I was re-reading some old posts and have a question, maybe one that this timeline's version of AH has asked:
In 1891 James Longstreet, Lucius Lamar, and Wade Hampton got together in a hotel in Nashville during the convention. The three of them basically appointed John T. Morgan as the next Consensus Democratic nominee for POTCS, and he duly won the election.
Set aside the fact that he was responsible for helping put the CSA on the road to war. I'm not super interested in that aspect of his Presidency for this post. My question is this: How much longer do the Consensus Democrats stay in power in Morgan is not forced on a pissed-off convention? The delegates were not happy that they were forced to pick Morgan as opposed to nominating one of their own. Morgan's Presidency, in addition to all the saber-rattling with the USA, marked the beginning of the end of Longstreet's Grand Consensus of single-party rule through patronage and graft.
If, say, someone else (Fitzhugh Lee? Joseph Blackburn?) gets nominated by the convention in a more or less normal course and then becomes President, how much longer does the Grand Consensus last? The country was having a bad decade regardless of its President (although Morgan certainly didn't help, you can make a case he's the worst POTCS who served between Forrest and Smith) but the Consensus Democrats had weathered storms for nearly two decades by that point. OTL the Southern Democrat machine lasted more or less uninterruped for eighty-ish years depending on the state. Is there a way for this timeline's analogue to last that long and have the CSA be a one-party state for several more decades?
This is a terrific question.
It’d be hard (impossible honestly) to avoid the 1890s agricultural depression regardless of who is President. The one-two punch of the financial panic and flu of 1890 hit hard almost everywhere after all. So the populist response to that in the CSA that mirrored the US one would still have happened regardless (the NFLP started consolidating even before then after all!) and those impulses that Tillman channeled into the Democratic Party rather than outside of it are still there.
That said, without the corrupt bargain in Nashville, there’s probably a different tenor. Fitzhugh Lee was a mediocre empty suit but definitely an improvement over Morgan, so him in the seat during those crucial years would be good. Tillman or someone like him probably arrives on the scene regardless, but IOTL Tillman worked totally fine inside the tent pissing out rather than outside pissing in, so the Tillmanite vs. Bourbon dynamic is probably way less hostile without salty memories of 1891.
That’s a circuitous way of saying the machine could have adapted and responded, in all likelihood, and endured.
That could be a good path of post-GAW Confederate States.
Southern states are halfway there as it is, since so many of them have structurally weak executives and powerful legislatures (OTL Texas, for instance. the Lieutenant Governor chairs the Senate and is arguably more powerful than the Governor day to day)
On the topic of CSA direction post war, they have a model for dealing with the lack of whites in the country following most of their current generation of men dying they can copy the techniques of Brazil for ''whitening'' it and or Mexico's for attracting Europeans though while it definitely is going against the values of the CSA might be less so than the alternatives.
Add by the sound of it Europe's going to see be in war for longer than America is possibly less devastating they could catch part of a immigration wave, less so than the US obviously but still.
The US on the other hand might depending on how the British empire boils over could be getting a large wave of Catholic migrant/refuges from Canada and elsewhere.
Maine, Vermont and Upstate NY gonna be a whole lot more French!
Can’t wait to see the Confederacy get their asses kicked and become even more of a banana republic shitshow than they are now. I hope the Harry Turtledove “they come back like Nazi Germany” thing doesn’t happen though
It won’t haha don’t fear… not the thesis of the TL
It feels like the CSA foreign policy from 1920- sometime will be aligning with anyone who wants to "use" the CSA to keep the USA distracted from becoming the "I don't have to worry about anything closeby and can thus get involved with things *much* farther afield" that they were iOTL. If Japan wants to keep the US from being actively involved in China, funnel money to the CSA, if France wants to keep the USA distracted from Africa, funnel money to the CSA. and most likely, If Brazil wants to keep the USA from being involved in South America, funnel money to the CSA.
That’s a good way of thinking about it, and you’ll see that to an extent (and not necessarily just the countries you mentioned, either)
Where is Los Pasos ? Searched in google. Couldn't find it.
You’re new here, huh? It’s El Paso and Cuidad Juarez, but because Mexico is still ruled by Emperor Maximilian ITTL, the town never changed its name.
I usually don’t rename places ITTL but this is a case where I didn’t really have a choice
Just looked at the 'reader mode' option at the top of the pages.
All the thread marks combined equal 81 pages of work. ...
😅😃😯
Brevity has never been my strong suit 😂 should see how bloated my novels got back when that was my preferred mode of writing.