Cinco de Mayo

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Kennedy Forever

Kennedy Forever

DanMcCollum said:
Who yah got? Because I'd be fascinated to see who people think the alt-Hoover may be! :)
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My suggestion is Andrew Mellon who in OTL served as Treasury Secretary under Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Hoover.
The reason I picked him is due to his fiscal conservatism and the prominent role he played in reducing tax after WW1 which you could argue helped led to the Great Depression.
 
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theflyingmongoose

The capital is probably rebuilt, if for morale purposes than anything else.

Functions probably won't return to any extent. Maybe DC will keep:

-Presidential Inaugurations/ceremonies (July 4, etc)
-Supreme Court
-Useless/more ceremonial departments.
 

Whanztastic

GDIS Pathe said:
The primary factor I think, that's going to preclude a full return of a Federal Government to the District, more then anything else, will be inertia. The Great American War will see the Federal Government rapidly expand both in it's powers, and it's bureaucracy. After the chaos of the evacuation of D.C subsides and the Hughes administration settles down in a nice Northeastern/Midwestern city, whichever provisional capital they pick is going to inundated with Federal Departments, relocated cabinet officials, and a large and rapidly expanding Federal workforce as the country shifts to a war footing.

After the War ends, the cost of moving all the Departments and their workers back to a war torn D.C will probably exceed whatever will exists to one up those damn Southroners. Not to mention the electoral implications of moving all those (presumably Liberal voting) Civil Servants who now reside in a nice (Midwestern/Northeastern) swing state...

And even if they do decide to shift some functions back to D.C, I doubt it's going to be anything close to a full return, for instance, I don't think the War Department is say, going to place the alt* Pentagon anywhere south of Maryland anytime soon.

Though speaking of the War Department, this is what the National Mall used to look like after they finished building a bunch of office buildings for the War Department. I'm pretty sure those are Walkways over the Reflecting Pool. So, the new construction the provisional capital can expect.

View attachment 776514
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I showed this to my wife and she said “Pentagon is cooler because it is a shape”
 
Reisen Storm

Reisen Storm

theflyingmongoose said:
The capital is probably rebuilt, if for morale purposes than anything else.

Functions probably won't return to any extent. Maybe DC will keep:

-Presidential Inaugurations/ceremonies (July 4, etc)
-Supreme Court
-Useless/more ceremonial departments.
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I wonder if this will give them an excuse to expand the House of Representatives.
 
DanMcCollum

DanMcCollum

Reisen Storm said:
I wonder if this will give them an excuse to expand the House of Representatives.
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That's actually an interesting idea. I wonder what building Congress will meet in initially - though I suspect an expanded one will be built sooner than later, and this will give them a chance to build a House chamber that can definitely hold more representatives. I could see this actually being a plank of the Dems after the war; it would favor them after all and would play into the idea of more representive democracy
 
Reisen Storm

Reisen Storm

DanMcCollum said:
I could see this actually being a plank of the Dems after the war; it would favor them after all and would play into the idea of more representive democracy
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I wonder what the political ramifications would be, since an expanded house of representatives will give third parties a chance to win seats, which in turn, will breathe new life into them.
 
DanMcCollum

DanMcCollum

Reisen Storm said:
I wonder what the political ramifications would be, since an expanded house of representatives will give third parties a chance to win seats, which in turn, will breathe new life into them.
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It would also increase the EC votes of some states, which could have some dramatic impacts as well. I wonder which states would benefit the most from this. In OTL, the number of Congressmen didn't become set until 1929, but 1920 seems to have been the real date, since that year Congress refused to reappropriate itself. So, in-univese, citizens of the United States wouldn't really notice any difference (since the number didn't become locked there), but the need for a newer, larger, House chamber could still be a good issue to run on ... possibly. In OTL there was a huge divide between rural and urban interests about this issue and I see no reason to see it being different here; but what's intersting is the Democrats have both a major urban and rural wing. So it's going to be interesting to see where the party falls on this issue.
 

KingSweden24

SWS said:
The U.S. military occupation of the Southern States may conclude as early as 1919 or as late as 1921, if we can anticipate an armistice in 1917. It does not supplant, but rather cooperates with, Confederate civil government in the prosecution of plantation dissolution with compensation to owners and the demilitarization of industries, particularly the massive factories owned and operated by the Anglophilic Ordnance Department, including the Augusta Powder-Works, the Macon national Armory/Central Laboratory (the Confederacy's principal small-arms and ammunition-producing plants), as well as the Ordnance and Naval Foundry at Selma. These may be re-converted into civilian use in order to maintain post-war economic development with the loss of slave-labor capital. In effect, the South's existing national armaments industry will need to be dismantled. Arsenals, such as those in Richmond, Fayetteville, and Columbia, may survive in order to serve local/regional needs.

Most manumitted field slaves, now second-class citizens, would probably be initiated into the share-cropping system. But there are also the industrial slaves formerly engaged in armaments and other factory work. You might consider something akin to the South African 'color bar'.

You must also consider the greatest refugee crisis to develop on the North American continent, involving Southerners both white and black. Do race riots erupt in cities such as St. Louis and Chicago?

I'm continuing to research the South's industrialization as a 'progressive slave society', considering the economic and intellectual trends of the 1840s-50s, and how an imperialist, financially-independent Confederacy would recognize the sine qua non of 'keeping-up' with the manufacturing-power of the North and Western Europe in order to assume its nationalistic destiny as hegemon of the American Tropics.
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Yeah, the postwar demographic effects are something I’ve pondered. Dark as it is to consider, the reaction in northern cities would honestly probably be worse. They were bad enough when all the new arrivals from down South were fellow citizens; here, it’s a refugee crisis from a bordering country, and I think the reaction would reflect that.
Kennedy Forever said:
My suggestion is Andrew Mellon who in OTL served as Treasury Secretary under Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Hoover.
The reason I picked him is due to his fiscal conservatism and the prominent role he played in reducing tax after WW1 which you could argue helped led to the Great Depression.
Click to expand...
It’s an interesting idea. I may have to find a role for Mellon regardless.
theflyingmongoose said:
The capital is probably rebuilt, if for morale purposes than anything else.

Functions probably won't return to any extent. Maybe DC will keep:

-Presidential Inaugurations/ceremonies (July 4, etc)
-Supreme Court
-Useless/more ceremonial departments.
Click to expand...
Is there any country that does things like this IOTL?
Whanztastic said:
I showed this to my wife and she said “Pentagon is cooler because it is a shape”
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She’s not wrong


DanMcCollum said:
It would also increase the EC votes of some states, which could have some dramatic impacts as well. I wonder which states would benefit the most from this. In OTL, the number of Congressmen didn't become set until 1929, but 1920 seems to have been the real date, since that year Congress refused to reappropriate itself. So, in-univese, citizens of the United States wouldn't really notice any difference (since the number didn't become locked there), but the need for a newer, larger, House chamber could still be a good issue to run on ... possibly. In OTL there was a huge divide between rural and urban interests about this issue and I see no reason to see it being different here; but what's intersting is the Democrats have both a major urban and rural wing. So it's going to be interesting to see where the party falls on this issue.
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I have some ideas on this front; the HoR will be bigger, but also more deliberate in how it’s expanded every census
 
Reisen Storm

Reisen Storm

Hold up, how is the CSA going to govern Maryland? I know we're talking about the USA occupying the CSA for a few years after the war, but the CSA does capture a U.S state in the opening days of the war. That will leave some traumatic experience for a few years.
 
SWS

SWS

Reisen Storm said:
Hold up, how is the CSA going to govern Maryland? I know we're talking about the USA occupying the CSA for a few years after the war, but the CSA does capture a U.S state in the opening days of the war. That will leave some traumatic experience for a few years.
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Probably analogous to the German military administration of Belgium IOTL.
 
SWS

SWS

Reisen Storm said:
I can't wait about the Rape of Maryland and other atrocities.
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The Maryland economy will be devastated, to say the least. The Confederate Army may not evacuate until as late as the Spring of 1916, evacuating manufactories (including the steel mills of Sparrows Point) into Virginia and initiating a State-wide scorched-earth policy. It would be interesting to see Johns Hopkins transformed into Confederate hospital barracks.
 
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