Cinco de Mayo

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SilentSpaniard

KingSweden24 said:
-The Southern Star: Brazil in the Age of Dom Pedro II
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Is it just me, or is there something ominous in this chapter? Everything seems to be going so well in Brazil… Therefore, it’s only a matter of time before something happens and it all goes wrong! Or should I say South?

KingSweden24 said:
defend her interests in the South Atlantic and Caribbean. She was friendlier with her former metropolitan state of Portugal than most former colonies were with their old rulers, and on good terms with the United Kingdom, France, Spain and United States
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Because amongst the countries with a friendly disposition towards Brazil and interests in the Caribbean, I do not see the Confederation. The aristocrats of the Dixie slavocracy surely aren’t going to be fans of all that “freedom nonsense” sponsored by Pedro II...
 
Maximilian of Mexico
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    • KingSweden24

    "...if Maximilian had one overarching trait, it was his intense insistence on trying to be all things to all people. In many cases this would work for him, though throughout his long reign there was many a time when his naivety came closer to destroying him than he would realize. Often, it did not - see, for instance, the utter failure of his attempt to thread the needle on education between reformers and the Church. His eagerness to please and belief in his own enlightened "aboveness" of conflict was a boon to him the complex world of foreign policy, however, where his vague promises, agreeableness and desire to impress and please foreign dignitaries helped him never overcommit to any position that would make Mexico anything other but a neutral ground. Much in the same way that his moderate course had served him will in the conservative vs liberal 1860s and in the palace intrigues between Vibaurri, Miramon and increasingly his wife and Benedek in the 1870s, it helped him balance an increasing number of competing interests in Mexico by the middle of the decade. The Cuban War had receded the CSA's influence in Mexico and Americans were more interested in partaking in the promise of the Tehuantepec Railway under the friendly, forward-looking administration of John Hoffman, of course, but the real balancing act came between France and Spain, both of which looked to reassert their interests in the New World. The young Napoleon IV wanted more than anything to avoid the hostilities that had bubbled up in the latter part of his father's reign and restarted the relationship by treating Maximilian as an equal, not a puppet that had gone astray. The reinvigoration of this relationship would have huge boons for Mexico - by the end of the decade, French trading houses and bankers had a larger presence in the country once more than Britain. As for Spain, as part of a project to "make amends" with her former colonies and build a trade bloc that could benefit the new liberal regime in Madrid, its first recipient of rapprochement was liberal, monarchic Mexico rather than the more unstable republics to her south. To show their seriousness, the Spanish dispatched as "jefe politico" of the Havana province former Prime Minister Juan Prim, who had family in Mexico and whom it was plainly understood would represent Madrid's interests in the Americas from his base on Cuba..."

    - Maximilian of Mexico
     
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    • The Eastern Question
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    • KingSweden24

    "...but on the eve of the Balkan Crises that would command Europe's attention in the latter half of the 1870s, the Ottoman Empire and her Barbary vassals were plodding along, with the Tanzimat reforms in Istanbul building towards the constitution that would soon be unveiled under Abdulaziz all while the profligacy of the states in the Near Eastern periphery continued to tie them ever-closer to financiers in Paris and London. It was the French Empire in particular that served as a model for the Ottoman reformers [1], and the French, as guarantors of the rights of Christians in the Levant and Balkans (to the chagrin of Vienna and Moscow), had become remarkably intertwined with the business of Turkish and Arab rulers. Egypt in particular, site of the Suez Canal and home of the notoriously spendthrift Ismail Pasha, continued to be drawn ever further into France's sphere of influence, especially as the triad of rulers in Paris known as Le Trois - Francois Bazaine, Patrice de MacMahon, Eugene Rouher - made the Mediterranean and Far East Fleets of the Marine Imperiale a focus. Indeed, investments in the French Navy spilled over to Istanbul, which commanded the third largest navy in the world behind those of Britain and France and also controlled the crucial Turkish Straits. So despite the systemic, structural worldwide economic slump, closer ties between Istanbul and Paris and modernization projects across the Ottoman world gave the era an optimistic vigor, one where few could have seen conflict bubbling so soon on the horizon..."

    -     The Eastern Question (Oxford University, 1988)

    [1] The Second Empire not collapsing gives us another huge butterfly
     
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    • Old Bull: Francisco Serrano and Modern Spain
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    • KingSweden24

    "...having sent Prim into exile in the American provinces, Serrano set about with his grand ambitions for Spain, with an eye towards the elections due in 1875, which his National Liberals aimed to win as a broad-tent party. The Conservatives, nominally to the National Liberals' right, had been discredited as Carlist sympathizers in Cabinet-friendly press; the Radicals under Manuel Ruiz Zorilla were dismissed as communards and anti-monarchists, with Serrano tying himself tightly to the popular Leopoldo. One of Serrano's programs was to undercut opposition to both left and right; some of Europe's most generous employment laws were passed in the runup to the elections, while he beat the nationalist drum in his "fortificado" program to construct border forts in the Pyrenees, whipping up the specter of a French threat as if the "Bourbon restorationists" in Paris were gathering strength. Eliding the ideological and familial feud between Carlists and Legitimists, the campaign worked - it gave Serrano a justification for maintaining high military expenditures by European standards and kept thousands of veterans of the Cuban War and Carlist uprising employed, while pleasing the King and re-emphasizing a nationalist, Spanish identity in the wake of the anti-centralist violence of the past two years..."

    - Old Bull: Francisco Serrano and Modern Spain
     
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    • Not Henry G.

    I'm seriously liking the Ottomans getting a second wind. It usually happens after CP victory in WWI, and it's only the victory giving them a few years before it collapses. Seeing actual reform is kind of new to me.
     

    KingSweden24

    Not Henry G. said:
    I'm seriously liking the Ottomans getting a second wind. It usually happens after CP victory in WWI, and it's only the victory giving them a few years before it collapses. Seeing actual reform is kind of new to me.
    Click to expand...

    the Tanzimat and the 1876 Constitution are OTL, too! It just got bogged down and a real missed opportunity for sustained Ottoman continuance
     
    Dixieland
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    • KingSweden24

    “...it is hard to believe that in a country so dependent on agriculture, and in a year without any drought, there would be food shortages, but so it was in 1874. The fealty of the landed oligarchy to King Cotton and the delayed destitution of the global depression - striking the Confederacy years after it began elsewhere, as years of diminished trade and industrial output finally caught up to her export partners - left thousands, even small farmers, without food. In the Crackervilles on the edges of major cities like Richmond, Nashville, and Charleston there were bread riots, and in New Orleans there was a mock guillotining of an effigy of President Harris. News of extrajudicial killings spread across the land as desperate criminals went to war with each other, and it was the first year that more free blacks departed the South than escaped slaves, a trend that would continue through the end of the decade...”

    - Dixieland
     
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    • 1874 US Election Results
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    • KingSweden24

    1874 House Election Results:

    Democrats lose seven seats in the Midwest, but hold other vulnerable seats throughout the Northeast and West thanks to the Liberal vs. Republican split. As a result, their resounding majority in fact becomes even more daunting despite the scandals of John Hoffman and the ongoing Depression.

    1874 Senate Election Results:

    The Republican caucus is hammered in the Senate as well, where many Liberals are elected, some Democrats are elected due to split state legislatures and a number of Republicans, especially in New England states, switch to the new Liberal Party. The quirky Newton Booth (cousin to John Wilkes) is elected from the left-wing Anti-Monopoly Party of California (as in OTL)

    CA: Eugene Casserly (D) Did not seek reelection; Newton Booth (Anti-Monopoly) ELECTED (Anti-Monopoly +1)
    CT: William Buckingham (R) DEFEATED; William W. Eaton (D) ELECTED (D+1)
    DE: Thomas F. Bayard (D) Re-Elected
    IN: Daniel Pratt (R) Retired; Joseph E. McDonald (D) ELECTED (D+1)
    ME: Hannibal Hamlin (R) Re-Elected as Liberal (L+1)
    MD: William Pinckney Whyte (D) Re-Elected
    MA: Henry Dawes (R) Elected after incumbent retired
    MI: Zachariah Chandler (R) DEFEATED; Isaac Christiancy (L) Elected (L+1)
    MN: Henry Mower Rice (D) Re-Elected
    MO: Carl Schurz (R) DEFEATED; Francis Cockrell (D) Elected (D+1)
    NE: Thomas Tipton (R) Re-Elected as Liberal (L+1)
    NV: William Stewart (R) Retired; William Sharon (D) ELECTED (D+1)
    NJ: John P. Stockton (D) Did Not Seek Reelection; Theodore Fitz Randolph (D) ELECTED
    NM: William Pile (L) Elected (L+1)
    NM (special): Samuel Beach Axtell Elected due to new state being admitted (D+1)
    NY: Reuben E. Fenton (R) DEFEATED; Francis Kernan (D) ELECTED
    OH: Allen Thurman (D) Re-Elected
    PA: Charles Buckalew (D) Re-Elected
    RI: William Sprague (R) Re-Elected as Liberal (L+1)
    VT: George F. Edmunds (R) Re-Elected as Liberal (L+1)
    WV: Joseph Sprigg (D) Re-Elected
    WI: James Rood Doolittle (D) Re-elected

    44th Congress of the United States

    Senate: 30D-11R-10L-1AM

    President of the Senate: Samuel Cox (D)
    Senate President pro tempore: Henry Mower Rice of Minnesota (D)

    California
    1. Newton Booth (A-M) (1875-)
    3. John S. Hager (D) (1873-)

    Connecticut
    1. William W. Eaton (D) (1875-)
    3. Orris Ferry (L) (1867-)

    Delaware
    1. Thomas Bayard (D) (1869-)
    2. Eli Saulsbury (D) (1871-)

    Illinois
    2. John Logan (R) (1871-)
    3. Richard Oglesby (R) (1873-)

    Indiana
    1. Joseph E. McDonald (D) (1875-)
    3. Daniel Voorhees (D) (1873-)

    Iowa
    2. George G. Wright (R) (1871-)
    3. William Allison (R) (1873-)

    Kansas
    2. Thomas Carney (R) (1871-)
    3. John Ingalls (R) (1873-)

    Maine
    1. Hannibal Hamlin (R) (1869-)
    2. Samuel C. Fessenden (R) (1869-)

    Maryland
    1. William Pinkney Whyte (D) (1869-)
    3. George Dennis (D) (1873-)

    Massachusetts
    1. Henry Dawes (R) (1875-)
    2. Henry Wilson (R) (1855-)

    Michigan
    1. Isaac Christiancy (L) (1875-)
    2. Byron G. Stout (D) (1865-)

    Minnesota
    1. Henry Mower Rice (D) (185:cool:
    2. Henry Hastings Sibley (D) (1865-)

    Missouri
    1. Francis Cockrell (D) (1875-)
    3. Lewis Bogy (D) (1873-)

    Nebraska
    1. Thomas Tipton (L) (1869-)
    2. Experience Estabrook (D) (1871-)

    Nevada
    1. William Sharon (D) (1875-)
    3. John P. Jones (D) (1873-)

    New Hampshire
    2. Aaron Cragin (L) (1865-)
    3. Bainbridge Wadleigh (L) (1873-)

    New Jersey
    1. Theodore Fitz Randolph (D) (1875-)
    2. Joel Parker (D) (1871-)

    New Mexico

    1. William A. Pile (L) (1875-)
    2. Samuel Beach Axtell (D) (1875-)

    New York
    1. Francis Kernan (D) (1875-)
    3. William Evarts (R) (1873-)

    Ohio
    1. Allen Thurman (D) (1869-)
    3. George Pendleton (D) (1873-)

    Oregon
    2. James Kelly (D) (1871-)
    3. James Nesmith (D) (1873-)

    Pennsylvania
    1. Charles Buckalew (D) (1863-)
    3. Asa Parker (D) (1873-)

    Rhode Island
    1. William Sprague (L) (1863-)
    2. Henry B. Anthony (L) (1859-)

    Vermont
    1. George F. Edmunds (L) (1866-)
    3. Justin Morrill (L) (1867-)

    West Virginia
    1. Joseph Sprigg (D) (1869-)
    2. Henry Gassaway Davis (D) (1871-)

    Wisconsin
    1. James Rood Doolittle (D) (1857-)
    3. Matthew Carpenter (D) (1873-)

    House: 173D-58L-48R (no splits between R's and LR's quite yet, New Mexico has 1 at large seat)

    Speaker of the House: Samuel Marshall of Illinois (D)

    Note: New Mexico being added to the Union in 1874 gives it two Senators, one of whom is defeated in 1874 by William Pile
     
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    • Scrum: The Early Days of Rugby in the United States
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    • KingSweden24

    "...while what would evolve into the early game of baseball would remain the nation's true pastime for more decades, even in the 1870s, universities were buzzing with the "gentleman's game," with the 1874 Harvard-Yale game being considered the origin of that famous rivalry. Rugby spread like wildfire across the United States in that decade, during the age when it was still an amateur sport on both sides of the Atlantic, and its popularity grew in tandem with the football played by the working class as well [1]. Indeed, so indelibly tied to the Union's elite colleges was the game by the 1880s that south of the Ohio, there was a stubborn refusal to implement the game at Confederate colleges - it was, after all, the 'Yankee game'..."

    - Scrum: The Early Days of Rugby in the United States

    [1] We're going to have some major sports butterflies in this TL, one of the few things I've actually charted out pretty aggressively
     
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    • Youth and Vigor: The Presidency of John T. Hoffman
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    • KingSweden24

    "...were it not for the structural convulsions that consumed the opposition - and the fact that many of the new Liberals were, on policy matters, virtually indistinguishable from many Democrats - the Democrats who dominated Washington would probably have bled support. But split contests between Republicans and Liberals bolstered their numbers in the Senate and statehouses, and muted their probable losses in the House. The critical damage to the Hoffman administration, though, would be not in Washington but in New York, where the Tweed scandal consumed the public imagination and split the Democrats. Samuel Tilden, a longtime Democrat, became a prominent defector when he was elected Governor on a "fusion" ticket of Anti-Tweed Democrats and Liberals, campaigning against the "politics of patronage." With Tilden in Albany, the shackles would come off the crusading prosecutor Wheeler Hazard Peckham, brother to Rufus Peckham, a close advisor to the President. The dispute between the Peckhams would become the focii of political cartoons in New York for years.

    The elevation of the Liberals as a political force was, in the short term though, not necessarily negative for the President. The expansion of the Democratic caucus and splitting of the Republican one would make the Silver Purchase Act of 1875 a reality once the next Congress began and buffeted Hoffman's hopes for a civil service bureau, which he hoped would be enough to negate the ill-tempers towards him within his own party caused by the Tweed Affair. At heart a reformer and sympathetic to the Liberals, there was even talk in Congress that perhaps Hoffman would run in 1876 not as a Democrat but as a Liberal, thus giving the young party enormous new cachet. Hoffman quickly squashed such speak and pledged that he would, like the Democratic idol Andrew Jackson, "serve two terms fully and capably as the Democrat I have always been." Blood had been in the water for a year now, though, and with large majorities in Congress and a vast, reactionary wing from the Midwest and border states butting heads with Western agrarians and Northeast "Bourbons," a not-insignificant number of Democrats started to wonder if perhaps they would make better Presidents than the stodgily patrician, cautiously moderate - and most importantly, reluctant supplier of patronage - Hoffman..."

    - Youth and Vigor: The Presidency of John T. Hoffman
     
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    • Our New Land: A History of the Indian Territory in the 19th Century
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    • KingSweden24

    "...a profound irony, then, that a country founded on the precept that the white man was not only permitted but obligated to enslave the African race contained within its borders a nation reserved for the Indians who they had once driven from their most fertile lands and indeed came to incorporate it as a protectorate with which it enjoyed good relations. As the 1870s progressed, a more formal relationship between Richmond and the Five Civilized Tribes that dominated the Indian Territory emerged out of the murkiness of the postbellum depression. The Indian Territory's self-governing document became a power-sharing arrangement between the Five Tribes known as the People's Council, a legislature of tribal leaders where power was shared equally and disputes were to be hashed out, meeting twice a year in a rotating location. That the Indian Territory allowed slavery was surely a major component in the soft touch the Harris administration gave them. Eventually, the members of the Five Tribes came to be viewed in an entirely different light, politically, than the Indians in the Arizona Territory, who were "cleared" just as brutally as those north of the border in the Union, and indeed Cherokee and Creek volunteers participated in campaigns under the Confederate banner thanks to a treaty signed in 1877 where they were entitled to the same privileges as white soldiers if they joined Confederate units. It should be said, though, that while the fighting in Texas and Arizona was brutal, nothing compared to the 1875 campaigns undertaken by the Union Army just to the north..."

    - Our New Land: A History of the Indian Territory in the 19th Century
     
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    • Darth_Kiryan

    KingSweden24 said:
    John T. Hoffman
    Click to expand...

    This is John T Hoffman right?

    John_T_Hoffman.png


    Look at the 'stache on this dude.
     
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