Months. It will be November before things come close to settling down and getting all troops to the front. And Harrisburg is into the area where I wouldn't want to try a major push in the Winter. (I don't know if the Confederates would have 1.5 Million winter uniforms go missing (yes modern politics), but the Union more or less *has* to be better prepared in terms of winter apparel)
Cinco de Mayo
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It's horrifying but I'm glad the knock-on effects of a surviving CSA with slavery (realistically, the only approach a CSA would take) isn't being glossed over.
I was hoping they'd end with a white peace at the start, but I'm starting to think it should hurt more with how terrible their allies are. (Baja, parts of Sonora? 'Just' ludicrous mining/oil concessions?) Then again, their army does supposedly end up with a good reputation in US after this -- I wonder what happens there?
Probably because they don't murder, rape, and/or enslave everything that moves as opposed to the Confederate Army.
No inch of land will be ceded to the norteamericanos! ¡Baja California es mexicana! But in all seriousness, I hope Mexico pays the price of being on the loosing side with money, concessions, etc., but not land. It'd be refreshing to see a TL where Mexico doesn't loose a combination of Baja California, Sonora and Chihuahua to either the USA or the CSA.
^^^
The question for Mexico's leadership becomes this - which one do they want to part with more, considering economic concerns were the impetus (allegedly, ymmv there) on entering the war? Do you trade Baja (and it'd only be Baja, in all likelihood) for some level of economic nationalism that keeps El Yanqui out of your oilfields, potentially for decades or even for good? Which deal is easier to sell to the public?
I haven't entirely made up my mind, tbh, on how Mexico's government answers that question. But its one they need to think about carefully. What do you find more valuable, some relatively worthless desert on a map for pride, or effective control over the wealth of Tampico and the western Yucatan?
(Perhaps somewhat as a side note, if Mexico did cough up Baja as their get-out-of-war-quick card... would the other 32 states be opposed to California just absorbing the whole thing, and would California even want all that near-empty land?)
Americans owning land in Mexico was one of the main reasons why so many Mexicans are resentful, selling a state would be suicide since it would invalidate Mexican nationalism. Maybe have them do a status quo ante bellum?
I think they're more likely to get that if they either never actually make it to U.S. soil... or go the other extreme and manage to take parts of the U.S. and/or Nicaragua before swapping them back in a separate early peace. (Starting a Confederate "stabbed in the back" myth?)
Could have sworn Mexico does indeed take U.S. territory, Southern California, which is why they're better remembered than the CSA soldier. Besides, with the CSA already defeated by the time of the ceasefire, Mexico has no reason to continue fighting.
Odd idea. But those civilians the Confederstes are trying to enslave? Maybe have the Mexican Consulate in Richmond 'buy' them and give them sanctuary, as well as launch formal complaints to their ally.
It's a small thing - but it's just that sort of thing which buys good will when the war is over and shows that the Mexican Empire's intentions were pure (even if they were allied to devils).
A bit of a Mexican Mr. Wahlenberg (if I haven't completely butchered the name of the Swedish ambassador to Hungary during WW2)
It's a small thing - but it's just that sort of thing which buys good will when the war is over and shows that the Mexican Empire's intentions were pure (even if they were allied to devils).
A bit of a Mexican Mr. Wahlenberg (if I haven't completely butchered the name of the Swedish ambassador to Hungary during WW2)
Expect for that it takes two parties to agree to a White Peace. It's precisely at the end of a bloody and hard fought far, one which their strongest enemy has already thrown the towel that the Yanks have little incentive to just bury the hatchet with an enemy that a fully mobilized US is now going to massively overpower. I'm sure you can find reasons why they should anyway, but that doesn't mean they will.
If we look at the US domestic situation from the all important "How will this affect the next election?" PoV, then insisting as pre-condition to peace that Mexico:
- Return all nationalized property
- Pay generous reparations for the lost revenue
- Pay for any repairs, maintenance, etc. Cost to be determined by a US appointed panel.
- Guarantees against future vaguely defined "gouvernment harrassment of US investors"
- etc etc
would be the perfect way to make the fat cat investors happy in a way blue collar voters don't pay the price for. Heck you could also add compensation for lost wages of interned civilian employees to the list, to really make sure the Unions will sign on.
Tl;dr Making voters happy and having another countrys treasury foot the bill is something that's going to look very attractive to US politicians.
Well, I'd trade the aforementioned watershed area for keeping nearly complete sovereignty over the economy of Mexico, but I'm basing that off of comparing Cincoverse Mexico to our Mexico, inevitably I have a feeling that Mexico should economically encroach or possibly surpass the future Confederacy in whatever form those states shall take (especially if its not a single entity) assuming that the positive and more comprehensive development of its potential (resources/demographics/intellectual property/etc) continues going up and up in the future postwar.
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My *guess* is that it would remain as a territory. If Baja had been gained in 1848, I could have seen California ending up as two states with San Diego (and possibly Los Angeles) ending up with Baja and the area north of that being one state. (Note, in that case, the San Diego/Baja one would have definitely been a Slave State). But it has been 70 years.
Also, if *any* of the pre-war state of California was moved from the pre-war state into "Baja" then that would only work if it had statehood.
And as a comment about ability to control that amount of land. The northern edge of California is at about the same latitude as New York City, the southern end of Baja is at the same latitude as Havana. And I *think* that would put Mega-California in the range of the Sub-national entities with the greatest distance between State capital and the farthest edge (With Western Australia, Sasha Republic and Alaska).
So unless Baja is *massively* more populated than iOTL (5x or more), choice 1, Territory, Choice 2 (way down the list), split California moving San Diego, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara into the South and make it a state immediately.
Note, the pre-1836 divider between Alta and Baja California (the Palóu Line) is actually slightly farther *south* than the current line.
No you're close! Wallenberg. Very interesting man; came from about as blue of blood as you can in Sweden and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to look the other way, but he did not.
Tom Lantos, the Congressman who sponsored the act to make him an honorary US citizen in the early 1980s, was one of the Hungarian Jews his actions saved.
Yeah the US will at least want a few items on those bullet points
Not to get too far ahead but Mexico will be a Top 10 economy or thereabouts by the early 2020s ITTL; I've eyeballed their nominal GDP per capita somewhere in between OTL's Spain and Portugal, which is close to triple their per capita GDP today.
Huh, interesting. Well, I definitely don't see why California would want to absorb all that empty land especially if its mostly a military matter for the feds to nab it so yeah, it would probably stay a territory well into the 1950s/60s at that rate. Might even be the last state to receive statehood!
American Charlemagne: The Trials and Triumphs of Charles Evans Hughes
"...the War Council was a sort of inner Cabinet, starting out with Root, Herrick, Ballinger, and the most senior officers of the Army and Navy. It was here where Hadley's experience as a Governor came in handy, as by January of 1914 he had taken over essentially most civilian-related aspects of the executive branch while Hughes turned his focus largely to coordinating the running of the war. Like the rest of the executive branch, the War Council met every day at the unused Merchants' Exchange Building, which Hughes facetiously called "the field White House," and the dominant personalities of the remainder of the conflict can see their influences traced to the very earliest meetings there in late September.
Hughes had mulled sacking Herrick as early as the train ride into Philadelphia but did not want to start a panic throughout the armed forces at a time of such fragile morale and instead began to slowly box his Secretary of War out, dealing directly with Wotherspoon and his chief aide, Bliss. It was the junior general who impressed Hughes, and Root for that matter, and they resolved that sometime soon, they would quietly ask Wotherspoon to retire to allow his more capable lieutenant to take the job of Chief of Staff. To his credit, Wotherspoon did perform capably and contrary to his reputation as "William Worthless-spoon" in the early weeks of the war, aggressively coordinating with regional garrison commanders, the infamously lead-footed Ordnance Bureau, and National Guards to bring as much mobilized force to the frontlines as possible by the end of the month, and a potential disaster at Harrisburg was averted thanks to his routing nearly the entire strength of the Northeast to central Pennsylvania even as Baltimore was falling into enemy hands.
Nonetheless, Bliss showed his mind for organization and strategy in those early meetings. It was Bliss' idea to look back to the War of Secession and not repeat the mistakes made then; first and foremost, he encouraged the civilian leadership to think in terms of strategic theaters, defined loosely by river systems, and three Army field commands were formed accordingly that would work independently under individual commanding generals but as part of a coordinated, grander strategy. In the east, the Army Command Susquehanna was created to prevent the Confederates from advancing any further north, placed under one of the most senior serving generals in the Army and a native Pennsylvanian, Hunter Liggett. Army Command Ohio was formed to attack the Confederate Midlands, placed under the purview of Charles Farnsworth, and finally Army Command Colorado, to coordiante all actions in the Southwest along the Texan and Mexican frontiers, under Charles Treat, though Hughes suspected that the forces under John J. Pershing in the western Arizona Territory would largely operate as they saw fit with little input from Treat's command post in Santa Fe.
Bliss' thinking in organizing the Army commands this way was that it aligned with the strategic realities of the various theaters of war and allowed various commanders to think on their feet accordingly in terms of pursuing their objectives. Further, he made a compelling case to the War Council that the Midlands were the true objective of the war and if the Confederates could be held off in southern Pennsylvania through winter, then a massive offensive into Kentucky the following spring could rapidly break Confederate morale and warmaking capabilities. "The key to defeating the enemy," Bliss wrote in a memorandum, "is to thrust through the heartland of their industry, a belt from Louisville on the Ohio through the central Cumberland Valley all the way to the transportation key at Chattanooga and on to grand Atlanta herself."
Similar actions were taken navally, where the various squadrons of the Navy were organized into two commands, Atlantic under William Sims and Pacific under Henry Mayo. Both would report directly to Austin Knight, who was designated as Chief of Naval Operations not long thereafter..."
- American Charlemagne: The Trials and Triumphs of Charles Evans Hughes
Hughes had mulled sacking Herrick as early as the train ride into Philadelphia but did not want to start a panic throughout the armed forces at a time of such fragile morale and instead began to slowly box his Secretary of War out, dealing directly with Wotherspoon and his chief aide, Bliss. It was the junior general who impressed Hughes, and Root for that matter, and they resolved that sometime soon, they would quietly ask Wotherspoon to retire to allow his more capable lieutenant to take the job of Chief of Staff. To his credit, Wotherspoon did perform capably and contrary to his reputation as "William Worthless-spoon" in the early weeks of the war, aggressively coordinating with regional garrison commanders, the infamously lead-footed Ordnance Bureau, and National Guards to bring as much mobilized force to the frontlines as possible by the end of the month, and a potential disaster at Harrisburg was averted thanks to his routing nearly the entire strength of the Northeast to central Pennsylvania even as Baltimore was falling into enemy hands.
Nonetheless, Bliss showed his mind for organization and strategy in those early meetings. It was Bliss' idea to look back to the War of Secession and not repeat the mistakes made then; first and foremost, he encouraged the civilian leadership to think in terms of strategic theaters, defined loosely by river systems, and three Army field commands were formed accordingly that would work independently under individual commanding generals but as part of a coordinated, grander strategy. In the east, the Army Command Susquehanna was created to prevent the Confederates from advancing any further north, placed under one of the most senior serving generals in the Army and a native Pennsylvanian, Hunter Liggett. Army Command Ohio was formed to attack the Confederate Midlands, placed under the purview of Charles Farnsworth, and finally Army Command Colorado, to coordiante all actions in the Southwest along the Texan and Mexican frontiers, under Charles Treat, though Hughes suspected that the forces under John J. Pershing in the western Arizona Territory would largely operate as they saw fit with little input from Treat's command post in Santa Fe.
Bliss' thinking in organizing the Army commands this way was that it aligned with the strategic realities of the various theaters of war and allowed various commanders to think on their feet accordingly in terms of pursuing their objectives. Further, he made a compelling case to the War Council that the Midlands were the true objective of the war and if the Confederates could be held off in southern Pennsylvania through winter, then a massive offensive into Kentucky the following spring could rapidly break Confederate morale and warmaking capabilities. "The key to defeating the enemy," Bliss wrote in a memorandum, "is to thrust through the heartland of their industry, a belt from Louisville on the Ohio through the central Cumberland Valley all the way to the transportation key at Chattanooga and on to grand Atlanta herself."
Similar actions were taken navally, where the various squadrons of the Navy were organized into two commands, Atlantic under William Sims and Pacific under Henry Mayo. Both would report directly to Austin Knight, who was designated as Chief of Naval Operations not long thereafter..."
- American Charlemagne: The Trials and Triumphs of Charles Evans Hughes
I dunno. I know this book is intentionally written to be very pro-Hughes but I think firing Herrick would actually boost morale not lower it. The men in uniform, especially the officer corps, aren't dumb - they know how bad Herrick is. Firing him sends a message that rank incompetence and buddy-buddy patronage won't be tolerated now that the guns are firing. I know things are chaotic right now but it also seems like this is the apex of Confederate advances in the East so things are going to settle down soon. Getting Herrick out of the War Department is a top priority.
aw yeah
it's cooler that the commanding generals were alive during the Civil war.which I guess is really just how time works but it adds a level of karma to whats about to happen.
curious whats going on with Peter Hanover hains ? In our timeline he was the only soilder who fought in the civil war and ww1.althrough he was purely an engineer in the latter .
on that point some 60 plus year old civil war veterans asked Wilson to serve in ww1 but he refused them.
in this timeline due to the emergency being on American soil maybe there services are taken?
but anways great chapter loved it
.it's both a shame and really great you haven't gone into real history writing .
it's cooler that the commanding generals were alive during the Civil war.which I guess is really just how time works but it adds a level of karma to whats about to happen.
curious whats going on with Peter Hanover hains ? In our timeline he was the only soilder who fought in the civil war and ww1.althrough he was purely an engineer in the latter .
on that point some 60 plus year old civil war veterans asked Wilson to serve in ww1 but he refused them.
in this timeline due to the emergency being on American soil maybe there services are taken?
but anways great chapter loved it
.it's both a shame and really great you haven't gone into real history writing .
I went back and forth on how early Herrick gets the hook, tbh. My original plan was sometime in early 1914 but I’m def scooting that up to more of a compromise position between my two first ideas. One thing I’m trying to portray with Hughes is a man who is often reluctant to fire people and a man who, even if his biography skims over it, is perhaps too patient with others to a fault (as can be seen in the Niagara Conference)
But our buddy Myron is not long for his job, that much is certain
Well, most of these officers were children, even the oldest ones, but I take your point haha
Is that an OTL trait? Or one you've adapted here? I'm not complaining, just asking.
80-90% my invention, though based in part on what I’ve read about him elsewhere/other traits of his
The thing about him being a weirdo just researching his way to conclusions on what to do rather than asking other people is 100% true though
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