Cinco de Mayo

[KingSweden24]

US Elections 1882

US Senate Elections 1882

For the most part, the legislative results of 1880 held; this of course cost Democrats Senate seats in Nebraska and Minnesota, though Sibley probably would have been re-elected even by a Liberal legislature considering his non-partisan demeanor and tremendous respect (and control of patronage) throughout the state. In some states, narrow Liberal majorities brought in during 1880 eroded in the 1882 elections; this likely saved Democratic Senators in New Jersey and New Mexico. In all, most of the Class 2 Senators were returned by their respective state legislatures with little fanfare, with Estabrook the only incumbent Senator defeated in a high profile contest, and hardcore Prohibitionist Governor John St. John parachuting in to be elected in Kansas after losing his re-election race to a Democrat thanks to the narrow Liberal majorities in the state legislature.

CO: Henry M. Teller (L) Re-Elected
DE: Eli Saulsbury (D) Re-Elected
IL: Shelby Moore Collum (L) Re-Elected
IA: Samuel Kirkwood (L) Re-Elected
KS: David Lowe (L) Deceased in 1882; Interim Appointee (L) Retired; John St. John (L) ELECTED
ME: William Frye (L) Re-Elected
MA: George Frisbie Hoar (L) Re-Elected
MI: Byron G. Stout (D) Re-Elected
MN: Henry Hastings Sibley (D) Retired; Dwight Sabin (L) ELECTED (L+1) (L+1)
NE: Experience Estabrook (D) DEFEATED; Charles F. Manderson (L) ELECTED (L+2) [1]
NH: Aaron Cragin (L) Re-Elected
NJ: John R. McPherson (D) Re-Elected
NM: Samuel Beach Axtell (D) Re-Elected
OR: La Fayette Grover (D) Re-Elected
RI: Henry B. Anthony (L) Re-Elected
WV: Henry G. Davis (D) Retird; John E. Kenna (D) ELECTED

US House Elections 1882

The House expanded by 35 seats, from 280 to 325, due to the 1880 Census. Liberals won some of the new districts and lost some of their marginal seats to the Democrats, in the end winding up with 166 seats total - an improvement of 2 over their old number, but a bare majority now with the newly expanded body. Democrats won 31 seats under the aggressive leadership of Samuel J. Randall, but still remained well short of a majority. They were also hampered on their flanks by the union of the three left-wing splinter parties - the Republican-Labor, Greenback and Anti-Monopoly parties all consolidated shortly after Blaine's election into a national outfit, now known as United Labor, and won a number of urban districts, while populist - agrarian, protectionist, free-silverite, and anti-monopolistic - Democrats were ascendant in the West, earning ex-Greenback support in an area where United Labor had not yet begun to effectively organize. Randall, close to big business, would become an increasingly isolated figure within his party as the United Labor threat in the cities grew.

48th United States Congress

Senate: 31L-23D

President of the Senate: John A. Logan (L)
Senate President pro tempore: Aaron Cragin (L-NH)
Chairman of the Senate Liberal Conference: Henry B. Anthony (L-RI)
Chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference: George Pendleton (D-OH)

California
1. George Hearst (D) (1881-)
3. John S. Hager (D) (1873-)

Colorado

2. Henry M. Teller (L) (1876-)
3. Nathaniel Hill (D) (1879-)

Connecticut
1. Joseph R. Hawley (L) (1881-)
3. Orville Platt (L) (1879-)

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

Illinois
2. Shelby Moore Collum [7] (1881-)
3. Richard J. Oglesby (L) (1873-)

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

Iowa
2. Samuel Kirkwood (L) (1877-)
3. William Allison (L) (1873-)

Kansas
2. John St. John (L) (1883-)
3. John Ingalls (L) (1873-)

Maine
1. Eugene Hale (L) (1881-)
2. William P. Frye (L) (1881-) [7]

Maryland
1. William Pinkney Whyte (D) (1869-)
3. James Black Groome (D) (1879-)

Massachusetts
1. Henry Dawes (L) (1875-)
2. George Frisbie Hoar (L) (1877-)

Michigan
1. George Armstrong Custer (D) (1881-)
2. Byron G. Stout (D) (1865-)

Minnesota
1. Samuel J.R. McMillan (L) (1881-)
2. Dwight Sabin (L) (1883-)

Missouri
1. Francis Cockrell (D) (1875-)
3. David H. Armstrong (D) (1877-)

Nebraska
1. Charles Van Wyck (L) (1881-)
2. Charles Manderson (L) (1883-)

Nevada
1. James Graham Fair (D) (1881-)
3. John P. Jones (D) (1873-)

New Hampshire
2. Aaron Cragin (L) (1865-)
3. Henry Blair (L) (1873-)

New Jersey
1. William Joyce Sewell (L) (1881-)
2. John R. McPherson (D) (1871-)

New Mexico

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

New York
1. Richard Crowley (L) (1881-)
3. Wheeler Hazard Peckham (L) (1879-)

Ohio
1. George Hoadly (D) (1878 - )
3. George Pendleton (D) (1873-)

Oregon
2. La Fayette Grover (D) (1871-)
3. James H. Slater (D) (1879-)

Pennsylvania
1. John I. Mitchell (L) (1881-)
3. J. Donald Cameron (L) (1879-)

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

Vermont
1. Redfield Procter (L) (1881-)
3. Justin Morrill (L) (1867-)

West Virginia
1. Joseph Sprigg (D) (1869-)
2. John E. Kenna (D) (1883-)

Wisconsin
1. Philetus Sawyer (L) (1881-)
3. Thaddeus Pound (L) (1881-)

House: 166L-143D-16UL (new total - 325 vs old total of 280)

Speaker of the House: James A. Garfield (L-OH)
Democratic Caucus Chair (Minority Leader): Samuel J. Randall (D-PA)

[1] Losing the Senator with the coolest name
[2] Matthew Carpenter passed shortly after the last Congress was sworn in in 1881; his replacement is a Liberal

 

[KingSweden24]

"...Blaine's majorities in Congress were buffeted by an expansion in the House and picking off two Democratic held seats, but the best analysis was that - though to a lesser extent than the landslide on the horizon [1] in two years time - he was rewarded for delivering. The number of new public schools built by Liberal legislatures in states they controlled rose by 25% in the years 1880 to 1882; in Democratic states the number was less than 10%. Thousands of teachers were hired even in existing schools, and "normal colleges," where teachers were to be trained, proliferated throughout the decade. Blaine had passed a sweeping civil service reform that was roundly praised even in some Democratic papers, even though some old guard patronage supporters groused. And the minor depression that had begun at the very end of the Hendricks administration, though nowhere near as severe as the six-year economic trough that had plagued the 1870s, had effectively ended by the end of the year, bizarrely punctuated by the early December Panic of 1882, contained almost entirely in New York, that was quickly stemmed from spreading beyond a select group of Wall Street banks and brokerage houses thanks to the rapid moves of clearinghouses and the aggressive response of National Bank President and former Secretary of the Treasury George Boutwell, who quickly injected excess capital and purchased debt from the failing institutions while accepted deposits of bonds from his friend Treasury Secretary Sherman. At the swearing-in of the 48th Congress the next spring, Speaker Garfield praised the quick response of the government, stating, "we see now in the present day that scientific and rational measures, when pursued by experts serving the common good, can head off calamity, and it bodes well for the future of our Republic that such technical expertise and robust response can be oriented in the direction of not only industry but of the entire national interest." Though it would perhaps be decades after his death before the term would be coined, Garfield had inadvertently identified and praised the modern technocrat, yet another legacy of the Blaine years..."

- Titan: The Life and Presidency of James G. Blaine

[1] Slight look-ahead

 

[TheRockofChickamauga]

2. John St. John (L) (1883-)

Finally, one of the best-named American governors makes an appearance in an ATL. Sad to see Experience Estabrook go though.

 

[kaizerfox]

Did the U.S. move its capital from D.C.? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me for them to have their capital right on the border. Maybe Philadelphia?

 

[KingSweden24]

Finally, one of the best-named American governors makes an appearance in an ATL. Sad to see Experience Estabrook go though.

Not gonna lie, people with interesting/strange names win tiebreakers when I do research to decide who to thrust into office (in cases where the person isn't really hugely important to the narrative, like "random Nebraska Senator" here). He was just born ahead of his time! "Vote Estabrook for Senate - Experience you can count on!"

Did the U.S. move its capital from D.C.? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me for them to have their capital right on the border. Maybe Philadelphia?

It hasn't yet. I know that's a common CS Victory trope (Philadelphia as the new capital in particular), but there'd be some Constitutional issues with doing so first of all and I don't know that they've seen an impetus to doing so... yet.

 

[Couperin]

Being far from the heartland didn't stop the Confederates from building their capital in Richmond, though the industry in Western VA certainly gave the site its upsides. In the future, there might be an extension of the Northeast megalopolis just like how the agglomeration around the Rhine reaches across national boundaries.

 

[HonestAbe1809]

By the time that the government has the motivation to move the US capital, there'd be no reason that they couldn't build a new capital further westward. Especially with all the railroads that the Union would be building.

Or you could do what Heart of Dixie did and move the capital to Chicago.

 

[KingSweden24]

"...Urabi's men retreated but the Minister of War stayed in Cairo to face the consequences of his actions - in his words, "My life may be forfeit, but true judgement will be before Allah instead." Both Khedive Tewfiq and the Sultan balked at doing anything more than stripping Urabi of his office, not even deigning it in their interests to imprison the man, let alone kill him. The Sultan, in a letter to British Foreign Minister Granville, stated, "All Egypt would burn to the ground if Ahmed Urabi were to hang." Influence from France helped steer the Sultan's thinking as well - Bazaine visited Istanbul in the fall as irregular fighting continued across the Nile Basin, trying to find ways to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the Egyptian Crisis peacefully.

The Sultan eventually found an agreement that modestly satisfied many involved but still left a number of issues outstanding. Egypt's nominal independence would be severely curtailed - while day to day internal matters would still be governed by the Khedive, the foreign relations of Cairo would be controlled by Istanbul until Egypt's debts, which would be guaranteed and partially consolidated with Ottoman debts to France, were paid down to a satisfactory amount. The interest rates on these debts would in turn be reduced and France would withdraw its financial administrators from Egypt entirely. The partnership between Paris and the Porte regarding Suez was influential in driving this compromise. However, France's other demand was the dismissal of Tewfiq Pasha as Khedive, much as his even more incompetent father Ismail had been driven out four years earlier for his profligacy. Instead, his younger brother Hussein Kamel Pasha [1] was named Khedive, and though he would be given purview of appointments, the Porte would retain an unofficial veto over any ministerial-rank officers the new, young Khedive sought to make.

Britain, as was often the case in the late 19th century, got the worst of it. The agreement to restructure Egyptian and Ottoman debts into one had left them out - they still held notes on Egyptian debt separately, but were being forced to accept the de facto withdrawal of British financial administrators from Cairo as France did the same. The bombardment of Alexandria had angered much of the Arab street against London and further diminished their influence in Egypt at the expense of France, which was now fully ascendant in the Near East [2]. As the Franco-Ottoman agreement was formalized late in 1882, with rioters still harassing Ottoman troops, the fallout of the debacle began to impact domestic British politics as well.

Of course, the most immediate lesson of the affair was to convince Abdul Hamid that he could no longer ignore the Arab vilayets, and five years after the war with Russia returned his attention to the Levant. The mobilization of his troops to Egypt had been slow, arduous and inefficient - the plan, as it emerged, was to begin investing in rail connections (financed once again with French money, where else?) [3] within the Levant, with the first priority of the Syrian Railroad Company (Compagnie Chemins de Fers du Syrie, as it was marketed to eager investors on the Paris Bourse) to connect Damascus to Haifa, then Halep to Antakya, and then a "spine" running from Halep in the north to Aqaba in the south via Amman, thus connecting all of Syria to both the Mediterranean and Red Seas..."

- The Hamidian Era: The Ottoman Empire 1876-1918

[1] OTL's Sultan Hussein Kamel
[2] Easy to forget that until 1882 Egypt was regarded as France's sphere of influence
[3] In case anybody is keeping track at home, the French are financing stuff around the world as if credit is candy, and the Great Depression is still lingering in parts of Europe (not France however). That certainly won't have any bad consequences down the line, nope, not at all.

 

[KingSweden24]

By the time that the government has the motivation to move the US capital, there'd be no reason that they couldn't build a new capital further westward. Especially with all the railroads that the Union would be building.

Or you could do what Heart of Dixie did and move the capital to Chicago.

That's a thought too. I haven't totally decided what I'll do there when it becomes... a valid question, let's just say. ATM I'm leaning towards just keeping it in DC for simplicity.

 

[Couperin]

A French-fueled debt bubble, a Great Britain that has faced round after round of foreign policy losses while facing internal conflict in Ireland, a Germany that seems to be careening towards a massive political scandal that seemingly will destroy Bismarck's career ... what could go wrong?

 

[KingSweden24]

"...Crook had predicted when Custer was about to be sworn in that his old colleague would hate the realities of serving in a deliberate, staid legislative body compared to the military life he had led, and as a result he would struggle to get along with his fellow Senators. Half of that prediction came true; Custer was well-liked in his first few years in the Senate, despite sometimes feeling like an outsider and not socializing in the same manner as some of his peers. He did, however, have frustrations with his new role. He disliked immensely how "matters here are more like molasses," he was bored and irritated at the conventions of the Senate, and as he lacked a law degree, he was unable to supplement his Senatorial income with retainers from railroad companies like many did at that time. [1] Liberals controlling all branches of government, and the impending imposition of a stricter civil service regimen, limited the levers of patronage he could have wielded, and what little remained was firmly in control of his senior Senator colleague, Byron Stout, the head of the Michigan Democratic party and an avowed Custer skeptic. The social circles of Washington were dominated by Liberals, particularly flamboyant figures such as Secretary of State John Hay, and he found that unlike out among the masses at home in Michigan, where he was celebrated as an Indian fighter and national hero for his exploits in the War of Secession and the Plains, in the halls of power there were still some, particularly at the War Department, who still had not forgiven his role in exposing trading post corruption within the Army.

But Custer was not a purely lonely figure. He found it easier to befriend Congressmen than Senators, with one friendship paying particular dividends in the future - the friendship he made with horticulturalist and Ohio Representative Levi Lamborn [2], another man from the Mid-West who had interests beyond those of the legislature. Custer also was fueled by his rivalry with several key figures still within the US Army, lambasting on the Senate floor that "our army has become little more than a constabulary to patrol for the Indian" and expressing concern that if war were to break out with the Confederacy or Canada at any point, the major cities of the country could be overrun in mere weeks (an exaggeration, to be sure).

As his admittedly unremarkable Senate career continued to progress, Custer began setting his sights higher. He still dreamed of the White House, especially now that President Blaine had proven that one could ascend to that office from the Senate, which no man had done before. The only question was what circumstances would have to align, especially with Blaine's popularity, to vault him there..."

- The Wolverine in the White House: The Presidency of George Armstrong Custer at 100

[1] Whatever could go wrong there
[2] As obscure a figure as can be IOTL, but this guy was who nearly beat McKinley in his early Congressional races. So no McKinley political career, to say the least.

 

[KingSweden24]

A French-fueled debt bubble, a Great Britain that has faced round after round of foreign policy losses while facing internal conflict in Ireland, a Germany that seems to be careening towards a massive political scandal that seemingly will destroy Bismarck's career ... what could go wrong?

Everything! Everything could go wrong!

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the flow of Germans had largely ended by the early 1870s after word got back to Europe that the "Deutschtexaner" were largely consigned to difficult territory in the West Hills, but nevertheless the vast open lands of Texas marked an opportunity for hundreds of thousands of Confederate pioneers. Many were small farmers, who perhaps owned a handful of slaves at the most or were yeomen themselves, driven west due to crop failures and farm foreclosures during the agricultural depressions of the mid-1870s or the particularly infamous one of the 1890s. Many others were second and third sons, not standing to inherit much, who were attracted to the bustling, booming cities of Dallas, Galveston and Austin for the opportunities for trades there or for work as cattlemen or in the timber industry. Of course, much of the best land, in East Texas, was claimed by planters who shifted substantial numbers of their slaves to grow more cotton, and the railroads from Houston Bayou and Dallas were designed primarily to ship Texas' rich natural resources east, to New Orleans, Little Rock or Memphis, for better use. Conflict between new white settlers in the land boom and "Tejanos" who were of Spanish ancestry were frequent, especially as the Texas Western Railroad from Dallas slowly crept year by year towards Los Pasos, where it was anticipated a rail link to the Mexican border would open up all of the Llano Estacado to Anglo settlement. The Texas Rangers, a paramilitary constabulary already near-legendary at this time, became the tip of the spear in westward pushes, clearing Natives, free blacks and Tejanos alike from areas where new settlement was desired. As much or perhaps even more so in comparison to frontier states and territories in the North, Texas embodied the "Wild West spirit," of cowboys taking on Comanches, of outlaws and the aggressive Manifest Destiny of Confederate resource extraction..."

- Land of the Lone Star

 

[KingSweden24]

"...Lerdo had many friends left in Mexico, and he had never condemned any of his former allies who had accepted defeat and reconciled themselves to the Imperial reality. Most prominently amongst his old Reform War compatriots now raising arms again two decades later was Matias Romero of Oaxaca, who by January of 1883 had secured much of the territory and diverted two entire divisions of Imperial forces south, one to defend the Tehuantepec Railway from encroachment from both Oaxaca and Chiapas and another to guard against any march on Puebla or Mexico City itself. But Lerdo himself had stayed in exile since Maximilian's coronation, first in New Orleans and later in New York, publishing "El Republicano," a monthly newspaper endorsing republican and liberal ideals for a small diaspora of Mexican intellectuals and living largely destitute. The death of Diaz in 1867 had led to his acceptance of his fate, and he had become little more than a curiosity to the anglophile elite of the United States by the early 1880s. He dined often in Washington with Senators and even Secretary of State John Hay [1], and had sojourned in Spain for two years visiting friends and reconnecting with his Catholic faith, though he never let go of his anticlericalist beliefs regarding the role of the Church. Lerdo had never planned to return to Mexico until in 1882 he read the Plan Zocalo, also known as the Zocalo Manifesto, espousing the same Juarista republican beliefs he had fought for a quarter century earlier. As the caudillos across the north and south of Mexico took up arms and the nation plunged into a civil war marked by army maneuvers, siege battles and low-intensity irregular combat, Lerdo began following events south of the Rio Bravo [2] carefully.

The Mazatlan Massacre appalled Lerdo, as it appalled many of the other caudillos, but the subsequent rapid advance of rebel forces in its wake inspired him. The rebellion lacked a singular leader, somebody who could inspire the entire nation - and in Lerdo's eyes, he was the perfect candidate for such an endeavor, the plain successor to Juarez and Diaz who held legitimacy due to his service in their government and it being his laws of liberation that had provoked the reactionary coup that was now being rebelled against, twenty years late. The collapse of the Imperial force at Saltillo after months of siege, and their panicked withdrawal south, opened up a vast stretch of the north. Rebel armies - helped enormously by the defection of powerful and previously neutral caudillo Trinidad Garcia de la Cadena of Zacatecas - swept southwards and westwards. Torreon collapsed with Saltillo to its east gone, and much of the garrison there was massacred in an atrocity that would have shocked Mexico had the colorful barbarism of Mazatlan not devoured so much oxygen in the public mind. Durango was abandoned shortly thereafter, Zacatecas was securely in rebel hands, and Tampico erupted in rebellion as dozens of Rurales switched sides and joined with a gang of Comisarios to force the small garrison there to flee by boat. After six months of frustrations, the rebels had suddenly doubled the amount of territory they controlled in a span of weeks in early 1883, and successes in Oaxaca and the Yucatan reached the ears of fighters starting to settle in to besiege Guadalajara.

Lerdo took this moment to stage his glorious return, traveling from New York to New Orleans by rail incognito, then traveling via private boat to Matamoros, where he disembarked with the pomp of Napoleon returning from Elba. Lerdo met with several of the northern caudillos who were not in the field in Monterrey at the end of February to hash out a formal organization for the army; Manuel Gonzales agreed to defer to his leadership, now coming around to the idea of installing a republic where before he had been skeptical. Others, such as Terrazas and Ochoa, only begrudgingly agreed to formalize the revolt under Lerdo, muttering that all he would do would be to switch out a centralist Emperor for a centralist President. Lozada, for his part, upon hearing that a number of his northern allies planned to consolidate under Lerdo, responded with outrage, threatening to shoot anyone who mentioned "that little bastard" in his presence again and deciding definitively that he would need to seize Mexico City himself before Lerdo could arrive, a threat that became all the more critical as the Northern Alliance (Alianza del Norte), as Lerdo's new coalition of friendly caudillos came to be known, began to settle in at Aguascalientes and San Luis Potosi in early March, now threatening the Altiplano directly..."


- The Revolt of the Caudillos

[1] I keep circling back to Hay for a reason
[2] Since this textbook is Mexico-focused

 

[KingSweden24]

"...Maximilian did his best to remain calm as news arrived of rebel forces attempting to invest both Aguascalientes and San Luis Potosi, but the loss of much of the north in the space of five weeks, and the return of Lerdo to cheering crowds, unnerved him to the point that he was unable to leave his room for several days, in deep melancholy. The Emperor's convalescence opened the door for Zuloaga to do what he had intended for months - sideline Miramon, which Maximilian, in his mercurial and oft-metronomic relationship with the Grand Marshal reaching one of its more positive swings during the revolt, had refused to do. Zuloaga informed Miramon that, speaking for the Emperor, he wanted Miramon to focus purely on grand strategy and cease sending battlefield commands. Miramon's focus was to be supplies and logistics for getting the vast army of conscripts raised during the previous six months readied to put down the rebels who they still outnumbered. Losses of professional soldiers across the North had been damaging but not devastating - to lose the regiments tied up in the three besieged cities now would be devastating. Zuloaga then conferred with two young and ambitious officers directly, concocting the "Plan Oaxaca" - an operation to break the less-organized Romero forces in Oaxaca, ending the threat from the south and to the trans-isthmian railway, and then thrust into the Yucatan to put down the growing Maya revolt, which was being fended off largely by outnumbered German colonists. These two officers, Aureliano Blanquet and Victoriano Huerta, [1] were put in charge of the Imperial Army's most elite cavalry unit and encouraged to use all means necessary to harass Romero's men. "We need a victory, and soon," Zuloaga entreatied.

Thankfully, the Siege of Guadalajara was going poorly for the rebels. Thanks to the contributions of an impressive young artillery officer, Manuel Mondragón, [1] Corona's forces at Guadalajara had managed to hold off attempted pushes by rebels to reach the city. During one of the most critical hours, when the combined armies of Lozada and Morales surged forward and nearly breached the city gates, Corona boldly shouted to his defenders, "Recall Mazatlan! Recall what these men do! Think of your wives, of your children! The barbarians are at the gates, the fate of our civilized land in your hands! Justice for Mazatlan, and death to our enemies!" The Siege of Guadalajara raged on for several more months after Corona's rousing speech was credited with repelling the most ambitious attack by Lozada; never again did the Tiger of Tepic get that close to driving Imperial forces out of the city, and it was never fully surrounded. New, fresh recruits soon arrived by rail, and many rebel soldiers deserted as food supplies were unsteady, there were frequent fights between various rebel groups over trivial disagreements and disease, particularly tuberculosis, spread like wildfire through Lozada's camps.

It was later in the spring, as Reyes' forces in San Luis Potosi redoubled their efforts to break Gonzales' siege, Aguascalientes seemed to be teetering on the verge of falling and the Mexican Navy aggressively and infamously shelled Tampico and Matamoros, drawing comparisons to the nonchalant way French ships had bombarded the same cities in 1862, that a wildcard erupted in the southwest - President Justo Rufino Barrios of Guatemala, for years pressing to unite Central America, launched a war against President Rafael Zaldivar of El Salvador along with his Honduran allies, sparking yet another conflagration. [2] The timing was fortuitous, however, as it marked a critical distraction for many of the Mayans who lived on either side of the border; the natives rose up in arms against Barrios, who had been confiscating their lands for years, and they turned their attention to Guatemala for just long enough for Blanquet to drive his men deep into the jungle, slaughtering entire villages, and later in the spring managing to capture and execute Mayan leader Crescensio Poot..."

- Maximilian of Mexico

[1] Blanquet, Huerta and Mondragón are all OTL figures in the Mexican Revolution, to various extents, much like Reyes who has already been introduced
[2] More or less what triggered the same conflict in OTL

 

[KingSweden24]

"...though the United States would not take possession of Port Hamilton for another year, Hay was already sketching out, with the President's blessing, a comprehensive strategy for the United States in Asia with "American Hongkong," as it was nicknamed, the focal point. For the first time since the Monroe Doctrine was laid out (before its obvious violation with France's installation of the Mexican monarchy over Washington's protests), a singular, defined and formal foreign policy vision was being laid out and codified. The Hay Doctrine built upon the ideas of Blaine in establishing what came to be known as the "Open Door Policy," that outside of formal colonies no great power would take efforts to prohibit or preclude "open trade" in any other state, though it left the door open [1] for reciprocal treaties that could favor one nation over another. It was the first time the United States had attempted to expand the Monroe Doctrine's approach of noninterference beyond what it regarded as its sphere of influence in the new states of the Western Hemisphere. Most critically, though, the Open Door was meant to apply to China. At a time of rising tensions in East Asia, Hay (and Blaine, to a lesser extent, as the President was often more focused on events in South and Central America) was concerned about the possibility of European powers carving up China and thus blocking access to her vast markets. The end of the Great Depression had invigorated America's merchant marine, and though a more subtle depression had carried over from Hendricks' last year in office, by 1883 there were twice as many vessels shipping goods from San Francisco as in 1881, abetted by coaling stations in Midway and neutral Samoa and by a friendly harbor in British-aligned Hawaii. Hay had urged the President to resist calls for hard caps on Chinese immigration, persuading him that being the "friendliest voice in the room" in Peking could confer long-term advantages and that immigration restrictions would sour such relations and violate the Burlingame Treaty, but needed something to reward West Coast merchants with as he was not banning "coolies." The expansion of Chinese trade, to be negotiated through a reciprocal treaty similar to the one completed with Korea, was seen by Hay as the best vehicle..."

- The Cornerstone: John Hay and the Foundation of American Global Prestige

[1] Hehe

 

[KingSweden24]

"...first to admit that he knew "little to nothing" of Naval matters, Nathan Goff nonetheless threw himself into his work as Naval Secretary after his surprise appointment to the position. Blaine had entrusted the young, obscure failed Congressional candidate from West Virginia to oversee the modernization and expansion of the United States Navy into a world-renowned force, one of the backbones of his administration's foreign policy. By every objective measure, Goff was a huge success in the office, and in serving well in 1889, only resigning when the lame-duck Blaine appointed him as his final judicial appointment to a circuit court position in West Virginia a few days before leaving office. He was the longest-serving Naval Secretary in American history up to that point, and the longest-serving - and probably the most impactful Cabinet officer of the 1880s along with John Hay. Goff approached the Naval Act of 1869 as an attorney would, viewing the bill as a starting point but lamenting that it was bloated and set targets in terms of tonnage rather than providing flexibility in ship design. The Navy was nowhere near as large as had been envisioned, the "Conkling Fleet" nowhere to be found. Goff, rather than continue the project of building a vast number of outdated vessels, instead proposed to Congress new designs that would be more modern, with fewer ships built but each one more effective. As his expert witness in his Congressional testimony he brought George Dewey, a respected Naval commander who had observed new designs in Britain and France and agreed that a single one of the more modern foreign cruisers could on its own likely sink every ship in the fleet.

Despite skepticism of abandoning the Naval Act approach for Goff's "New Navy," Congress nevertheless approved what came to be known as the ABCD ships, with tenders for construction going out in 1882 and the four vessels being laid down by Roach and Sons in Philadelphia the next year. A 4,200 ton protected cruiser named Albany [1], iron-hulled, would be the first vessel of her class; two 3,000 ton protected cruisers, Boston and Chicago, would each become flagships of the Pacific and Asia Squadrons; and the dispatch vessel Dolphin would be built to test the potential max speeds of such new vessels. All three fell behind schedule, and indeed only Chicago was ready by the time of the Panama Crisis in 1885 that proved definitively to Congress once and for all of the need for an expanded Navy. The Roach yards were near bankruptcy and the Navy even had to seize control of the business to get the ships finished, 22 months late.

Further logistic problems plagued Goff's ambitions. Strikes at shipyards in San Francisco, often violent, delayed older class ships being built for the Pacific; the high-quality steel needed for many of his ships was in rare supply. Getting coal to stations in Samoa and Midway proved difficult and expensive. Goff admired the Board of Admiralty in the United Kingdom and sought to implement something similar in the United States, only to be rebuffed by Blaine, who continued to see efficacy in having all naval decisions in the hands of the Commander in Chief and Naval Secretary and "keeping the damn admirals out of it." Nevertheless, Goff was able to impress upon Blaine the importance of improving the Naval staff officer corps, and after Hay's intercession, Blaine agreed to back a bill in Congress introduced by Speaker Garfield to establish the Naval War College in Newport, now regarded as one of the best naval staff schools in the world. Despite protestations from some who wanted to keep the primacy of the Naval Academy in Annapolis intact, creating the additional school would dramatically improve the staff operations of the Navy over the next few decades as some of its luminaries emerged from its classrooms..."

- The Fourth Branch: A Comprehensive History of the United States Navy

[1] OTL the flagship of the New Navy was the Atlanta, which is obviously not the name here for obvious reasons

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the leaders of both European monarchies and the nascent socialist organizations agitating against them watched the events in Belgium in May of 1883 with bated breath; it was the largest mass uprising by the working class since the mass strikes a decade earlier in Britain. Started mostly as a small gathering to commemorate the abortive Paris Commune formed in May of 1868, the strikes and riots spread across Belgium's "sillon industriel" in Wallonia, eventually engulfing working class districts of Brussels as well to the point that Leopold II and his family were evacuated to Antwerp. Factories in Roux, Charleroi and Liege were burned; the Belgian Army was mobilized along with the Garde Civique, and the violent protests were met with crushing force, killing nearly two hundred across the country.

The events polarized Belgian society even further; the rioters were almost uniformly Walloons and were ardently socialist, in opposition to the more pacific Dutch in the north who skewed liberal, where there were almost no uprisings. The relatively lenient treatment of the rioters' leaders by Leopold II in the aftermath of the riots only emboldened the socialists further, and was an early case of doubts being sowed in Flanders about the monarchy's willingness to defend the state and Catholicism against "Walloon violence," as it had been unwilling to defend their right to run Dutch schools in previously Dutch-speaking Brussels. For many Belgian historians, the conservatism and later siege-mentality of Flemish citizens can be traced to the violence of that May [1].

The upheaval also caught the attention of other European governments. Alarmed at the violence - of stories of shopkeepers and factory foremen being dragged from their homes and beaten (and in one rumored case, lynched), of factories and churches burned - there were calls to respond even further. Napoleon IV, for instance, mobilized the National Guard and the Army on Belgium's borders in case any activity spilled over into France's own industrial heartland; as tensions were running high across the Channel at that time due to the Egyptian Crisis of the previous year, Britain deployed the Home Fleet to Dover and Portsmouth and began re-arming the Egyptian Expeditionary Force to potential intervene in Belgium, whose neutrality they ensured, in case France "pacified" Wallonia.

The "Belgian Social Revolt," [2] as it came to be known, including a number of prominent German exiles as well, and the unrest occurred just as debate about renewing the expiring Anti-Socialist Laws had begun in Germany. The Reichstag was bitterly divided, with the National Liberals split but not wanting to embarrass their leader von Bennigsen by joining Bismarck's push for even more draconian measures than the 1878 package. Social Democrats in the Reichstag condemned the actions of strikers in Belgium to head off a reaction in Berlin, but Bismarck's angry speech to the Landtag in late May tipped his hand of where he was headed. Germany's first great crisis since unification may have begun in the factory towns of Wallonia, but it had officially arrived within the Reich itself, with the tensions of the previous five years finally coming to a head..."

- The Cradle: Social Democracy in Germany

[1] There aren't enough alt-hists that really mess around with Belgium, in my view; that's going to change.
[2] This was a real event in 1886 upon the OTL 15-year anniversary of the more-successful-than-TTL Paris Commune, but here with Belgium being more of a pressure cooker for left wing agitation, it winds up being more violent and more impactful on overall world history.

 

[SilentSpaniard]

Updates so fast! What madness is this?

Texas embodied the "Wild West spirit," of cowboys taking on Comanches, of outlaws and the aggressive Manifest Destiny of Confederate resource extraction..."

Some Westerns are going to be a bit different in this timeline.

Lozada, for his part, upon hearing that a number of his northern allies planned to consolidate under Lerdo, responded with outrage, threatening to shoot anyone who mentioned "that little bastard" in his presence again and deciding definitively that he would need to seize Mexico City himself before Lerdo could arrive,

"No, I'm doing the Revolution my way. Surely that's more important than keeping a united front."

They are already doomed. They just don't know it yet.

Maya revolt, which was being fended off largely by outnumbered German colonists.

Poor Germans, can't get a rest in Mexico. Maybe some volunteers will come to their rescue from the Fatherland?

"Those savages are trying to eat uncle Hans alive! Me and some friends are going to Mexico, we have to help them no matter what."

Corona boldly shouted to his defenders, "Recall Mazatlan! Recall what these men do! Think of your wives, of your children! The barbarians are at the gates, the fate of our civilized land in your hands! Justice for Mazatlan, and death to our enemies!

I like this part a lot! Such a rousing speech, would be an epic scene in a movie. But then we have this:

the Mexican Navy aggressively and infamously shelled Tampico and Matamoros, drawing comparisons to the nonchalant way French ships had bombarded the same cities in

"Remember Mazatlan!"
"What about Tampico and Matamoros?"
"Shut up, we are the good guys!"
"Allegedly..."

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the death in the summer of 1883 of the oft-sickly 11-month old Prince Willem Alexander, heir to the throne, threw the King into deep depression. Having already seen his wife give birth to a stillborn daughter two years prior, Alexander withdrew from public appearances and became increasingly morose, irritable, and erratic in his behavior. Thyra, for her part, traveled to Paris to convalesce from her own grief, bonding there with Empress Maria del Pilar, who had become pregnant again and was about to give birth. Alarmed by reports of the King's rapid physical decline, the Dutch government began to make succession plans, staying in close contact with Adolf, the former Duke of Nassau of the ruling dynasty's Walram line who in the event of the passing of King Alexander was next-in-line to the throne. Adolf, who had still been living in Wiesbaden, made arrangements to move to a small but comfortable mansion in Rotterdam, began taking lessons in Dutch, and started seeking out an appropriate bride for his 30-year old son, Wilhelm. Upon hearing of Adolf's "presumptuous" arrival, the generally even-keeled and intellectual Alexander flew into an angry rage, threatening to have his relative arrested, demanded the immediate resignation of his government, and threw an armoir out the window of his quarters. The episode, which was compared to the rages of his late father [1] and brother, severely taxed Alexander physically and he did not leave his bed for a week. Thyra returned from Paris later in the autumn, after the Princess Imperial had been born, and was alarmed at her husband's deteriorated mind and body. Despite sleeping in different rooms to let him rest, the royal couple tried frequently to no avail for a third child until both were so spent that Thyra had to flee to Denmark for a break over the Christmas holiday [2], and Alexander would never see his wife again. When Adolf announced that his son had been engaged to Princess Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont [3] and that they were to be married in the spring, and the press speculated that the fruit of that union "would likely succeed to the throne," the young King collapsed and passed away on Christmas Eve, to be discovered in the morning when he was roused to attend church services. The line of the House of Orange was gone, to be replaced by the House of Nassau-Weilberg (generally just called the House of Nassau) from then on, as Adolf I of the Netherlands was proclaimed King [4]..."

- The Orange Sunset: The Expiry of the Netherlands' First Royal House

[1] The same father, William III, who was killed by a dog ITTL
[2] I'm skipping around a bit timeline wise here, since the next update will be March of 1883 suddenly again
[3] So Queen Emma will still exist! Only this time she's married to a man six years older than her rather than several decades her senior, and the future Willem V of the Netherlands isn't a savage nutcase his William III of the Netherlands was
[4] OTL's Grand Duke Adolphe of Luxembourg, as Luxembourg did not allow for women to inherit the throne