Fifty-Four Forty or Bite!
- Thread starter Thespitron 6000
- Start date
Thespitron 6000
Damn that was bloody, and disappointing.
Raglan managed to foul things up when a stout defence, which is what he would normally do probably, would have very likely won the day.
Harney's massacre will harden feeling and possibly especially in London where it's going to be harder for any appeasers to suggest putting up with US aggression. However its going to take a while to regroup and get reinforcements in. Britain can win a hell of a lot by crippling the US economy with a blockade and possibly raids, as well as success in the west but we really need to get the US out of the Canadian heartlands.
Hopefully the campaign will clear some of the dead-wood out. People like Lucan, Rokeby and Rowan coming to the fore.
I think you are about doubling the size of some of the units as I don't think regiments are ~4k in strength. [Could be wrong and a problem that regiments, in Britain anyway, had varying numbers of battalions. However generally I think 2-3 battalions of which one would be based at home for further recruiting].
Steve
Damn that was bloody, and disappointing.
Raglan managed to foul things up when a stout defence, which is what he would normally do probably, would have very likely won the day. Harney's massacre will harden feeling and possibly especially in London where it's going to be harder for any appeasers to suggest putting up with US aggression. However its going to take a while to regroup and get reinforcements in. Britain can win a hell of a lot by crippling the US economy with a blockade and possibly raids, as well as success in the west but we really need to get the US out of the Canadian heartlands.
Hopefully the campaign will clear some of the dead-wood out. People like Lucan, Rokeby and Rowan coming to the fore.
I think you are about doubling the size of some of the units as I don't think regiments are ~4k in strength. [Could be wrong and a problem that regiments, in Britain anyway, had varying numbers of battalions. However generally I think 2-3 battalions of which one would be based at home for further recruiting].
Steve
67th Tigers
Banned
In 1848 a British Regiment was about 1,200 strong (the 6 regiments with more than 1 battalion had each Bn of this strength). On campaign they'd usually be about 800-1,000 strong. In wartime usually each regiment would establish a 2nd Bn.
A US regular regiment had an establishment of ca. 500, expanding to 1,000 at war (which was rarely achieved even on paper). On campaign they'd be around 3-400 strong, and a brigade was usually around 1,000. Such of this was to do with the fact that the US Army was primarily a mercernary one, dominated by "filthy catholics" from Ireland, Germany and those of such stock. No WASP American wanted anything to do with them. As such the regular army deserted heavily whenever there was the opportunity and had a habit of shooting their own officers if they got the chance.
There were 12 US Infantry Regiments, 8 with 10 coys (1st-8th US Infantry) and 4 with 8 coys (1st-4th US Artillery). The "artillery battalions" were usually better and more reliable infantry, being much more "American" than the Infantry. There were also 3 mounted infantry regiments (1st and 2nd US Dragoons and US Mounted Rifles). The rest of the artillery were, on paper, organised as batteries, although only 4 of the 8 had guns in 1848 (each 4x 6 pdr), three had been reequipped in Mexico with captured Mexican guns, but they left them behind and reverted to training depots on their return.
You can expect the following provided by the states:
Alabama: 1 regiment
Arkansas: 1 regiment
Georgia: 1 regiment
Illinois: 4 regiments
Indiana: 2 regiments
Kentucky: 3 regiments
Louisiana: 1 regiment and the rather useful Washington Artillery
Maryland and DC: 1 regiment
Massachusetts: 1 regiment
Michigan: 1 regiment
Mississippi: 1 regiment
Missouri: 1 regiment
New Jersey: 1 regiment
New York: 1 regiment
North Carolina: 1 regiment
Ohio: 3 regiments
Pennsylvania: 2 regiments
South Carolina: 1 regiment
Tennessee: 1 regiment
Texas: 1 regiment
Virginia: 1 regiment
which is their 1846-8 historical mobilisation level.
It gets worse.
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June - July 1849: Scott’s army is hammered after the battles of mid-June. He decides to wait before pursuing the British Army; his own army needs several weeks to recuperate, and to rearm. Scott makes his camp east of Quebec, prepared to move against Raglan should he show signs of going on the offensive.
The disaster at the Chaudiere triggers a political crisis in both Britain and Canada that has been brewing for months. The Whigs, the ruling party in Parliament, are divided on a number of issues, and Lord Russell, the Prime Minister, has not been handling things well. His Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, is given to exceeding his brief; much of the Oregon Crisis of 1847 and 1848 was due to his actions, and Russell lacks the personal strength to rein him in. Further, the ongoing Potato Famine in Ireland is a continuing humanitarian disaster that the Whig government seems incapable of controlling.
Now Raglan’s collapse at the Chaudiere has sparked off a general crisis, as Robert Peel and his Peelite Conservatives use the defeat to cudgel the Whigs for incompetence. It is clear to Russell, Palmerston, and Fox Maule, the Secretary of State for War, that in order for the Whig government to survive, Raglan must go. Aside from the obvious political considerations, Raglan has proven himself an incompetent commander. Someone else must take over the army in Canada. But who?
A few members of the Cabinet put forward the idea of the Duke of Wellington, warhorse of the British Army and Commander-In-Chief. However, the Duke is 81 years old, and retired. Sending him across the Atlantic to Canada to fight in frigid weather seems almost cruel to Russell and Maule.
The logical candidates are either Lucan or Rowan. Both have seen the entire campaign so far, both are experienced fighting the Americans, and both are vigorous, competent commanders. Lucan has political connections in London, while Rowan has longer service in both the Army and in Canada. Ultimately, it is decided that Rowan shall serve as Commander-in-Chief of North America, while Lucan shall serve as Commander of the British Army encamped at Saint-Denis, directly answerable to Rowan. In addition, Maule is disturbed by reports of the prevalence of fieldworks and earthworks in the campaign so far. He suggests sending a regiment of military engineers to Canada, as a response. Their commander will be General John Fox Burgoyne, who has been serving as Inspector-General of Fortifications, and is eager to try out some new theories on the battlefield.
Lucan, meanwhile, is attempting to restore order out of chaos. The Royal Navy is having great success chasing Matthew Perry’s flotilla from the Labrador coast, and hope to link up with the British Army in the interior--except there is no army to link up with. It will be at least a month before Lucan is prepared for any sort of engagement, and he desperately needs more troops. The political situation in London makes reinforcements nearly impossible at the present. Lucan will have to wait.
In the United States, people are amazed at a new invention called the “telegraph”. Although Samuel Morse first perfected the device in 1844, it has only slowly spread throughout the East Coast during the past five years. Now, however, a connected line runs from Buffalo to Savannah. News can be sent from the Canadian border to President Cass at the White House in a matter of minutes; indeed, this is how Cass first hears of the American victory at the Chaudiere. Newspaper readers in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Charleston are fascinated to read reports from the battlefield only two days after the Chaudiere is concluded. The New York Herald speculates that in the future, newspaper reporters might accompany armies on campaign, wiring back news reports on offensives as they occur. Most of the Herald’s letters column regards this idea as an amusing fantasy.
Politically, the South continues to be restless. The Wide-Awakes and similar groups conduct acts of sabotage and vandalism throughout the South, including lynching of free blacks in states like Maryland. The slavery bills floating in Congress show no sign of a resolution; President Cass and other Democrats have no good options, and mostly hope the crisis will play out to a reasonable solution if left alone. If nothing particularly inflammatory occurs, they might get their wish.
July 26, 1849: A Thursday. As night falls over Charleston, South Carolina, things are relatively quiet. The summer heat is intense; most people are indoors, sleeping and trying to avoid mosquitoes.
John Brown has traveled the nine hundred miles from Springfield, Massachusetts to Charleston over the past several weeks. Accompanying him are twenty of his followers, including three of his sons. Six of the men are free blacks, one is an escaped slave.
Brown has decided that tonight is the night. He will attempt to rouse a general slave revolt in Charleston by force of arms, come what may. His target is the Custom House on Broad Street, which serves as a post office and mercantile. It is also one of the major slave-trading sites in the city.
Under cover of darkness, Brown and his followers overpower the guards and take control of the Custom House. Brown sends two of his free black followers, who know Charleston, to rouse the slaves.
The slaves, unfortunately for Brown, do not rise up. The local militia, on the other hand, is on the scene within an hour. What follows is a four hour shootout between Brown and the militia. Brown and his remaining sons (one has already been killed) barricade themselves, along with the remainder of their men and six slaves they have liberated from a holding pen near the rear of the Custom House, on the top floor of the building. There is no way for them to escape; nor is there any way for the militia to breach Brown’s barricade without taking heavy losses.
July 27, 1849: Brown and his followers are still barricaded on the top floor of the Custom House in Charleston. One of Brown’s sons has been killed, as have two of Brown’s white followers and one of his free black followers. The commander of the local militia orders his men to stay well away from the Custom House. Brown reads this as a kind of success; in truth, the commander is waiting for instructions from Charleston Mayor Thomas Hutchinson and Governor Whitemarsh Seabrook. At a little after noon, instructions from Seabrook arrive: the militia is to take the Custom House at any cost. If possible, Brown is to be taken alive.
The militiamen storm the upper story and within a matter of minutes, capture Brown and his followers. Six militiamen are killed. Brown is taken to the local prison, and kept separate from the remainder of his people. Mayor Hutchinson remarks to the militia commander, “That man is going to end in a hanging, either by his hand or someone else’s. There is no helping it.”
With Brown now captured, Charleston breathes a collective sigh of relief. Their relief is short-lived. At sundown, word comes that slaves in the small town of Darlington, South Carolina, hearing of Brown’s raid and assuming its success, have risen up. In fact, the rising is small, a few dozen slaves, and easily put down by the white residents of Darlington. But fear of a general slave uprising begins to spread throughout South Carolina, and over the borders into North Carolina, Georgia, and ultimately into Alabama and Mississippi.
Letters and telegraphs from Southern politicians pour into Washington, demanding that President Cass and the Army return Southern volunteer regiments from the North to secure the South against a slave revolt. Cass, examining the reports he has received from Charleston and elsewhere, reasonably concludes that there is little chance of a general revolt. He politely but firmly turns down Southern requests for an increase in volunteer presence. The regiments are needed in Canada, he replies to several Southern senators. This does little to assuage Southern fears.
August 2, 1849: It has taken time, but word of Brown’s raid and the slave revolt in Darlington has flowed up the telegraph and reaches Scott’s encampment at Quebec. Scott, himself a Virginian, is sympathetic to Southern fears, but has also received orders that he is not to release any of his Southern volunteer regiments. There is a war to fight, after all. Scott himself continues his plans to move against Raglan (actually Rowan) within the week.
August 3, 1849: Rumors of slave revolts in the South have spread like wildfire throughout Scott’s army. Col. Jefferson Davis approaches Scott. Davis is the commander of the 1st Mississippi Rifles, a volunteer unit that has already served in Canada longer than its contracted one year, and is himself a slaveholder. Davis is aware that his men are already frustrated that they have been kept longer than the allotted one year; this has been a minor point of contention between himself and Scott for the past two months. Davis served in Mexico with honors, and considers himself a proud American--but also a proud Mississippian. He tells Scott that he and his unit are required to return to Mississippi to defend against slave revolts, and asks for Scott to release them from their current duties. Most of Davis’ officers--and many of Scott’s--are slaveholders, and fear possible loss of what they consider to be their property.
Scott, characteristically, refuses. Although Scott is sympathetic to the men’s complaints about the continuation of their volunteer contracts, and has offered to negotiate an extension, he has read the same reports as Cass and regards a possible slave uprising as a fairytale. Davis and his men are needed in Canada. Period.
August 4, 1849: This typical high-handedness from Scott may make him a good commander on the battlefield, but it makes him a poor politician, at least at the present time. Davis’s friend, Robert E. Lee, approaches Scott on Davis’s behalf, hoping to smooth troubled waters. Lee has risen in Scott’s esteem since Quebec; recently he was brevetted to the rank of full colonel, and Scott has hinted at a possible promotion to generalship in the future.
Lee is more soft-spoken than Davis; he is no abolitionist but has no great love for slavery. He is well liked by Scott. These qualities make him an ideal emissary for Davis. Scott tells him about the reports from Charleston, and Lee agrees that a general revolt seems unlikely. But, Lee argues, Davis is not considering facts, he is considering emotion. The people of Mississippi are scared; the presence of Mississippi soldiers standing guard on Mississippi plantations would make things a little calmer, a little less explosive.
Scott, for his part, cannot believe what he is hearing. He informs Lee, kindly but intensely, that he is within a hair’s breadth of crushing the British in Canada. All he needs is a few more weeks.
Lee thinks about this, and tells Scott that he genuinely wishes Scott would get his few more weeks. But, he warns, Davis is not the only Southern commander who wants to return home.
“And what about you?” asks Scott, as Lee makes to leave the tent.
“Sir, I would gladly fight and die for Virginia, but I will fight and die for America first,” says Lee, and smiles as he finishes, “Just don’t make me fight against Virginia.”
“Colonel Lee,” replies Scott, “it won’t come to that.”
---------------------------------
NB: Jeff Davis was wounded in Mexico and returned to Mississippi to become a Senator OTL. ATL that wound never happened, Davis continued to serve as an officer during the resolution of the Mexican American War, and the 1st Mississippi Rifles were reconstituted in early 1848 to serve in a possible Canadian invasion. Their terms of enlistment would have run out in April-May, 1849. Rowan actually did ascend to C-in-C of NA in 1849 OTL; of course, there was no war then.
Your thoughts?
----------------------------------
June - July 1849: Scott’s army is hammered after the battles of mid-June. He decides to wait before pursuing the British Army; his own army needs several weeks to recuperate, and to rearm. Scott makes his camp east of Quebec, prepared to move against Raglan should he show signs of going on the offensive.
The disaster at the Chaudiere triggers a political crisis in both Britain and Canada that has been brewing for months. The Whigs, the ruling party in Parliament, are divided on a number of issues, and Lord Russell, the Prime Minister, has not been handling things well. His Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, is given to exceeding his brief; much of the Oregon Crisis of 1847 and 1848 was due to his actions, and Russell lacks the personal strength to rein him in. Further, the ongoing Potato Famine in Ireland is a continuing humanitarian disaster that the Whig government seems incapable of controlling.
Now Raglan’s collapse at the Chaudiere has sparked off a general crisis, as Robert Peel and his Peelite Conservatives use the defeat to cudgel the Whigs for incompetence. It is clear to Russell, Palmerston, and Fox Maule, the Secretary of State for War, that in order for the Whig government to survive, Raglan must go. Aside from the obvious political considerations, Raglan has proven himself an incompetent commander. Someone else must take over the army in Canada. But who?
A few members of the Cabinet put forward the idea of the Duke of Wellington, warhorse of the British Army and Commander-In-Chief. However, the Duke is 81 years old, and retired. Sending him across the Atlantic to Canada to fight in frigid weather seems almost cruel to Russell and Maule.
The logical candidates are either Lucan or Rowan. Both have seen the entire campaign so far, both are experienced fighting the Americans, and both are vigorous, competent commanders. Lucan has political connections in London, while Rowan has longer service in both the Army and in Canada. Ultimately, it is decided that Rowan shall serve as Commander-in-Chief of North America, while Lucan shall serve as Commander of the British Army encamped at Saint-Denis, directly answerable to Rowan. In addition, Maule is disturbed by reports of the prevalence of fieldworks and earthworks in the campaign so far. He suggests sending a regiment of military engineers to Canada, as a response. Their commander will be General John Fox Burgoyne, who has been serving as Inspector-General of Fortifications, and is eager to try out some new theories on the battlefield.
Lucan, meanwhile, is attempting to restore order out of chaos. The Royal Navy is having great success chasing Matthew Perry’s flotilla from the Labrador coast, and hope to link up with the British Army in the interior--except there is no army to link up with. It will be at least a month before Lucan is prepared for any sort of engagement, and he desperately needs more troops. The political situation in London makes reinforcements nearly impossible at the present. Lucan will have to wait.
In the United States, people are amazed at a new invention called the “telegraph”. Although Samuel Morse first perfected the device in 1844, it has only slowly spread throughout the East Coast during the past five years. Now, however, a connected line runs from Buffalo to Savannah. News can be sent from the Canadian border to President Cass at the White House in a matter of minutes; indeed, this is how Cass first hears of the American victory at the Chaudiere. Newspaper readers in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Charleston are fascinated to read reports from the battlefield only two days after the Chaudiere is concluded. The New York Herald speculates that in the future, newspaper reporters might accompany armies on campaign, wiring back news reports on offensives as they occur. Most of the Herald’s letters column regards this idea as an amusing fantasy.
Politically, the South continues to be restless. The Wide-Awakes and similar groups conduct acts of sabotage and vandalism throughout the South, including lynching of free blacks in states like Maryland. The slavery bills floating in Congress show no sign of a resolution; President Cass and other Democrats have no good options, and mostly hope the crisis will play out to a reasonable solution if left alone. If nothing particularly inflammatory occurs, they might get their wish.
July 26, 1849: A Thursday. As night falls over Charleston, South Carolina, things are relatively quiet. The summer heat is intense; most people are indoors, sleeping and trying to avoid mosquitoes.
John Brown has traveled the nine hundred miles from Springfield, Massachusetts to Charleston over the past several weeks. Accompanying him are twenty of his followers, including three of his sons. Six of the men are free blacks, one is an escaped slave.
Brown has decided that tonight is the night. He will attempt to rouse a general slave revolt in Charleston by force of arms, come what may. His target is the Custom House on Broad Street, which serves as a post office and mercantile. It is also one of the major slave-trading sites in the city.
Under cover of darkness, Brown and his followers overpower the guards and take control of the Custom House. Brown sends two of his free black followers, who know Charleston, to rouse the slaves.
The slaves, unfortunately for Brown, do not rise up. The local militia, on the other hand, is on the scene within an hour. What follows is a four hour shootout between Brown and the militia. Brown and his remaining sons (one has already been killed) barricade themselves, along with the remainder of their men and six slaves they have liberated from a holding pen near the rear of the Custom House, on the top floor of the building. There is no way for them to escape; nor is there any way for the militia to breach Brown’s barricade without taking heavy losses.
July 27, 1849: Brown and his followers are still barricaded on the top floor of the Custom House in Charleston. One of Brown’s sons has been killed, as have two of Brown’s white followers and one of his free black followers. The commander of the local militia orders his men to stay well away from the Custom House. Brown reads this as a kind of success; in truth, the commander is waiting for instructions from Charleston Mayor Thomas Hutchinson and Governor Whitemarsh Seabrook. At a little after noon, instructions from Seabrook arrive: the militia is to take the Custom House at any cost. If possible, Brown is to be taken alive.
The militiamen storm the upper story and within a matter of minutes, capture Brown and his followers. Six militiamen are killed. Brown is taken to the local prison, and kept separate from the remainder of his people. Mayor Hutchinson remarks to the militia commander, “That man is going to end in a hanging, either by his hand or someone else’s. There is no helping it.”
With Brown now captured, Charleston breathes a collective sigh of relief. Their relief is short-lived. At sundown, word comes that slaves in the small town of Darlington, South Carolina, hearing of Brown’s raid and assuming its success, have risen up. In fact, the rising is small, a few dozen slaves, and easily put down by the white residents of Darlington. But fear of a general slave uprising begins to spread throughout South Carolina, and over the borders into North Carolina, Georgia, and ultimately into Alabama and Mississippi.
Letters and telegraphs from Southern politicians pour into Washington, demanding that President Cass and the Army return Southern volunteer regiments from the North to secure the South against a slave revolt. Cass, examining the reports he has received from Charleston and elsewhere, reasonably concludes that there is little chance of a general revolt. He politely but firmly turns down Southern requests for an increase in volunteer presence. The regiments are needed in Canada, he replies to several Southern senators. This does little to assuage Southern fears.
August 2, 1849: It has taken time, but word of Brown’s raid and the slave revolt in Darlington has flowed up the telegraph and reaches Scott’s encampment at Quebec. Scott, himself a Virginian, is sympathetic to Southern fears, but has also received orders that he is not to release any of his Southern volunteer regiments. There is a war to fight, after all. Scott himself continues his plans to move against Raglan (actually Rowan) within the week.
August 3, 1849: Rumors of slave revolts in the South have spread like wildfire throughout Scott’s army. Col. Jefferson Davis approaches Scott. Davis is the commander of the 1st Mississippi Rifles, a volunteer unit that has already served in Canada longer than its contracted one year, and is himself a slaveholder. Davis is aware that his men are already frustrated that they have been kept longer than the allotted one year; this has been a minor point of contention between himself and Scott for the past two months. Davis served in Mexico with honors, and considers himself a proud American--but also a proud Mississippian. He tells Scott that he and his unit are required to return to Mississippi to defend against slave revolts, and asks for Scott to release them from their current duties. Most of Davis’ officers--and many of Scott’s--are slaveholders, and fear possible loss of what they consider to be their property.
Scott, characteristically, refuses. Although Scott is sympathetic to the men’s complaints about the continuation of their volunteer contracts, and has offered to negotiate an extension, he has read the same reports as Cass and regards a possible slave uprising as a fairytale. Davis and his men are needed in Canada. Period.
August 4, 1849: This typical high-handedness from Scott may make him a good commander on the battlefield, but it makes him a poor politician, at least at the present time. Davis’s friend, Robert E. Lee, approaches Scott on Davis’s behalf, hoping to smooth troubled waters. Lee has risen in Scott’s esteem since Quebec; recently he was brevetted to the rank of full colonel, and Scott has hinted at a possible promotion to generalship in the future.
Lee is more soft-spoken than Davis; he is no abolitionist but has no great love for slavery. He is well liked by Scott. These qualities make him an ideal emissary for Davis. Scott tells him about the reports from Charleston, and Lee agrees that a general revolt seems unlikely. But, Lee argues, Davis is not considering facts, he is considering emotion. The people of Mississippi are scared; the presence of Mississippi soldiers standing guard on Mississippi plantations would make things a little calmer, a little less explosive.
Scott, for his part, cannot believe what he is hearing. He informs Lee, kindly but intensely, that he is within a hair’s breadth of crushing the British in Canada. All he needs is a few more weeks.
Lee thinks about this, and tells Scott that he genuinely wishes Scott would get his few more weeks. But, he warns, Davis is not the only Southern commander who wants to return home.
“And what about you?” asks Scott, as Lee makes to leave the tent.
“Sir, I would gladly fight and die for Virginia, but I will fight and die for America first,” says Lee, and smiles as he finishes, “Just don’t make me fight against Virginia.”
“Colonel Lee,” replies Scott, “it won’t come to that.”
---------------------------------
NB: Jeff Davis was wounded in Mexico and returned to Mississippi to become a Senator OTL. ATL that wound never happened, Davis continued to serve as an officer during the resolution of the Mexican American War, and the 1st Mississippi Rifles were reconstituted in early 1848 to serve in a possible Canadian invasion. Their terms of enlistment would have run out in April-May, 1849. Rowan actually did ascend to C-in-C of NA in 1849 OTL; of course, there was no war then.
Your thoughts?
Thespitron 6000
Interesting. The pot is boiling. If Scott was to win a quick victory he could possibly keep atop of things with the army but I think that's unlikely. Especially since men have already been kept beyond their offical commitment. [Know this caused a lot of problems for the US in 1812 but not sure what happened in Mexico OTL. Could be a lot of other disgruntled American troops, including many from the north. Coupled with another winter in Canada, the growing resentment of the locals and continued heavy losses the army could face a crisis, even if not defeated the following year when British reinforcements come.
The other thing is that if/when the RN starts bombarding coastal targets and/or landings there could well be a new surge of demands for troops to be released to defend their homes. Plus if the south is no longer sending men to Canada - as seems very likely - and recruitment from the north is probably flagging, the men already there will grow resentful about being stuck in the war while others are sitting safely at home. - This might be delayed as while by the end of the Crimean they had a number of powerful ironclad batteries able to demolish forts I'm not sure what they would have had at this point. Probably nothing like as powerful but then how are the US defences and how thinly spread are they.
Another storm will be with Brown's trial. Given what's happened and the fact he did trigger a small uprising Brown will hang. However that will probably cause a lot of unrest in the north.
Again sooner or later British forces are bound to arrive in the west and land in Oregon. If they start occupying the official cause of the war then there might be pressure for the US to send forces west, very, very difficult, or try something else.
There is one thing Cass could do to seek to bridge the splits. He could try and persuade the south to mount operations against British possessions in the Caribbean, possibly even hinting that they might keep any gains after the war. Would be a long shot given the expected British naval superiority plus the idea of southern militias going against British garrisons and free black in the colonies could be very difficult for them. I.e. the leaders would realise that its a bit of a red herring but it might mollify opinion against the war in the south a little.
What is the situation in Mexico? I know you said earlier that the forces that were occupying the southern gains had been largely left there but I suspect some will have been recalled or left when their time was up. Also with the US embroiled in a big war with Britain and shipping disrupted you might see at least some unrest by the locals and possibly some elements in the rest of Mexico talking about aiding their co-compatriots.
Steve
Interesting. The pot is boiling. If Scott was to win a quick victory he could possibly keep atop of things with the army but I think that's unlikely. Especially since men have already been kept beyond their offical commitment. [Know this caused a lot of problems for the US in 1812 but not sure what happened in Mexico OTL. Could be a lot of other disgruntled American troops, including many from the north. Coupled with another winter in Canada, the growing resentment of the locals and continued heavy losses the army could face a crisis, even if not defeated the following year when British reinforcements come.
The other thing is that if/when the RN starts bombarding coastal targets and/or landings there could well be a new surge of demands for troops to be released to defend their homes. Plus if the south is no longer sending men to Canada - as seems very likely - and recruitment from the north is probably flagging, the men already there will grow resentful about being stuck in the war while others are sitting safely at home. - This might be delayed as while by the end of the Crimean they had a number of powerful ironclad batteries able to demolish forts I'm not sure what they would have had at this point. Probably nothing like as powerful but then how are the US defences and how thinly spread are they.
Another storm will be with Brown's trial. Given what's happened and the fact he did trigger a small uprising Brown will hang. However that will probably cause a lot of unrest in the north.
Again sooner or later British forces are bound to arrive in the west and land in Oregon. If they start occupying the official cause of the war then there might be pressure for the US to send forces west, very, very difficult, or try something else.
There is one thing Cass could do to seek to bridge the splits. He could try and persuade the south to mount operations against British possessions in the Caribbean, possibly even hinting that they might keep any gains after the war. Would be a long shot given the expected British naval superiority plus the idea of southern militias going against British garrisons and free black in the colonies could be very difficult for them. I.e. the leaders would realise that its a bit of a red herring but it might mollify opinion against the war in the south a little.
What is the situation in Mexico? I know you said earlier that the forces that were occupying the southern gains had been largely left there but I suspect some will have been recalled or left when their time was up. Also with the US embroiled in a big war with Britain and shipping disrupted you might see at least some unrest by the locals and possibly some elements in the rest of Mexico talking about aiding their co-compatriots.
Steve
stevep, General Gomm's oxen have died. General Gomm has dysentery. You have arrived in Oregon.
--------------------------------------------
August 9, 1849: Command of the American forces in Mexico devolved to General William Butler after Scott left for Canada. Butler, although brave and assertive as a general, is not as high-handed as Scott, so when he is approached by several officers representing Southern volunteer units, he is more inclined to listen to their requests for release. By this time, few of the original volunteer units from the Mexican-American War are still in service there; most have either returned home or, more commonly, been dispatched to Canada. The remaining volunteer units number less than five thousand, roughly half of which are Southerners, and have had their commitments extended several times.
Butler, a slaveholder himself, is sympathetic to the arguments put forward by his Southern officers, who are ready to return home, see their families, and head off any potential slave uprising. Butler also feels that, as the units’ commitments are about to lapse, he has no constitutional authority to keep them in Mexico. He gives permission for three regiments, numbering 2400 men, to return home and disband.
When Scott hears of this on August 24, he is furious. For the past three weeks he has been struggling to hold his army together. The hoped-for offensive against Rowan at Saint-Denis has not come off, as Scott has been too busy patching over arguments among his officer corps to move northeast. In addition, he has made a serious enemy out of Jefferson Davis, who has become the de facto spokesman for the Southern officers. Now that Butler has released his Southern volunteers, Scott’s position is severely weakened. However, he maintains the line given to him by President Cass: Volunteer units, both Northern and Southern, are needed in Canada. Scott will not release any units until ordered to do so by the President.
Davis maintains a pretense of civility towards his commanding officer, but inside seethes. As an officer in a militia unit turned volunteer, he regards his obligations as being to Mississippi first. If Mississippi is threatened, then that is where the 1st Rifles must go. States’ defense against an internal threat must come before national defense against an external threat.
August 10, 1849: “It is written in our glorious Constitution that ‘We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America,’ and it is said that Lewis Cass has taken an oath to defend this same Constitution. At least, that is what we have been told. And yet now, when our domestic tranquility and common defense are threatened, Lewis Cass does not fulfill his sworn duties by allowing our noble soldiers to return to hearth and home to defend Southern white womanhood against the depredations of Negro ‘John Browns’ who wish to rape and pillage across our great heartland. Instead, we are told that the civilized gentlemen of Canada are the mortal peril which faces our nation, and not the bloodthirsty Negro. It should be obvious to all thinking people that this is false, completely and categorically. Therefore we ask our readers, if the President and his much-vaunted ‘Federal’ government do not defend us, are they our friends? If the President and his much-vaunted ‘Federal’ government bind our hands and prevent us from defending ourselves, are they our friends? And what does it profit the South to remain in such an unholy union? Would we perhaps be better off alone and unmolested? The answer to this final question is an unreserved YES.” --Editorial, Augusta Chronicle, August 10, 1849
Brown Trial to Begin Sept 3: “Gross Treason and Murder”--Headline, Virginia Gazette, August 10, 1849
August 11, 1849: In a letter to President Lewis Cass, Col. Jefferson Davis writes, “I have marched into Mexico on behalf of my country, and indeed into Canada, on behalf of a union which I hold to be sacred--sacred after God, and Jesus Christ, and after my beloved Mississippi. I recognize and understand the great turmoil which, given your station, must dwell within your bosom when you are torn between the defense of these States and the defense of our Nation abroad, but I must implore you to see the necessity of placing the immediate needs of the States to the fore, for if the States perish, then so too perish the Nation. I write to you now not in my capacity of Colonel of the 1st Mississippi Rifles, but instead in my capacity as a private citizen. I implore you now, please allow our soldiers, who have served you so faithfully in Mexico and Canada, allow them to return to their homes which even now stand threatened by the Negro and his rapacious character. I sincerely hope that you will take these words to heart, and understand that I represent a great multitude of your officers diligently fighting in Quebec. May God keep the United States, and may God keep Mississippi.”
Cass responds: “Colonel Davis, as always I am in everlasting debt to you and your fellow officers, who have done so much to advance our cause in our war against the British. But as much as my conscience is pricked by your heartfelt words, my duties prick me even more harshly, and as Commander-in-Chief of these armies, I must regretfully decline to permit your units in Quebec to return to their homes at this juncture. I know my words seem harsh, but it is my hope that in the fullness of time, when we have achieved victory, you and your compatriots will understand the great difficulty--and the great rightness--of my decision. I remain, President Lewis Cass.”
Davis is incensed by what he perceives to be a patronizing, condescending tone in Cass’s letter. He and the other Southern officers reach an unspoken agreement: there will be no movement against the British at this time, until they have exhausted every avenue to return home.
August 14, 1849: Two British regiments, totaling 2000 men, land at Fort Vancouver under the command of General William Gomm. Gomm’s orders are to take control of the Oregon Territory from the Provisional Government and Governor George Abernathy. This is easily done, as Abernathy’s only armed forces consist of a few hundred militiamen led by Col. Cornelius Gilliam.
August 18, 1849: The “Battle” of the Dalles takes place between Gomm’s men and Gilliam’s militiamen, who are encamped at Fort Lee, a small stockade near the Columbia River. Gilliam’s second-in-command, Henry A. G. Lee, has taken a force of nearly 200 militiamen in pursuit of a large band of Cayuse raiders, the Oregonians having been at war with the Cayuse tribe for the past two years. As a result, Gilliam has only 300 men at Fort Lee, and is completely unprepared for the arrival of Gomm’s army. The Oregonians are outnumbered nearly seven to one, and wisely call for a parley.
Gilliam, recognizing that he cannot possibly win, informs Gomm that he is willing to surrender, provided his men are simply disarmed and allowed to go home, and provided the British will assume the duties of protecting the settlers from the Cayuse. Gomm is happy to assent to these conditions, since it will give him a bloodless victory in Oregon. In order to preserve the Oregonians’ honor, and allow them to say that they did resist, before the official surrender one man from each side steps forward and fires a shot over the heads of the opposing army. Thus having exchanged fire, the Oregonians feel they can surrender. They are disarmed and marched back to their homes, to rejoin their families. Gomm leaves 700 men at Fort Lee to await Henry Lee’s return, and marches to Oregon City to take control of the territory form Abernathy. In all, he feels rather good about himself.
August 21, 1849: Gomm arrives in Oregon City with 1300 troops. He quickly takes control of the city, arrests Governor George Abernathy, and installs a curfew to prevent word of the occupation from spreading. The occupying British are under orders to treat the Oregonians well, as it is expected that the British will claim the Oregon Territory after the war, and the settlers will become British subjects. Abernathy frequently dines with Gomm, who he describes as “erudite, witty, the most charming jailer one could hope for.”
James Bridger, a mountain man, trapper, and scout, is in Oregon City as Gomm’s troops arrive. Quickly saddling his horse, he and his partner Pierre Louis Vasquez ride like hellfire out of the city east, towards the Rocky Mountains.
September 3, 1849: “He marches forth, carrying aloft his cross, his noose, before his enemies, who seek to execute him for naught but their own sins. I stand as witness to his character, in which was born the notion that a man might, in all righteousness, interfere with the slaveholder in order that the slave might be free. I dare say there is no man in this country who should not agree--but there are many who do not agree. I am not one of them.” --Henry David Thoreau, written September 2, 1849
“HE MUST HANG” -- Headline, Jackson Mississippian, September 3, 1849
The trial of John Brown begins. Charleston, South Carolina, is a city not predisposed to pardoning men who attempt to raise slaves against their masters. The charges include conspiracy, treason, and murder. For four days, Charleston is witness to a farce of a trial; Brown does not have adequate representation, and many times legitimate objections are overruled by the judge, likely due to haste. Afterward, there are allegations that some of the witnesses against Brown were not even in Charleston on the night of the raid; there is no evidence for these allegations.
Brown does not help his case by steadfastly admitting his guilt. “I regret that this body, old and worn as it is, is the only one that I might sacrifice on the altar of abolition,” he says at one point, paraphrasing Nathan Hale.
It takes a South Carolinian jury just half an hour to find him guilty. He is sentenced to be hanged on September 23.
Word of Brown’s sentence spreads like wildfire. In the South, revelers take to the streets. “Never a man more justly hanged,” remarks Louis Wigfall, a Texan politician. In Nashville, Wide Awakes flood the local bars, emerging intoxicated and apt to violence, and by the morning of September 6, small riots have broken out throughout the city.
In the North, the mood is mixed. Abolitionists grieve while moderates hope that the verdict will ease over bad feelings stirred up by the Charleston raid and the Darlington uprising. President Cass says in private, “It is a bad thing, but best that it be over quickly.”
September 1849: “The calm before the storm.” Joseph Hooker writes this in his diary; he has been having long talks with Robert E. Lee, one of his superior officers. Hooker, a Northerner from Massachusetts, finds Lee to be an island of sanity amidst the Southern officer corps. Lee presciently predicts that Brown’s conviction has settled nothing: “We and he must first make it through the hanging, and then we and he will see what follows.”
Slaves throughout the South are no less enamored of gossip than their white masters, and word that a white man is willing to lay down his life for black freedom passes from plantation to plantation like sparks off bare metal. Most slaves are too beaten down to care too much; a few, on the other hand, take inspiration from Brown, and begin making their own plans.
Very little is happening in Canada. Rowan and Lucan have linked back up with Rokeby; they have approximately 27,000 men under arms, with no prospects of getting more from England. Rokeby and Rowan suggest raising and training militia, but with most of Quebec’s civilian population under American occupation, there seems to be little hope of that. Any strategy in the future rests on one simple fact: the Americans outnumber the British. Rowan and Lucan are therefore resigned to another winter in Canada; they have been getting promising reports from their spies regarding disaffection under Scott’s command, but those are rumors, nothing more. They will have to wait, dig in, and wait some more.
Scott, for his part, is furious. Unable to rely on his Southern units, he is likewise unable to attack the British. A great opportunity seems to be slipping away. But there is little he can do. Like Cass, he must weather the political storm before he can move against the British. Wearily, he begins preparing for winter quarters.
September 23, 1849: “A great man goes to the gallows, and with him, I think, the nation.” --Henry David Thoreau.
“Thank God and Good Riddance.”--Headline, Charleston Courier, September 23, 1849
John Brown is hanged shortly after dawn. He refuses religious assistance, stating that he does not wish to be ministered to by pro-slavery clergymen. He dies quickly, and, it is said by witnesses both pro-slavery and anti, with great dignity.
After the hanging, the mood of the day is somber. Most Charlestonians and Southerners hoped that the execution would prove cathartic, that they would be able to move on. Reflecting afterwards, most of the more thoughtful agree that little has actually changed.
At sunset, several slaves from a plantation west of the new city of Atlanta meet in a slave hut in the nearby woods. They have heard of Brown’s execution, and have been planning in secret to avenge Brown’s death. They are not the only ones. Scattered throughout the South, disgruntled slaves have been meeting to plan acts of violence against their white owners. Like Brown, the conspiring slaves are excessively optimistic and blind to the realities which surround them. Most slaves quite simply are unwilling to take the risk of an uprising. The South is too big, too well-armed, and too prepared for a Santo Domingo to occur.
Scattered murders and arsons occur throughout the South on the night of September 23-24. Almost all of the rebellious slaves are quickly captured or killed. A few manage to escape to the woods or swamps.
As word of the slave uprisings spread, the South erupts. Terrified whites flee to the cities; others enact brutal regimes on their plantations to prevent revolt. Everywhere, the desire for militia on the roads and in the fields is fervent--and loud. Politicians from the South join the growing chorus demanding that President Cass recall the volunteer units.
“This is not peace. This is a hand holding a lid down on a boiling cauldron.”--Frederick Douglass, September 26, 1849.
September 28, 1849: President Cass and his cabinet meet to discuss the growing crisis in the South. Vice-President Polk is the first to broach releasing the volunteer units. While opposition among the cabinet members is fierce at first, gradually it is recognized that this is the only way to diffuse the crisis. However, says Polk, it will take time and careful planning to avoid the British taking advantage. “We are running out of time, and running damn near out of plans,” says Cass. But it is the only way.
September 29, 1849: Word of the slave revolts reaches Quebec City. Davis’s response is immediate: he orders his 1st Rifles to begin preparing for the long march back to Mississippi. When Scott hears of this, he orders Davis arrested for insubordination. Davis is shocked; he didn’t think Scott would actually do it. Scott regards Davis as being deluded, if he thinks that he can simply march off with a thousand of Scott’s men without permission.
The Southern officers do not take well to Davis’s arrest. They protest the action; General Taylor informs them coldly that Davis refused to obey a direct order and in doing so, threatened to give aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war. The Southern officers are outraged, and meet in private to discuss their options. The meeting is interrupted by Col. Robert E. Lee. Although many of the men refuse to continue with Lee present, Lee insists that he has come in the spirit of reconciliation. If the Southern officers will present him with a list of grievances, Lee will present them to Scott. Lee can be the bridge between the Southerner volunteers and the Federal army.
October 1, 1849: It has taken the Southern officer corps two days to agree upon a list of grievances. Chief among them: unwarranted extension of volunteer commitments, the arrest of Colonel Davis, and failure of staff to recognize the urgent need to return home. Brevetted Captain Thomas Jackson has been chosen as the Southern contingent’s spokesman; his steadfastness and imperturbability have given him high standing among the frustrated officers. Presenting the list to Lee, Jackson is uncomfortable. “So this is it, then, Tom?” asks Lee gently. Jackson merely salutes, and then leaves Lee’s tent.
Lee immediately proceeds to Scott’s command tent, mentally preparing himself for the coming argument. To his surprise, once Scott receives the document, the general reads it quietly. “You realize that if we do not comply, then they are in mutiny,” says Scott, not looking up. “You do realize that, don’t you, Rob?”
Lee looks down at his hands and sees that they are shaking. “Yes, sir. I realize that.”
“I only ask, because so many of them are your friends. There will be trials, you see. Afterwards.”
“If there is an afterwards,” says Lee, and wonders why.
“Everything we’ve worked for, the past two years. Gone. Like that.” Scott does not raise his head. He covers his eyes with one large hand, rubs at them. “No. My answer is no.”
“Sir?”
“I have been ordered to remain in the field against the British until they are defeated,” says Scott in a rote, mechanical tone of voice. “And I shall comply with that order until ordered otherwise.” He sighs. “Good luck to you, Rob.”
“And to you, sir.”
Scott stands, looks Lee in the eye for the first time. “Colonel Lee, you have your orders. Dismissed.”
Lee decides that the men deserve at least one more night of peaceful sleep. He will tell them in the morning.
----------------------------------------
NB: Brown actually denied his real intent at his trial, which has always struck me as being oddly out of character; Brown was intensely committed to the idea of truth. Anyway, ATL he admits his intent to trigger a slave revolt, which seems more in line with his personality.
Your thoughts, as always, are welcome.
--------------------------------------------
August 9, 1849: Command of the American forces in Mexico devolved to General William Butler after Scott left for Canada. Butler, although brave and assertive as a general, is not as high-handed as Scott, so when he is approached by several officers representing Southern volunteer units, he is more inclined to listen to their requests for release. By this time, few of the original volunteer units from the Mexican-American War are still in service there; most have either returned home or, more commonly, been dispatched to Canada. The remaining volunteer units number less than five thousand, roughly half of which are Southerners, and have had their commitments extended several times.
Butler, a slaveholder himself, is sympathetic to the arguments put forward by his Southern officers, who are ready to return home, see their families, and head off any potential slave uprising. Butler also feels that, as the units’ commitments are about to lapse, he has no constitutional authority to keep them in Mexico. He gives permission for three regiments, numbering 2400 men, to return home and disband.
When Scott hears of this on August 24, he is furious. For the past three weeks he has been struggling to hold his army together. The hoped-for offensive against Rowan at Saint-Denis has not come off, as Scott has been too busy patching over arguments among his officer corps to move northeast. In addition, he has made a serious enemy out of Jefferson Davis, who has become the de facto spokesman for the Southern officers. Now that Butler has released his Southern volunteers, Scott’s position is severely weakened. However, he maintains the line given to him by President Cass: Volunteer units, both Northern and Southern, are needed in Canada. Scott will not release any units until ordered to do so by the President.
Davis maintains a pretense of civility towards his commanding officer, but inside seethes. As an officer in a militia unit turned volunteer, he regards his obligations as being to Mississippi first. If Mississippi is threatened, then that is where the 1st Rifles must go. States’ defense against an internal threat must come before national defense against an external threat.
August 10, 1849: “It is written in our glorious Constitution that ‘We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America,’ and it is said that Lewis Cass has taken an oath to defend this same Constitution. At least, that is what we have been told. And yet now, when our domestic tranquility and common defense are threatened, Lewis Cass does not fulfill his sworn duties by allowing our noble soldiers to return to hearth and home to defend Southern white womanhood against the depredations of Negro ‘John Browns’ who wish to rape and pillage across our great heartland. Instead, we are told that the civilized gentlemen of Canada are the mortal peril which faces our nation, and not the bloodthirsty Negro. It should be obvious to all thinking people that this is false, completely and categorically. Therefore we ask our readers, if the President and his much-vaunted ‘Federal’ government do not defend us, are they our friends? If the President and his much-vaunted ‘Federal’ government bind our hands and prevent us from defending ourselves, are they our friends? And what does it profit the South to remain in such an unholy union? Would we perhaps be better off alone and unmolested? The answer to this final question is an unreserved YES.” --Editorial, Augusta Chronicle, August 10, 1849
Brown Trial to Begin Sept 3: “Gross Treason and Murder”--Headline, Virginia Gazette, August 10, 1849
August 11, 1849: In a letter to President Lewis Cass, Col. Jefferson Davis writes, “I have marched into Mexico on behalf of my country, and indeed into Canada, on behalf of a union which I hold to be sacred--sacred after God, and Jesus Christ, and after my beloved Mississippi. I recognize and understand the great turmoil which, given your station, must dwell within your bosom when you are torn between the defense of these States and the defense of our Nation abroad, but I must implore you to see the necessity of placing the immediate needs of the States to the fore, for if the States perish, then so too perish the Nation. I write to you now not in my capacity of Colonel of the 1st Mississippi Rifles, but instead in my capacity as a private citizen. I implore you now, please allow our soldiers, who have served you so faithfully in Mexico and Canada, allow them to return to their homes which even now stand threatened by the Negro and his rapacious character. I sincerely hope that you will take these words to heart, and understand that I represent a great multitude of your officers diligently fighting in Quebec. May God keep the United States, and may God keep Mississippi.”
Cass responds: “Colonel Davis, as always I am in everlasting debt to you and your fellow officers, who have done so much to advance our cause in our war against the British. But as much as my conscience is pricked by your heartfelt words, my duties prick me even more harshly, and as Commander-in-Chief of these armies, I must regretfully decline to permit your units in Quebec to return to their homes at this juncture. I know my words seem harsh, but it is my hope that in the fullness of time, when we have achieved victory, you and your compatriots will understand the great difficulty--and the great rightness--of my decision. I remain, President Lewis Cass.”
Davis is incensed by what he perceives to be a patronizing, condescending tone in Cass’s letter. He and the other Southern officers reach an unspoken agreement: there will be no movement against the British at this time, until they have exhausted every avenue to return home.
August 14, 1849: Two British regiments, totaling 2000 men, land at Fort Vancouver under the command of General William Gomm. Gomm’s orders are to take control of the Oregon Territory from the Provisional Government and Governor George Abernathy. This is easily done, as Abernathy’s only armed forces consist of a few hundred militiamen led by Col. Cornelius Gilliam.
August 18, 1849: The “Battle” of the Dalles takes place between Gomm’s men and Gilliam’s militiamen, who are encamped at Fort Lee, a small stockade near the Columbia River. Gilliam’s second-in-command, Henry A. G. Lee, has taken a force of nearly 200 militiamen in pursuit of a large band of Cayuse raiders, the Oregonians having been at war with the Cayuse tribe for the past two years. As a result, Gilliam has only 300 men at Fort Lee, and is completely unprepared for the arrival of Gomm’s army. The Oregonians are outnumbered nearly seven to one, and wisely call for a parley.
Gilliam, recognizing that he cannot possibly win, informs Gomm that he is willing to surrender, provided his men are simply disarmed and allowed to go home, and provided the British will assume the duties of protecting the settlers from the Cayuse. Gomm is happy to assent to these conditions, since it will give him a bloodless victory in Oregon. In order to preserve the Oregonians’ honor, and allow them to say that they did resist, before the official surrender one man from each side steps forward and fires a shot over the heads of the opposing army. Thus having exchanged fire, the Oregonians feel they can surrender. They are disarmed and marched back to their homes, to rejoin their families. Gomm leaves 700 men at Fort Lee to await Henry Lee’s return, and marches to Oregon City to take control of the territory form Abernathy. In all, he feels rather good about himself.
August 21, 1849: Gomm arrives in Oregon City with 1300 troops. He quickly takes control of the city, arrests Governor George Abernathy, and installs a curfew to prevent word of the occupation from spreading. The occupying British are under orders to treat the Oregonians well, as it is expected that the British will claim the Oregon Territory after the war, and the settlers will become British subjects. Abernathy frequently dines with Gomm, who he describes as “erudite, witty, the most charming jailer one could hope for.”
James Bridger, a mountain man, trapper, and scout, is in Oregon City as Gomm’s troops arrive. Quickly saddling his horse, he and his partner Pierre Louis Vasquez ride like hellfire out of the city east, towards the Rocky Mountains.
September 3, 1849: “He marches forth, carrying aloft his cross, his noose, before his enemies, who seek to execute him for naught but their own sins. I stand as witness to his character, in which was born the notion that a man might, in all righteousness, interfere with the slaveholder in order that the slave might be free. I dare say there is no man in this country who should not agree--but there are many who do not agree. I am not one of them.” --Henry David Thoreau, written September 2, 1849
“HE MUST HANG” -- Headline, Jackson Mississippian, September 3, 1849
The trial of John Brown begins. Charleston, South Carolina, is a city not predisposed to pardoning men who attempt to raise slaves against their masters. The charges include conspiracy, treason, and murder. For four days, Charleston is witness to a farce of a trial; Brown does not have adequate representation, and many times legitimate objections are overruled by the judge, likely due to haste. Afterward, there are allegations that some of the witnesses against Brown were not even in Charleston on the night of the raid; there is no evidence for these allegations.
Brown does not help his case by steadfastly admitting his guilt. “I regret that this body, old and worn as it is, is the only one that I might sacrifice on the altar of abolition,” he says at one point, paraphrasing Nathan Hale.
It takes a South Carolinian jury just half an hour to find him guilty. He is sentenced to be hanged on September 23.
Word of Brown’s sentence spreads like wildfire. In the South, revelers take to the streets. “Never a man more justly hanged,” remarks Louis Wigfall, a Texan politician. In Nashville, Wide Awakes flood the local bars, emerging intoxicated and apt to violence, and by the morning of September 6, small riots have broken out throughout the city.
In the North, the mood is mixed. Abolitionists grieve while moderates hope that the verdict will ease over bad feelings stirred up by the Charleston raid and the Darlington uprising. President Cass says in private, “It is a bad thing, but best that it be over quickly.”
September 1849: “The calm before the storm.” Joseph Hooker writes this in his diary; he has been having long talks with Robert E. Lee, one of his superior officers. Hooker, a Northerner from Massachusetts, finds Lee to be an island of sanity amidst the Southern officer corps. Lee presciently predicts that Brown’s conviction has settled nothing: “We and he must first make it through the hanging, and then we and he will see what follows.”
Slaves throughout the South are no less enamored of gossip than their white masters, and word that a white man is willing to lay down his life for black freedom passes from plantation to plantation like sparks off bare metal. Most slaves are too beaten down to care too much; a few, on the other hand, take inspiration from Brown, and begin making their own plans.
Very little is happening in Canada. Rowan and Lucan have linked back up with Rokeby; they have approximately 27,000 men under arms, with no prospects of getting more from England. Rokeby and Rowan suggest raising and training militia, but with most of Quebec’s civilian population under American occupation, there seems to be little hope of that. Any strategy in the future rests on one simple fact: the Americans outnumber the British. Rowan and Lucan are therefore resigned to another winter in Canada; they have been getting promising reports from their spies regarding disaffection under Scott’s command, but those are rumors, nothing more. They will have to wait, dig in, and wait some more.
Scott, for his part, is furious. Unable to rely on his Southern units, he is likewise unable to attack the British. A great opportunity seems to be slipping away. But there is little he can do. Like Cass, he must weather the political storm before he can move against the British. Wearily, he begins preparing for winter quarters.
September 23, 1849: “A great man goes to the gallows, and with him, I think, the nation.” --Henry David Thoreau.
“Thank God and Good Riddance.”--Headline, Charleston Courier, September 23, 1849
John Brown is hanged shortly after dawn. He refuses religious assistance, stating that he does not wish to be ministered to by pro-slavery clergymen. He dies quickly, and, it is said by witnesses both pro-slavery and anti, with great dignity.
After the hanging, the mood of the day is somber. Most Charlestonians and Southerners hoped that the execution would prove cathartic, that they would be able to move on. Reflecting afterwards, most of the more thoughtful agree that little has actually changed.
At sunset, several slaves from a plantation west of the new city of Atlanta meet in a slave hut in the nearby woods. They have heard of Brown’s execution, and have been planning in secret to avenge Brown’s death. They are not the only ones. Scattered throughout the South, disgruntled slaves have been meeting to plan acts of violence against their white owners. Like Brown, the conspiring slaves are excessively optimistic and blind to the realities which surround them. Most slaves quite simply are unwilling to take the risk of an uprising. The South is too big, too well-armed, and too prepared for a Santo Domingo to occur.
Scattered murders and arsons occur throughout the South on the night of September 23-24. Almost all of the rebellious slaves are quickly captured or killed. A few manage to escape to the woods or swamps.
As word of the slave uprisings spread, the South erupts. Terrified whites flee to the cities; others enact brutal regimes on their plantations to prevent revolt. Everywhere, the desire for militia on the roads and in the fields is fervent--and loud. Politicians from the South join the growing chorus demanding that President Cass recall the volunteer units.
“This is not peace. This is a hand holding a lid down on a boiling cauldron.”--Frederick Douglass, September 26, 1849.
September 28, 1849: President Cass and his cabinet meet to discuss the growing crisis in the South. Vice-President Polk is the first to broach releasing the volunteer units. While opposition among the cabinet members is fierce at first, gradually it is recognized that this is the only way to diffuse the crisis. However, says Polk, it will take time and careful planning to avoid the British taking advantage. “We are running out of time, and running damn near out of plans,” says Cass. But it is the only way.
September 29, 1849: Word of the slave revolts reaches Quebec City. Davis’s response is immediate: he orders his 1st Rifles to begin preparing for the long march back to Mississippi. When Scott hears of this, he orders Davis arrested for insubordination. Davis is shocked; he didn’t think Scott would actually do it. Scott regards Davis as being deluded, if he thinks that he can simply march off with a thousand of Scott’s men without permission.
The Southern officers do not take well to Davis’s arrest. They protest the action; General Taylor informs them coldly that Davis refused to obey a direct order and in doing so, threatened to give aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war. The Southern officers are outraged, and meet in private to discuss their options. The meeting is interrupted by Col. Robert E. Lee. Although many of the men refuse to continue with Lee present, Lee insists that he has come in the spirit of reconciliation. If the Southern officers will present him with a list of grievances, Lee will present them to Scott. Lee can be the bridge between the Southerner volunteers and the Federal army.
October 1, 1849: It has taken the Southern officer corps two days to agree upon a list of grievances. Chief among them: unwarranted extension of volunteer commitments, the arrest of Colonel Davis, and failure of staff to recognize the urgent need to return home. Brevetted Captain Thomas Jackson has been chosen as the Southern contingent’s spokesman; his steadfastness and imperturbability have given him high standing among the frustrated officers. Presenting the list to Lee, Jackson is uncomfortable. “So this is it, then, Tom?” asks Lee gently. Jackson merely salutes, and then leaves Lee’s tent.
Lee immediately proceeds to Scott’s command tent, mentally preparing himself for the coming argument. To his surprise, once Scott receives the document, the general reads it quietly. “You realize that if we do not comply, then they are in mutiny,” says Scott, not looking up. “You do realize that, don’t you, Rob?”
Lee looks down at his hands and sees that they are shaking. “Yes, sir. I realize that.”
“I only ask, because so many of them are your friends. There will be trials, you see. Afterwards.”
“If there is an afterwards,” says Lee, and wonders why.
“Everything we’ve worked for, the past two years. Gone. Like that.” Scott does not raise his head. He covers his eyes with one large hand, rubs at them. “No. My answer is no.”
“Sir?”
“I have been ordered to remain in the field against the British until they are defeated,” says Scott in a rote, mechanical tone of voice. “And I shall comply with that order until ordered otherwise.” He sighs. “Good luck to you, Rob.”
“And to you, sir.”
Scott stands, looks Lee in the eye for the first time. “Colonel Lee, you have your orders. Dismissed.”
Lee decides that the men deserve at least one more night of peaceful sleep. He will tell them in the morning.
----------------------------------------
NB: Brown actually denied his real intent at his trial, which has always struck me as being oddly out of character; Brown was intensely committed to the idea of truth. Anyway, ATL he admits his intent to trigger a slave revolt, which seems more in line with his personality.
Your thoughts, as always, are welcome.
Thespitron 6000
Well things are really coming to the boil. Scott's in an impossible situation. Either he allows about half his army to leave, which will not only make further offensives by him virtually impossible but make the remaining troops very unhappy. Or he does as it sounds like he's planning, arrests a large proportion of the officers, which is likely to lead to open mutiny by the troops they command. Furthermore, although he hadn't heard it yet, Cass is going to undermine his position, although possibly too slowly to prevent further problems. It sounds like all the British have to do is hang on and wait for the Americans to melt down.
The British have finally reached Oregon and secured the southern part of it - presumably already controlling those sections above the Snake River? However sounds like news is spreading eastward and could cause some problems. [Although its a damned long way to the settled US proper if Bridger tries going that far]. Possibly could add south to California instead, although the US may not have much there, let alone be able to spare any from the region. Hopefully we can secure the region, which would make Canada's position in the east markedly stronger. Also I hope Lee's force doesn't try and do anything rash.
Steve
Well things are really coming to the boil. Scott's in an impossible situation. Either he allows about half his army to leave, which will not only make further offensives by him virtually impossible but make the remaining troops very unhappy. Or he does as it sounds like he's planning, arrests a large proportion of the officers, which is likely to lead to open mutiny by the troops they command. Furthermore, although he hadn't heard it yet, Cass is going to undermine his position, although possibly too slowly to prevent further problems. It sounds like all the British have to do is hang on and wait for the Americans to melt down.
The British have finally reached Oregon and secured the southern part of it - presumably already controlling those sections above the Snake River? However sounds like news is spreading eastward and could cause some problems. [Although its a damned long way to the settled US proper if Bridger tries going that far]. Possibly could add south to California instead, although the US may not have much there, let alone be able to spare any from the region. Hopefully we can secure the region, which would make Canada's position in the east markedly stronger. Also I hope Lee's force doesn't try and do anything rash.
Steve
The plot, it thickens.
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October 2, 1849: Lee presents Scott’s response to the assembled Southern officers. Escorting Lee from their meeting, they promise him a response by the middle of the afternoon.
The meeting of the Southern officers is a raucous one. Most of the officers want nothing more than to return home to defend their native states against potential slave uprisings. However, they are concerned about the legality of their actions. A few officers, more experienced in the law, state that, since they are fundamentally militia units, to remain in Canada would violate their obligations to their home states and thus any orders to do so would be illegal. The United States Articles of War state that it is the obligation of every member of the armed forces to disobey unlawful orders. Nonetheless, many officers remain concerned about the legality of mutiny. Debate is heated.
At three p.m., Lee returns to the officers’ meeting. He is met outside the tent by Thomas Jackson, who presents him with the officers’ response. The Southerners have decided they are not, technically, in mutiny; they are in lawful and willful disobedience of unlawful orders, and therefore, should be regarded as, in a sense, conscientious objectors. They have no intent of giving aid to the British; they merely wish to fulfill what they regard as their primary obligation, the defense of their home states. If Scott orders them to proceed home, they will follow said orders. But they will follow no others. As one regimental wag puts it, “They are not mutinying, but are reserving the right to mutiny at a later date.”
Scott takes immediate action. All officers, Northern and Southern, who refuse to obey orders to take to the field are to be “detained” in stockade until a court martial can be held. Military police round up and detain the Southern officers as they emerge from their meeting. “You’re arresting us?” protests Albert Sidney Johnston to Scott, as he is led away.
“You are not ‘mutinying’, you are ‘objecting’, and I am not ‘arresting’ you, I am ‘detaining’ you,” replies Scott.
As word spreads that the officers of the Southern contingent have been arrested, the enlisted men become increasingly restive. Worries that a riot might occur cause Jefferson Davis and several other arrested officers to issue orders at Scott’s behest to their units requesting calm. The net effect is to settle things down, but the enlisted men, led by their sergeants, choose to emulate their superior officers, and several regiments organize and enact a general strike. They will not attack, or make any aggressive military action, until their commanders have been released.
There is nothing Scott can do. The strikers have promised nonviolence; indeed, that is the foundation of their strike. And there are too many to arrest. “I shall have half my army arresting the other half,” he grouses to Robert E. Lee.
October 5, 1849: The Soldiers’ Strike is in its third day. Tensions are high among the officers, but among the enlisted men there is a surprising sense of camaraderie. Non-striking soldiers regard the strikers as being “maybe a little bit wrong, but they ain’t bad,” as one soldier puts it. At any rate, the approaching winter will render the strike largely moot, as Scott will be unable to attack anyway.
Reports of the strike reach Washington, D.C. Cass is appalled. “Bad news from the North,” he writes in his journal. “Discipline and morale low. Soldiers unwilling to fight. Something must break.” The time has come to order the release of Southern units, he decides. The British will be unable to mount winter offensives, and hopefully by the time spring arrives, they will be able to raise new units of regulars. He drafts a letter to General Scott, ordering the release of nearly 10,000 of Scott’s troops, and sends it by courier to Canada.
October 9, 1849: Less than two months after leaving Oregon City, Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez arrive in Fort Scott, Kansas, an astonishing feat. Both men and horses are nearly dead from the effort, but Bridger is able to inform the commander of the Army garrison at the fort that the British have occupied the Oregon Territory. The commander, seriously alarmed, dispatches riders for Washington, D.C., with instructions to alert the Secretary of War William Marcy and the President. As diligent as the commander is, he neglects to clamp down on the spread of rumors among his officers, several of which hail from Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi. These officers, in letters and telegrams, pass on word of the Oregon occupation to their friends and political patrons back home.
October 12, 1849: “BRITISH OCCUPY OREGON; ALL THIS FOR NAUGHT?” --Headline, Jonesborough Whig and Independent Journal, October 12, 1849.
Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee wake to news that the cause of the “whole mess”, as William L. Yancey describes it, has fallen into the hands of the British, lock, stock and barrel. Worse, there is apparently no plan for getting it back. Angry Southerners meet in the streets, spreading rumor, and in some cases, liquor. By afternoon, Memphis, Tennessee, and Jackson, Mississippi, are both overflowing with frustrated and intoxicated citizens. It takes little to spark riots. In Memphis, the publisher of a local abolitionist newspaper is hung in effigy, and his printing shop is stormed by rioters and burned. In Jackson, a crowd of drunken Wide-Awakes gathers around the house of the mayor, James H. Boyd, and chant for him to come out. Boyd, a supporter of slavery and an opponent of the war, emerges to tell the rioters to leave. They set upon him with clubs and savagely beat him before he is able to escape back into his house, where he and his family barricade themselves for the remainder of the riot.
It is not until the next day that order is restored.
October 14, 1849: Scott receives Cass’s order to release the volunteer units. He can’t believe what he is reading; he barely has control of his army, and now Cass is making him look like a fool. But he has committed himself to obeying the President’s orders, and so drafts orders to release the volunteer units from their service, and to release the “objecting” officers from confinement. This last he does not want to do; he thinks that Davis and the others should be tried at court-martial. But the Southern units refuse to return home without their officers, and as Cass has ordered him to send the Southern units home, Scott sees no other option than to release Davis and the rest.
October 16, 1849: William Marcy and Lewis Cass receive some dispiriting news: the British have occupied the Oregon Territory, and rioting seems to have broken out throughout much of the South. It is now more imperative than ever that Scott release the volunteer units to return home.
The Southern volunteers break camp and begin the long march home. Jefferson Davis, feeling vindicated, rides at the head of his 1st Mississippi Rifles, his triumph only marred by the return of his chronic bronchitis.
October 18, 1849: John C. Calhoun has returned home to die. His tuberculosis has taken a severe turn to the worse, and now he is back in Clemson, South Carolina, writing, writing, writing, and waiting for the end. Incensed by what he sees happening across the South, in particular President Cass’s failure to return home needed volunteer units to put down slave unrest, Calhoun is in rare form, his words so passionate and fiery that the Governor of South Carolina, Whitemarsh Seabrook, a supporter of Calhoun, considers arresting him for behavior liable to cause a breach of the peace.
Calhoun’s words have reached influential ears. On October 18, he is visited by his friend Augustus Longstreet, and Rep. Alexander Stephens from Georgia and Francis Pickens from South Carolina. All three men are prominent in pro-slavery circles; Pickens is influential among South Carolina’s Wide-Awakes. They are looking for guidance. Calhoun, who is very sick, can give them one piece of advice: the South must act in concert, whatever they do. Stephens drafts a letter to other prominent anti-war, pro-slavery agitators, which Calhoun, Pickens, Longstreet, and ultimately Speaker of the House Howell Cobb affix their signatures. The key excerpt reads:
“RESOLVED: That this Federal Government, and its President, Lewis Cass, have committed the following acts which contravene the Constitution of these United States:
It has prosecuted an unlawful war against the Kingdom of Great Britain, and invaded Canada.
It has misled the Congress in the prosecution of said war.
It has used states’ militias in the prosecution in said war.
It has kept said militias at war past the duration and commitments given in their volunteer contracts.
It has, through the personage of the commander of the Canadian forces, General Winfield Scott, unlawfully detained and arrested officers of said militias acting in the course of their legitimate duties.
It has failed to protect the Ports of Charlotte, Mobile, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville, and Galveston, Texas, from the depredations of the British Royal Navy.
It has failed to protect the economy and foreign trade of these United States from the depredations of the above.
It has failed to maintain the public peace, and instead has sought to deprive citizens of the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and the State of Texas of their lawful property by failing to quell civil insurrections on the part of slaves.
It has failed to maintain public order in quelling riots in the cities of Mobile, Memphis, and Jackson.
It has allowed American territory in the form of the Oregon Country to be seized by the Kingdom of Great Britain as a result of aforementioned war, and in doing so has allowed American citizens to be unlawfully detained by British military commanders.
It has levied unlawful and exorbitant taxes on its citizenry to support the aforementioned war.
It has unlawfully prevented the transportation of legitimate property into the territories of New Mexico and California.
It has conscripted men into the United States Army without a declared draft.
It has unlawfully quartered troops in the homes of private citizens in the conquered province of Quebec.
We, the below signed, do request that all right-thinking men of the oppressed States send delegates to meet in the city of Charleston, South Carolina, no later than the middle of the month of November, to determine a joint course of protest against these unlawful crimes as committed by President Lewis Cass, his Cabinet, and the Federal Government of these United States."
The letter is distributed throughout the South, and is published on the front pages of the major Southern newspapers from October 23-27, 1849.
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Your thoughts?
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October 2, 1849: Lee presents Scott’s response to the assembled Southern officers. Escorting Lee from their meeting, they promise him a response by the middle of the afternoon.
The meeting of the Southern officers is a raucous one. Most of the officers want nothing more than to return home to defend their native states against potential slave uprisings. However, they are concerned about the legality of their actions. A few officers, more experienced in the law, state that, since they are fundamentally militia units, to remain in Canada would violate their obligations to their home states and thus any orders to do so would be illegal. The United States Articles of War state that it is the obligation of every member of the armed forces to disobey unlawful orders. Nonetheless, many officers remain concerned about the legality of mutiny. Debate is heated.
At three p.m., Lee returns to the officers’ meeting. He is met outside the tent by Thomas Jackson, who presents him with the officers’ response. The Southerners have decided they are not, technically, in mutiny; they are in lawful and willful disobedience of unlawful orders, and therefore, should be regarded as, in a sense, conscientious objectors. They have no intent of giving aid to the British; they merely wish to fulfill what they regard as their primary obligation, the defense of their home states. If Scott orders them to proceed home, they will follow said orders. But they will follow no others. As one regimental wag puts it, “They are not mutinying, but are reserving the right to mutiny at a later date.”
Scott takes immediate action. All officers, Northern and Southern, who refuse to obey orders to take to the field are to be “detained” in stockade until a court martial can be held. Military police round up and detain the Southern officers as they emerge from their meeting. “You’re arresting us?” protests Albert Sidney Johnston to Scott, as he is led away.
“You are not ‘mutinying’, you are ‘objecting’, and I am not ‘arresting’ you, I am ‘detaining’ you,” replies Scott.
As word spreads that the officers of the Southern contingent have been arrested, the enlisted men become increasingly restive. Worries that a riot might occur cause Jefferson Davis and several other arrested officers to issue orders at Scott’s behest to their units requesting calm. The net effect is to settle things down, but the enlisted men, led by their sergeants, choose to emulate their superior officers, and several regiments organize and enact a general strike. They will not attack, or make any aggressive military action, until their commanders have been released.
There is nothing Scott can do. The strikers have promised nonviolence; indeed, that is the foundation of their strike. And there are too many to arrest. “I shall have half my army arresting the other half,” he grouses to Robert E. Lee.
October 5, 1849: The Soldiers’ Strike is in its third day. Tensions are high among the officers, but among the enlisted men there is a surprising sense of camaraderie. Non-striking soldiers regard the strikers as being “maybe a little bit wrong, but they ain’t bad,” as one soldier puts it. At any rate, the approaching winter will render the strike largely moot, as Scott will be unable to attack anyway.
Reports of the strike reach Washington, D.C. Cass is appalled. “Bad news from the North,” he writes in his journal. “Discipline and morale low. Soldiers unwilling to fight. Something must break.” The time has come to order the release of Southern units, he decides. The British will be unable to mount winter offensives, and hopefully by the time spring arrives, they will be able to raise new units of regulars. He drafts a letter to General Scott, ordering the release of nearly 10,000 of Scott’s troops, and sends it by courier to Canada.
October 9, 1849: Less than two months after leaving Oregon City, Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez arrive in Fort Scott, Kansas, an astonishing feat. Both men and horses are nearly dead from the effort, but Bridger is able to inform the commander of the Army garrison at the fort that the British have occupied the Oregon Territory. The commander, seriously alarmed, dispatches riders for Washington, D.C., with instructions to alert the Secretary of War William Marcy and the President. As diligent as the commander is, he neglects to clamp down on the spread of rumors among his officers, several of which hail from Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi. These officers, in letters and telegrams, pass on word of the Oregon occupation to their friends and political patrons back home.
October 12, 1849: “BRITISH OCCUPY OREGON; ALL THIS FOR NAUGHT?” --Headline, Jonesborough Whig and Independent Journal, October 12, 1849.
Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee wake to news that the cause of the “whole mess”, as William L. Yancey describes it, has fallen into the hands of the British, lock, stock and barrel. Worse, there is apparently no plan for getting it back. Angry Southerners meet in the streets, spreading rumor, and in some cases, liquor. By afternoon, Memphis, Tennessee, and Jackson, Mississippi, are both overflowing with frustrated and intoxicated citizens. It takes little to spark riots. In Memphis, the publisher of a local abolitionist newspaper is hung in effigy, and his printing shop is stormed by rioters and burned. In Jackson, a crowd of drunken Wide-Awakes gathers around the house of the mayor, James H. Boyd, and chant for him to come out. Boyd, a supporter of slavery and an opponent of the war, emerges to tell the rioters to leave. They set upon him with clubs and savagely beat him before he is able to escape back into his house, where he and his family barricade themselves for the remainder of the riot.
It is not until the next day that order is restored.
October 14, 1849: Scott receives Cass’s order to release the volunteer units. He can’t believe what he is reading; he barely has control of his army, and now Cass is making him look like a fool. But he has committed himself to obeying the President’s orders, and so drafts orders to release the volunteer units from their service, and to release the “objecting” officers from confinement. This last he does not want to do; he thinks that Davis and the others should be tried at court-martial. But the Southern units refuse to return home without their officers, and as Cass has ordered him to send the Southern units home, Scott sees no other option than to release Davis and the rest.
October 16, 1849: William Marcy and Lewis Cass receive some dispiriting news: the British have occupied the Oregon Territory, and rioting seems to have broken out throughout much of the South. It is now more imperative than ever that Scott release the volunteer units to return home.
The Southern volunteers break camp and begin the long march home. Jefferson Davis, feeling vindicated, rides at the head of his 1st Mississippi Rifles, his triumph only marred by the return of his chronic bronchitis.
October 18, 1849: John C. Calhoun has returned home to die. His tuberculosis has taken a severe turn to the worse, and now he is back in Clemson, South Carolina, writing, writing, writing, and waiting for the end. Incensed by what he sees happening across the South, in particular President Cass’s failure to return home needed volunteer units to put down slave unrest, Calhoun is in rare form, his words so passionate and fiery that the Governor of South Carolina, Whitemarsh Seabrook, a supporter of Calhoun, considers arresting him for behavior liable to cause a breach of the peace.
Calhoun’s words have reached influential ears. On October 18, he is visited by his friend Augustus Longstreet, and Rep. Alexander Stephens from Georgia and Francis Pickens from South Carolina. All three men are prominent in pro-slavery circles; Pickens is influential among South Carolina’s Wide-Awakes. They are looking for guidance. Calhoun, who is very sick, can give them one piece of advice: the South must act in concert, whatever they do. Stephens drafts a letter to other prominent anti-war, pro-slavery agitators, which Calhoun, Pickens, Longstreet, and ultimately Speaker of the House Howell Cobb affix their signatures. The key excerpt reads:
“RESOLVED: That this Federal Government, and its President, Lewis Cass, have committed the following acts which contravene the Constitution of these United States:
It has prosecuted an unlawful war against the Kingdom of Great Britain, and invaded Canada.
It has misled the Congress in the prosecution of said war.
It has used states’ militias in the prosecution in said war.
It has kept said militias at war past the duration and commitments given in their volunteer contracts.
It has, through the personage of the commander of the Canadian forces, General Winfield Scott, unlawfully detained and arrested officers of said militias acting in the course of their legitimate duties.
It has failed to protect the Ports of Charlotte, Mobile, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville, and Galveston, Texas, from the depredations of the British Royal Navy.
It has failed to protect the economy and foreign trade of these United States from the depredations of the above.
It has failed to maintain the public peace, and instead has sought to deprive citizens of the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and the State of Texas of their lawful property by failing to quell civil insurrections on the part of slaves.
It has failed to maintain public order in quelling riots in the cities of Mobile, Memphis, and Jackson.
It has allowed American territory in the form of the Oregon Country to be seized by the Kingdom of Great Britain as a result of aforementioned war, and in doing so has allowed American citizens to be unlawfully detained by British military commanders.
It has levied unlawful and exorbitant taxes on its citizenry to support the aforementioned war.
It has unlawfully prevented the transportation of legitimate property into the territories of New Mexico and California.
It has conscripted men into the United States Army without a declared draft.
It has unlawfully quartered troops in the homes of private citizens in the conquered province of Quebec.
We, the below signed, do request that all right-thinking men of the oppressed States send delegates to meet in the city of Charleston, South Carolina, no later than the middle of the month of November, to determine a joint course of protest against these unlawful crimes as committed by President Lewis Cass, his Cabinet, and the Federal Government of these United States."
The letter is distributed throughout the South, and is published on the front pages of the major Southern newspapers from October 23-27, 1849.
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Your thoughts?
Oh, shit. This is getting serious. I don't see this ending well.
If Cass tries to stop this meeting, the South could very well secede. If he doesn't, they may secede anyway.
Either way, come spring, the US had better get more troops into Canada, or Scott will likely be forced from Canada, and that would be a complete disaster.
The best thing I can see to do is take action to reclaim Oregon. That might bring enough of a victory to tide Cass past the crisis.
If Cass tries to stop this meeting, the South could very well secede. If he doesn't, they may secede anyway.
Either way, come spring, the US had better get more troops into Canada, or Scott will likely be forced from Canada, and that would be a complete disaster.
The best thing I can see to do is take action to reclaim Oregon. That might bring enough of a victory to tide Cass past the crisis.
Houston/Lincoln for the White House, 1852! Anyone? Anyone?
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Late October, 1849: Calhoun and Stephens’ letter is met with varying reactions. In the South, there is general approval. Most southerners are tired of the British blockade, particularly in cotton-growing country, where unsold bales sit on blockaded wharves; the war in Canada is also unpopular, and the impression that Cass is a waffling, weak president is strong.
In the North, contrarily, the letter meets with consternation. What, exactly, Stephens and Calhoun mean by a “joint course of protest” is unclear. Many northerners wonder if the South intends some kind of legislative action, perhaps to denounce Cass in Congress or even impeach him. The sectionalism inherent in the letter is worrisome to many abolitionists, who note that the named states are all slaveholding. President Cass is urged to arrest those who meet in Charleston by his Secretary of War, William Marcy. “On what charge, Mr. Marcy? On what charge?” is his reply. Ironically, the very Constitution the Southerners accuse Cass of contravening ties his hands. The Southerners do have the right to freedom of assembly; the phrases used in the letter are too vague to construe any kind of sedition, and it is not illegal to redress the President for perceived wrong-doing. The Federal government is stuck.
The one odd man out is Texas. For Texans, the situation is far more complex than either Calhoun and his Southerners or Cass and his Northerners make it out to be. While Texas is a slaveholding state, and many Texans are Southerners by birth, in Texas Cass is still relatively popular, due to his victory in the Mexican-American War, and the massive expansion of territory on Texas’s western frontier the war gained. At the same time, many Texans still feel fondness for Great Britain, who allowed Texan merchants to trade in British ports during Texas’s long struggle for independence from Mexico. Also, Texans have not been hit as hard by the British blockade as other Southern states. In short, the Texans are leery of hitching themselves too closely to a Southern cause that seems both vague and potentially reckless.
November, 1849: It seems to have been a long year since President Lewis Cass’s reelection. The war in Canada seems all but lost; General Winfield Scott has less than half the men he had two months ago, and must winter for several months in Quebec City, possibly giving the British time to reinforce their forces at Saint-Denis. The incompetent British commander, Lord Raglan, has been replaced by William Rowan, a vigorous and able general. War has finally come to the West, with Lower Oregon now occupied by British troops. The British continue to blockade American ports, and by now the economy is starting to feel the pinch, particularly in the South.
The South itself has become a political powderkeg. The Wide-Awakes, a secret society bent on civil disobedience, now has hundreds of members spread throughout southern cities. Minor slave uprisings continue to fester, adding an unneeded sense of paranoia to the Southern mindset. Riots have torn apart cities like Memphis, Mobile, and Jackson, and seem likely to erupt in several other cities. President Cass and the remainder of the Federal government are at their lowest levels of popularity in the South, and the army is riven by sectional differences and rivalries between volunteer and professional troops. Jefferson Davis, arriving back in Mississippi on November 7, well ahead of his troops, is hailed as a hero and political martyr, having apparently sacrificed his military career for the protection of Mississippi.
Now, ominously, the Southern disaffection is becoming organized and regimented. In states all along the Gulf of Mexico, and up the tidewater coast of the Eastern Seaboard, committees are springing up to choose delegates to send to Calhoun’s meeting in the middle of the month.
November 17, 1849: Fourteen states have sent delegates to Charleston; the three delegates from Maryland are not taken seriously by the others and are considered by most to be spies from Washington. The Kentucky and Missouri delegations are ambivalent about the proceedings, having suffered the least from the blockade and not particularly fearing slave uprisings.
The arrival of the returning volunteer units has taken the edge off the urgent undercurrent of the gathering, but at the same time has caused many delegates to take a longer-term approach to their concerns: yes, the units have been returned now, but what about during the next war? Or the one after that? Do the states have the right to demand the return of their volunteer units when they see fit, or will the Federal army continue to override them? Who has ultimate control, the states or the Federal government?
Debate, from the beginning, is spirited. Alexander Stephens, a Congressional Representative and delegate from Georgia, takes leadership of the “states’ rights” contingent. Small and frail, Stephens is nonetheless a captivating and dynamic speaker. He argues that the Federal government has failed in its foremost duty, which is not merely the defense of the individual sovereign states, but the defense of those states’ rights. Had there been a general slave uprising, the government’s policy would have prevented the adequate defense of person and property throughout the South. Kentuckian Garrett Davis becomes the champion of the contrary position, stating that while he respects the states’ necessity to champion their own rights, the threat of foreign invasion trumps the particular needs of any one state. Ironically, both men are Whigs, arguing against and for the policies of a Democratic President. The debate does not cease after supper, but continues on into the night.
November 18, 1849: Two quiet observers to the debate between Stephens and Davis are a senator from Texas and a young second-term congressman from Illinois, who has come down from Washington specifically to watch the proceedings. Sam Houston is the warhorse of Texan politics, and has been asked by friend James W. Henderson, the governor of Texas, to lead the Texan delegation. Abraham Lincoln is in his third year as a representative from Illinois, and is considering running for Senate in 1852.
Stephens and his faction have not given an inch to Davis throughout the debate, and after lunch they reach the logical conclusion of their line of thinking. “As it has been considered and confirmed that, the Federal union having failed in its obligations to the sovereign states, the time has now come for those states to secede themselves from the union, and once it is dissolved, to form one more harmonious to their interests,” says Stephens. It is the first time secession has been mentioned.
The meeting breaks down into pandemonium, and Calhoun, who is presiding over the occasion despite severe ill health, must shout for order. After several minutes of chaos, Calhoun’s shouting devolves into a harsh coughing fit, which causes the delegates to calm down and help the old man to a chair.
Calhoun has been saving himself through the debate, recognizing that his own stature in the eyes of the delegates would effectively squash any debate and prevent the creation of a South-wide consensus. Now, however, he speaks, and from his first words it is clear he journeyed onto the ideological ground Stephens now occupies long ago, having arrived at the conclusion of secession long before any of the others. He lays out the case for remaining in the Union, and the case for secession. To all the Southern delegates, it is clear what course he recommends. As he finishes, it is sundown. Davis, seriously shaken by the course the meeting is taking, suggests adjourning for the evening, and it is put to a vote. As the weary delegates return to their quarters, the worrying--and liberating--thought of secession is on many a mind.
November 19, 1849: Calhoun dominated the second day of debate. Now a new voice speaks, a fellow giant of Southern politics. Sam Houston does not want to be here, hearing what he hears. He holds slaves himself, and is sympathetic to many of the South’s grievances. But he has worked too long and too hard to get Texas into the Union to give an assenting vote to secession. For an hour, he argues in his harsh, booming voice why the Southerners should reconsider the trajectory they are on. They have sacrificed too much, given too much of themselves, to give up on a Union that has sheltered them safely for the past sixty years. His words are eloquent in their simplicity, and move some hearts. But not enough. Debate continues after Houston has finished, and as it does it becomes clear that many delegates support introducing the idea of secession to their individual states. The Maryland delegates make it clear that such an idea cannot be entertained in their state. But the remainder assent. Jefferson Davis, the young co-leader of the Mississippi delegation, seems practically giddy at the idea. Calhoun, watching, wonders how much of the younger man’s enthusiasm is due to his understanding of the repercussions of secession and how much is due to a desire to stick a finger in the eye of Lewis Cass and Winfield Scott. As debate winds down, Houston hangs his head in sadness. “Then let fall Caesar,” he whispers. Few hear his words, and almost all that do think the quote inappropriate.
One who hears and understands is Abraham Lincoln, who has said nothing throughout the meeting.
November 20, 1849: The delegates leave Charleston in small groups, eager to get home and report on the gathering’s events. Jefferson Davis lingers an extra day, eager to speak to the great John Calhoun. All the others will proceed home, and inform their respective state legislatures that the idea of secession has been introduced, and met with general approval.
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NB: Both Garrett Davis (no relation to Jefferson) and Sam Houston were Unionists in OTL. It's possible, although unlikely, that Cass might try to prevent the meeting, but since the notion of general secession isn't introduced to the delegates until the second day, it's difficult to imagine on what grounds Cass might justify preventing the meeting. Secession as an idea has been floating around the fringe of politics since at least the 1830s, but things have never been so bad as to make it seem appealing. But then, things change.
Your thoughts?
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Late October, 1849: Calhoun and Stephens’ letter is met with varying reactions. In the South, there is general approval. Most southerners are tired of the British blockade, particularly in cotton-growing country, where unsold bales sit on blockaded wharves; the war in Canada is also unpopular, and the impression that Cass is a waffling, weak president is strong.
In the North, contrarily, the letter meets with consternation. What, exactly, Stephens and Calhoun mean by a “joint course of protest” is unclear. Many northerners wonder if the South intends some kind of legislative action, perhaps to denounce Cass in Congress or even impeach him. The sectionalism inherent in the letter is worrisome to many abolitionists, who note that the named states are all slaveholding. President Cass is urged to arrest those who meet in Charleston by his Secretary of War, William Marcy. “On what charge, Mr. Marcy? On what charge?” is his reply. Ironically, the very Constitution the Southerners accuse Cass of contravening ties his hands. The Southerners do have the right to freedom of assembly; the phrases used in the letter are too vague to construe any kind of sedition, and it is not illegal to redress the President for perceived wrong-doing. The Federal government is stuck.
The one odd man out is Texas. For Texans, the situation is far more complex than either Calhoun and his Southerners or Cass and his Northerners make it out to be. While Texas is a slaveholding state, and many Texans are Southerners by birth, in Texas Cass is still relatively popular, due to his victory in the Mexican-American War, and the massive expansion of territory on Texas’s western frontier the war gained. At the same time, many Texans still feel fondness for Great Britain, who allowed Texan merchants to trade in British ports during Texas’s long struggle for independence from Mexico. Also, Texans have not been hit as hard by the British blockade as other Southern states. In short, the Texans are leery of hitching themselves too closely to a Southern cause that seems both vague and potentially reckless.
November, 1849: It seems to have been a long year since President Lewis Cass’s reelection. The war in Canada seems all but lost; General Winfield Scott has less than half the men he had two months ago, and must winter for several months in Quebec City, possibly giving the British time to reinforce their forces at Saint-Denis. The incompetent British commander, Lord Raglan, has been replaced by William Rowan, a vigorous and able general. War has finally come to the West, with Lower Oregon now occupied by British troops. The British continue to blockade American ports, and by now the economy is starting to feel the pinch, particularly in the South.
The South itself has become a political powderkeg. The Wide-Awakes, a secret society bent on civil disobedience, now has hundreds of members spread throughout southern cities. Minor slave uprisings continue to fester, adding an unneeded sense of paranoia to the Southern mindset. Riots have torn apart cities like Memphis, Mobile, and Jackson, and seem likely to erupt in several other cities. President Cass and the remainder of the Federal government are at their lowest levels of popularity in the South, and the army is riven by sectional differences and rivalries between volunteer and professional troops. Jefferson Davis, arriving back in Mississippi on November 7, well ahead of his troops, is hailed as a hero and political martyr, having apparently sacrificed his military career for the protection of Mississippi.
Now, ominously, the Southern disaffection is becoming organized and regimented. In states all along the Gulf of Mexico, and up the tidewater coast of the Eastern Seaboard, committees are springing up to choose delegates to send to Calhoun’s meeting in the middle of the month.
November 17, 1849: Fourteen states have sent delegates to Charleston; the three delegates from Maryland are not taken seriously by the others and are considered by most to be spies from Washington. The Kentucky and Missouri delegations are ambivalent about the proceedings, having suffered the least from the blockade and not particularly fearing slave uprisings.
The arrival of the returning volunteer units has taken the edge off the urgent undercurrent of the gathering, but at the same time has caused many delegates to take a longer-term approach to their concerns: yes, the units have been returned now, but what about during the next war? Or the one after that? Do the states have the right to demand the return of their volunteer units when they see fit, or will the Federal army continue to override them? Who has ultimate control, the states or the Federal government?
Debate, from the beginning, is spirited. Alexander Stephens, a Congressional Representative and delegate from Georgia, takes leadership of the “states’ rights” contingent. Small and frail, Stephens is nonetheless a captivating and dynamic speaker. He argues that the Federal government has failed in its foremost duty, which is not merely the defense of the individual sovereign states, but the defense of those states’ rights. Had there been a general slave uprising, the government’s policy would have prevented the adequate defense of person and property throughout the South. Kentuckian Garrett Davis becomes the champion of the contrary position, stating that while he respects the states’ necessity to champion their own rights, the threat of foreign invasion trumps the particular needs of any one state. Ironically, both men are Whigs, arguing against and for the policies of a Democratic President. The debate does not cease after supper, but continues on into the night.
November 18, 1849: Two quiet observers to the debate between Stephens and Davis are a senator from Texas and a young second-term congressman from Illinois, who has come down from Washington specifically to watch the proceedings. Sam Houston is the warhorse of Texan politics, and has been asked by friend James W. Henderson, the governor of Texas, to lead the Texan delegation. Abraham Lincoln is in his third year as a representative from Illinois, and is considering running for Senate in 1852.
Stephens and his faction have not given an inch to Davis throughout the debate, and after lunch they reach the logical conclusion of their line of thinking. “As it has been considered and confirmed that, the Federal union having failed in its obligations to the sovereign states, the time has now come for those states to secede themselves from the union, and once it is dissolved, to form one more harmonious to their interests,” says Stephens. It is the first time secession has been mentioned.
The meeting breaks down into pandemonium, and Calhoun, who is presiding over the occasion despite severe ill health, must shout for order. After several minutes of chaos, Calhoun’s shouting devolves into a harsh coughing fit, which causes the delegates to calm down and help the old man to a chair.
Calhoun has been saving himself through the debate, recognizing that his own stature in the eyes of the delegates would effectively squash any debate and prevent the creation of a South-wide consensus. Now, however, he speaks, and from his first words it is clear he journeyed onto the ideological ground Stephens now occupies long ago, having arrived at the conclusion of secession long before any of the others. He lays out the case for remaining in the Union, and the case for secession. To all the Southern delegates, it is clear what course he recommends. As he finishes, it is sundown. Davis, seriously shaken by the course the meeting is taking, suggests adjourning for the evening, and it is put to a vote. As the weary delegates return to their quarters, the worrying--and liberating--thought of secession is on many a mind.
November 19, 1849: Calhoun dominated the second day of debate. Now a new voice speaks, a fellow giant of Southern politics. Sam Houston does not want to be here, hearing what he hears. He holds slaves himself, and is sympathetic to many of the South’s grievances. But he has worked too long and too hard to get Texas into the Union to give an assenting vote to secession. For an hour, he argues in his harsh, booming voice why the Southerners should reconsider the trajectory they are on. They have sacrificed too much, given too much of themselves, to give up on a Union that has sheltered them safely for the past sixty years. His words are eloquent in their simplicity, and move some hearts. But not enough. Debate continues after Houston has finished, and as it does it becomes clear that many delegates support introducing the idea of secession to their individual states. The Maryland delegates make it clear that such an idea cannot be entertained in their state. But the remainder assent. Jefferson Davis, the young co-leader of the Mississippi delegation, seems practically giddy at the idea. Calhoun, watching, wonders how much of the younger man’s enthusiasm is due to his understanding of the repercussions of secession and how much is due to a desire to stick a finger in the eye of Lewis Cass and Winfield Scott. As debate winds down, Houston hangs his head in sadness. “Then let fall Caesar,” he whispers. Few hear his words, and almost all that do think the quote inappropriate.
One who hears and understands is Abraham Lincoln, who has said nothing throughout the meeting.
November 20, 1849: The delegates leave Charleston in small groups, eager to get home and report on the gathering’s events. Jefferson Davis lingers an extra day, eager to speak to the great John Calhoun. All the others will proceed home, and inform their respective state legislatures that the idea of secession has been introduced, and met with general approval.
---------------------------------------------------------
NB: Both Garrett Davis (no relation to Jefferson) and Sam Houston were Unionists in OTL. It's possible, although unlikely, that Cass might try to prevent the meeting, but since the notion of general secession isn't introduced to the delegates until the second day, it's difficult to imagine on what grounds Cass might justify preventing the meeting. Secession as an idea has been floating around the fringe of politics since at least the 1830s, but things have never been so bad as to make it seem appealing. But then, things change.
Your thoughts?
Disagree
If a vote for succession had been held in 1851 instead of OTLs 1861 it would have passed easily.
However during the 50's most slaves in the western and northern counties were freed/sold changing the dynamics, of state politics.
As your TL is taking place in the late 40's .........................
Thespitron 6000
Two updates to respond to. Very good going.
I wonder if Cass is going to realise he needs to bite the bullet and make peace before things come totally apart. Although it looks increasingly unlikely they can hold it the US still occupies much of Canada and might be able to make a deal. It depends on how angry Britain is and how informed they are of events in the north.
With the section on the rioting in the south and "Boyd, a supporter of slavery and an opponent of the war, emerges to tell the rioters to leave. They set upon him with clubs and savagely beat him before he is able to escape back into his house, where he and his family barricade themselves for the remainder of the riot." Is that a typo as Boyd sounds like someone they would support or are they so drunk their losing all control.
Makes for an interesting situation with possibly a secession with America already weakened by what is effectively a defeat and at least with tension lasting with Britain but with Texas staying in the union.
Which raises a point. I don't know what Cass's stance will be, although suspect he will seek to oppose secession . However in one way the south are shooting themselves in the foot. If recognised states decide to leave they can't really claim access to/influence in the western territories. If Cass is wise enough or frustrated enough to not oppose any secession then he can fairly easily probably get California and other points in the west established as slave-free. Might need to be a little careful that he doesn't spook the remaining slave states that are yet not talking of secession.
What is the stance of Kentucky, which was arguably the key swing state OTL? You mentioned Garrett Davis opposing such talk and less hostility to Cass in Kentucky and Missiouri but does that mean their delegates are overwhelmingly loyalist or split? [If Maryland was to take a different route as DuQuense says then that points Washington in rather a dilemma.
Given how strong feeling is, I'm surprised that Lincoln has been able to be an observer. If the Marylanders are thought of as spies then what would they think of him?
I suspect that Cass will try and do something, as now secession is now openly on the table, but could face serious problems. With one army tied down holding the gains in the south west and another dissolving in Canada and facing a British threat, unless he ends the war I can't see where he will get the men to use force, which I think will definitely be required.
Whether peace is agreed quickly with Britain or not Britain's reaction will be crucial. If its angry enough then it could screw the north pretty thoroughly. Simply recognising any break-away south and trading with it would remove any chance of a blockade of the south. Holding firm on a total withdrawal from Canada along with possibly some compensation or demanding more of Oregon would also put Cass on the spot. On the other hand, while the south may be more important as a trading market, especially with the north's protectionist nature, it is slave-holding. Which is a big issue in Britain.
Anyway looking interesting and very difficult for the US. Hope to see more soon, especially before I'm off for a fortnight on Saturday.
Thanks
Steve
Two updates to respond to. Very good going.
I wonder if Cass is going to realise he needs to bite the bullet and make peace before things come totally apart. Although it looks increasingly unlikely they can hold it the US still occupies much of Canada and might be able to make a deal. It depends on how angry Britain is and how informed they are of events in the north.
With the section on the rioting in the south and "Boyd, a supporter of slavery and an opponent of the war, emerges to tell the rioters to leave. They set upon him with clubs and savagely beat him before he is able to escape back into his house, where he and his family barricade themselves for the remainder of the riot." Is that a typo as Boyd sounds like someone they would support or are they so drunk their losing all control.
Makes for an interesting situation with possibly a secession with America already weakened by what is effectively a defeat and at least with tension lasting with Britain but with Texas staying in the union.
Which raises a point. I don't know what Cass's stance will be, although suspect he will seek to oppose secession . However in one way the south are shooting themselves in the foot. If recognised states decide to leave they can't really claim access to/influence in the western territories. If Cass is wise enough or frustrated enough to not oppose any secession then he can fairly easily probably get California and other points in the west established as slave-free. Might need to be a little careful that he doesn't spook the remaining slave states that are yet not talking of secession.
What is the stance of Kentucky, which was arguably the key swing state OTL? You mentioned Garrett Davis opposing such talk and less hostility to Cass in Kentucky and Missiouri but does that mean their delegates are overwhelmingly loyalist or split? [If Maryland was to take a different route as DuQuense says then that points Washington in rather a dilemma.
Given how strong feeling is, I'm surprised that Lincoln has been able to be an observer. If the Marylanders are thought of as spies then what would they think of him?
I suspect that Cass will try and do something, as now secession is now openly on the table, but could face serious problems. With one army tied down holding the gains in the south west and another dissolving in Canada and facing a British threat, unless he ends the war I can't see where he will get the men to use force, which I think will definitely be required.
Whether peace is agreed quickly with Britain or not Britain's reaction will be crucial. If its angry enough then it could screw the north pretty thoroughly. Simply recognising any break-away south and trading with it would remove any chance of a blockade of the south. Holding firm on a total withdrawal from Canada along with possibly some compensation or demanding more of Oregon would also put Cass on the spot. On the other hand, while the south may be more important as a trading market, especially with the north's protectionist nature, it is slave-holding. Which is a big issue in Britain.
Anyway looking interesting and very difficult for the US. Hope to see more soon, especially before I'm off for a fortnight on Saturday.
Thanks
Steve
imperialaquila
As you say very grim for Cass and his government. However can't see any way an attack on Oregon would work. Even if he can find any troops with all the problems on-going, how the hell would they get to the west coast. Don't forget that during the Californian gold-rush OTL most of the Americans who arrived from the east coast came via either Panama or Cape Horn, neither of which are options while the US is at war with Britain.
Just had a very nasty thought. If gold was discovered now in California it immediately becomes a lot more attractive. Which could cause a mad political scramble between Britain, Mexico, both American factions and anyone else who poke their finger into the pot.
Steve
As you say very grim for Cass and his government. However can't see any way an attack on Oregon would work. Even if he can find any troops with all the problems on-going, how the hell would they get to the west coast. Don't forget that during the Californian gold-rush OTL most of the Americans who arrived from the east coast came via either Panama or Cape Horn, neither of which are options while the US is at war with Britain.
Just had a very nasty thought. If gold was discovered now in California it immediately becomes a lot more attractive. Which could cause a mad political scramble between Britain, Mexico, both American factions and anyone else who poke their finger into the pot.
Steve
"We shall all hang together, or we shall surely hang separately." Bad times for the Union. Bad times indeed.
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The Secession Crisis
November, 1849: The delegates to the Charleston Convention, as it is quickly being called, return home to a public eager for news of the debates in South Carolina. Although secession was first broached as a topic of serious discussion on November 18, Alexander Stephens was not the first to have the idea. Since the Nullification Crisis of 1832, the thought that one or more states might secede from the Union in the right circumstances has floated about the political fringe. However, since 1848, it has gradually been drifting towards the center of Southern politics. Now it is out in the open. To the population of most Southern states, the idea has appeal. The threat posed to their way of life by abolitionism, perceived Northern “Puritanism” and “atheism”, the increasing industrialization of the North, fears that slavery will be restricted in the newly acquired western territories, the British blockade of Southern ports, the slave uprisings and the fear of further uprisings, the war in Canada, President Cass’s perceived deceitfulness and untrustworthiness--all these combine to form a potent and dangerous stew of resentment and fear towards the North, and towards the Union in general.
In South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, secession is met with great popular acclaim.
“LET THE ENSHACKLING CABLES BE BROKEN”--Headline, Jackson Mississippian, November 23, 1849.
Rallies are held in Charleston to support the idea of breaking free of the Union.
“WE ARE DONE WITH JOHN BROWN GOVERNMENT”--Headline, Charleston Courier, November 25, 1849.
In Mobile, Alabama, the President is hung in effigy.
“Good riddence to Ole Devil Lew”--Graffiti, Mobile, Alabama.
Reactions are somewhat more muted in North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida, and Virginia, although the general consensus is that secession may be the correct course of action.
“I fear that our great Commonwealth may be at once the cradle of this magnificent Nation and its deathbed. I pray it is not so.”--Mary Custis Lee, letter to her husband, Col. Robert E. Lee.
In Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware, there is no consensus. Despite the words of the Maryland delegates at the Charleston Convention, it certainly seems that Maryland shall secede, if secession is on the table. Thomas Pratt, the governor of Maryland, is staunchly pro-slavery and anti-war, and holds that secession is not only necessary, but moral. The perception that the Maryland delegates were spies is only partly true; Senator Reverdy Johnson, one of the delegates, is a friend of Lewis Cass’s, and writes a report of the day’s proceedings after each day’s debate concludes. Johnson, who spoke out of turn in stating that Maryland would never secede, is anti-slavery; the other two delegates are pro. The proportions are reversed in Kentucky, where attempts by abolitionists to revise the Kentucky Constitution in a Constitutional Convention to a less slavery-friendly form have been stymied by political preoccupation with the war and the gathering crisis in the South. Kentucky is confused politically; it is possible it will secede, but then again, it might not. Delaware, alone of the slave states, has a strong pro-Union majority, but secessionists are very vocal, and think that leaving the Union might mean a better political position for slaveholders. Missouri, another state with divided loyalties like Kentucky, decides not to decide.
Texas is the state with the weakest bonds to the Union. For most of its history, it has been either a colony of Mexico or an independent nation. It has been a state for less than four years. There seem to be two options: side with an increasingly weak Union, who is losing one war in Canada and may lose another, political, one in the South, or side with the South, a region it shares much with culturally but which seems willing to throw itself into the abyss to uphold their interpretation of “states’ rights” that to Texans seems ridiculous. Sam Houston, long a supporter of Unionism, argues against secession, while Louis Wigfall, State Representative and Southerner at heart, argues in favor of it. Wigfall doesn’t have Houston’s standing in Texas, but he is young and combative, and willing to make a spectacle of himself to get his message out. The pragmatic Texans are torn between their two options; in private, some hope that a third option might present itself. If it does, Texas will take it.
The North’s reaction to all of this is pure shock. Most Northerners, although aware of the depth of feeling in the South, didn’t think the crisis had reached this point. Lewis Cass is aghast. Secession was the last thing he was expecting, but Reverdy Johnson’s reports reveal that most of the Southern delegates support such a radical idea.
Cass is, for a few days in late November, paralyzed with outrage and perplexity. “How did it come to this?” he demands of his cabinet members, of Senators, of passersby. “How did it come to this?” There seem to be no good options. In fact, there is little Cass can do to prevent secession, if the Southerners decide to secede. Any promises Cass might make will be disbelieved. Legally, Cass and the Attorney General, Robert J. Walker, both believe that secession is completely and totally unlawful, but how to make that stick? Military action seems to be right out. “They have all the damned troops now,” grouses Cass in private.
December, 1849: “For God’s sake, you cannot let them take Kentucky,” says Vice-President Polk in a rare outburst, and he is right. Cass now has two missions: patch things up with Britain, and sway the border states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri back over into the Unionist column.
The first is more easily said than done. John Bloomfield, the new British envoy to the United States, has been observing with particular interest the political pandemonium in America. The Southerners have not been particularly quiet in their desire to secede, and Bloomfield, an experienced diplomat, recognizes that all Britain might need to do is wait, and she may get everything she wants at the negotiation table. When President Cass pays him a personal visit at the British mission on Connecticut Avenue on November 26, Bloomfield is all smiles and politeness, but to Cass’s eminent annoyance, makes no offer to take the current conflict into the realm of diplomacy. “I am saddened to say that as Her Majesty’s envoy extraordinaire, I am not at liberty to make such decisions, which must be referred to His Grace, the Duke of Wellington, being Her Majesty’s Commander in Chief, and to the Right Honorable the Earl Grey, the Secretary of State for War,” says Bloomfield, smiling.
“But that will take weeks,” says Cass. “Surely things can be expedited in some fashion.”
“I am afraid not. These are matters of state,” replies Bloomfield, and smiles, and smiles.
In the border states, Cass has more luck. Thanks to the newly completed telegraph line reaching as far as Jefferson City, Missouri, Cass is able to mount a hastily organized political campaign in both Missouri and Kentucky, with the hope of keeping the two states from seceding. Cass’s political operatives in both states report that secessionist sentiment is not strong, but Cass continues pouring what little political capital he has left into the two states. Maryland, Cass fears, may be a lost cause.
Hope comes from an unexpected quarter. Reports from Texas, slowly arriving during the middle of the month, suggest that that state is in no great hurry to secede. Deliberations are slow, and there seems to be no clear consensus for either position, Unionist or Secessionist. Cass instructs his Democratic allies there to keep working hard to maintain Texas’s place in the Union.
But time is not on Cass’s side. In fact, time has almost run out, and like an unleashed avalanche, the secessionist movement is rumbling towards its denouement. On December 10, 1849, secessionist legislators introduce to the South Carolina House of Representatives a measure to secede from the Union. On December 11, North Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia follow suit. On December 13, Mississippi. On December 15, Louisiana and Florida. Arkansas is next, as is Tennessee, on December 17, and lastly, Virginia and Maryland introduce their own measures. The sand has almost run out. All Cass and the rest of the North can do now is watch and wait.
December 24, 1849: Christmas Eve. By a unanimous vote, the South Carolina General Assembly approves a measure seceding South Carolina from the United States of America. They are the first state to secede from the Union. When Cass receives a telegram informing him of the decision, he wires back four words: “After this, the flood.”
South Carolina’s secession sets off a rush to leave the constricting bonds of the Union.
December 27, 1849: Mississippi and Arkansas secede.
December 28, 1849: North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee secede.
December 29, 1849: Louisiana, Virginia, and Alabama secede.
December 31, 1849: On the cusp of the New Year, the North holds its breath as they wait for word from Annapolis. “They cannot do it, they must not do it, they shall not do it,” is the lead sentence in the editorial of the New York Herald.
And yet they do do it. A little after noon, the word arrives: Maryland has seceded.
The nation has been broken in two.
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Up next: "Our Troubled Golden Republic": California, 1847-1850
Hey, and how come you guys didn't tell me off for calling Fox Maule Secretary of State for War, when he was clearly Secretary at War in 1849?
-----------------------------------------------------
The Secession Crisis
November, 1849: The delegates to the Charleston Convention, as it is quickly being called, return home to a public eager for news of the debates in South Carolina. Although secession was first broached as a topic of serious discussion on November 18, Alexander Stephens was not the first to have the idea. Since the Nullification Crisis of 1832, the thought that one or more states might secede from the Union in the right circumstances has floated about the political fringe. However, since 1848, it has gradually been drifting towards the center of Southern politics. Now it is out in the open. To the population of most Southern states, the idea has appeal. The threat posed to their way of life by abolitionism, perceived Northern “Puritanism” and “atheism”, the increasing industrialization of the North, fears that slavery will be restricted in the newly acquired western territories, the British blockade of Southern ports, the slave uprisings and the fear of further uprisings, the war in Canada, President Cass’s perceived deceitfulness and untrustworthiness--all these combine to form a potent and dangerous stew of resentment and fear towards the North, and towards the Union in general.
In South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama, secession is met with great popular acclaim.
“LET THE ENSHACKLING CABLES BE BROKEN”--Headline, Jackson Mississippian, November 23, 1849.
Rallies are held in Charleston to support the idea of breaking free of the Union.
“WE ARE DONE WITH JOHN BROWN GOVERNMENT”--Headline, Charleston Courier, November 25, 1849.
In Mobile, Alabama, the President is hung in effigy.
“Good riddence to Ole Devil Lew”--Graffiti, Mobile, Alabama.
Reactions are somewhat more muted in North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida, and Virginia, although the general consensus is that secession may be the correct course of action.
“I fear that our great Commonwealth may be at once the cradle of this magnificent Nation and its deathbed. I pray it is not so.”--Mary Custis Lee, letter to her husband, Col. Robert E. Lee.
In Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware, there is no consensus. Despite the words of the Maryland delegates at the Charleston Convention, it certainly seems that Maryland shall secede, if secession is on the table. Thomas Pratt, the governor of Maryland, is staunchly pro-slavery and anti-war, and holds that secession is not only necessary, but moral. The perception that the Maryland delegates were spies is only partly true; Senator Reverdy Johnson, one of the delegates, is a friend of Lewis Cass’s, and writes a report of the day’s proceedings after each day’s debate concludes. Johnson, who spoke out of turn in stating that Maryland would never secede, is anti-slavery; the other two delegates are pro. The proportions are reversed in Kentucky, where attempts by abolitionists to revise the Kentucky Constitution in a Constitutional Convention to a less slavery-friendly form have been stymied by political preoccupation with the war and the gathering crisis in the South. Kentucky is confused politically; it is possible it will secede, but then again, it might not. Delaware, alone of the slave states, has a strong pro-Union majority, but secessionists are very vocal, and think that leaving the Union might mean a better political position for slaveholders. Missouri, another state with divided loyalties like Kentucky, decides not to decide.
Texas is the state with the weakest bonds to the Union. For most of its history, it has been either a colony of Mexico or an independent nation. It has been a state for less than four years. There seem to be two options: side with an increasingly weak Union, who is losing one war in Canada and may lose another, political, one in the South, or side with the South, a region it shares much with culturally but which seems willing to throw itself into the abyss to uphold their interpretation of “states’ rights” that to Texans seems ridiculous. Sam Houston, long a supporter of Unionism, argues against secession, while Louis Wigfall, State Representative and Southerner at heart, argues in favor of it. Wigfall doesn’t have Houston’s standing in Texas, but he is young and combative, and willing to make a spectacle of himself to get his message out. The pragmatic Texans are torn between their two options; in private, some hope that a third option might present itself. If it does, Texas will take it.
The North’s reaction to all of this is pure shock. Most Northerners, although aware of the depth of feeling in the South, didn’t think the crisis had reached this point. Lewis Cass is aghast. Secession was the last thing he was expecting, but Reverdy Johnson’s reports reveal that most of the Southern delegates support such a radical idea.
Cass is, for a few days in late November, paralyzed with outrage and perplexity. “How did it come to this?” he demands of his cabinet members, of Senators, of passersby. “How did it come to this?” There seem to be no good options. In fact, there is little Cass can do to prevent secession, if the Southerners decide to secede. Any promises Cass might make will be disbelieved. Legally, Cass and the Attorney General, Robert J. Walker, both believe that secession is completely and totally unlawful, but how to make that stick? Military action seems to be right out. “They have all the damned troops now,” grouses Cass in private.
December, 1849: “For God’s sake, you cannot let them take Kentucky,” says Vice-President Polk in a rare outburst, and he is right. Cass now has two missions: patch things up with Britain, and sway the border states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri back over into the Unionist column.
The first is more easily said than done. John Bloomfield, the new British envoy to the United States, has been observing with particular interest the political pandemonium in America. The Southerners have not been particularly quiet in their desire to secede, and Bloomfield, an experienced diplomat, recognizes that all Britain might need to do is wait, and she may get everything she wants at the negotiation table. When President Cass pays him a personal visit at the British mission on Connecticut Avenue on November 26, Bloomfield is all smiles and politeness, but to Cass’s eminent annoyance, makes no offer to take the current conflict into the realm of diplomacy. “I am saddened to say that as Her Majesty’s envoy extraordinaire, I am not at liberty to make such decisions, which must be referred to His Grace, the Duke of Wellington, being Her Majesty’s Commander in Chief, and to the Right Honorable the Earl Grey, the Secretary of State for War,” says Bloomfield, smiling.
“But that will take weeks,” says Cass. “Surely things can be expedited in some fashion.”
“I am afraid not. These are matters of state,” replies Bloomfield, and smiles, and smiles.
In the border states, Cass has more luck. Thanks to the newly completed telegraph line reaching as far as Jefferson City, Missouri, Cass is able to mount a hastily organized political campaign in both Missouri and Kentucky, with the hope of keeping the two states from seceding. Cass’s political operatives in both states report that secessionist sentiment is not strong, but Cass continues pouring what little political capital he has left into the two states. Maryland, Cass fears, may be a lost cause.
Hope comes from an unexpected quarter. Reports from Texas, slowly arriving during the middle of the month, suggest that that state is in no great hurry to secede. Deliberations are slow, and there seems to be no clear consensus for either position, Unionist or Secessionist. Cass instructs his Democratic allies there to keep working hard to maintain Texas’s place in the Union.
But time is not on Cass’s side. In fact, time has almost run out, and like an unleashed avalanche, the secessionist movement is rumbling towards its denouement. On December 10, 1849, secessionist legislators introduce to the South Carolina House of Representatives a measure to secede from the Union. On December 11, North Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia follow suit. On December 13, Mississippi. On December 15, Louisiana and Florida. Arkansas is next, as is Tennessee, on December 17, and lastly, Virginia and Maryland introduce their own measures. The sand has almost run out. All Cass and the rest of the North can do now is watch and wait.
December 24, 1849: Christmas Eve. By a unanimous vote, the South Carolina General Assembly approves a measure seceding South Carolina from the United States of America. They are the first state to secede from the Union. When Cass receives a telegram informing him of the decision, he wires back four words: “After this, the flood.”
South Carolina’s secession sets off a rush to leave the constricting bonds of the Union.
December 27, 1849: Mississippi and Arkansas secede.
December 28, 1849: North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee secede.
December 29, 1849: Louisiana, Virginia, and Alabama secede.
December 31, 1849: On the cusp of the New Year, the North holds its breath as they wait for word from Annapolis. “They cannot do it, they must not do it, they shall not do it,” is the lead sentence in the editorial of the New York Herald.
And yet they do do it. A little after noon, the word arrives: Maryland has seceded.
The nation has been broken in two.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Up next: "Our Troubled Golden Republic": California, 1847-1850
Hey, and how come you guys didn't tell me off for calling Fox Maule Secretary of State for War, when he was clearly Secretary at War in 1849?
Thespitron 6000
Things are looking very bad for the US. A few thoughts and comments.
a) Bloomfield is playing things wisely, both because he realises time is on his side and because there may well be limits on his authority he doesn't want to exceed but has Cass actually made any proposals? If he has put anything on the table then Bloomfield can send it to London to give some idea. It might weaken his position in negotiations because Britain can build from that base but his position is already so weak that he may have no choice.
b) I wonder if you're thinking of the [to me] fairly obvious 3rd alternative for Texas? Their only been a state for 4 years and given their southern border is now more secure there could be an argument for independence again. It does mean [effectively] seceding themselves, but not joining any southern confederation, which might anger both neighbours but it could act as a compromise that binds elements in Texas. It would avoid, if war does occur, possibly avoiding clashing with former neighbours on either side.
c) Is there any plan, public or otherwise for what the southern states will do? OTL they formed the CSA and its unlikely that all of them would want to stay totally independent of any organisation. That would mean too many costs and risks. Plus if war occurs with the north, which I think will be certain now Maryland has gone, they will need to look to each other for support.
d) It sounds like interesting times for California ahead. Also the description of it as a 'golden republic' doesn't bode well for its continued membership of the union, at least in the short term. I hadn't actually noticed the date, shows how much attention I had been playing. Have they struck gold yet? That would as I said before really stir things up on the west coast.
e) I think Maryland seceding will be the trigger as I said above. What is going to happen with Washington. Like the OTL historical trigger of federal outposts in the south it makes avoiding a clash virtually impossible. Furthermore, if it means war's triggered by the north seeking to overrun Maryland to secure access to the capital then that would inflame the south and possibly some undecided elements and throw the moral burden of having triggered the conflict on the north. Not sure what will happen if elements in Maryland seek to bar unionist communications with the capital.
Basic I can't really see any good choices for Cass, He can, and probably will, try to fight to preserve the union but that would definitely mean making peace with Britain, on terms favourable to Britain. Also while he's roundly hated in the south how is he viewed in the north. Given the total mess could there be talk of impeachment or some other action to express displeasure with his government. Or might he help matters by falling on his sword and resigning in the hope that a replacement, with less baggage, might be able to salvage something. [Highly unlikely a politician will make that sort of sacrifice and his double dealing with Calhoun earlier suggests he doesn't have the character for it but he might consider it or having it suggested]. Not sure what the situation would be if his vice took over.
Another potential attitude in the north could be a lot of resentment at the south. Can see many arguing that their not only breaking the union but also meaning defeat in a war they will claim - wrongly - was being won. Depends on how things develop but presuming a separate southern state emerges there could be a hell of a lot of bad blood on both sides.
Steve
PS - You dweb. Fox Maule was obviously Secretary of State at War not for War. Do you know nothing!
Things are looking very bad for the US. A few thoughts and comments.
a) Bloomfield is playing things wisely, both because he realises time is on his side and because there may well be limits on his authority he doesn't want to exceed but has Cass actually made any proposals? If he has put anything on the table then Bloomfield can send it to London to give some idea. It might weaken his position in negotiations because Britain can build from that base but his position is already so weak that he may have no choice.
b) I wonder if you're thinking of the [to me] fairly obvious 3rd alternative for Texas? Their only been a state for 4 years and given their southern border is now more secure there could be an argument for independence again. It does mean [effectively] seceding themselves, but not joining any southern confederation, which might anger both neighbours but it could act as a compromise that binds elements in Texas. It would avoid, if war does occur, possibly avoiding clashing with former neighbours on either side.
c) Is there any plan, public or otherwise for what the southern states will do? OTL they formed the CSA and its unlikely that all of them would want to stay totally independent of any organisation. That would mean too many costs and risks. Plus if war occurs with the north, which I think will be certain now Maryland has gone, they will need to look to each other for support.
d) It sounds like interesting times for California ahead. Also the description of it as a 'golden republic' doesn't bode well for its continued membership of the union, at least in the short term. I hadn't actually noticed the date, shows how much attention I had been playing.
Have they struck gold yet? That would as I said before really stir things up on the west coast.e) I think Maryland seceding will be the trigger as I said above. What is going to happen with Washington. Like the OTL historical trigger of federal outposts in the south it makes avoiding a clash virtually impossible. Furthermore, if it means war's triggered by the north seeking to overrun Maryland to secure access to the capital then that would inflame the south and possibly some undecided elements and throw the moral burden of having triggered the conflict on the north. Not sure what will happen if elements in Maryland seek to bar unionist communications with the capital.
Basic I can't really see any good choices for Cass, He can, and probably will, try to fight to preserve the union but that would definitely mean making peace with Britain, on terms favourable to Britain. Also while he's roundly hated in the south how is he viewed in the north. Given the total mess could there be talk of impeachment or some other action to express displeasure with his government. Or might he help matters by falling on his sword and resigning in the hope that a replacement, with less baggage, might be able to salvage something. [Highly unlikely a politician will make that sort of sacrifice and his double dealing with Calhoun earlier suggests he doesn't have the character for it but he might consider it or having it suggested]. Not sure what the situation would be if his vice took over.
Another potential attitude in the north could be a lot of resentment at the south. Can see many arguing that their not only breaking the union but also meaning defeat in a war they will claim - wrongly - was being won. Depends on how things develop but presuming a separate southern state emerges there could be a hell of a lot of bad blood on both sides.
Steve
PS - You dweb. Fox Maule was obviously Secretary of State at War not for War. Do you know nothing!
Damn, I've just realized you could set a totally kickass western in the alternate California I'm working on for this TL. John C. Fremont, Kit Carson, and Jose Antonio Carrillo in a clogged, frustrated Gold Rush, fighting the British and each other--that would make a damned good movie.
Once Upon A Time In California...
Once Upon A Time In California...
A rather long update today. Also, I'm not a super-expert on Californian history, so if I've made any mistakes, by all means correct me.
-----------------------------
“Our Troubled Golden Republic”: California, 1847-1850
September, 1847: The Treaty of Azcapotzalco cedes California to the United States, and overnight, Californians find themselves part of an entirely different country. Some, former and now once again American settlers, are pleased. Others, settlers from Mexico, are less pleased. However, over the years the Californians have learned to live together, if only uneasily, despite their background. As a result, the settlers are cautiously optimistic about joining the Union as a territory. Many have come to see California as a land of opportunity. One of these is Lt. Col. John C. Fremont, the one-time military governor of the new territory. Fremont, who was ousted from his position by General Stephen Kearny, is in disgrace, having narrowly avoided a court-martial. His commission in the Army is tenuous at best; Kearny, who has recently departed California for the East Coast, has been looking for a reason to revoke it since March. Richard Mason, the new governor, is more willing to indulge the would-be adventurer Fremont. Fremont is impulsive, rash, and vainglorious; he is also intelligent, idealistic, and a hero to many Californians and Americans.
Also in California is Kit Carson, an experienced guide, trapper, scout, and sometime Indian fighter. Carson, who fought alongside the Americans in the Mexican American War, has spent most of his adult life in the wilderness of the American West, and having married for the third time a few years before, is thinking about settling down. California looks good to him, and he figures he might be able to make it as a rancher.
Jose Antonio Carrillo, a Mexican general who fought against the Americans during the War in places like Los Angeles, now finds himself a man without a country. California belongs to the Americans now, but Carrillo is not content to leave things at that. For now, though, he will consider his options; the Americans don’t seem to be in any hurry to arrest or expel him.
January, 1848: Gold is discovered near the American River. At first the news is kept quiet by the discoverers, but eventually word leaks out, and the first wave of gold prospectors head towards Coloma, the small village near the original discovery of gold.
July, 1848: The East Coast learns of the gold strike in California; many newspapers run stories, but war news from Canada pushes the news of the discovery off the front page. Europe learns of the new find shortly after America does. While America is preoccupied by war, and Europe by revolutions, thousands on both continents decide that the time is right for easy riches. The Gold Rush has begun.
Summer and Fall, 1848: It takes many months before the first “Forty-Eighters” arrive in California. The fastest route is overland, via the California Trail. A dedicated, skilled horseman experienced with wilderness living can make the length of the trail in just three months; taking a ship around the tip of South America takes at least five months. Soon, however, a shorter route across the Isthmus of Panama is developed. Whatever the method used, tens of thousands set out for California, and by October 1848, thousands have arrived in the small port town of San Francisco.
Overnight, San Francisco turns from a sleepy village into a bustling boom town. Canny operators soon realize that the real money is not in gold, but in supplying the often ill-equipped would-be prospectors. The ongoing Gold Rush depends on a steady supply of ships bringing in needed food and materials; no one has time to farm when there’s gold to be had.
Kit Carson, who has taken a claim outside Sacramento, finds the lure of easy money to be too much to bear. Only for him, the lure isn’t gold; it’s guiding the hapless prospectors to the gold fields. Setting up shop out of an office in San Francisco that’s little more than a storefront, he soon begins leading parties of gold-hungry Forty-Eighters out to the Sierra Nevadas.
Jose Carrillo begins making a good living off the prospectors as well. He has raised a small force of Californios willing to adopt the life of banditry, and they rob wagon trains of prospectors on their way to and from Sacramento.
John Fremont, too, is drawn to the gold fields, but fails as a prospector. Instead, he finds a calling in politics: San Francisco needs clever, ambitious men to fill vacant public offices, and Fremont is soon elected San Francisco County Sheriff, a new position.
Things seem to be going well for California.
November 19, 1848: The ships-of-the-line HMS Albion and HMS London arrive at San Francisco Bay and blockade the port there. Aside from the blockade, they do nothing. However, nothing in this case is enough. The burgeoning gold trade out of Sutter’s Mill is shut down, and no goods are allowed in or out of San Francisco. For the gold miners and other Forty-Eighters, it is a catastrophe of the first order. There is little food stockpiled in the city; ships expected to bring vital supplies are turned away by the British. For the San Franciscans, the situation is exacerbated by the fact that they have only the vaguest idea of why the British are there. The extent of the war crisis in the east is unknown to most San Franciscans.
Military governor Richard Mason formally protests the blockade to the British commander, but his protest is ignored.
December 8, 1848: Joseph Chiles, a Californian guide and explorer, returns to San Francisco overland from El Paso. With him he brings valuable news in regards to what’s happening back east. San Franciscans are intrigued to hear war news, particularly with two British warships anchored offshore, but are appalled and then outraged to hear that President Cass intends to extend slavery to California. Chiles swears that it is the truth to anyone who will ask.
December 10 - 12, 1848: Rioting breaks out in San Francisco, over both the British blockade, the increasing lack of supplies, and the slavery issue, and quickly spreads to surrounding communities. Richard Mason orders the soldiers under his command to take “all appropriate steps” to quell the rioting; tragically, at some point in the chain of command, the key word “appropriate” is lost, and soldiers in Benicia, believing themselves about to be mobbed, open fire on rioters. Seventeen are killed before rioting ceases.
December 1848 - January 1849: After the riots, things remain tense in San Francisco and the neighboring communities. Mason and Fremont take the prudent step of placing on trial several of the soldiers involved in what is being called the “Benicia Massacre”; two soldiers are found guilty of murder. While the public is not entirely happy that many of the soldiers escaped serious punishment, things seem to be quieting down. But under the surface, strong tensions remain.
In the Sierra Nevadas, food is somewhat easier to find, but in San Francisco, stocks are starting to run low. Fremont foolishly exacerbates matters by stating that the people of San Francisco should attempt to drive out the Albion and the London by force, a totally unrealistic proposition, but one that finds fertile soil in the resentment brewing in the city.
February 3, 1849: Food is very scarce. “Today I noticed a child of about four or five years of age, sitting in the gutter, as thin as a skeleton. The child, while breathing shallowly, made no motion when I approached, and only sighed softly and did not stir when I touched it. It was like touching a corpse not yet dead,” writes Robert Semple, a journalist and newspaper publisher. Although no one has yet starved, it is only a matter of time. The British, upon being petitioned by Mason, agree to allow two grain ships to dock at the San Francisco wharf. News soon spreads that the ships will be arriving around noon, and a huge crowd gathers at the docks. As the ships attempt to unload their grain, the famished crowd surges forward. Hapless San Franciscans are pushed off the docks into the Bay, where weakened by a lack of food, many drown. The ships themselves are soon swamped by San Franciscans frantically grabbing any grain they can find. The smaller of the two, the SS Pearse, capsizes under the weight of the mob, and dozens drown while much of the grain is lost.
“GRIM TRAGEDY: BRITISH GRAIN SHIP CAPSIZES, HUNDREDS FEARED DEAD”--Headline, Alta California, February 4, 1849
“British Watch While We Starve and Drown”--Lead Editorial, Alta California, February 5, 1849
Anti-British feeling and the notion, championed by John C. Fremont, that the British were responsible for the Pearse Disaster, become very commonplace among San Franciscans. The British, fearing a possible military backlash, reinforce the London and the Albion with three smaller warships.
The Gold Inflation
March, 1849: “One cannot buy a loaf of bread for less than a handful of nuggets. Tomorrow it shall be two handfuls.” --Royal Sprague, Forty-Eighter, writing in his journal.
The people of northern California find themselves in a nightmarish paradox: everyone seems to have plenty of gold, everyone has achieved the “Dream of ‘48”--but the gold is worthless. There is no food to buy. There is no livestock, no seed. On March 1, 1848, a two-ounce nugget of gold will buy you a decent wagon and a horse to hitch to it. On March 1, 1849, it will buy you a potato. People are beginning to starve. “We float in a sea of gold, as worthless as piss,” writes Kit Carson.
Hauling goods across the California Trail is difficult, time consuming, and not particularly efficient. Those who make the trip often are mobbed by starving Californians as they arrive in San Francisco or Sacramento.
Spring, 1849: It is time to plant. Seed is exceedingly hard to come by. Much of what was intended for this year’s crop was eaten during the hard times of December and January, and now times are harder still. Still, some seed--wheat, corn, oats--goes into the ground. But harvest time is months away. Unless something is done to relieve the food shortage, most of the Forty-Eighters, stranded in California, will starve to death.
The British do not have hearts of stone. But save for lifting the blockade, there is no way to supply the thousands of erstwhile prospectors with food and victuals. Some small amounts of grain are let through; they do little good.
April 22, 1849: The London is relieved by the HMS Arrogant, who has arrived in San Francisco by way of Bengal and Hong Kong. A small party of sailors led by Captain Robert FitzRoy comes ashore and meet briefly under flag of truce with Governor Mason. The topic is the food shortage, and what is to be done. Although both men feel a strong humanitarian urge to end the crisis, they cannot find a solution.
During the meeting, one of the sailors uses a public outhouse. He has not been feeling well for the last day, and has complained to the ship’s doctor of diarrhea. The outhouse’s cesspool feeds directly into San Francisco’s water table.
April 27, 1849: Many people in San Francisco await feeling feverish and suffering from diarrhea. Doctors and medicine are in extremely short supply in California, and most of the sick suffer in agony alone, unnoticed. Weakened by months of malnutrition, the populace of San Francisco is ill-prepared to deal with a bacteriological invader. The San Francisco Cholera Epidemic of 1849 has begun.
April - July, 1849: Cholera ravages the already weakened population of California. By the first week of June, the first cases begin to appear in Sacramento. Hundreds perish.
July 19, 1849: It is the hottest part of the year now, and cholera and starvation is epidemic throughout most of the territory. However, in San Francisco the epidemic seems to have died down over the last three weeks, due in part to the hot California summer killing the extant bacteria not already infecting a human. Many San Franciscans begin to relax.
On the morning of July 19, a city doctor notices an influx of cholera cases in the neighborhood near Mission San Francisco de Asis. He is alarmed; the number of people who have taken sick is much higher than he has seen the last few days. Many of the sick are Mormons, recently arrived to the city. The Mormons, who abstain from bacteria-killing caffeinated and alcoholic beverages, are much more vulnerable to water-borne cholera, and many of the newly arrived are very sick indeed.
The people of San Francisco do not know the origins of cholera, and word that a new breakout is occurring in the south part of the city causes panic. Rumors that the Mormons have brought, or even cause, the disease run rampant, and panicky mobs of starving, sickened San Franciscans begin targeting Mormons. Anti-Mormon riots erupt throughout the city.
July 23, 1849: The Anti-Mormon Riots end after four days. Numerous Mormons and San Franciscan “gentiles” alike have been killed in the chaos.
The Golden Republic
August, 1849: John Fremont has had enough. He was lucky to have contracted cholera in the city and then suffered through it well away in the country; inadvertently, he and his companions, surveying a possible site for a new town, have struck upon the only effective treatment: drink lots of uncontaminated water. Extremely weak and still recuperating from his illness, Fremont returns to San Francisco determined to do something about the blockade. What, he isn’t sure. But something needs to be done. He enlists some old army friends, and in secret they form the Committee for Defense of the Golden Republic, an organization devoted to ending the blockade and the food shortage.
The population of California is slowly starving, and has been decimated by disease. Out at sea, the British ships mock the San Franciscans in their misery; the British have become the most despised people in California. The second-most despised is the American military government, who seem impotent and negligent in the face of the British. Messengers have been sent east, begging for help, but no help seems to be coming.
September - October, 1849: Scant crops are harvested from the fields of one of the richest farmlands in the world. Stories that farmers have been killed for their seed grain, or even the grain that they intend for their own children, circulate among Californians, and crank tight the screws of fear.
Carrillo, the former Mexican general turned bandit, is living like a king. When he wants food, he steals it. Farmers and prospectors living in the Sierra Nevadas are in turns terrified and envious of him, and resent the government in San Francisco for failing to catch and kill him.
John Fremont’s Committee for Defense begins a series of attempts to sabotage the British warships, all of which fail.
December, 1849: The Second Starvation Winter. San Franciscans do not even have the strength to riot anymore. Why does the American government not send aid? is the question that seems to be on everyone’s swollen, sore-pocked lips. The other question is, Why does Mason do nothing?
Richard Mason, governor of California, deserves none of the San Franciscans’ hatred, as he has worked assiduously since the crisis began trying to find a way to end it, and he has starved alongside his public. But increasingly the public sees him as weak and ineffectual; the Committee for Defense, which is growing in strength and influence, has begun to see him as the enemy.
January, 1850: It is now clear what must be done. If California is to survive, a separate peace must be made with Britain. The idea, unthinkable even six months earlier, is now the consensus among Californians from Sacramento down to the tiny village of Los Angeles. Word has spread fast, and the Californians are united in their discontent. Some of their messengers have returned, beaten and despairing, telling tales of political turmoil in the east, of a Federal government seemingly incapable of defeating the British. The Committee for Defense operates openly now, its members walking the streets with impunity. Mason seems weak and enfeebled. He can only watch from his office overlooking Portsmouth Square as his power slips away from him.
February 9, 1850: Sheriff John C. Fremont is confident as he walks into the military governor’s office. A small force of men, many of them U.S. soldiers, has occupied key points in the city, under Fremont’s command. A coup is now in effect, he carefully informs Mason, who sits behind his desk with an expression that might be resignation. Fremont explains with delicacy that the current administration cannot continue; continued association with the United States of America, and no end of hostilities between that country and Great Britain, shall result in most of California’s population starving. Therefore, Fremont, supported by the Committee for Defense and many of San Francisco’s most prominent citizens, is declaring independence.
The coup is a fait accompli. Mason has neither the power nor the wherewithal to resist, and both he and Fremont know it. Word spreads through the city, and cheers are heard even as Fremont and Mason discuss the new nation in the governor’s office.
Fremont’s first intention is to negotiate peace with Britain. The new country does not have a name yet, and already it has a foreign policy.
February 11, 1850: For two days, Robert FitzRoy has waited for Fremont to come to him to negotiate. But revolutions are tricky things, and it has taken Fremont two days to consolidate his power. When he does arrive, a little after two in the afternoon, the British captain and the Californian revolutionary quickly get to business. What the Californians want, Fremont explains, is an end to the blockade and food--quickly. In exchange for the British recognizing Californian independence and the establishment of friendly relations, the Californians are willing to recognize the southern extent of the British claim in the Oregon territory as being the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Also, the Californians have quite a lot of gold they’d love to trade. FitzRoy cautions Fremont that while the British commanders at the scene can end the blockade on their own initiative, recognizing the independence of California will need to be done by Her Majesty’s Government. Fremont is content with this, if it means that the people of California won’t starve.
As Fremont gets up to leave, FitzRoy asks him in what capacity he’s negotiating: president, prime minister, king? Fremont replies with a laugh that they haven’t decided on a title yet.
“An unnamed leader for an unnamed country,” says FitzRoy.
“Oh, it has a name,” replies Fremont. “It is the Union of California and New Mexico.”
-------------------------------------------------
Your thoughts?
Up Next: A Confederacy, At Last
-----------------------------
“Our Troubled Golden Republic”: California, 1847-1850
September, 1847: The Treaty of Azcapotzalco cedes California to the United States, and overnight, Californians find themselves part of an entirely different country. Some, former and now once again American settlers, are pleased. Others, settlers from Mexico, are less pleased. However, over the years the Californians have learned to live together, if only uneasily, despite their background. As a result, the settlers are cautiously optimistic about joining the Union as a territory. Many have come to see California as a land of opportunity. One of these is Lt. Col. John C. Fremont, the one-time military governor of the new territory. Fremont, who was ousted from his position by General Stephen Kearny, is in disgrace, having narrowly avoided a court-martial. His commission in the Army is tenuous at best; Kearny, who has recently departed California for the East Coast, has been looking for a reason to revoke it since March. Richard Mason, the new governor, is more willing to indulge the would-be adventurer Fremont. Fremont is impulsive, rash, and vainglorious; he is also intelligent, idealistic, and a hero to many Californians and Americans.
Also in California is Kit Carson, an experienced guide, trapper, scout, and sometime Indian fighter. Carson, who fought alongside the Americans in the Mexican American War, has spent most of his adult life in the wilderness of the American West, and having married for the third time a few years before, is thinking about settling down. California looks good to him, and he figures he might be able to make it as a rancher.
Jose Antonio Carrillo, a Mexican general who fought against the Americans during the War in places like Los Angeles, now finds himself a man without a country. California belongs to the Americans now, but Carrillo is not content to leave things at that. For now, though, he will consider his options; the Americans don’t seem to be in any hurry to arrest or expel him.
January, 1848: Gold is discovered near the American River. At first the news is kept quiet by the discoverers, but eventually word leaks out, and the first wave of gold prospectors head towards Coloma, the small village near the original discovery of gold.
July, 1848: The East Coast learns of the gold strike in California; many newspapers run stories, but war news from Canada pushes the news of the discovery off the front page. Europe learns of the new find shortly after America does. While America is preoccupied by war, and Europe by revolutions, thousands on both continents decide that the time is right for easy riches. The Gold Rush has begun.
Summer and Fall, 1848: It takes many months before the first “Forty-Eighters” arrive in California. The fastest route is overland, via the California Trail. A dedicated, skilled horseman experienced with wilderness living can make the length of the trail in just three months; taking a ship around the tip of South America takes at least five months. Soon, however, a shorter route across the Isthmus of Panama is developed. Whatever the method used, tens of thousands set out for California, and by October 1848, thousands have arrived in the small port town of San Francisco.
Overnight, San Francisco turns from a sleepy village into a bustling boom town. Canny operators soon realize that the real money is not in gold, but in supplying the often ill-equipped would-be prospectors. The ongoing Gold Rush depends on a steady supply of ships bringing in needed food and materials; no one has time to farm when there’s gold to be had.
Kit Carson, who has taken a claim outside Sacramento, finds the lure of easy money to be too much to bear. Only for him, the lure isn’t gold; it’s guiding the hapless prospectors to the gold fields. Setting up shop out of an office in San Francisco that’s little more than a storefront, he soon begins leading parties of gold-hungry Forty-Eighters out to the Sierra Nevadas.
Jose Carrillo begins making a good living off the prospectors as well. He has raised a small force of Californios willing to adopt the life of banditry, and they rob wagon trains of prospectors on their way to and from Sacramento.
John Fremont, too, is drawn to the gold fields, but fails as a prospector. Instead, he finds a calling in politics: San Francisco needs clever, ambitious men to fill vacant public offices, and Fremont is soon elected San Francisco County Sheriff, a new position.
Things seem to be going well for California.
November 19, 1848: The ships-of-the-line HMS Albion and HMS London arrive at San Francisco Bay and blockade the port there. Aside from the blockade, they do nothing. However, nothing in this case is enough. The burgeoning gold trade out of Sutter’s Mill is shut down, and no goods are allowed in or out of San Francisco. For the gold miners and other Forty-Eighters, it is a catastrophe of the first order. There is little food stockpiled in the city; ships expected to bring vital supplies are turned away by the British. For the San Franciscans, the situation is exacerbated by the fact that they have only the vaguest idea of why the British are there. The extent of the war crisis in the east is unknown to most San Franciscans.
Military governor Richard Mason formally protests the blockade to the British commander, but his protest is ignored.
December 8, 1848: Joseph Chiles, a Californian guide and explorer, returns to San Francisco overland from El Paso. With him he brings valuable news in regards to what’s happening back east. San Franciscans are intrigued to hear war news, particularly with two British warships anchored offshore, but are appalled and then outraged to hear that President Cass intends to extend slavery to California. Chiles swears that it is the truth to anyone who will ask.
December 10 - 12, 1848: Rioting breaks out in San Francisco, over both the British blockade, the increasing lack of supplies, and the slavery issue, and quickly spreads to surrounding communities. Richard Mason orders the soldiers under his command to take “all appropriate steps” to quell the rioting; tragically, at some point in the chain of command, the key word “appropriate” is lost, and soldiers in Benicia, believing themselves about to be mobbed, open fire on rioters. Seventeen are killed before rioting ceases.
December 1848 - January 1849: After the riots, things remain tense in San Francisco and the neighboring communities. Mason and Fremont take the prudent step of placing on trial several of the soldiers involved in what is being called the “Benicia Massacre”; two soldiers are found guilty of murder. While the public is not entirely happy that many of the soldiers escaped serious punishment, things seem to be quieting down. But under the surface, strong tensions remain.
In the Sierra Nevadas, food is somewhat easier to find, but in San Francisco, stocks are starting to run low. Fremont foolishly exacerbates matters by stating that the people of San Francisco should attempt to drive out the Albion and the London by force, a totally unrealistic proposition, but one that finds fertile soil in the resentment brewing in the city.
February 3, 1849: Food is very scarce. “Today I noticed a child of about four or five years of age, sitting in the gutter, as thin as a skeleton. The child, while breathing shallowly, made no motion when I approached, and only sighed softly and did not stir when I touched it. It was like touching a corpse not yet dead,” writes Robert Semple, a journalist and newspaper publisher. Although no one has yet starved, it is only a matter of time. The British, upon being petitioned by Mason, agree to allow two grain ships to dock at the San Francisco wharf. News soon spreads that the ships will be arriving around noon, and a huge crowd gathers at the docks. As the ships attempt to unload their grain, the famished crowd surges forward. Hapless San Franciscans are pushed off the docks into the Bay, where weakened by a lack of food, many drown. The ships themselves are soon swamped by San Franciscans frantically grabbing any grain they can find. The smaller of the two, the SS Pearse, capsizes under the weight of the mob, and dozens drown while much of the grain is lost.
“GRIM TRAGEDY: BRITISH GRAIN SHIP CAPSIZES, HUNDREDS FEARED DEAD”--Headline, Alta California, February 4, 1849
“British Watch While We Starve and Drown”--Lead Editorial, Alta California, February 5, 1849
Anti-British feeling and the notion, championed by John C. Fremont, that the British were responsible for the Pearse Disaster, become very commonplace among San Franciscans. The British, fearing a possible military backlash, reinforce the London and the Albion with three smaller warships.
The Gold Inflation
March, 1849: “One cannot buy a loaf of bread for less than a handful of nuggets. Tomorrow it shall be two handfuls.” --Royal Sprague, Forty-Eighter, writing in his journal.
The people of northern California find themselves in a nightmarish paradox: everyone seems to have plenty of gold, everyone has achieved the “Dream of ‘48”--but the gold is worthless. There is no food to buy. There is no livestock, no seed. On March 1, 1848, a two-ounce nugget of gold will buy you a decent wagon and a horse to hitch to it. On March 1, 1849, it will buy you a potato. People are beginning to starve. “We float in a sea of gold, as worthless as piss,” writes Kit Carson.
Hauling goods across the California Trail is difficult, time consuming, and not particularly efficient. Those who make the trip often are mobbed by starving Californians as they arrive in San Francisco or Sacramento.
Spring, 1849: It is time to plant. Seed is exceedingly hard to come by. Much of what was intended for this year’s crop was eaten during the hard times of December and January, and now times are harder still. Still, some seed--wheat, corn, oats--goes into the ground. But harvest time is months away. Unless something is done to relieve the food shortage, most of the Forty-Eighters, stranded in California, will starve to death.
The British do not have hearts of stone. But save for lifting the blockade, there is no way to supply the thousands of erstwhile prospectors with food and victuals. Some small amounts of grain are let through; they do little good.
April 22, 1849: The London is relieved by the HMS Arrogant, who has arrived in San Francisco by way of Bengal and Hong Kong. A small party of sailors led by Captain Robert FitzRoy comes ashore and meet briefly under flag of truce with Governor Mason. The topic is the food shortage, and what is to be done. Although both men feel a strong humanitarian urge to end the crisis, they cannot find a solution.
During the meeting, one of the sailors uses a public outhouse. He has not been feeling well for the last day, and has complained to the ship’s doctor of diarrhea. The outhouse’s cesspool feeds directly into San Francisco’s water table.
April 27, 1849: Many people in San Francisco await feeling feverish and suffering from diarrhea. Doctors and medicine are in extremely short supply in California, and most of the sick suffer in agony alone, unnoticed. Weakened by months of malnutrition, the populace of San Francisco is ill-prepared to deal with a bacteriological invader. The San Francisco Cholera Epidemic of 1849 has begun.
April - July, 1849: Cholera ravages the already weakened population of California. By the first week of June, the first cases begin to appear in Sacramento. Hundreds perish.
July 19, 1849: It is the hottest part of the year now, and cholera and starvation is epidemic throughout most of the territory. However, in San Francisco the epidemic seems to have died down over the last three weeks, due in part to the hot California summer killing the extant bacteria not already infecting a human. Many San Franciscans begin to relax.
On the morning of July 19, a city doctor notices an influx of cholera cases in the neighborhood near Mission San Francisco de Asis. He is alarmed; the number of people who have taken sick is much higher than he has seen the last few days. Many of the sick are Mormons, recently arrived to the city. The Mormons, who abstain from bacteria-killing caffeinated and alcoholic beverages, are much more vulnerable to water-borne cholera, and many of the newly arrived are very sick indeed.
The people of San Francisco do not know the origins of cholera, and word that a new breakout is occurring in the south part of the city causes panic. Rumors that the Mormons have brought, or even cause, the disease run rampant, and panicky mobs of starving, sickened San Franciscans begin targeting Mormons. Anti-Mormon riots erupt throughout the city.
July 23, 1849: The Anti-Mormon Riots end after four days. Numerous Mormons and San Franciscan “gentiles” alike have been killed in the chaos.
The Golden Republic
August, 1849: John Fremont has had enough. He was lucky to have contracted cholera in the city and then suffered through it well away in the country; inadvertently, he and his companions, surveying a possible site for a new town, have struck upon the only effective treatment: drink lots of uncontaminated water. Extremely weak and still recuperating from his illness, Fremont returns to San Francisco determined to do something about the blockade. What, he isn’t sure. But something needs to be done. He enlists some old army friends, and in secret they form the Committee for Defense of the Golden Republic, an organization devoted to ending the blockade and the food shortage.
The population of California is slowly starving, and has been decimated by disease. Out at sea, the British ships mock the San Franciscans in their misery; the British have become the most despised people in California. The second-most despised is the American military government, who seem impotent and negligent in the face of the British. Messengers have been sent east, begging for help, but no help seems to be coming.
September - October, 1849: Scant crops are harvested from the fields of one of the richest farmlands in the world. Stories that farmers have been killed for their seed grain, or even the grain that they intend for their own children, circulate among Californians, and crank tight the screws of fear.
Carrillo, the former Mexican general turned bandit, is living like a king. When he wants food, he steals it. Farmers and prospectors living in the Sierra Nevadas are in turns terrified and envious of him, and resent the government in San Francisco for failing to catch and kill him.
John Fremont’s Committee for Defense begins a series of attempts to sabotage the British warships, all of which fail.
December, 1849: The Second Starvation Winter. San Franciscans do not even have the strength to riot anymore. Why does the American government not send aid? is the question that seems to be on everyone’s swollen, sore-pocked lips. The other question is, Why does Mason do nothing?
Richard Mason, governor of California, deserves none of the San Franciscans’ hatred, as he has worked assiduously since the crisis began trying to find a way to end it, and he has starved alongside his public. But increasingly the public sees him as weak and ineffectual; the Committee for Defense, which is growing in strength and influence, has begun to see him as the enemy.
January, 1850: It is now clear what must be done. If California is to survive, a separate peace must be made with Britain. The idea, unthinkable even six months earlier, is now the consensus among Californians from Sacramento down to the tiny village of Los Angeles. Word has spread fast, and the Californians are united in their discontent. Some of their messengers have returned, beaten and despairing, telling tales of political turmoil in the east, of a Federal government seemingly incapable of defeating the British. The Committee for Defense operates openly now, its members walking the streets with impunity. Mason seems weak and enfeebled. He can only watch from his office overlooking Portsmouth Square as his power slips away from him.
February 9, 1850: Sheriff John C. Fremont is confident as he walks into the military governor’s office. A small force of men, many of them U.S. soldiers, has occupied key points in the city, under Fremont’s command. A coup is now in effect, he carefully informs Mason, who sits behind his desk with an expression that might be resignation. Fremont explains with delicacy that the current administration cannot continue; continued association with the United States of America, and no end of hostilities between that country and Great Britain, shall result in most of California’s population starving. Therefore, Fremont, supported by the Committee for Defense and many of San Francisco’s most prominent citizens, is declaring independence.
The coup is a fait accompli. Mason has neither the power nor the wherewithal to resist, and both he and Fremont know it. Word spreads through the city, and cheers are heard even as Fremont and Mason discuss the new nation in the governor’s office.
Fremont’s first intention is to negotiate peace with Britain. The new country does not have a name yet, and already it has a foreign policy.
February 11, 1850: For two days, Robert FitzRoy has waited for Fremont to come to him to negotiate. But revolutions are tricky things, and it has taken Fremont two days to consolidate his power. When he does arrive, a little after two in the afternoon, the British captain and the Californian revolutionary quickly get to business. What the Californians want, Fremont explains, is an end to the blockade and food--quickly. In exchange for the British recognizing Californian independence and the establishment of friendly relations, the Californians are willing to recognize the southern extent of the British claim in the Oregon territory as being the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Also, the Californians have quite a lot of gold they’d love to trade. FitzRoy cautions Fremont that while the British commanders at the scene can end the blockade on their own initiative, recognizing the independence of California will need to be done by Her Majesty’s Government. Fremont is content with this, if it means that the people of California won’t starve.
As Fremont gets up to leave, FitzRoy asks him in what capacity he’s negotiating: president, prime minister, king? Fremont replies with a laugh that they haven’t decided on a title yet.
“An unnamed leader for an unnamed country,” says FitzRoy.
“Oh, it has a name,” replies Fremont. “It is the Union of California and New Mexico.”
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Up Next: A Confederacy, At Last
The flag of the Union of California and New Mexico:
The two red stripes indicate the blood shed in the name of liberty, both in the past and in the future. The blue field indicates the Pacific Ocean. The gold star is representative of the industry and wealth of the new nation. The two silver stars represent California and New Mexico.
The two red stripes indicate the blood shed in the name of liberty, both in the past and in the future. The blue field indicates the Pacific Ocean. The gold star is representative of the industry and wealth of the new nation. The two silver stars represent California and New Mexico.
