An Empire of Liberty

Chapter XVI - 1865-1869
An Empire of Liberty

Chapter XVI
1865-1869

An excerpt from The American Presidents
by William Grayson, 2019

General George McClellan was an ambitious man, as can be seen through his rapid ascent through the military and his eventual presidential victory. However, what he would have done with that ambition is unknown.

McClellan's only main act was the purchase of Sonora from Mexico. After the Second Mexican War, it became clear that Mexico could not pay its debts to France, and began asking the US for aid. Many Americans, tired with Mexican affairs, wanted nothing to do with it. However, McClellan cleverly offered to give Mexico aid in return for Sonora. This would be ratified by Congress, despite some deriding "McClellan's sandbox", and Sonora would be the newest addition to US territory.

On April 14, 1865, President McClellan was reviewing a military parade led by Ulysses S. Grant, a disgruntled soldier, Emerson Himes, shot at the President. His reasoning was that McClellan was a coward and a liar thanks to his actions in the Second Mexican War and the subsequent election of 1864. Thanks to the actions of a quick-thinking soldier besides him, the shot eventually landed far below where the president was sitting. However, it did hit one of the key beams supporting the wooden podium where the President was sitting. In an instance of bad luck, McClellan was crushed by the fall, and would eventually die. Himes managed to escape the chaos, and even gained some followers, and they somehow managed to take a barn near Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Eventually, a task force led by Robert E. Lee managed to track Himes and his supporters down, and managed to kill Himes in a firefight.

His replacement was George Pendleton. Formerly a Representative of Ohio, Pendleton took inspiration from Winfield Scott, largely being a caretaker president - this decision was heavily influenced by the catastrophe that had put Pendleton into office. However, just like Scott, a national crisis would emerge, one that would forever tarnish Pendleton's reputation. And unlike Scott, he did not have a heroic reputation as a general to fall back upon.

This crisis was the emergence of the Order of the Golden Circle. Made up of reactionaries who opposed the emancipation laws, it was founded in December 1865, and quickly began committing atrocities against pro-abolition whites and African Americans, both free and enslaved. While it grew popular in the South, and in isolated cases the West, this was met with horror in the North. Pendleton, realizing that attempting to persecute the Golden Circle would probably fail and lead to the practical death of the Democratic-Republican party in the South, did nothing except for provide for more transportation from America to Liberia. Free Soil members of Congress would propose Civil Rights bills, but these would either fail in Congress or be vetoed by Pendleton, in which case Congress would not have the strength to respond.

Eventually, the Golden Circle crisis would consume Pendleton's presidency, and in 1868 General Ulysses S. Grant of the Free Soil Party was overwhelmingly elected President. After his Presidency, Pendleton would quickly find himself hated in his home state of Ohio, and would withdraw to a self-imposed exile in Cuba.

An excerpt from A Heart of Darkness - Terror in Liberia
by Barack Obama, 2010

The real turning point in Liberia came in the latter half of the 1860's, with the new refugees coming to Liberia telling of the vicious Order of the Golden Circle. It was at this point when any veneer of Liberian "civility" came crashing down. In 1866, Liberia ordered the departure of any non-African race from Liberia - this was largely complied with, but those that did not obey the order were never heard from again. Now, the only members of "other races" that would visit were traders coming to Monrovia, in which a pleasant exterior was put on the nation. Soon after, the democratic government of Liberia was dismantled, replaced with a non-elected oligarchy.

After this, what is known to the Afro-Liberians as "The Great Terror" began. Although many records from this period have been destroyed, what little we know tells us this much - the native Afro-Liberian population was treated as less than human. The Americo-Liberians, enraged at the decades of suffering they had endured in America, wreaked many of the same brutalities upon the Afro-Liberians as had been imposed upon them, but went a step farther. Many escaped into French and British colonies, although their tales were dismissed as ludicrous by colonial authorities.

Over the years, this would only get worse.

An excerpt from The Age of Revolutions
by Thomas Gibson, 2015

After suffering a defeat in the Second Mexican War, Napoleon III looked to another place to regain any glory he had lost. And he found just the right place in Iberia. France's neighbor had been undergoing the Carlist Wars for the last two decades, and France had finally had enough. Napoleon III's army came sweeping into Iberia, much like it had fifty years before. At this point, the peninsula had been exhausted from fighting twenty years, and the fresh troops were all the loyalist side needed. The Carlists were kicked out of Iberia, and were forced to retreat to Brazil. Jerome-Napoleon Bonaparte, the son of Napoleon would become the new, undisputed King of Iberia.

In turn, these Carlists, who were experienced guerilla fighters, arrived in a Brazil that desperately needed Carlist aid. The members of the Grand Coalition were on their doorstep, and the Brazilian government requested Carlist help in setting up Brazilian defenses. This was done, and soon the slow slog through Brazilian territory by the Republican powers would grind to a halt. In 1869, after eight years of war, a white peace would be signed between the various warring powers, reducing everything back to square one in the continent.

By 1870, the Age of Revolutions was over. Although various minor conflicts in what was once the Ottoman Empire still simmered, the light of the Enlightenment had finally gone out. However, its legacy would remain. The United States of America and the French Empire, both nations based on the principles of the Enlightenment, stood as the two most powerful nations in the world, and would continue to do so.

 
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