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I admit things are not going well for the CSA, but I do suspect things are going to worse overtime in a way you don't expect.

The near total mobilization it appears to be trying for has it's costs but one unexpected one for a lot of states that try it as weird as it sounds is the improvement of life for soldiers. By that once rationing and constant good meals appears improved the health of the lower class population in both central powers and entente did increase in a lot of states. The idea of going back to old way did not appeal to a lot of veterans in the places that one and as you can imagine in the places that lost led to vast rise in banditry given their skills, no good choices and their lives are worse than ever ect.

For the peace deal though I think as weird as it sound she CSA government might be vastly interested in a quick deal they could sign later on, the CSA I think the army will break before the CSA is conquered and the government is probably going to need some help putting down revolts or you know not being killed for signing a deal to try and preserve what's left of their state.
 
Waiting to see when the poor kids from the rural south are paid to serve instead of some rich kid and come home radicalized.
I'm sort of waiting to see which direction politically each of the losers go. Chile appears to be going far left, Brazil to the right, Mexico is *sort* of moving left??? and I guess the CSA to the right, though Long iOTL doesn't quite match either direction...
 
I'm sort of waiting to see which direction politically each of the losers go. Chile appears to be going far left, Brazil to the right, Mexico is *sort* of moving left??? and I guess the CSA to the right, though Long iOTL doesn't quite match either direction...
Chile: Slide to the Left
Brazil: Slide to the Right
CSA: Criss-cross!
 
I'm sort of waiting to see which direction politically each of the losers go. Chile appears to be going far left, Brazil to the right, Mexico is *sort* of moving left??? and I guess the CSA to the right, though Long iOTL doesn't quite match either direction...

Yeah, Long is definitely to the Left - though more of a Populist left than a Socialist left. So it will likely be pretty economically left while socially center or right (though in OTL Long showed some sympathy for the black population and included them in his projects, so we MIGHT see at least some work to help the freedmen. Though that could get interesting as I suspect that such a move would be politically unpopular and considering this ATL Long grew up in a CSA where slavery was still legal ... so we shall see). I'm actually really excited to see the Era of the Kingfish of the Lodge (though he will likely be getting a different nickname in this ATL - Kingfish of the Lodge was a reference to the radio program Amos and Andy and I can't imagine that that show exists in this ATL or, if it does, that it will be popular south of the Ohio) and how it develops.
 
it had been the Hero of Ha Long riding beside the Emperor in the Triomphe Orientale, well on his way to ascending the ladders of French power and groomed from the mighty office of Cabinet Secretary [1]
[1] My invention; sort of a chief of staff or COO for the whole of French Cabinet, serving as a right hand for the Prime Minister and go-between between him and the Eaglet. That Courbet (in a minor retcon) held this portfolio and Naval Ministry at the same time made him profoundly powerful before he replaced MacMahon in the top job
Actually, that is pretty much what Rouher's job was as "Minister of State" (Ministre d'état) in 1863-1869.

[3] No, Georges Boulanger building a deep state of Ligue-ists (How would I say this in French?)
"Un état dans l'état" (a state within the state) perhaps.
 
I really feel for the poor guy who's gonna be elected in 1915. Feels like it is better than even money he won't serve out his full term due to some sort of political violence.

Also, I like how the CSA has revised its goals downward. From "complete domination of North America, especially the Caribbean" to "hey, maybe we should have ratified Bliss-Blackburn after all!"
Shoulda taken that deal!
Forgot that Lenihan had prior successes. Makes me hope (though the author has decided otherwise) that Lenihan would be the one headed through Atlanta to the sea. As an additional note, I can't see the US Army contracting after the GAW nearly to the same level as it did after OTL WWI, so hopefully he won't lose his General's star as he did iOTL (not due to anything he did wrong, just due to shrinkage of the military)

Also, I'm still thinking of where the treaty that ends the USA/CSA portion of the war should be negotiated/signed. Would the US go full Foch's Railway car (Compiègne Wagon) and go for Havana? If not, I think Madrid and San Juan might be candidates. Unfortunately, I doubt the USA and CSA would be going back to Niagara given some of the notes about the area in flashforward.
No, definitely not the kind of drawdown we had OTL - gotta be ready for any funny business from not just the CSA but Mexico, too. The coming botching of demobilization will persuade policymakers that maybe having a decently-sized standing army is a good thing after all, too. (Obviously, this has major impacts on where Army and Air Force bases are eventually sited across the US)
Every time someone says "Atlanta" General Sherman vaporizes a Confederate in hell.
As he damn well should
Im sure it was discussed earlier in the thread but i cant for the life of me remember. In terms of military uniforms what are we looking at ITTL? Are the US and CS still defined by the colors they wear? or have they moved to more muted colors more like the US uniforms in WW1?
I am also very much looking forward to the "finding out" stage of "f around and find out" coming to full fruition for the CSA x'D
Good question!

My thinking, tbh, was that there's less definition around their colors/uniforms. The US probably wears some kind of muted blue or muted khaki as in WW1 and the CSA probably has shifted from their butternut of the ACW to something more like German Feldgrau. So you'd notice a difference. Probably different helmets, too. (CSA being tight with France may have imported Adrian helmets, for instance, or at least used the general design as a jumping-off point)
Hi. Still catching on, getting to 1895.
So, on French politics under Napoléon IV in the 1880s and 1890s, a few more remarks.

I read that you had Freycinet as Foreign Minister during the Sino French war ITTL, being a moderate republican that eventually switched. While that's not impossible, I don't think it natural.
I don't know much on Freycinet, except that he was an engineer by trade, and his political carreer had basically begun as a helping hand to Gambetta in his efforts organizing French resistance and efforts after Sedan. Without Gambetta and without the war happening as badly as it did IOTL, I surmise Freycinet would not have had the occasion to rise above the fray and he have probably stayed in either an administrative office or landed at some private job.

The thing, given the repressive turn of 1867 ITTL and then the corporatist, proto integralist constitution of Napoléon IV, there is no much room left for the republican or liberal opposition to be coopted. Basically anyone who was a republican before 1848, who remembered the days of the Second Republic or was born early enough to be a student and radicalize with republican ideas under Napoléon III (so any republican, moderate or republican born before 1850), would not have gone along with either "Les Trois" or Napoléon IV TTL project. They would have gone with the OTL parliamentarian system set up by the constitution of 1870 under Ollivier (when Ollivier negotiated the formation of his government, Gambetta was sounded out and rather than rejecting it, was "open" to it, though that meant he demanded the powerful Interior Ministry ) if it had survived the 1870 war, but the authoritarian system under Les Trois, and the powerless parliament under Napoléon IV, would have been anathema to republicans, even those decried as "opportunistic" (coined by the radical republicans I believe, but that should be understood as "pragmatic"). Their participation would have required some political concessions, not empty ones, I think. You might have looked to the OTL program of Belleville for instance, Gambetta's plank for 1869 elections.

Instead, for Napoléon IV, I would have looked more towards conservative-liberal monarchists, especially Orléanists. Broglie, which you briefly mention as having occupied several positions, Decazes, or even Gramont if still alive (a carreer diplomat, and not utterly discredited by the war of 1870 ITTL), each of them serving at the Quai d'Orsay at some point IOTL, either under Napoléon III or MacMahon, and also all dukes. Otherwise, on more domestic matters, after Rouher, I would like into figures among the OTL monarchists and bonapartists that eventually rallied the republic in the late 1880s or 1890s, like Mackau or Bardi de Fourtou, or among those who supported the wannabe Boulanger putsch.



Unless Napoléon IV reinstated them, France did not have any property requirements since the overthrow of the July Monarchy in 1848. The Order Party under Thiers had though replaced it with a more permicious requirement on residency that eliminated a third of the electoral corps in 1850 (you needed to reside in the same place for three years to be able to vote, so if were an itinerant worker looking for job from a city to another...); that law had been a pretext used by Napoléon III to launch his coup the next year, reinstating universal male suffrage. Universal male suffrage subsisted under the Second Empire, though it was "guided" with the "Official candidacy" system. There was even secret ballot, from what I could gather, enshrined in the 1848 constitution, and though Napoléon III considered removing it, he ultimately kept it, though in its application, I read it was anything but thorough.


On the Panama scandal also, Eiffel's scapegoating seems logical. I'd say it would be even more logical, considering that Lesseps was a relative, albeit distant, of Dowager Empress Eugénie, and putting too much blame on his shoulders could have tainted Eugénie and through her, Napoléon IV. I don't recollect reading much on Lesseps' connection with Eugénie, and I guess harsh press censorship could have avoided it, but did you use that plotline in any way? I just think the connection is too tempting to make for the regime opponents to use it against Napoléon IV and the imperial regime.
That's sad for Eiffel in this TL though, since the whole scandal stemmed from Lesseps' stubborn refusal to budge from a sea level canal and the technical issues with it that were near impossible to overcome, leading to financing issues and schemes that brought about the OTL scandal, while Eiffel, an engineer by trade, advocated for locks, like would be done by the Americans not long after, but arrived in the project far too late to save it. In a thread of mine, I even discussed the possibility of removing Lesseps from the picture (getting conveniently dead), giving the reins of the project to Eiffel from the beginning, giving a working canal in the 1890s, and no scandal.
Hard to retcon at this point, but since I skimp a bit over the French Cabinets of the 1880s/90s I'd imagine Decazes, Gramont et al all have a number of roles in such governments, perhaps especially once its Courbet's turn at the wheel after 1893. You'll see some familiar Boulangist names get thrown about pretty soon, based on where you're at in the narrative.
I admit things are not going well for the CSA, but I do suspect things are going to worse overtime in a way you don't expect.

The near total mobilization it appears to be trying for has it's costs but one unexpected one for a lot of states that try it as weird as it sounds is the improvement of life for soldiers. By that once rationing and constant good meals appears improved the health of the lower class population in both central powers and entente did increase in a lot of states. The idea of going back to old way did not appeal to a lot of veterans in the places that one and as you can imagine in the places that lost led to vast rise in banditry given their skills, no good choices and their lives are worse than ever ect.

For the peace deal though I think as weird as it sound she CSA government might be vastly interested in a quick deal they could sign later on, the CSA I think the army will break before the CSA is conquered and the government is probably going to need some help putting down revolts or you know not being killed for signing a deal to try and preserve what's left of their state.
So your prediction, as I understand it, is something like the 1917 French mutinies, had those gone much worse?
Waiting to see when the poor kids from the rural south are paid to serve instead of some rich kid and come home radicalized.
AKA the Future Kingfish Voter Express!
Chile: Slide to the Left
Brazil: Slide to the Right
CSA: Criss-cross!
Bahahahaha that is amazing
 
What is the state-by-state status of slavery in the CSA? I remember the manumission laws and the ban on free Blacks living in certain states, but have any abolished it completely?
 
What is the state-by-state status of slavery in the CSA? I remember the manumission laws and the ban on free Blacks living in certain states, but have any abolished it completely?
Slavery is legal everywhere; there are more slaves and free blacks the further South you get. By 1915 it’s probably not practical to still have unilateral laws against free black residence anywhere but their rights as citizens are next to nonexistent and it’s not hard to get “re-bonded” if you know what I mean
 
Can you please give Napoleon V something good? Like his all his daughters (Biological or Not) being Daddy's little girls and loving their father more than their mother?!
We know Helmtrud will outlive her husband and then badmouth him, and history will scorn Napoleon V!! So please at least give him daughters who love him!!!!
 
Can you please give Napoleon V something good? Like his all his daughters (Biological or Not) being Daddy's little girls and loving their father more than their mother?!
We know Helmtrud will outlive her husband and then badmouth him, and history will scorn Napoleon V!! So please at least give him daughters who love him!!!!
His kids aren’t getting the Romanov girls treatment, if that’s what you’re worried about
 
His kids aren’t getting the Romanov girls treatment, if that’s what you’re worried about
No. Not worried about that. I just would like the idea of his kids loving and defending their dad reputation long after his death!
I would also really love a scenario where all or some of the girls shun Helmtrud out of love and duty to Napoleon V!!!!!
 
Hi. Still catching on, getting to 1895.
So, on French politics under Napoléon IV in the 1880s and 1890s, a few more remarks.

I read that you had Freycinet as Foreign Minister during the Sino French war ITTL, being a moderate republican that eventually switched. While that's not impossible, I don't think it natural.
I don't know much on Freycinet, except that he was an engineer by trade, and his political carreer had basically begun as a helping hand to Gambetta in his efforts organizing French resistance and efforts after Sedan. Without Gambetta and without the war happening as badly as it did IOTL, I surmise Freycinet would not have had the occasion to rise above the fray and he have probably stayed in either an administrative office or landed at some private job.

The thing, given the repressive turn of 1867 ITTL and then the corporatist, proto integralist constitution of Napoléon IV, there is no much room left for the republican or liberal opposition to be coopted. Basically anyone who was a republican before 1848, who remembered the days of the Second Republic or was born early enough to be a student and radicalize with republican ideas under Napoléon III (so any republican, moderate or republican born before 1850), would not have gone along with either "Les Trois" or Napoléon IV TTL project. They would have gone with the OTL parliamentarian system set up by the constitution of 1870 under Ollivier (when Ollivier negotiated the formation of his government, Gambetta was sounded out and rather than rejecting it, was "open" to it, though that meant he demanded the powerful Interior Ministry ) if it had survived the 1870 war, but the authoritarian system under Les Trois, and the powerless parliament under Napoléon IV, would have been anathema to republicans, even those decried as "opportunistic" (coined by the radical republicans I believe, but that should be understood as "pragmatic"). Their participation would have required some political concessions, not empty ones, I think. You might have looked to the OTL program of Belleville for instance, Gambetta's plank for 1869 elections.

Instead, for Napoléon IV, I would have looked more towards conservative-liberal monarchists, especially Orléanists. Broglie, which you briefly mention as having occupied several positions, Decazes, or even Gramont if still alive (a carreer diplomat, and not utterly discredited by the war of 1870 ITTL), each of them serving at the Quai d'Orsay at some point IOTL, either under Napoléon III or MacMahon, and also all dukes. Otherwise, on more domestic matters, after Rouher, I would like into figures among the OTL monarchists and bonapartists that eventually rallied the republic in the late 1880s or 1890s, like Mackau or Bardi de Fourtou, or among those who supported the wannabe Boulanger putsch.



Unless Napoléon IV reinstated them, France did not have any property requirements since the overthrow of the July Monarchy in 1848. The Order Party under Thiers had though replaced it with a more permicious requirement on residency that eliminated a third of the electoral corps in 1850 (you needed to reside in the same place for three years to be able to vote, so if were an itinerant worker looking for job from a city to another...); that law had been a pretext used by Napoléon III to launch his coup the next year, reinstating universal male suffrage. Universal male suffrage subsisted under the Second Empire, though it was "guided" with the "Official candidacy" system. There was even secret ballot, from what I could gather, enshrined in the 1848 constitution, and though Napoléon III considered removing it, he ultimately kept it, though in its application, I read it was anything but thorough.


On the Panama scandal also, Eiffel's scapegoating seems logical. I'd say it would be even more logical, considering that Lesseps was a relative, albeit distant, of Dowager Empress Eugénie, and putting too much blame on his shoulders could have tainted Eugénie and through her, Napoléon IV. I don't recollect reading much on Lesseps' connection with Eugénie, and I guess harsh press censorship could have avoided it, but did you use that plotline in any way? I just think the connection is too tempting to make for the regime opponents to use it against Napoléon IV and the imperial regime.
That's sad for Eiffel in this TL though, since the whole scandal stemmed from Lesseps' stubborn refusal to budge from a sea level canal and the technical issues with it that were near impossible to overcome, leading to financing issues and schemes that brought about the OTL scandal, while Eiffel, an engineer by trade, advocated for locks, like would be done by the Americans not long after, but arrived in the project far too late to save it. In a thread of mine, I even discussed the possibility of removing Lesseps from the picture (getting conveniently dead), giving the reins of the project to Eiffel from the beginning, giving a working canal in the 1890s, and no scandal.
I suppose the defection of men like Freycinet would make more sense. They did fit the mold of Opportunist Republicans of being pragmatic but also essentially liberal as opposed to radical like Gambetta and his allies. Plus Ferry is literally the head of the faction and from what I gather the man was pretty moderate to conservative; even his educational reforms were somewhat watered down.
 
No. Not worried about that. I just would like the idea of his kids loving and defending their dad reputation long after his death!
I would also really love a scenario where all or some of the girls shun Helmtrud out of love and duty to Napoleon V!!!!!

I get what you're saying - it's just a way to humanise Nappy V a bit more. Like, we get the historical consensus that the guy with a bit of a neurotic, weak willed idiot who shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the power that a French Emperor.

But it would be kind of sweet to learn that one of his GOOD traits is that he's a very attentive and loving Dad who did a good job raising his children.
 
I suppose the defection of men like Freycinet would make more sense. They did fit the mold of Opportunist Republicans of being pragmatic but also essentially liberal as opposed to radical like Gambetta and his allies. Plus Ferry is literally the head of the faction and from what I gather the man was pretty moderate to conservative; even his educational reforms were somewhat watered down.
Except that Gambetta was not a Radical, quite the contrary, Gambetta was the figurehead of the "Opportunistic Republicans"; the Radicals were the likes of Clemenceau and Pelletan.
The pragmatic/radical split happened in the 1870s over a difference of political strategy. Laying out a program of ambitious reforms, the Belleville program, under the Second Empire while you were far from power was one thing, but enacting them while in government was another quite different thing.

When the Belleville program was made, nobody would have expected Napoléon III's regime would crumble the next year, and that they would have the opportunity to carry it. But when it happened, what faced the Republicans was the reality that France was still a conservative country, with the countryside still attached to either Bonapartists or monarchists. And indeed, the 1870s, the entire presidencies of Thiers and MacMahon were characterized as a struggle between Republicans and Monarchists. That the republic won in the end was only due to Henri of Chambord's stubborn refusal to accept the tricolor flag, preventing any entente between the different monarchist factions; the constitutional laws were initially tailored to accomodate a restoration of the monarchy and the Wallon Amendment which explicitely declared a republican form of government was only voted into effect in 1875.
In all of this, Gambetta had the lucidity of concluding that only moderation could allow the Republicans to concile and ingratiate themselves to the rural masses, and allow the Third Republic to survive after its two predecessors, and so, from the many reforms they envisioned, they either dropped some or delayed them considerably. Radicals, Clemenceau the first, were however in complete opposition to this strategy, wanting everything at once. If there were some watering down in the education bill, it is to be understood in this particular context, of rural and catholic France, which this TL captures rather well I think; at the very least, after the Falloux Law, Ferry laid the solid foundation of a widespread secular education system outside of the Church's influcence, a small revolution in itself. It would not be until the Combes Ministry in the early 1900s that the Republicans felt entrenched safely enough, after the Boulanger crisis, the Panama scandal, and the Dreyfus affair, that they set out to enact a more openly anticlerical program.
To Gambetta's credit, the Third Republic lasted nearly 70 years. The current Fifth is only nearing its 65th birthday this year.
 
Battle of Hilton Head - Part I
"...reputation as a vain, glory-seeking publicity hound. While Hobson's brief tenure as a Congressman from his home state of Alabama had indeed seen him be one of the more flamboyantly press-friendly and photogenic politicians in the Confederacy and thus something of a minor celebrity, this reputation is wholly unearned. The arrogant nature of the Confederate military-political establishment atop both the Army and Congress that often threw caution to the wind and was convinced of its own superiority had never really plagued the more cautious Naval Department, and Hobson was, like his mentor and direct superior Admiral Washington, aware of the CSN's strengths and weaknesses in open combat. His command of the Combined Fleet in the events of late April and early May of 1915 certainly deserve scrutiny, but he had resisted calls to stage more assertive and risky operations and had appreciated the protection that the otherwise hawkish Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels had provided his officers over the prior two years. For that reason, it is not only scrutiny that Admiral Richmond Hobson warrants, but a fair analysis of why he made the choices he made both in the strategic context of the battle but also in the context of pragmatic and careful Confederate naval culture.

Hobson was well aware that while the Combined Fleet was the strongest naval force the United States had faced yet, it was still outgunned and he risked facing a considerably superior foe if he allowed the III Squadron to join up with Task Force C, which he still believed to be in the Caribbean in the vicinity of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands rather than where it really was just east of the Bahamas. Hobson's plan, a sound one based on the information he had available to him, was to place his Combined Fleet between the two American fleets to attempt to prevent their union and, ideally, defeat Belknap's III Squadron in detail after pushing it northeast, away from the Confederate coast. Hobson suspected (incorrectly) that Belknap's weapons stores would be depleted after his raids against Virginia Beach, Wilmington and now Charleston, and if he could press the enemy out into open seas he could either force it to have to go around his position, further south, or back to port if it were unwilling to face him. On paper, with the intelligence available to Hobson at that time about Murdock's own movements, it was not an entirely unsound plan.

The problem for Hobson of course was that Murdock's fleet was nowhere near the eastern Great Antilles anymore, but rather about fifty kilometers east of San Salvador Island in the Bahamas and headed north-northwest to intercept him. Confederate Sea Wolves in the Caribbean that had been following the Yankee vessels had either been sunk or lost sight of Murdock's formation, and Confederate radio-telegraphy communications at sea were of considerably lower quality than those of their American counterparts. This meant that Hobson, who figured he had about five days to sink Belknap's squadron or drive it back into a US port before Murdock appeared to ruin his plans, actually had about two..."

- Hell at Sea: The Naval Campaigns of the Great American War

"...the maneuver by Hobson up along the Florida coast brought him up to the port of Savannah a day after Belknap's raid against it, and once Belknap was confident he had the Confederate fleet in sight dispatched one of his submarines southwards to act as courier and report to Murdock in the Bahamas the forces that Hobson was at sail with. Belknap and his commanders had considered Hobson's likeliest goals in the battle and figured that he, as they would in his situation, would attempt to aggressively force a battle near Confederate shores where support could be found either from a wolfpack of submarines in wait or coastal artillery, or chase them out into high sea. Wanting to put off the first option for now, Belknap elected to draw Hobson out into the Atlantic and closer to US ports while letting Murdock position himself to capture Hobson from behind. Accordingly, when Hobson briefly sent two vessels into his supply base at Port Royal Sound halfway between Charleston and Savannah, he revealed where his supply stores were, and Belknap quickly sent another submarine to head to Murdock's approaching fleet and then lie in wait at Port Royal Roads, off the headland of Hilton Head Island.

Belknap's gambit began on April 26th, 1915, as he turned northeast near the state border of the Carolinas and steamed out to see, with Hobson in pursuit. The Confederate admiral was reluctant to force a battle in the mid-Atlantic in case of a late spring storm but nonetheless followed at a distance, reserving his ability to turn about and return to port if he needed to. On the 28th, Belknap, worried that Hobson was about to end his pursuit, maneuvered southeast suddenly, towards Bermuda. Hobson, confused, decided to follow, slowing down slightly but just enough to keep Belknap in view. At Bermuda, Belknap showed the flag to two very perplexed Royal Navy cruisers and asked to purchase refueling supplies in harbor, a request which neutral Britain begrudgingly accepted, as their telescopes showed only a small Confederate fleet in the distance. [1] Subsequently, on May 1st, 1915, Belknap sailed out of Bermuda and in the direction of Hobson's fleet, attempting to force it southwards. This operation was successful, with a limited exchange of fire in what is known as the Bermuda Skirmish, done less than a hundred kilometers from the island's shore.

Hobson was convinced at this point that Belknap's run for Bermuda was a trick meant to lure him into a trap at sea and after disengaging from his quarry immediately steamed westwards, concerned that he had burned precious time. His goal was to restock at Port Royal after a journey of slightly less than four days and then re-engage with Belknap, who he could see following him from just out of gun range to his north, and this time force a decisive fight somewhere along the coast after Belknap had gamely avoided giving Hobson what he wanted.

The Confederate-Brazilian Combined Fleet did not realize, however, that Murdock had moved his formations - in three columns, commanded by himself, Admiral William Rodgers, and the newly-promoted Commander Franklin Roosevelt - to a point approximately a hundred kilometers off of Savannah, allowing him to rapidly respond to any movement by Hobson towards any of the three major ports in the area at Charleston, Savannah or Saint Augustine or, as it so happened, cut him off ahead of Port Royal Roads..."

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

[1] My understanding is that naval doctrine of the time was for neutral countries to be friendly to military vessels that arrived under the flag of peace to their ports, but I'm not sure. Anyways, they do it here.
 
So at least at this point in the story, the answer is that the Americans managed to pull off something very right rather than a massive error on the part of the Confederates. But there is still time...
 
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