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Seymour: Profile of a Forgotten President
"...with the newer, narrower majority in the House of Representatives during the 40th Congress - where Democrats could only lose one vote, due to a majority of 89 to 87 - the choice for Speaker was not in fact Samuel Cox, but rather Samuel S. Marshall of Illinois. Lacking Cox's reputation for oratory, parliamentary acumen and honesty, Marshall was instead chosen solely for his hailing from a Midwestern state dominated by Republicans (indeed it was Lincoln's old home state) and his friendship with a number of moderate Republicans who would be needed to sustain any motions in the House, with the majority so precariously narrow and many members often missing.

Indeed, the 40th Congress can be seen as the last high-water mark for the antebellum party system - like the Whigs before them, the Republicans were teetering on the edge of dissolution despite their substantial Senate majority and comfortable control of many states, for the issue that had brought them together - slavery - was effectively decided. Maryland and Delaware were the last de jure slave states in the Union, after all, and in Delaware fewer than 30% of all blacks were in bondage. "The world has passed Stevens, Sumner and all the others by," Seymour would remark in his diary at the start of the 40th Congress, as new Senators and Representatives were sworn in. Republicans from the Midwest were already bickering with those from the Northeast about the power of the federal government, the size of tariffs, and whether to invest in the army or the navy, and Seymour was content in the fact that goals to aggressively defend the interests of free blacks would not advance far in Congress and would be unpopular moves by Republicans, and there was an unspoken agreement that the Fugitive Slave Act was a dead letter. Besides, with the departure of more than half of the
Dred Scott Court during Lincoln's Presidency - either by fleeing South, retirement or death - the judiciary as now composed was not one to aggressively enforce such antebellum laws any longer, which suited Seymour just fine. Never an aggressive supporter of slavery to begin with, his eye was on continued internal improvements throughout the country, including his eagerness to complete the Transcontinental Railroad before reelection.

Would that it were so simple for the 17th President, for the party of Jackson, Van Buren and Polk was also butting against headwinds of its own. The sectional dispute that had defined American politics since Calhoun's Nullification Crisis was over, but with the departure of the South had also departed much of the backbone of the Democratic Party. On economic matters, the Democrats were split as much as the Republicans - Seymour, hailing from the mercantile capital of the Americas, opposed high tariffs, while many of his fellow partisans began to sympathize with them more and more. Though there was no Faultline emerging within the Democratic Party quite as similar as the ones already emerging within the opposition, it still remained the case that much like within the Democrats of New York in the 1850s - the famous Barnburner vs Hunker feud - Seymour's position in favor of banks, hard money, expenditures on improvements and even his relatively moderate position on Rapprochement earned him scores of enemies from Democrats ranging from easy money supporters like his Vice President, George Pendleton, who sought to pay off the national debt with greenbacks still in circulation, to old Copperheads who wanted to aggressively halt the "improvements" that they viewed monied interests in the East as supporting.

No issue would challenge Seymour, however, quite like the United States Navy Act of 1867..."

- Seymour: Profile of a Forgotten President
 
The Unification Wars of Europe 1864-1868
"...the embarrassingly poor finances of the Netherlands made Napoleon III's offer too lucrative to William to turn down. The 6,000,000 guilders would offset the troubles his treasury was experiencing, land held by him personally separated from Dutch territory would no longer be his concern, and William was satisfied that surrendering Luxembourg to Napoleon would then satisfy the balance of powers in Europe and allow France to save face after its humiliating vacillation during the 'Ten Weeks War,' an issue that had been burning for the entirety of the fall of 1866. So on March 18th, 1867[1], William accepted the offer made by France and agreed to sell Luxembourg - and its strategic fortress - to Paris..."

- The Unification Wars of Europe 1864-1868


[1] Five days earlier than when William II of the Netherlands accepted the offer to buy Luxembourg, which of course he agreed to sell for 5,000,000 guilders in OTL
 
"...the embarrassingly poor finances of the Netherlands made Napoleon III's offer too lucrative to William to turn down. The 6,000,000 guilders would offset the troubles his treasury was experiencing, land held by him personally separated from Dutch territory would no longer be his concern, and William was satisfied that surrendering Luxembourg to Napoleon would then satisfy the balance of powers in Europe and allow France to save face after its humiliating vacillation during the 'Ten Weeks War,' an issue that had been burning for the entirety of the fall of 1866. So on March 18th, 1867[1], William accepted the offer made by France and agreed to sell Luxembourg - and its strategic fortress - to Paris..."

- The Unification Wars of Europe 1864-1868


[1] Five days earlier than when William II of the Netherlands accepted the offer to buy Luxembourg, which of course he agreed to sell for 5,000,000 guilders in OTL
Reminder Prussia Fortress still are there meaning nothing changes anyway
 
Seymour: Portrait of a Forgotten President
"...though the Navy had grown due to the war, it was still nowhere near the force that France or Russia could put out to say, to say nothing of the Royal Navy with which Britain effectively dominated global shipping. This was a byproduct of a simpler earlier United States that adhered to the warnings of Washington's farewell address against foreign entanglements and alliances, and which believed that the Monroe Doctrine was a settled matter. The French intervention in Mexico and the Treaty of Havana put paid to such notions, however, and in a post-Havana world - one in which the French Navy regularly sailed from Marseille to Veracruz and the Confederacy's existence was understood to be underwritten by European frigates - the clamoring for a standing permanent blue water navy grew loud.

The loudest voice was of a man well familiar to Seymour, Roscoe Conkling of New York. An aggressive Republican from the party's radical wing, Conkling viewed the Treaty of Havana not as a peace document but an act of war, and to many in his circle another conflict with not just the great slave power to the south but possibly France and Britain was inevitable. Conkling's bold posture was to build not one but two blue water navies, an Atlantic Fleet and a Pacific one. The Atlantic Fleet, to be based out of Philadelphia, was to be the larger of the two, built to rapidly mobilize and be outfitted for combat both in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean if need be. The Pacific Fleet would be smaller and nimbler, to be harbored at San Francisco, as he described it "a cannon aimed at British Columbia and Acapulco." It was also to include a number of vessels well equipped to sail to icy Alaska to defend the US's new possession. Unsaid but understood was the benefits a Navy such as this would reap for New York's substantial shipyards.

Seymour, who was generally sympathetic to a larger Navy but viewed Conkling's proposals as wasteful and unwieldy, was surprised to discover that a number of Democrats were not only skeptical of Conkling's grand plans for a two-ocean Navy but openly hostile to the idea of any Naval expansion, which they viewed as a "Europeanization" of the federal government. If they had their way, the Navy should indeed be shrunk - a peacetime Union, with the slavery issue now settled thanks to secession and the peculiar institution still only in practice in two border states, had no need for such matters. Canada, a new Dominion to be ratified on July 1, was to be a friend of the United States, to eventually be guided to republicanism; the Confederacy was a potential trade partner, with cotton the textile mills of New York and New England sorely needed. A ballooning Navy was an aggressive act, one which would create a permanent officer class that would steer the decisions of the republic. And not only that, but they were horrified about how much debt such a service would create, when the Union was already debating how to settle its remaining war debts..."


- Seymour: Portrait of a Forgotten President
 
The Wizard: The Life of Nathan Forrest
"...by early April, enough news had trickled in from the northern departments for Maximilian to have become utterly appalled. After Chihuahua was cleared of rebels in a bloody battle in March, at the conclusion of a 1,500 kilometre march by the Imperial Army, Diaz's Republican forces were scattered. The response by Forrest's Great Posse, which had been active well to the east of Chihuahua, was to engage in a brutal campaign of intimidation. Towns were burned and those thought sympathetic to Diaz's motley army were lynched; stories of Forrest's men using children for target practice and mass rapes reached Mexican cities with alarm. Maximilian's desire to declare Forrest's posse as much criminals as Diaz's men was overruled only by the urging of Vibaurri, who knowing the ailing President Davis well was worried that such a move would be a grievous insult to the Confederate honor, for back home Forrest was considered a hero for putting down Jed Ford Rebellion and was even being spoken of as the next President. And nevertheless, in Mexico's aristocratic circles, the poor townspeople of the northern departments were collateral damage...

The Sierra Madre War would end on April 20th, 1867 with a fight at Ocampo, where Diaz's men were intercepted by a small Mexican cavalry unit while the Great Posse was only two miles away. Though Diaz's men made a bold last stand, one that would be immortalized by antimonarchist forces for a generation, the arrival of Forrest's small army to reinforce the outgunned Mexican cavalry officers turned the tide. The village was nearly levelled, over a hundred died, and Diaz was killed fleeing, shot seventy-four times, many of the shots at close range. Though it was the Mexican cavalrymen who had caught him and killed him, thus earning the bulk of the reward, Nathan Forrest standing beside the corpse of Porfirio Diaz with several of his lieutenants was what was photographed and circulated back home in the Confederate newspapers. The architect of the Memphis Massacre had just put an end to Mexico's long-running civil war, to hear the tales. The Wizard of the Saddle and his Tennessee Templars, already heroes at home, had just transcended legend..."

- The Wizard: The Life of Nathan Forrest (University of Mississippi, 1927)
 
The Knights of the South: Secret Societies in the Confederate States
"...of course, the Great Posse would form the early backbone of the Klan. The Tennessee Templars and the assorted mercenaries who came home from Mexico, despite not being cut in on the rewards and having earned a reputation as sadistic butchers in the country they believed themselves to have saved, were now a hardened paramilitary, and returned to a Confederacy where unemployed poor veterans were looking to the rapidly multiplying knighthoods spreading among the upper class as essentially quasi-governmental social clubs and wanted their own organization to defend their interests. In a world where formal political parties were still for the time being regarded as an institution best left behind in the decadent North, these knighthoods were suddenly of massive value to both the plantocracy's interests and those of the soldier class that had actually earned the Confederacy's victory but had only grown poorer in the postwar years..."

- The Knights of the South: Secret Societies in the Confederate States
 
The Unification Wars
"...the reaction of German newspapers, and by proxy the public, shocked Napoleon's government; the Emperor, meanwhile, was outraged at the perceived betrayal by Bismarck, whom he was convinced had reassured him at Biarritz that France would be rewarded for neutrality in the fight between Prussia and Austria. Luxembourg was a small prize, considerably smaller than what Italy or Prussia had won at Austria's expense, and France's neutral position had eroded their position in Vienna. In the German press, Napoleon III was compared to his famous uncle, looking to invade and subjugate everything west of the Rhine; France's newspapers howled in anger as well, demanding that the purchase of Luxembourg proceed to satisfy French national pride.

French military planners were more sanguine. Germany's mobilization against Austria had happened impressively quickly, even if they had become bogged down moving through the Bohemian mountains and the battle at Sadowa was a narrowly avoided disaster for the Prussians that could have effectively destroyed the kingdom's ambitions in one swoop. In the end, it was Count Walewski who persuaded Napoleon III that the time to mobilize was now, when Prussia was still recovering from its losses against Austria, and to occupy Luxembourg as per the agreement with the Netherlands. Who was Prussia to deny France their rightfully-negotiated prize? French soldiers had won in Italy in 1859 and in Mexico in 1862. A rapid strike and then holding the line against the mobilized forces of Germany was the right move. And who knows? Perhaps the angry Austrians would respond and attack Prussia as well..."

- The Unification Wars
 
The Reign of Napoleon III 1848-1874
"...for Bismarck, Napoleon's declaration that he would not back down and proceed with his purchase of Luxembourg was as if he had drawn it himself. Though he had been somewhat caught off guard by the furor of the German street in reaction to the Luxembourg Purchase, the Iron Chancellor was ever the opportunist and finally had the aggressive move by France he needed to permanently bind the skeptical (and Catholic) south German states to Prussia's yoke. Napoleon III gave the May 5th Ultimatum [1] demanding that the Fortress of Luxembourg - known as the Gibraltar of the North - be immediately evacuated. The ultimatum was made before the other great powers could react, which left France more isolated than they would have otherwise. Austria, reeling from the previous war, was in the midst of negotiations between Vienna and the Hungarian nobility about the future structure of their nation, while Russia had little quarrel with Prussia but loathed Napoleon's support for Polish nationalism. Britain was alarmed, but with Belgium in no immediate threat did not make an immediate move. Willem II quickly acceded to Napoleon's demands despite the looming threat of war and the Dutch garrison at Luxembourg was evacuated on May 11th as a small French army crossed into the country. The Prussians who had held the fort jointly remained. As France and Prussia both continued to mobilize, Napoleon III sent another ultimatum, this time directly to the garrison at Luxembourg - that France was now the rightful hegemon of the small duchy and that the continued presence of Prussian men on Luxembourgish soil was an "illegal occupation." The response was silence and a riot of German-sympathetic locals on May 12th that left fourteen dead and over a hundred wounded. Comparisons were drawn with Dos de Mayo in Madrid 1808, and though Napoleon was appalled at the bloodshed, both he and Bismarck had their declarations of war.

The morning of May 13th, 1867, the first shells fell on the walls of Luxembourg Fortress. The Franco-Prussian War - the third and final war in the Unification of the German Empire - had begun."

- The Reign of Napoleon III 1848-1874 (Oxford University Press)

[1] ;)
 
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