Ah good God *that* statue. Part of me hopes that something that amazingly hideous breaks through time and space to appear in Cinco de Mayo's dimension too but who knows haha
Cinco de Mayo
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
- Status
Ah good God *that* statue. Part of me hopes that something that amazingly hideous breaks through time and space to appear in Cinco de Mayo's dimension too but who knows haha
I'd say that a Confederate President would likely have better monuments than that metallic monstrosity.
At least one would hope! Perhaps that monstrosity as you called it is an amateur's project hidden away in some small Tennessee town somewhere!
Ships of the South: Naval History of the Confederate States of America
"...the resignation of Navy Secretary Samuel Barron over disagreements with Forrest and Harris on how to best prepare the CSN for potential counters against the "Conkling Fleets" led to a technocratic appointment in the mold of the legendary John H. Reagan, with John Luke Porter of Virginia taking over as Navy Secretary in early 1871. The appointment wound up being fortuitous - the Chief Constructor of the Navy was an old hand at the shipyards in Norfolk and Hampton and an innovator in maximizing the Confederate ironclad and monitor fleet for coastal defense with the limited resources given him by the Treasury and the relatively sparse steel industry in the South (the proximity of Richmond's Tredegar Iron Works [1] just up the James River was a particularly prominent partnership for Porter). So less than a year after his entering Cabinet to oversee an overworked and overwhelmed Navy Department, Porter was now suddenly in charge of war planning for the logistics of the Confederate Expeditionary Force and any potential escalation from Spain.
The strategy of the administration and the tactical implications were often at loggerheads, and it was a miracle that Porter was not shunted to the side in the early days of the Spanish-Confederate War for his outright pessimism about the project and refusal to indulge the grandiose visions of his boss. President Forrest's view, shared by prominent Knights of the Golden Circle as well as his otherwise-levelheaded Secretary of State Isham G. Harris, was that a Spanish garrison having to fight not one but three enemy forces on Cuba would quickly capitulate, retreat and turn their focus instead to pacifying the less intense but longer-running insurrection on re-colonized Santo Domingo. Porter thought this wishful thinking at best and willful ignorance at worst, though he kept the latter thoughts contained in his personal diaries that were only published in the early 20th century, notes that considerably changed historical assessments of the otherwise lionized Forrest Presidency.
Most concerning to Porter was the logistical nightmare of supplying troops 1,600 miles from the Confederate Navy's main base of Norfolk all the way down in Cuba. His first step was to divert several of the screw steamers of the Navy to the naval base at Key West, impressing on Forrest how critical it would be to have a semblance of control over the Florida Strait in order to enjoy operational command of the naval theater around Havana. In one sense, despite his skepticism, Porter agreed with the administration in one respect - any Confederate advantage would have to come from a quick and decisive victory, not unlike that at Sharpsburg in Maryland that had secured Southern independence nearly a decade earlier. European powers would not long concede to Confederate control of the Florida Straits, let alone the Confederacy's nominal ally in Mexico, which everyone in the Cabinet expected to be officially neutral (Maximilian I of Mexico was, in fact, privately sympathetic to the Confederate cause as he was beginning to tire of European involvement in the Americas, period). Porter's biggest concern was the vulnerability of an invasion fleet embarking from Norfolk southwards and so proposed a gradual movement of troops and materiel in coastal waters of the Confederacy under convoy escort of both steamers and ironclad monitors, the "hopscotch" strategy as he termed it, all the way south to Key West, from where the invasion would launch in the less-stormy, post-hurricane season winter. This would leave Confederate vessels least exposed to the Spanish Navy, which despite being small and dated by European standards still considerably outclassed what the Confederacy could muster, and that was before much of the Confederate fleet tonnage had to be diverted to coastal defense. Recalling the Union blockade of the Independence War, Porter also began using his long list of contacts developed as Chief Constructor to begin recruiting blockade runners once again in preparation for a potential Spanish embargo on the Confederacy's Atlantic ports.
Suffice it to say, Forrest's ill-fated Cuban Expedition - in a tempting of fate, the President announced that it would be an "splendid little war" as he decided to lead the Cuban Expeditionary Force personally and set off for Savannah where the flagship CSS Alabama was waiting for him - would have been stillborn before it was even able to be launched were it not for the aggressive legwork pursued by his forgotten and oft-derided "small thinker" Navy Secretary in that fateful autumn. There is a reason, after all, that at the Confederate Naval Academy in Norfolk to this day that it is John Luke Porter's portrait that hangs in the Great Hall and that he, not his predecessors as Navy Secretary Mallory or Barron, holds the title "Father of the Dixie Navy."..."
- Ships of the South: Naval History of the Confederate States of America (University of Alabama, 1989)
[1] One of the reasons the Confederate capital was put in Richmond was due to this iron works being located there. Proximity to Hampton Roads is a huge plus in this case for modest naval expansion/modernization
The strategy of the administration and the tactical implications were often at loggerheads, and it was a miracle that Porter was not shunted to the side in the early days of the Spanish-Confederate War for his outright pessimism about the project and refusal to indulge the grandiose visions of his boss. President Forrest's view, shared by prominent Knights of the Golden Circle as well as his otherwise-levelheaded Secretary of State Isham G. Harris, was that a Spanish garrison having to fight not one but three enemy forces on Cuba would quickly capitulate, retreat and turn their focus instead to pacifying the less intense but longer-running insurrection on re-colonized Santo Domingo. Porter thought this wishful thinking at best and willful ignorance at worst, though he kept the latter thoughts contained in his personal diaries that were only published in the early 20th century, notes that considerably changed historical assessments of the otherwise lionized Forrest Presidency.
Most concerning to Porter was the logistical nightmare of supplying troops 1,600 miles from the Confederate Navy's main base of Norfolk all the way down in Cuba. His first step was to divert several of the screw steamers of the Navy to the naval base at Key West, impressing on Forrest how critical it would be to have a semblance of control over the Florida Strait in order to enjoy operational command of the naval theater around Havana. In one sense, despite his skepticism, Porter agreed with the administration in one respect - any Confederate advantage would have to come from a quick and decisive victory, not unlike that at Sharpsburg in Maryland that had secured Southern independence nearly a decade earlier. European powers would not long concede to Confederate control of the Florida Straits, let alone the Confederacy's nominal ally in Mexico, which everyone in the Cabinet expected to be officially neutral (Maximilian I of Mexico was, in fact, privately sympathetic to the Confederate cause as he was beginning to tire of European involvement in the Americas, period). Porter's biggest concern was the vulnerability of an invasion fleet embarking from Norfolk southwards and so proposed a gradual movement of troops and materiel in coastal waters of the Confederacy under convoy escort of both steamers and ironclad monitors, the "hopscotch" strategy as he termed it, all the way south to Key West, from where the invasion would launch in the less-stormy, post-hurricane season winter. This would leave Confederate vessels least exposed to the Spanish Navy, which despite being small and dated by European standards still considerably outclassed what the Confederacy could muster, and that was before much of the Confederate fleet tonnage had to be diverted to coastal defense. Recalling the Union blockade of the Independence War, Porter also began using his long list of contacts developed as Chief Constructor to begin recruiting blockade runners once again in preparation for a potential Spanish embargo on the Confederacy's Atlantic ports.
Suffice it to say, Forrest's ill-fated Cuban Expedition - in a tempting of fate, the President announced that it would be an "splendid little war" as he decided to lead the Cuban Expeditionary Force personally and set off for Savannah where the flagship CSS Alabama was waiting for him - would have been stillborn before it was even able to be launched were it not for the aggressive legwork pursued by his forgotten and oft-derided "small thinker" Navy Secretary in that fateful autumn. There is a reason, after all, that at the Confederate Naval Academy in Norfolk to this day that it is John Luke Porter's portrait that hangs in the Great Hall and that he, not his predecessors as Navy Secretary Mallory or Barron, holds the title "Father of the Dixie Navy."..."
- Ships of the South: Naval History of the Confederate States of America (University of Alabama, 1989)
[1] One of the reasons the Confederate capital was put in Richmond was due to this iron works being located there. Proximity to Hampton Roads is a huge plus in this case for modest naval expansion/modernization
Last edited:
Love how ambigous is...still the red tide still exist.
Another case we don't have a footnote
The Reign of Napoleon III 1848-1874
"...the education of the Petit-Prince in London had dual purposes. The first was to expose him to ideas and innovations indigent to Britain, to inspire his future reign in the way that his father was inspired by his own time in exile. Anglophilia was treated suspiciously by much of rural, Catholic France as well as the country's more radical element, but free trade had brought France prosperity and after the defeat at Germany's hands a closer bond to London was seen as a boon within Le Trois and the Cabinet. To tie that bond closer together, a second purpose was being served - the attempt to secure a marriage pact between Prince Louis-Napoleon and Princess Beatrice, the youngest and favorite daughter of Queen Victoria. The notion was spoken widely of in the British tabloids, and despite the potential scandal of the Queen's daughter - a daughter the Queen relied on so closely that she had at one time forbidden her marrying any suitor - converting to Catholicism to be the consort of long-hated France, the notion had begun to earn credence by late in the year.
The marriage could well have happened, though many biographers of Victoria remain deeply skeptical to the point of viewing Prince Albert Edward's death not as the reason for Beatrice not being promised to Louis-Napoleon upon their maturity, but an excuse tossed about afterwards by continental historians. As a deadly typhoid fever ravaged the country that winter, it struck most acutely at Londesborough Lodge, where "Bertie" was hosting his friend Lord Chesterfield and the new King William IV of the Netherlands, on the throne less than six months, to hunt and, as rumors went, to entertain a group of young ladies brought to the Yorkshire lodge specifically for the amusement of the young men. All three would pass in quick succession from the disease, Chesterfield [1] and the King of the Netherlands on the 1st of December and Bertie the next day.
The nation was plunged deep into mourning at the death of the future king and second of Victoria's sons to die within four years. Though she had never been close to Bertie after blaming him for his father's death (of the same disease), the Queen was thrown into a deep melancholy which nearly killed her over Christmas, and only the support of her favorite children Arthur [2] and Beatrice is said to have kept her alive through the ordeal. With the death of Bertie at the age of only thirty, it thrust upon his son Albert Victor - a mere month before his 8th birthday - the title of Prince of Wales and made him Victoria's immediate successor. The typhoid epidemic caused chaos in the Netherlands, too, where now two kings had died in quick succession and making the finding of a wife to bear the new King Alexander an heir a critical matter.
For the purposes of Le Trois and their designs on a cross-Channel marriage, the death of Prince Albert Edward essentially closed that door for good. Victoria would never send her Beatrice out of the country now, and by the end of 1872 the Prince Imperial would return to France. Despite his pragmatic foreign policy and noted Anglophilia, the future Emperor Napoleon IV never quite trusted the British royal family again in his dealings with them..."
- The Reign of Napoleon III 1848-1874
[1] Lord Chesterfield did indeed die on this date, though Bertie survived. Here, Bertie's buddy Will from the Netherlands joins him and they all die together
[2] So - Arthur, the future Duke of Connaught (and Governor General of Canada) IOTL, is going to become a major character in this TL as the eldest surviving son of Queen Victoria. Does anyone have any good information on him to help me shape his role in this story? I haven't been able to find much
The marriage could well have happened, though many biographers of Victoria remain deeply skeptical to the point of viewing Prince Albert Edward's death not as the reason for Beatrice not being promised to Louis-Napoleon upon their maturity, but an excuse tossed about afterwards by continental historians. As a deadly typhoid fever ravaged the country that winter, it struck most acutely at Londesborough Lodge, where "Bertie" was hosting his friend Lord Chesterfield and the new King William IV of the Netherlands, on the throne less than six months, to hunt and, as rumors went, to entertain a group of young ladies brought to the Yorkshire lodge specifically for the amusement of the young men. All three would pass in quick succession from the disease, Chesterfield [1] and the King of the Netherlands on the 1st of December and Bertie the next day.
The nation was plunged deep into mourning at the death of the future king and second of Victoria's sons to die within four years. Though she had never been close to Bertie after blaming him for his father's death (of the same disease), the Queen was thrown into a deep melancholy which nearly killed her over Christmas, and only the support of her favorite children Arthur [2] and Beatrice is said to have kept her alive through the ordeal. With the death of Bertie at the age of only thirty, it thrust upon his son Albert Victor - a mere month before his 8th birthday - the title of Prince of Wales and made him Victoria's immediate successor. The typhoid epidemic caused chaos in the Netherlands, too, where now two kings had died in quick succession and making the finding of a wife to bear the new King Alexander an heir a critical matter.
For the purposes of Le Trois and their designs on a cross-Channel marriage, the death of Prince Albert Edward essentially closed that door for good. Victoria would never send her Beatrice out of the country now, and by the end of 1872 the Prince Imperial would return to France. Despite his pragmatic foreign policy and noted Anglophilia, the future Emperor Napoleon IV never quite trusted the British royal family again in his dealings with them..."
- The Reign of Napoleon III 1848-1874
[1] Lord Chesterfield did indeed die on this date, though Bertie survived. Here, Bertie's buddy Will from the Netherlands joins him and they all die together
[2] So - Arthur, the future Duke of Connaught (and Governor General of Canada) IOTL, is going to become a major character in this TL as the eldest surviving son of Queen Victoria. Does anyone have any good information on him to help me shape his role in this story? I haven't been able to find much
And on that note, who is Forrest's VP? I have the feeling we'll be getting to know him a whole lot better.
haha! John Breckinridge of Kentucky! (1860 Southern Democratic nominee)
The irony of this line absolutely slays me. Although to be fair, I suppose it does show that Max is probably putting the interests of Mexico ahead of the interests of Europe, even though it was the interests of Europe that got him where he is in the first place.
France was defeated and he feel free to break shackles of europe meddling now, plus he won and have a comfty throne now, he would care little the europe kicked him
Thanks! I’ve found myself becoming quite sympathetic to him as I’ve written this TL and he’s certainly one of its early protagonists (I mean he won’t live until 2020 so history will eventually pass him by). I find it interesting how people’s (and nations’) narrow interests can evolve over time and how malleable they were back then and still are
The Cuban Revolt at 100
"...the Confederate decision to intervene in Cuba added another wrinkle to a profoundly complicated war. Spain had reinforced her garrisons both in Cuba and in Santo Domino, where a longer but more subtle guerilla war had been smoldering since the mid-1860s upon the ascension of Leopold to the monarchy. With the new constitution passed, the Cortes in Madrid was debating how to apply the governing document to the colonies - a large bloc of the Democratic Liberals who held a majority supported incorporating the three Caribbean territories as full provinces of Spain with the same rights and privileges as any other Spanish province, thus removing the exploitative colonial relationship and simultaneously addressing many of the grievances of the Republic at Arms, as the "East Cuba" rebels under Cespedes, Agramonte and Gomez were called. A smaller bloc, led by President of the Cortes (Prime Minister) Juan Prim, were in favor of releasing Cuba and Santo Domingo completely, making Puerto Rico the last focal point of the Spanish New World colonial system and turning attention to reforms within the country. Arguments in Spain mirrored arguments within the East Cuba rebellion, where Cespedes and Agramonte frequently jockeyed for power against one another and supported full independence, whereas more pragmatically minded rebels such as the Maceo brothers were open to a provincial arrangement with most of their demands met as a way to end the bloodshed. Most notably, the Maceos - of mixed race - had effectively won on the issue most dear to them, the abolition of slavery, and were skeptical that an independent Cuba could successfully resist the intervention of the neighboring Confederacy which would surely install a puppet government that would reimpose slavery. Within Spain, freedom for all black and mulatto Cubans was effectively secure.
Spain had successfully used such wedges to defend its position and thus was caught off guard by the West Cuba government established by the Pinar del Rio and Matanzas sugar oligarchy, headed by Juan Salcedo [1], in late 1871 and its immediate recognition by the Confederacy. For a brief moment, it appeared that Prim's instincts on withdrawing from "the nest of vipers" and the now-multisided war in Cuba would win out. Spain had an ally, however, one that would be quite useful: the United States.
Officially, the United States took no position on the war in Cuba, considering it an internal matter of the Kingdom of Spain. Unofficially, the United States government had two positions: they were generally skeptical of if not opposed to Cuban independence due to concerns that the island would fall into the hands of another power, most worryingly Britain, France or the Confederacy (Spain was not a Great Power and American dealings with Madrid had always been courteous and, more importantly in a post-Havana world, predictable), but much of the public, thanks to newspapers and Cuban insurrectionists fundraising in New York, sympathized with the republican and abolitionist sentiments of the Cespedes-led Republic at Arms [2]. It made this confused neutrality much easier for Secretary of State Hamilton Fish when Spain abolished slavery, and he had offered to mediate an end to the war when the Salcedo regime was declared and then recognized by Richmond. To President Chase and his Cabinet, it was an echo of the Confederacy declaring what had then been an illegal secession, also over the matter of slavery, and then recognized by opportunistic foreign powers. "Spain is no suffering the same cruel betrayal of diplomatic etiquette we too were subjected to," Chase declared in his diary. Though the United States would never formally enter the war on Spain's side, the small-scale shipments of arms to both rebel and Spanish forces ceased and Spain became the sole beneficiary of American weapons, and volunteers, adventurers and mercenaries headed to the Caribbean to fight for the insurrection and earn a reward in the new Cuba were suddenly receiving funding from American bankers, possibly at the encouragement of Chase himself, to instead present their services to the Spanish Crown.
Other foreign powers had renewed interest in the events in Cuba, too. For Mexico's Maximilian, despite his lingering personal distaste for slavery in general and Nathan Bedford Forrest in particular, was quietly sympathetic towards the Confederate intervention in a hope that it would result in at the very least an independent Cuba that Mexico could help influence. In France, where Napoleon III was in his last years of life and the government was run by a reactionary cabal known as "Le Trois" [3], there was hope for another state within the French sphere and that a loss in Cuba would eventually mean a Spanish withdrawal from Santo Domingo, allowing the Second Empire to fulfill its long-term ambitions to vassalize the entire island of Hispaniola again. There was also opposition to the liberal Spanish state generally and the Hohenzollern King specifically within France [4], which viewed it as a German encirclement and which was host to the exiled Bourbon dynasty overthrown in 1868. Germany, for its part, secured commitments from Spain as to German settlers in Cuba, many of whom had formed volunteer militias to defend their property, and dispatched military advisors to assist in the war effort out of hopes for economic opportunities in the Caribbean that would come with a Spanish victory. And finally, Britain, courteous with Spain and with its own investments in the New World to concern itself with, was leery of the Confederacy enjoying de facto control over both sides of the Florida Straits with which it could control the quickest route of access to Mexico and the Tehuantepec Isthmus specifically [5] (Britain, it should be noted, had several years since surpassed France as Maximilian of Mexico's primary financial benefactor and the largest investor in the country)…"
- The Cuban Revolt at 100
[1] Fictional person
[2] This was effectively the US position during OTL Ten Years War - supportive of Spain generally and quietly opposed to Cuban independence, but turned a blind eye to domestic support/fundraising for the rebels. Here, with a Confederacy that at minimum wants to vassalize Cuba if not outright annex it depending on circumstances (recall there's a constellation of opinions within Forrest's Cabinet and his main goal is just war glory for its own sake in the short term), their support for Spain is considerably more overt
[3] Style note - Since different "textbooks" provide Cinco de Mayo's excerpts, Le Trois would not have been mentioned previously in this one.
[4] More on this later
[5] See also: British stance on one country controlling both sides of the Straits of Gibraltar or the Straits of Tunis
Spain had successfully used such wedges to defend its position and thus was caught off guard by the West Cuba government established by the Pinar del Rio and Matanzas sugar oligarchy, headed by Juan Salcedo [1], in late 1871 and its immediate recognition by the Confederacy. For a brief moment, it appeared that Prim's instincts on withdrawing from "the nest of vipers" and the now-multisided war in Cuba would win out. Spain had an ally, however, one that would be quite useful: the United States.
Officially, the United States took no position on the war in Cuba, considering it an internal matter of the Kingdom of Spain. Unofficially, the United States government had two positions: they were generally skeptical of if not opposed to Cuban independence due to concerns that the island would fall into the hands of another power, most worryingly Britain, France or the Confederacy (Spain was not a Great Power and American dealings with Madrid had always been courteous and, more importantly in a post-Havana world, predictable), but much of the public, thanks to newspapers and Cuban insurrectionists fundraising in New York, sympathized with the republican and abolitionist sentiments of the Cespedes-led Republic at Arms [2]. It made this confused neutrality much easier for Secretary of State Hamilton Fish when Spain abolished slavery, and he had offered to mediate an end to the war when the Salcedo regime was declared and then recognized by Richmond. To President Chase and his Cabinet, it was an echo of the Confederacy declaring what had then been an illegal secession, also over the matter of slavery, and then recognized by opportunistic foreign powers. "Spain is no suffering the same cruel betrayal of diplomatic etiquette we too were subjected to," Chase declared in his diary. Though the United States would never formally enter the war on Spain's side, the small-scale shipments of arms to both rebel and Spanish forces ceased and Spain became the sole beneficiary of American weapons, and volunteers, adventurers and mercenaries headed to the Caribbean to fight for the insurrection and earn a reward in the new Cuba were suddenly receiving funding from American bankers, possibly at the encouragement of Chase himself, to instead present their services to the Spanish Crown.
Other foreign powers had renewed interest in the events in Cuba, too. For Mexico's Maximilian, despite his lingering personal distaste for slavery in general and Nathan Bedford Forrest in particular, was quietly sympathetic towards the Confederate intervention in a hope that it would result in at the very least an independent Cuba that Mexico could help influence. In France, where Napoleon III was in his last years of life and the government was run by a reactionary cabal known as "Le Trois" [3], there was hope for another state within the French sphere and that a loss in Cuba would eventually mean a Spanish withdrawal from Santo Domingo, allowing the Second Empire to fulfill its long-term ambitions to vassalize the entire island of Hispaniola again. There was also opposition to the liberal Spanish state generally and the Hohenzollern King specifically within France [4], which viewed it as a German encirclement and which was host to the exiled Bourbon dynasty overthrown in 1868. Germany, for its part, secured commitments from Spain as to German settlers in Cuba, many of whom had formed volunteer militias to defend their property, and dispatched military advisors to assist in the war effort out of hopes for economic opportunities in the Caribbean that would come with a Spanish victory. And finally, Britain, courteous with Spain and with its own investments in the New World to concern itself with, was leery of the Confederacy enjoying de facto control over both sides of the Florida Straits with which it could control the quickest route of access to Mexico and the Tehuantepec Isthmus specifically [5] (Britain, it should be noted, had several years since surpassed France as Maximilian of Mexico's primary financial benefactor and the largest investor in the country)…"
- The Cuban Revolt at 100
[1] Fictional person
[2] This was effectively the US position during OTL Ten Years War - supportive of Spain generally and quietly opposed to Cuban independence, but turned a blind eye to domestic support/fundraising for the rebels. Here, with a Confederacy that at minimum wants to vassalize Cuba if not outright annex it depending on circumstances (recall there's a constellation of opinions within Forrest's Cabinet and his main goal is just war glory for its own sake in the short term), their support for Spain is considerably more overt
[3] Style note - Since different "textbooks" provide Cinco de Mayo's excerpts, Le Trois would not have been mentioned previously in this one.
[4] More on this later
[5] See also: British stance on one country controlling both sides of the Straits of Gibraltar or the Straits of Tunis
The Age of the Railroad
"...the Cuban War was the first, but certainly not the last, time that the limitations of the Confederate rail system crimped the country's war efforts. A mere five years after Germany had demonstrated a second time how railroads can assist with rapid deployment when war is afoot - the Confederacy announced its expedition was being sent to protect and defend the integrity of the legitimate Cuban government, and allowed Spain to be the country to declare war - the reliance on riverboats and a poor rail system in the Confederacy's southeast, the region nearest to the theater of war, cost the Cuban Expeditionary Force precious days and weeks in January of 1872 as it prepared for its invasion.
The Florida East Coast Railroad had never been completed, going bankrupt after barely reaching the Mosquito Lagoon south of St. Augustine, using a broad gauge track unseen anywhere else in the Confederacy (or the world). Its assets, held in receivership since the Panic of 1870 effectively killed new private railroad development in Dixie for the rest of the decade, were snapped up by the Confederate government as soon as the CEF was formed, in order to provide a rail link to southern Florida with better proximity to Key West, the "tip of the sword" in the war planning. Thousands of slaves were "requisitioned," in the horrifying parlance of the time, to rapidly complete the railroad all the way to Biscayne Bay. The Transcontinental Railroad of the United States had been built at an average of two miles per day with its Irish and Chinese work crews; the overseers of the FEC, regarded as a strategic necessity for the Confederacy, wanted five miles of track per day laid down, a goal it fell laughably short of for a variety of reasons. There is probably no count of how many forced laborers died building the FEC, which was still not even in modern-day Palm Beach by the end of the year due to shoddy, rushed construction and part of the railroad sinking, but what records there are of the railroad's construction suggests that one of the reasons the construction slowed so badly was because the slaves building it had to stop and dig shallow graves in place every time one of their peers died from heat, disease or being beaten by one of the government overseers [1] (the railroad eventually was said to change its policy to one mass grave to be dug at the end of every day for any laborers who died during working hours; the FECR records regarding the Cuban War expansion were not unsealed until the 1950s, and information on the matter is, to say the least, sparse).
Compounding problems was the lack of integration of the Florida rail system with the rest of the Confederacy - it was designed to connect Jacksonville to Tallahassee, and a small spur well to the west was all that connected it to rail lines from Savannah even by 1871 (it would not be until the 1880s that the Florida Northern Railroad would connect Jacksonville directly to Pensacola, which was much better integrated with Alabama's expanding rail network). And so, shipments from arms factories from budding industrial centers in Nashville and Louisville were routed instead to Savannah or, more commonly, Charleston, and Richmond's ironworks instead sent supplies through Norfolk. It should be noted that all three of those ports were very far from Cuba, with hundreds of miles of ocean separating them..."
- The Age of the Railroad
[1] In case we all needed a reminder of what a cruel, ugly society a surviving Confederacy would have been
The Florida East Coast Railroad had never been completed, going bankrupt after barely reaching the Mosquito Lagoon south of St. Augustine, using a broad gauge track unseen anywhere else in the Confederacy (or the world). Its assets, held in receivership since the Panic of 1870 effectively killed new private railroad development in Dixie for the rest of the decade, were snapped up by the Confederate government as soon as the CEF was formed, in order to provide a rail link to southern Florida with better proximity to Key West, the "tip of the sword" in the war planning. Thousands of slaves were "requisitioned," in the horrifying parlance of the time, to rapidly complete the railroad all the way to Biscayne Bay. The Transcontinental Railroad of the United States had been built at an average of two miles per day with its Irish and Chinese work crews; the overseers of the FEC, regarded as a strategic necessity for the Confederacy, wanted five miles of track per day laid down, a goal it fell laughably short of for a variety of reasons. There is probably no count of how many forced laborers died building the FEC, which was still not even in modern-day Palm Beach by the end of the year due to shoddy, rushed construction and part of the railroad sinking, but what records there are of the railroad's construction suggests that one of the reasons the construction slowed so badly was because the slaves building it had to stop and dig shallow graves in place every time one of their peers died from heat, disease or being beaten by one of the government overseers [1] (the railroad eventually was said to change its policy to one mass grave to be dug at the end of every day for any laborers who died during working hours; the FECR records regarding the Cuban War expansion were not unsealed until the 1950s, and information on the matter is, to say the least, sparse).
Compounding problems was the lack of integration of the Florida rail system with the rest of the Confederacy - it was designed to connect Jacksonville to Tallahassee, and a small spur well to the west was all that connected it to rail lines from Savannah even by 1871 (it would not be until the 1880s that the Florida Northern Railroad would connect Jacksonville directly to Pensacola, which was much better integrated with Alabama's expanding rail network). And so, shipments from arms factories from budding industrial centers in Nashville and Louisville were routed instead to Savannah or, more commonly, Charleston, and Richmond's ironworks instead sent supplies through Norfolk. It should be noted that all three of those ports were very far from Cuba, with hundreds of miles of ocean separating them..."
- The Age of the Railroad
[1] In case we all needed a reminder of what a cruel, ugly society a surviving Confederacy would have been
For reference: I've been extrapolating a early 1870s Confederate rail system using this map that shows what it looked like in the early ACW era:
en.wikipedia.org
Confederate railroads in the American Civil War - Wikipedia
And the Myth slaves could not work in a industrial scale, they could work, they could work too damn good is scary.
Amazing update buddy, seems Cuba is a mess but a nice one and seems spanish could get it on the bag soon
What the french would do? Start a war?
Cross and Crown: The Legacy of the Papacy in the Time of the Nation State
"...the Roman Question had, to the Italian government, essentially been replaced with what King Victor Emanuel often referred to as "the Maltese Thorn." Pius IX, now on Malta for well over four years and showing no signs of reconciling himself to the Treaty of Privileges and Guarantees that established an autonomous Papal State within the Leonine City, had inspired a new issue rising in the Europe of the early 1870s - ultramontanism, a renewed push for Papal authority by many Catholic clergy as a direct result of the Council of Malta that invigorated and enshrined papal infallibility and served as a pushback against rising anticlericalism not just among the liberal reformers within many European states but also the small but growing radicals adhering to socialism and anarchism, two movements threaded together awkwardly within the International Workingmen's Association.
The most prominent targets of ultramontanism were Italy, which had driven the Pope from Rome and burned much of the Apostolic Palace and Sistine Chapel as a result, and Spain, once a redoubt of the Church's most conservative and fervent supporters but which now was headed by a secular, liberal government under a Catholic King supportive of a lessened role for the Church. The Church would find itself in retreat elsewhere; moderate Catholic monarchs such as Maximilian I of Mexico and Pedro II of Brazil held tremendous sway over the appointment of bishops and clergy in their countries and had supported relatively modest reforms, especially to the role of the Church in education, as well as in conservative Germany 1872 would see the beginnings of Otto von Bismarck's aggressive Kulturkampf policy to reign in the independence of Catholicism within Prussia (which had the ironic byproduct of having the previously independent and antimontane bishops of South Germany align with the Pope). Ultramontanism especially complicated the domestic situation in France, where antimonarchists - who were often revolutionaries with anticlerical sympathies as well - decried it as standing against the laicite of the French Revolution and their commitments to secularism, adding another dispute between the reactionary Imperial government that still openly supported the Papacy's interests, of which it saw itself as the defender, and the growing liberal-socialist alliance that opposed them, particularly in working-class Paris.
For Pius IX, ending his status as "the exile in Malta" [1] and return to Rome would be to admit defeat, that the shepherd of the Catholic flock could have his seat and his temporal power dictated to him by worldly powers. Despite support for the Leonine Compromise by his two greatest patrons, France and Austria, he still stubbornly refused to leave the island, where ironically he was a guest of a Protestant power, Britain. The pontiff was beginning to get up there in years, however, and though he survived an illness in early 1872 discussions began to be had among the Roman Curia, cardinals who had remained in Rome to continue to assert the Holy See's rights there, about how the inevitable death of the conservative Pope would be handled. A minor schism was forming within the College of Cardinals between them and the "Maltese Curia," more conservative cardinals who supported the continuation of the Papacy-in-exile. While ultramontanism was more or less a settled question after the Council of Malta, to the dismay of more liberal cardinals and bishops, the matter of the Maltese Thorn was not..."
- Cross and Crown: The Legacy of the Papacy in the Time of the Nation State (Oxford University, 1988)
[1] A correlation to OTL "Prisoner of the Vatican"
The most prominent targets of ultramontanism were Italy, which had driven the Pope from Rome and burned much of the Apostolic Palace and Sistine Chapel as a result, and Spain, once a redoubt of the Church's most conservative and fervent supporters but which now was headed by a secular, liberal government under a Catholic King supportive of a lessened role for the Church. The Church would find itself in retreat elsewhere; moderate Catholic monarchs such as Maximilian I of Mexico and Pedro II of Brazil held tremendous sway over the appointment of bishops and clergy in their countries and had supported relatively modest reforms, especially to the role of the Church in education, as well as in conservative Germany 1872 would see the beginnings of Otto von Bismarck's aggressive Kulturkampf policy to reign in the independence of Catholicism within Prussia (which had the ironic byproduct of having the previously independent and antimontane bishops of South Germany align with the Pope). Ultramontanism especially complicated the domestic situation in France, where antimonarchists - who were often revolutionaries with anticlerical sympathies as well - decried it as standing against the laicite of the French Revolution and their commitments to secularism, adding another dispute between the reactionary Imperial government that still openly supported the Papacy's interests, of which it saw itself as the defender, and the growing liberal-socialist alliance that opposed them, particularly in working-class Paris.
For Pius IX, ending his status as "the exile in Malta" [1] and return to Rome would be to admit defeat, that the shepherd of the Catholic flock could have his seat and his temporal power dictated to him by worldly powers. Despite support for the Leonine Compromise by his two greatest patrons, France and Austria, he still stubbornly refused to leave the island, where ironically he was a guest of a Protestant power, Britain. The pontiff was beginning to get up there in years, however, and though he survived an illness in early 1872 discussions began to be had among the Roman Curia, cardinals who had remained in Rome to continue to assert the Holy See's rights there, about how the inevitable death of the conservative Pope would be handled. A minor schism was forming within the College of Cardinals between them and the "Maltese Curia," more conservative cardinals who supported the continuation of the Papacy-in-exile. While ultramontanism was more or less a settled question after the Council of Malta, to the dismay of more liberal cardinals and bishops, the matter of the Maltese Thorn was not..."
- Cross and Crown: The Legacy of the Papacy in the Time of the Nation State (Oxford University, 1988)
[1] A correlation to OTL "Prisoner of the Vatican"
Last edited:
- Status