Cinco de Mayo

[KingSweden24]

Definitely. I don't think I've seen a TL where the South actually runs with the States' Rights thing. Most federalize like the US

There's federalizing, and then there's federalizing.

Canada's provinces, for instance, are considerably more autonomous than US states in terms of their relationship with Ottawa, believe it or not

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the worst Orange riot in the United States occurring in his home state mere days after the conclusion of the Democratic convention wounded Seymour badly, and his equivocating on the matter damaged him badly with the Irish community that formed a large constituency in his home state, surprisingly considering how the Tammany Hall machine used it as a declaration to the Irish that they needed the protection of Boss Tweed and his organization more than ever. The only respite for Seymour, who elected not to run a "front porch" campaign in the style of Salmon Chase out of concerns over Democratic enthusiasm for his campaign, was the publicity generated by attending the ceremonial "golden spike" ceremony of the Pacific Railroad, standing beside the grinning Leland Stanford as the President drove the spike in and then gave an address in which he declared, 'now and forever, our Union binds both ends of this continent.' Seymour travelled much of the Midwest by train, giving speeches from the back of carriages to gathered crowds. Never an articulate orator, Seymour nevertheless gave his best try out of concern for the well-organized Republican parties in many of the states he needed to sustain an electoral college majority, powered by abolitionists or those wary of Seymour's rapprochement policy, Protestants concerned about his connections to Irish Catholics, and farmers intrigued by soft money.

The campaign began to turn south for Seymour, though, when the substantial Royal Navy squadron arrived in Halifax. Though the presence there was to handle a largely Canadian matter, it nevertheless proved the moment when Republican newspapers blared that Britain's move was meant to further isolate the Union, reinforce the Confederacy, and that the United States could not defend itself thanks to Seymour's veto of the Naval Act. Suddenly the issue from a year prior reared its head again, and the Republicans emphasized that passing Conkling's Naval Act would be the first order of business when the new Congress was seated with Chase as President. Seymour, stubbornly, maintained his opposition to the act in campaign speeches, further alienating important public officials in his home state of New York, where Boss Tweed was eager to participate in the shipbuilding contracts the enlarged Navy and merchant marine would surely entail..."

- Seymour: Portrait of a Forgotten President

 

[KingSweden24]

"...events would rapidly occur after the Revolt of Cadiz - within weeks, the universally unpopular Queen Isabella had fled Spain, leaving in place a caretaker government headed by Generals Juan Prim and Francisco Serrano. Ever wary of the Carlists coming back to stir trouble yet again, the relatively liberal generals set about to consolidate their power in Madrid and began discussions of finding a suitable monarch who would honor whatever Constitution the Cortes was set to pass..."

- 150 Years On: A Symposium on the Glorious Revolution and Constitutional Monarchy in Spain (Heidelberg University, 2018)

 

[Nivek]

- 150 Years On: A Symposium on the Glorious Revolution and Constitutional Monarchy in Spain (Heidelberg University, 2018)

Seems whatever ended up as king was far better amadeus of savoy

 

[KingSweden24]

Seems whatever ended up as king was far better amadeus of savoy

oh you’ll see

 

[Not Henry G.]

If the Republicans win the election I really hope their navy bill bites them in the ass hard.

 

[KingSweden24]

"...despite his occasional Liberal sympathies [1], Lord Stanley headed a Conservative Cabinet, and at the urging of Buckingham and Salisbury he put the needs of the Conservative interests first. At the advice of Stanley, Victoria assented to calling a general election, which the Cabinet positioned as necessary to determine the Government's course in the wake of the Sydney Affair and the subsequent unrest, particularly in Ireland. Terrified of a Fenian rebellion on British soil, Salisbury - who had amassed true power as Chancellor - viewed the election as an opportunity to further use the Liberal divide to his advantage and to create a stronger platform for his policy of constructive Unionism, assenting to the need for policies beneficial to Ireland. The election wound wind up being closer than expected, with the Conservatives winning more seats than they expected in Ireland but underperforming their expectations in England proper. Still, it returned a Conservative majority to Parliament [2], one that would go unthreatened for the next decade..."

- History of Victorian Britain 1860-69

[1] He almost switched parties on his dad!
[2] Recall that franchise reform was killed, to Conservative advantage

 

[pathfinder]

Sort of wondering how Max is handling the Conservative vs Liberal divide in Mexican politics. It didn't seem like he altogether quashed it. OTL the constant contention between the two sides was more or.less finished after the Republican victory over the Empire because the Conservatives had been thoroughly discredited by their actions concerning the Empire, and had all been thrown out of government, executed or exiled after the war. This isn't the case here, where Max has gladly taken people from all over the political spectrum and Incorporated them into his government. While I can see that it would be good for keeping the peace, for the moment, I can't help but feel that the Emperor has only postponed that final reckoning between the two sides. I can only imagine that after his death, things will once again come to a head.

 

[KingSweden24]

Sort of wondering how Max is handling the Conservative vs Liberal divide in Mexican politics. It didn't seem like he altogether quashed it. OTL the constant contention between the two sides was more or.less finished after the Republican victory over the Empire because the Conservatives had been thoroughly discredited by their actions concerning the Empire, and had all been thrown out of government, executed or exiled after the war. This isn't the case here, where Max has gladly taken people from all over the political spectrum and Incorporated them into his government. While I can see that it would be good for keeping the peace, for the moment, I can't help but feel that the Emperor has only postponed that final reckoning between the two sides. I can only imagine that after his death, things will once again come to a head.

The reckoning has definitely just been postponed, but it's also more of a simmer... thanks largely to the Empire managing to kill Juarez early in the war and then Nathan Forrest joining in the battle that killed Porfirio Diaz (and posing for pictures with the corpse, since this is Nathan Forrest we're talking about). Max incorporating some Liberal ideas, plus instituting some of his own imported from European best practices, while not antagonizing otherwise disappointed Conservatives too much (no real major land reform and he rules definitively as a devout Catholic in alignment with the Archbishop of Mexico City, if I recall from my notes), has insulated him a bit too. So I'd say that while it's overall a narrow Conservative victory, its more of a draw. Some of the structural rivalries haven't gone away, but the decisive defeat of the Republicans and overall satisfaction of all factions with Max's rule has more or less made this a moot point... for now.

 

[KingSweden24]

"...at the polls, the campaign Seymour had wanted to run, that of "a President of peace and prosperity" - emphasizing the continued settlement of the West, strong economic growth in the immediate recovery of the post-war financial crisis caused by secession, expansion of industry, moderate rapprochement with the Confederacy and the Alaska Purchase - foundered. Republicans, hoping to capitalize on Democrats' soft attitude on enforcing the Monroe Doctrine and the party's closeness to Irish immigrants in the wake of July's Orange Riots, tarred Seymour as the "candidate of Retreat and Romanism." [1] Pledging to build a two-ocean navy so that "the humiliation of Havana would never come to pass again," the Republican campaign emphasized Salmon Chase's fine stewardship of the Treasury during the Lincoln years and swore that those killed in the war would not have died so that the Union would bend the knee to Richmond. The Democratic campaigns retorted that "Republicans stand for riots," dismissed the Naval Act as a frivolous expenditure beyond the limited scope of the federal government, and railed against Chase as "the candidate of the banks and the barons!" Bad blood boiled back up, for the Treaty of Havana was but five years old. Despite a game and aggressive campaign that would mark a substantial departure from the front porch candidacies conducted by many of his predecessors, Seymour floundered in the end.

The Salmon Chase/John Fremont victory in 1868 was nearly as crushing a result as Abraham Lincoln's 1860 win in the shadow of secession. Seymour carried only 3 states - Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey - failing to win even his home state by the narrowest of margins [2]. Historians debate to this day how much of Seymour's inability to carry his native New York was due to Roscoe Conkling building a patronage machine in short order there and how much was thanks to the Tweed Ring lacking enthusiasm for putting together an ambitious campaign. Out of 226 possible electoral votes, Seymour secured but 17 - well short of the 114 needed to win. Chase earned 209 electors, a landslide by any definition of the term and certainly a turnaround from Seymour's relatively narrow win in 1864. The electoral vote was closer, 52%-47%, but still a crushing victory few could have predicted.

The effects trickled downballot, too. Republicans picked up 33 seats in the House of Representatives, a massive swing, and swept state legislatures across the country, failing only to pick up those in the three states Seymour carried. This would have the effect of positioning them to retake a number of the Senate seats lost in the 1862 elections as well, most prominently that of Thomas Hendricks of Indiana. With substantial majorities in the House and Senate and a President to be inaugurated regarded as one of the fathers of the party rather than a compromise candidate such as Lincoln, the Republican Party suddenly stood resurgent a mere four years after what was then thought of as its nadir, when many wondered if it would collapse as the Whigs had done over the matter of slavery..."

- Seymour: Portrait of a Forgotten President

[1] Temperance not being a huge thing yet, gotta leave out the "rum" part
[2] I went back and forth on Seymour losing his home state, but decided that the reaction to the Orange Riots among Irish voters would probably crimp his style. Plus, this gives William Tweed some more power in the short term...

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the reality was that though the planter class that dominated the Confederate Senate found Forrest to be uncouth in his personal style, despite his mild manners, they found him to not be as different from them as they'd worried. He had, prewar, been one of the richest men in the South after all, despite his informal education a self-made successful planter and slave trader who gave up his comforts to volunteer for the war, where he excelled to leap from private to brigadier general despite having no military training. The Senators tolerated Forrest and his Jacksonian pursuits - for starters, his pushing ahead with a mild tariff as part of a pledge to strengthen the Confederacy's near-depleted finances, overcoming considerable opposition to the movement, allegedly via Klan intimidation. Without a formal party to satisfy, patronage was doled out almost entirely to loyalists from the Tennessee Templars and the Klan. The most prominent such appointment was of course Isham Harris to lead the state department, but in time most of the administration's most plum roles and patronage jobs were either handed out to friends from Tennessee or publicly-identified Klan members. The 'Tennessee Clique,' as they became known, functioned effectively as a political party in all but name. The financial difficulties of the Confederacy also denied Forrest some of his other ambitions, such as building a new Capitol for the Confederacy after he failed to pressure the Virginia government to relocate to Williamsburg (a move that would be effected two decades later).

The fall of 1868 saw foreign affairs begin to rattle the Confederacy. Foremost, the matter of Forrest's indemnity to Mexico - paid in part out of his own fortune - and a gritted-teeth apology he regretted penning even until his dying breath. Secondly, the electoral victory of Salmon Chase in the Union led to potential alarm that hostilities might resume. The debates over the Naval Act were well known South of the Potomac, and the Confederate Navy had expanded in the postwar years but was still oriented more towards brown-water and coastal defense measures - only one of the ironclad cruisers ordered had ever been delivered by British shipyards, and beyond the Hampton Roads there was little indigenous skill on such heavy shipbuilding. The news that the Union would lease St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies as a coaling station now also meant that the United States would have a Navy base to the Confederacy's south, a notion that concerned Forrest and his Naval Secretary Samuel Barron greatly. Despite the plain need for a superior navy when the Naval Act would inevitably pass, the skepticism about standing armies in the wake of the Tar Heel Rebellion and the deep debt the Confederacy already found itself in led to much dismay at the Confederate War department..."

- The Wizard of the Saddle: The Life of Nathan Forrest

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the revolt in Cuba pitted the interests of criollos, farmers and freed slaves in the eastern half of the island against the hacendados and pensinular merchants reliant on sugarcane production on the western half, who enjoyed the resources and support of Metropolitan Spain through its governor-general. Whether Carlos Manuel Cespedes timed the Cuban Revolt to coincide with the Glorious Revolution in Spain is unknown, but his Grito de Yara - Cry of Yara - declaring Cuban Independence, would mark a major milestone not just in the history of the Caribbean but all the West..."

- The Cuban War (University of Madrid, 1977)

 

[Nivek]

"...the revolt in Cuba pitted the interests of criollos, farmers and freed slaves in the eastern half of the island against the hacendados and pensinular merchants reliant on sugarcane production on the western half, who enjoyed the resources and support of Metropolitan Spain through its governor-general. Whether Carlos Manuel Cespedes timed the Cuban Revolt to coincide with the Glorious Revolution in Spain is unknown, but his Grito de Yara - Cry of Yara - declaring Cuban Independence, would mark a major milestone not just in the history of the Caribbean but all the West..."

- The Cuban War (University of Madrid, 1977)

Now here come the fun...

 

[KingSweden24]

"...few marriages of convenience worked out better for both parties than that of Maximilian and the new Inspector General of the Mexican Imperial Army, Ludwig von Benedek, who arrived in time for Christmas Mass in 1868. Ostracized publicly in native Austria for his poor performance in the Second Unification War, von Benedek elected to follow the Emperor's younger brother west to the New World, as did many Europeans to a Mexico that promised them immediate citizenship upon arrival. It was von Benedek who advised Maximilian that the Mexican Army needed considerable reforms to bring it merely to European standards. Maximilian, still resentful of the 10,000 French Legionnaires who stayed at their fortress at Veracruz and behaved as if they owned the city, was eager to rebuild the military, especially after some Republican stragglers in the north staged raids in November that embarrassed the government.

Benedek was perhaps the most valuable immigrant under what would today be considered an "open door" policy - indeed, the Hungarian was proclaimed Duke of Tampico, one of many honorary titles Maximilian became fond of giving out over his long reign, and died in 1881 a profoundly respected figure [1] - but the stream of Europeans to Mexico brought with it money, and investors, and practices of business often foreign to the previously unstable Mexico. Coal and silver mining by 1870 was mined in the same efficient manner as was common in Europe, filling the Mexican treasury's coffers (helpfully allowing it to settle many of its foreign debts over the next many years) and giving a boost to nascent industry in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Queretaro. The Bank of Mexico and South America, having shed the "London" from its name in 1868, emerged as one of Latin America's largest financial institutions and normalized banking separate from merchant guilds and loans from the clergy. Its board of directors was a mix of Mexicans - almost all peninsulares - and Englishmen, and a new headquarters for the bank, lavish in design and featuring Aztec-inspired frescoes in its grand hall - was opened on the Paseo de Emperatriz that same year. 1869 would be the first of many high points of Maximilian's reign - the Paris-inspired Paseo de Emperatriz [2] cutting through the city from the Zocalo, lined with trees and new neighborhoods for the city's growing urban elite, was finally completed. It was the year that construction on the Tehuantepec Railway was finally begun. And late that year, Carlota would give birth to the second of the couple's sons, José Francisco Carlos Maria. And, perhaps most importantly, it was the last year that Maximilian continued to view France and the Confederacy as his most important allies [3]..."

- Maximilian of Mexico

[1] Sometimes the butterflies give the destitute a happier ending
[2] Essentially a Mexican Champs d'Elysees
[3] Sorry Nappy! This was pretty much inevitable considering all the Germans/Austrians coming to live in Mexico, the fact that it's British and American financiers funding his railway projects, and the fact that a more humbled Napoleon III doesn't really scare anyone post-Treaty of Brussels. 10k troops in Veracruz isn't really enough to project power in a vast Latin American empire, and I haven't found much to suggest what Napoleon's post-Mexico designs were, anyways

 

[Nivek]

[3] Sorry Nappy! This was pretty much inevitable considering all the Germans/Austrians coming to live in Mexico, the fact that it's British and American financiers funding his railway projects, and the fact that a more humbled Napoleon III doesn't really scare anyone post-Treaty of Brussels. 10k troops in Veracruz isn't really enough to project power in a vast Latin American empire, and I haven't found much to suggest what Napoleon's post-Mexico designs were, anyways

IIRC, he wanted to re vassalize(not annex) Haiti, if Dominincan republic have offered be part of france he would gladly have took it, other was the centro america channel(nicaragua seems was his idea) dunno the others...

importantly, it was the last year that Maximilian continued to view France and the Confederacy as his most important allies [3]..."

Plus Mexico is so far away European Affairs so they can goes their own slowly.

 

[Not Henry G.]

Ho boy, Mexico possibly allied with Germany/Austria? That's a welcome departure from the "Entente Mexico/CSA and Central US" trope

 

[KingSweden24]

Ho boy, Mexico possibly allied with Germany/Austria? That's a welcome departure from the "Entente Mexico/CSA and Central US" trope

got 40 years to go 😉 besides, it may not be the case the alliances are the same... or that there even is a WW1! Time will tell haha

 

[KingSweden24]

IIRC, he wanted to re vassalize(not annex) Haiti, if Dominincan republic have offered be part of france he would gladly have took it, other was the centro america channel(nicaragua seems was his idea) dunno the others...


Plus Mexico is so far away European Affairs so they can goes their own slowly.

he could realistically still vassalize Haiti though with the US underwriting Samana Bay from now on that may be difficult

 

[KingSweden24]

"...though the Fenians were a decisively Catholic organization, Irish nationalism was limited not just to Ireland's Catholic population. Indeed, there was a broad swath of the Anglo-Irish establishment even within the Church of Ireland who viewed the crackdown in Ireland against the Brotherhood as unsustainable. Among those for whom the Sydney Affair marked the first stirrings of a Protestant Irish identity, albeit one comfortable with unionism, was a young man named Charles Stewart Parnell..."

- Ireland Unfree (University of Cambridge 1947)

 

[KingSweden24]

"...despite sympathetic newspapers whipping up a fury over the Korean Expedition, the elections of 1869 were a disaster for Napoleon III, as a coalition of republicans, liberals and anti-Bonapartist monarchists earned 45% of the vote, a record. Bazaine and Rouher pushed for Napoleon to refuse further concessions to the liberals and urged that he continue to implement a conservative program.

The Korean Expedition came at a fortuitous time for the Emperor, as such. Two separate forces landed in Korea under cover of naval bombardment - one at Ganghwa Island in the mouth of the Han River, the other in Busan to force the port open. In all, 15,000 Legionaries, including a number of men recruited from Mexico, Algeria, Pondichery and Cochinchina, invaded Korea. With the modern chassepot rifle and the element of surprise, they were able to successfully seize Busan while inflicting disproportionate casualties on the locals. The march to Seoul from Ganghwa was more complicated - with few maps of the countryside, the going was slow and it allowed a force of 10,000 Koreans to respond, leading to a bloody battle on the banks of the Han River. Despite heavy casualties, the French broke the larger enemy force and arrived at Seoul's doorsteps.

The Korean defeat stirred patriotism within the country, but to little avail - the treaty imposed upon the Joseon Dynasty was thoroughly unequal. The Regent Prince Gung, who ruled the country on behalf of the child Emperor Gojong, was forced to abdicate and the treaty granted France the concession of Busan while making Korea a protectorate and ensuring the rights of Catholic missionaries to operate within the country [1]. It was a quick, splendid little war, as Bazaine would call it, and news of the victory in France brought with it a surge of support. Napoleon III, with his two marshals who now effectively ran the Second Empire, staged a grand parade on the Champs-Elysees for a number of the veterans of the war when they returned home that autumn, marching beneath the Arc de Triomphe and singing "Partant pour la Syrie," [1] the Emperor's preferred anthem. That many on the streets instead sang La Marseillaise to try to drown out the singing of the victorious soldiers did not go unnoticed by Napoleon and his retinue, nor did many opponent of the regime in attendance that day - chief among them Adolphe Thiers - fail to notice that the Emperor sat in his saddle in a slouch and looked remarkably pale..."

- Reign of Napoleon III 1848-1874

[1] Major butterflies for Korean history here, to say the least
[2] Suffice to say Napoleon III wasn't a fan of an anthem about blood shed to overthrow tyrants