Americans to flee the bedlam which beset the southwest, most crossing the Mississippi to the general safety of the Deep South. The sudden influx of refugees strained the region’s economy, and by extension its already tenuous relationship with the North. In September, the Governor of Georgia George Towns issued what came to be called the Georgia Platform. It amounted to an ultimatum, stating that the South only sought to preserve the Union at all costs, but further injury on behalf of the Northern states would risk secession. The Deep South rallied behind Georgia, and those Southern politicians who did not were swept away in the elections of 1854.[3]
In the autumn of 1849 political disturbances all across Europe ignited a continent-wide war which resulted in thousands of war refugees, often times liberals, emigrating to the western hemisphere. Roman Catholics from southern and western Europe began arriving at ports spanning the Atlantic Seaboard in the hopes of finding the freedom that was very much absent in their native land. To their dismay, they were oftentimes met by angry mobs who wanted nothing more than for these immigrants to return to Europe.
"Citizen Know Nothing: the ideal American"
At the core of these disturbances lay the Know Nothings (ironically a group that referred to themselves as the Native American Party), a movement lead by white Protestant Americans who viewed all Catholic immigrants with utter contempt. The movement, originating in the early 1840’s in light of increased Catholic immigration to the United States, argued that Catholicism was incompatible with “American republicanism.” The Nativist movement grew rapidly in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War, as all Catholics (regardless of their place of origin) carried the blame for the United States’ loss. The Nativists were very swift to blame the nation’s economic woes on the Catholics as well, which resulted in mass rioting in numerous American cities.
By the mid 1850’s, the situation in the United States had become so unbearable for many Catholics that many decided it was best to emigrate elsewhere. Some ventured north into British North America, while more trekked south into Mexico. Under the leadership of Captain Juan O’Reilly and other veterans from Mexico’s famed
Batallón de San Patricio, Catholic immigrants were settled throughout northern Mexico.[4] President Paredes, in a rare display of good judgment, fully endorsed the settlement of “loyal Catholics” throughout the north, all too eager to exploit the human capital the Americans were blindly throwing away. Before long the flow of immigration from the Old World found the ports of Gutierrez, Tampico and Veracruz more welcoming than their counterparts in New York and Baltimore. Scattering throughout the vast Mexican Republic, most immigrants found the temperate climate of Alta California and Sacramento Territory too tempting to pass up.
Democratic Senator from Illinois, Stephen Douglas
Back in Washington, the American government feverishly tried to bring an end to the bloodshed in Kansas, but that proved to be easier said than done. The halls of Congress eerily began to mirror the fighting occurring in the territories, with fist fights breaking out between Northern and Southern congressmen. In an attempt to tread a middle path, Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas introduced a bill in early 1854 that would effectively repeal the Missouri Compromise and allow the territories to decide for themselves what kind of state they would like to be—free or slave. While the northernmost territories of Minnesota and Nebraska (created by the remnant left behind by the creation of Kansas Territory) were unquestionably set to enter the Union as free states, the situation in Kansas stoked fears throughout the North (and hopes in the South) that slavery would jump the Compromise line and extend into what had previously been free territory.
Despite the strong opposition set forth by Northern Senators William Seward, Salmon P. Chase and Charles Sumner, the bill passed the Senate in March, and moved for a vote in the House of Representatives. Proceedings in the House proved to be just as sluggish, if not more toxic. Nevertheless, with the Democrats in control of the House, it was only a matter of time before the bill passed, acquiring the votes needed in late May. Northerners balked at what they deemed “Southern avarice,” while Southerners saw it as simple justice.
Over the course of the following months slavers attempted to create a pro-slavery government based in Lecompton, drafting a new constitution and putting it to vote in November. The elections (if one can call them that) were rigged so as to ensure there would be no abolitionist interference. Slaver militants even tried to derail a rival anti-slavery government from drafting their own constitution in nearby Topeka, going so far as attacking the homes of key draftees and destroying the nascent document.
When word of these events (as well as the Lecompton Constitution) reached President Butler, he vehemently decried the actions of the Lecompton government, with Congress rejecting the pro-slavery constitution. Butler, in fear that choosing a side in the conflict could further divide the nation, also rejected the anti-slavery constitution from Topeka. His decision was made somewhat easier by the fact that the free-soilers, seeking blood for blood, had attacked Lecompton and other pro-slavery settlements throughout eastern Kansas in early 1855. The damage was done however, and Butler’s non-partisan overtures only served to inflame many in the South, who viewed his refusal to recognize the Lecompton constitution as irrefutable proof that the North and the Federal government conspired to abolish slavery and destroy everything the South held dear.
The upheavals of the previous couple of years had taken a toll on the United States’ political establishment, as both the Whigs and Democrats became divided along regional grounds. As the presidential elections of 1856 neared, old political parties were reborn while new ones rose from the ashes. The anti-slavery movement in the North had gained considerable steam since the early 1850’s, with many Whigs renouncing their own party and coalescing with free-soilers, anti-slavery Democrats and other like-minded men to form the Republican Party in 1854. By 1856 they had become the most prominent political force north of the Mason-Dixon Line, displacing many Northern Democrats and Nativists alike. At the first Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, three men were considered to carry the party’s banner to Election Day: William Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and John Charles Frémont.
In spite of his radicalism, there were many in the North who supported General Frémont’s bid for the nomination. Others in the party, whether they liked the man or not, felt the election would be lost to them under Frémont, and so opted between Chase and Seward, eventually choosing the latter. Frémont felt snubbed by the party’s refusal to nominate him, but he did not contend the issue further in order to keep the new party unified and allow it a chance to succeed.
The Democrats, despite their loss of power in the Northern states, nominated Stephen Douglas at their own convention in Cincinnati, and despite overtures to nominate a Southerner for vice-President, the party settled on Pennsylvanian James Buchanan. It was a move that injured the Democrats’ national prospects, as many Southern Democrats renounced support for Douglas and held their own convention in Atlanta. Spurred on by notable fire-eaters such as William Lowndes Yancey and Robert Barnwell Rhett, who called for “extreme measures” if the Republicans won, the Southern Democrats settled on Georgia Senator Robert Toombs as their nominee.
The Presidential campaign was dominated by the issue of slavery. The Republicans were in favor of abolition anyway they could get it, while the Southern Democrats continued to call for its expansion into the territories. All the while the rump Democrats dithered between the status quo and eventual manumission, attracting little support. Soon enough Election day arrived, with Seward carrying New England and his home state of New York, as well as Iowa, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the old Northwest minus Illinois. Much to their astonishment and dismay, Douglas only managed to carry his home state of Illinois, as well as Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina and Louisiana. The rest of the South went to Toombs and the Southern Democrats.
13th President of the United States, William Henry Seward
With 161 electoral votes, William Seward was elected as the 13th President of the United States. As news of Seward’s victory filtered south, Southerners from Virginia to Texas felt it was the last straw. In late December the South Carolina legislature passed an ordinance on secession, with the rest of the Deep South following suit over the course of January 1857. In late February Southern delegates met in Montgomery, Alabama, where they discussed uniting behind Robert Toombs as legitimate President and initiate measures to prepare against the Federal government’s response. Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee followed several weeks later with their own secession ordinances, with the six remaining slave states being the only ones left in the Union by Seward’s inauguration. Civil war was all but certain, now it was only a matter of which side would land the first strike.
United States Presidential Election, 1856
Senator William Henry Seward (R-NY) / Charles Francis Adams, Sr. (R-MA): 161 EV
Senator Stephen Arnold Douglas (D-Il) / James Buchanan, Jr. (D-PA): 74 EV
Senator Robert Augustus Toombs (SD-GA) / Representative Alexander Hamilton Stevens (SD-GA): 54 EV
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Notes:
[1] Remember, Jackson never lived to become president, so he never killed the Second Bank. Despite Van Buren's best efforts the Whigs rechartered it for a third time in 1841.
[2] Basically inversed what happened to Mexico in OTL. In the aftermath of the Mexican-American War the Mexicans continue their tribute payments to the Comanche and try to be super nice to them (until Paredes fucks it all up). The Comanche have to do their thing, and they see the proverbial vultures flying over the US.
[3] Remains more or less true to OTL, but with everything going on in this timeline Southerners are less hesitant to opt for secession.
[4] Yup, that's the same
John Riley. Naturally he isn't executed by the Americans since he chose the winning side.
