DBWI: No Confederate military dictatorship

Ah yes, the Domestic Prisoner Labor Laws--turning convicts into essentially slaves. Combined with a failing legal system and a creative interpretation of legal rights that was both an admixture of religious and wartime tribunal, it was hailed as the way to kill two birds with one stone--fight crime and balance the CSA's Budget.

The fact that it included things like such common offenses as avoiding the liquer tax and bankruptcy made it even worse.
 

~The Doctor~

So, what was your opinion of the burning of Atlanta in 1915? Justified or unjustified?
 
So, what was your opinion of the burning of Atlanta in 1915? Justified or unjustified?
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Its a very difficult question to answer.

The Confederate Military Leadership had by this point deployed chemical weapons against the United States, and this would have been roughly about the time the Birmingham Brothers would have drawn massive reprisials from the military Junta.

The Union Positions in Georgia was not a good one in 1915--they had a small force that had arrived via ocean and frankly, they faced Serious Partisan activity in Atlanta. Georgia was the most dedicated state to slavery--the state that seceded first and the home state of three Confederate Presidents. The Union decision to burn the city is the same kind of tactics that the Union would have used in the 1860s where plans were drawn to demolish large portions of the South and make it howl.

Now these tactics were largely unneeded--by 1916 the Confederacy was little more than their Paramilitary organization, the Ku Klux Klan, and their government in Exile in Nicaragua. The Ferocity of the slaves to earn their freedom in that war was truly incredible--and the USA decision to fly in weapons and create a massive slave revolt is generally viewed as decisive.

That there was a high-intensity partisan war for twenty years afterward is in part because there was only one logical power that could safely be given power in the South--and that would be the Birmingham Brothers--hence why the 1920s had a large number of black governors and senators and why "Southern Rabble" is still viewed with such disdain today.
 
OOC: It's similar, but lots of differences: TR never becomes President, Canada is three countries not one (Maritime, Northwest and Canada dominions...suggestions for a better name for the Northwest dominion would be appreciated), democracy is restored in Mexico and it's strong enough to stand up to the CSA, the rematch between the US and CS takes place in 1876 and the US wins, etc....I may expand this into more of a timeline).

OOC: Borea?
 
.

Its a very difficult question to answer.

The Confederate Military Leadership had by this point deployed chemical weapons against the United States, and this would have been roughly about the time the Birmingham Brothers would have drawn massive reprisials from the military Junta.

The Union Positions in Georgia was not a good one in 1915--they had a small force that had arrived via ocean and frankly, they faced Serious Partisan activity in Atlanta. Georgia was the most dedicated state to slavery--the state that seceded first and the home state of three Confederate Presidents. The Union decision to burn the city is the same kind of tactics that the Union would have used in the 1860s where plans were drawn to demolish large portions of the South and make it howl.

Now these tactics were largely unneeded--by 1916 the Confederacy was little more than their Paramilitary organization, the Ku Klux Klan, and their government in Exile in Nicaragua. The Ferocity of the slaves to earn their freedom in that war was truly incredible--and the USA decision to fly in weapons and create a massive slave revolt is generally viewed as decisive.

That there was a high-intensity partisan war for twenty years afterward is in part because there was only one logical power that could safely be given power in the South--and that would be the Birmingham Brothers--hence why the 1920s had a large number of black governors and senators and why "Southern Rabble" is still viewed with such disdain today.

True enough. The CSA was on the ropes but it DID use chemical weapons against the US so it hard to see if it was justified or not.
 
Nicaragua

"and their government in Exile in Nicaragua"
Which one are you referring to here? The one made up of military officers that fled after the fall of Richmond during? Or the one made up of the civilian government that fled after the military coup? The second one was long protected by British interests in Nicaragua after the country reasserted it's independence from the Confederacy, and was instrumental in getting the transoceanic canal built there in response to the one the Unionists paid the Mexicans to build.
 
The Nicaragua situation was very complicated indeed. Admitted as the 13th state of the CSA (The "Indian State" was the 12th in what is now Oklahoma), even after Texas seceded, the whole thing was botched.

You must remember that the CSA was based on firmly racist principles, and was fully intended to be a slave state. By the Army Coup, the CSA's civilian government had already been discredited for its failure in the Centennial war. The Exiled Government is far from the angelic chorus you suggest--more racist laws and persecution of the natives followed their arrival. True, the Nicaraguan Canal was a boon for trade, but lets not kid ourselves--the French were intending to build one in Panama anyhow.

The Military Government fleeing the mainland during the siege of Miami (Don't worry, it only stayed in Miami for two months during the war, and the flight from Richmond was much more evocative.) and emerging as a vestigial government in what was now known as the Jefferson Republic is one of the real oddities of the world, very similar to Taiwan's situation with China--vast claims but no real support and a world that left them behind. Except that unlike Taiwan, the world doesn't want to do business with a country that still uses slave labor. A sad place for our age:(.
 
RE:

I certainly didn't mean to imply any praise for the Confederate Republic of Nicaragua: if they didn't need British protection to survive, the first exiled government would have legalized slavery in fact as well as deed. Once the second exiled government came and repeated history by launching a coup, slavery once again blemished the earth.
Anyway, no one's taken me up on my other question: what would it take for the Union to abandon democracy: I already mentioned Pope's attempted coup and Roosevelt's four unsuccessful bids for the Presidency (I mean Theodore by the way, his idiot nephew Franklin was lucky to walk away on two legs after praising the Italian fascist party in a debate with President Henry Wallace in the run-up for the 1940 election. No way he could have ever been President). The Greater Destiny movement, while never coalescing into a political party, wielded an extraordinary amount of power in US politics from 1878 (where they were created with a sense that the Union didn't take enough in the Centennial War) to their final defeat in the various Crises (plural because you had unrest in the newly occupied territories, Mexico, the soon to be Republique du Canada, Central America, the United States and just about everywhere but the Carribean) of the mid 30's. Personally, I shudder to think what would have happened if someone other than Lafollette was elected President in 1920...
 
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OOC: This is all extremely unlikely. The Union has had rough patches in its history--censorship is nothing new, and the Lincoln Election of 1864 had "supervised voting" in some regions. But it remained Democratic. I'll try to follow that line.

IC: The Federal System of American Democracy is stronger than you assume at first glance. To put it mildly, American Politics, even in the turbulent 1880s with a grossly enlarged army, still had democracy on many levels--city, state, and federal. Pope's "March on Washington" being called a coup attempt is probably inaccurate, although demanding the concessions that the Army gets veto powers over the Defense Secretary and control of its own defense spending could have weakened Democracy considerably. In the worst case, Pope weakens but doesn't break democracy.

TR is another odd case: Recall that the USA would become more and more tied to its business elite. A similar clique--a quasi-fundamentalist group called the Populists--attempted to create a state church and other things under William Jennings Bryan. TR, despite his rhetoric and his aggressive attitudes, probably would have kept democracy intact.

We need to remember that the USA very easily could have moved very left or very right in the 1890s and 1900s--but it probably would have remained a democracy. Someone needed to break Corporate Power, and La Follette was the man for the job, although privately I think TR probably would have been satisfactory. I would become concerned at the power of the Hanna political machine.

That's a particularly hard jab at someone attempting to play on the fame of TR! Franklin Roosevelt contracted Polio and essentially was too crippled to stand on two legs--nor did he ever become more than Mayor of New York City. That and the membership of the "Greater Destiny Movement" generally remained committed to democracy, although quasi-imperialist. It was an outgrowth of "Manifest Destiny" in the 1800s.

The US government was in no danger in most of these situations. The worst problem, actually, came later when Arnold Palmer came to lead the FBI and started cracking down on leftists who turned out to be innocent. The USA has had some rough times, but the fact that states MIGHT be able to secede and this had to be considered, as well as the fact that US politics has never been dominated by one particular group kept democracy working. In an odd way, the secession of the CSA had the effect of the federal government keeping a weaker role in the affairs of states--states might secede if they weren't happy with the outcome, and while secession didn't work out too well for the South, notice was duly served.

In this regard, a TR dictatorship would lead to the fragmentation of America. Or, much more likely, TR plays a much softer tune. This explains why the USA Federal Government continues operate quietly even to this day, and why we rely on State Guards and Localized forces. Its hard to imagine a Federalized Army, just like its hard to imagine a Federal Income Tax.
 
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