This is one of the best timelines on the site, but in OTL Longstreet converted to Catholicism in 1877.
Dixieland: The Country of Tomorrow, Everyday (yet another Confederate TL)
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This is one of the best timelines on the site, but in OTL Longstreet converted to Catholicism in 1877.
That is a possibility, though I'd expect him to be more sympathetic towards Catholics than most. Longstreet was not a particularly religious man until three of his children died of scarlet fever between January 25 and February 1 of 1862 and it was more than a month before the fourth child was out of danger.
Also, in OTL's 1897, Longstreet, who had been a widower for nearly a decade, remarried a woman 42 years younger than him.
This can still work, however; Rerum Novarum had been published in 1891 which broadly set out Catholic social teachings towards labor and society. So, Longstreet looking to that for inspirations for his reforms would work just as well.
Makes sense. ITL, he'd probably convert after leaving office or on his death-bed.
Anti-Catholicism isn't really a major feature of Confederate politics, so I don't think this would change much.
I know this is late but just wanted to point out how awesome the opening monologue is. It gives a nice psychological tragic feel.like the story has an actual moral lesson and theme.
Chapter 134 - The First and Second Battle of Tacna
The First and Second Battle of Tacna
As of the beginning of the third year of the war, Chile appeared victorious on all fronts. The Peru-Bolivian Army was in shambles, having totally collapsed in the Gran Chaco, losing huge swaths of territory to the surprise Ecuadorian entrance into the war, and having garrison after garrison surrender in the Atacama Desert. The Chilean military split into two camps - one of which favored a bold assault into Lima - the other which hoped to just seize the capital of Tacna and try to hold off any American reinforcements that would arrive to aid their beleaguered client state. At that point, it was seen as a huge mistake by the Americans to move the Peru-Bolivian capital to Tacna, because it meant that the Chileans didn't need to go very far to besiege the capital.
Landing north of the capital, the Chilean Army met the Peruvo-Bolivian Army in a notoriously one-sided confrontation. Corrupt American and Peruvo-Bolivian officers notoriously had sold off most of the shells for the Peruvo-Bolivian artillery - an early artillery duel devastated the Peruvo-Bolivian Army for hours before officers realized that most of the shells being launched at the Chileans were duds. The Peruvo-Bolivian military had been trained essentially in the American method of war, as perfected in the World War I, which relied on powerful logistical and medical systems, which simply allowed the Americans to overwhelm their opponents with constant artillery barrages and mass infantry assaults. After all, despite being technologically inferior, fielding almost entirely untrained conscripts, and not actually enjoying any numerical superiority, the American Army had famously broken the British Army at the Battle of Toledo, in what was widely seen as a global humiliation to the British.
The problem with the American way of war was that it fundamentally did not work with a country with a relatively corrupt and low morale officer corps, and in a poorer country without a deep pool of institutional knowledge on how to run complex logistics systems. The British sarcastically replied that every third American was an entrepreneur who spent their free time memorizing roads and counting beans. That was not the case in Peru-Bolivia, and as a result, the PBC Army, severely degraded already by constant Chilean artillery, completely collapsed after a disastrous charge. Out of 19,000 Chilean soldiers that marched on Tacna, 37 died. Out of roughly 18,000 PBC soldiers, an estimated 4,000 died in combat, of their wounds, or of disease, with another 5,000 captured.
A panic quickly ensued in the capital. Much of the leadership of the Peru-Bolivia Confederation, which were essentially corrupt yesmen to the United States, fled the capital with whatever valuables they could carry. Furious Peruvians attacked government officials as they fled. The situation would essentially be salvaged by a relatively low-ranked bureaucrat by the name of Guillermo Billinghurst, who led a small group of technocrats in organizing a civil defense of the city. Simply handing out guns to everyone who would take one and building barricades on every street, the provisional Peruvo-Bolivian government was determined to defend Tacna to the end. Although the Americans were scared of simply arming everyone, the situation was grave enough so Billinghurst's plan was approved. Chilean attempts to breach the city simply resulted in horrific losses on both sides, as superior Chilean artillery simply meant that Peruvian militias could fight in the rubble.
Given the terrible sanitary situation in Tacna - and the general belief that Chile needed to preserve its troops if American reinforcements showed up, it was decided to simply siege the city and allow it to starve. As a result, rampant disease raged across Tacna, killing tens of thousands. However, the city simply refused to surrender even as the death toll piled up - largely because it was quite easy for the leadership to hold out hope for American reinforcements. A set of large fortifications were dug around the city and also along the coasts, in preparation for an American landing.
The landing would eventually come - and unlike the first Battle of Tacna, the American way of war would actually at least partially work. Neither the Chilean Navy nor the American Pacific Fleet was actually eager to get into a pitched confrontation. The Americans were afraid severe navy losses would destroy their entire influence network on the Pacific Coast, while the Chileans feared that navy losses would jeopardize the largely successful Argentine front. The Chilean Navy was largely happy interdicting American shipping to make it harder for the Americans to resupply, largely evading American patrols.
American troops landing were able to engage Chilean fortifications, though most of the engagements were essentially bloody messes for both sides. Smart observers realized that the method of warfare in Tacna would be quickly mirrored in the future - the futility of Americans bombing and charging Chilean fixed fortifications - and then being forced out again by an equally costly Chilean counterattack meant almost no movement over months. Both sides would continually funneling reinforcements into the meat grinder. Over several months, the Tacna campaign would essentially see around 11,500 Chileans and Americans each killed (with significantly higher American wounded totals). In practice, the Americans took significantly higher casualties, but superior American medical care managed to keep deaths lower than expected.
Ultimately, the campaign would end in an Axis victory, as the Chileans simply took too many losses to maintain their siege of Tacna, even in spite of the constant reinforcements. Peruvo-Bolivian militia guerillas quickly filtered out of the city and began harassing Chilean supply lines, driving their logistic situation to a crisis. Realizing that the Chilean Army could not hold, a decision was made to retreat them back to Chile proper. The fear was that cut off from Chile proper by the Atacama Desert, the entire Chilean Army could be destroyed. In the last days of the campaign, the Chileans would make a dramatic evacuation. As far as evacuations went, it was largely seen as largely successful, except around 600 Chilean soldiers who stayed behind to help the others retreat (and were eventually killed or forced to surrender). Ironically, where Peru-Bolivian garrisons littered the Atacama, now Chilean garrisons littered the desert, hoping to inflict losses severe enough on the Americans to exit the war with control over the Atacama. Of course, the human costs in Tacna were beyond hideous, with Peru-Bolivia also needing now to draw manpower essentially far away from the front.
Going into the 1908 Presidential elections, the Beveridge Administration celebrated what appeared like a great victory - or at least a "turning point." However, their detractors pointed out that not only were American losses rather heavy, but that they hadn't actually managed to win the war. The Argentine front was still seen as an abject disaster, Ecuadorian forces were still occupying large swaths of northern Peru-Bolivia, and Brazil continued to appear like a hopeless morass, with Americans dying in mass numbers from ambushes and disease (the actual primary killer in the Brazil front for both sides).
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If this is what World War Two looks like, World War Three will be actual hell on Earth.
Hopefully that will be the last world war and we won’t have to worry about Albert Einstein’s predictions about World War IV coming true.
“I know not with what weapons World War IV will be fought, but World War V will be fought with sticks and stones.”
-TTL's Albert Einstein (assuming he exists)
Chapter 135 - The US Presidential Election of 1908
The US Presidential Election of 1908
The National Union Convention was always going to be a mess. The National Unionists had in many senses lost their identity. In theory, the National Unionists were the relatively more progressive party, drawing their support from yeomen farmers in the West, as well as the "Southern Unionist states", such as Kentucky, West Virginia, and Missouri. Indeed, another growing support base for the party was burgeoning Confederate neighborhoods in major industrial cities like Chicago, Buffalo, Milwaukee, and various random industrial and mill towns throughout the Northeast. However, the rise of Beveridge allowed the Republican Party to basically retain its hold on business-orientated and upper-class voters, as well as add in many progressives into their ranks.
What was left of the National Unionist party...was both some of the most right-wing and left-wing Americans out there. The conservative wing had been dealt a gruesome blow by Beveridge's landslide victory in 1904, but the sheen of Beveridge had significantly worn off to many, especially with regards to the increasingly unpopular war in Latin America. That being said, his domestic agenda was largely popular and he retained total support from most Republicans. The conservative wing quickly rallied behind Richard Olney, a well-known diplomat from Massachusetts who was one of the most high-profile critics of Beveridge's war. Opposing him from the left was the firebrand populist William Jennings Bryan, who shared his views on the war, but took them much further. The fighting between the two was furious and divided the National Unionists in half, causing many party elders to fear a party split in what essentially to them seemed like a winnable election.
After several rounds of balloting, and in one of the most dramatic moments of American political history, the well-known National Unionist governor of New York, William Randolph Hearst, waltzed into the convention, promising that if he were selected, he would entirely fund his own presidential race. This was exceedingly appealing to many populists, as they realized the party when run by populists tended to have a funding problem. After peeling off several delegates who had supported Olney for electability (aka funding) reasons, Hearst grew and grew in each round of balloting until he seized the required majority, after a last minute deal where he named Bryan as his running-mate. I also helped that New York was both a swing state and the largest state in the Union, which made the National Unionists feel good about their odds.
With two essentially extremely outspoken - and well-funded progressive populists running the campaign, both Beveridge and Hearst actually competed to see who could make more promises. In many ways, the progressive economic agenda was the "spirit of the ages", as it was an ethos essentially shared by both sides. If anything divided the two parties, it was essentially class and ethnicity. For example, both had a relatively bigoted but semi-positive (albeit it very patronizing) view of blacks - even as they affirmed the principles of intellectual white supremacy, the Republicans often depicted blacks as noble savages oppressed by "populist lynch mob violence", while the National Unionists often depicted them as "cheap labor exploited by bosses." Both took a negative view of Great Britain - but declared that they would maintain "peaceful commerce." Both promised to maintain current immigration policy. Both promised to maintain the current war, which actually alienated several supporters of the National Unionists.
In the end, the race was close. The critical swing vote was essentially actually immigrants, particular Germans and Scandinavians in the Midwest. Although fairly anti-war, the war issue didn't swing them when Hearst was also pro-war. Furthermore, they were generally happy with the booming economy, high wages, and generally successful progressive Republican state governments in the Midwest. In the end, they opted for four more years. Much to the shock of the Republicans, the National Unionists actually narrowly won the popular vote by a little less than one percent, even though the Republicans won the electoral college, 183-173. The tilting point state was Michigan, by only a third of a percent, which Republicans narrowly carried. Furthermore, the Republicans only won Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota by 1 point or less - these states combined for almost 50 electoral college votes.
That being said, Hearst still delivered one of the best National Unionist performances in their history. His generous spending, high-energy campaign, and ability to (work with Bryan to) rally both Westerners, Southerners, and big city workers delivered huge victories for the National Unionist party on the downballot, helping them take a large House majority, as well as come very close to a Senate majority (only one Senator off). This was seen as a unfortunate outcome by the Beveridge Administration, as the new National Unionist house speaker promised to demand concessions in exchange for war funding, causing many Republican Party elites to start questioning the war effort. Furthermore, although Hearst did bring them success, the National Unionist plunge among antiwar Midwesterners seemed to suggest to many that Hearst's attempt to out-hawk Beveridge had essentially cost him the election. Hearst and Bryan had essentially settled the issue of whether the National Unionists could win on progressive domestic policies - even if these two camps still debated the war.
Nice to see this TL back, and nice to see that US presidential elections ITTL are as dramatic as ever.
The Hearst/Bryan ticket was unexpected, but certainly interesting. Heart performed well at the national level here, I wonder if maybe Heart will try again in another four years and be the NU candidate to take back the White House? It would certainly add an interesting dynamic of how the media plays into foreign policy as Heart's own paper was one of the most popular rags in the US at the turn of the century. Could Heart essentially use his paper as a propaganda machine to promote his policies, as well as attack political enemies?
Honestly, I don't think I would've anticipated in a million years that Hearst actually ran for president. With the major divisions between the two main parties being class and ethnicity, with most ethos and policy overlapping, it wouldn't surprise me if he ran again in four years and won if he played his cards right. I agree that as Hearst's paper was very popular at the time, he could've leveraged it to promote his policies and attack political enemies. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if this creates a precedent where the presidency gradually gains more control of the media, which would be fascinating to explore in and of itself even if it felt more than a bit dystopic.