John Brown’s Soul: We Shoulda Hanged Jeff Davis from a Sour Apple Tree, But We Are Marching On

[Guildencrantz]

John Brown’s Soul: We Shoulda Hanged Jeff Davis from a Sour Apple Tree, But We Are Marching On

-a timeline by demonkangaroo


Oho! A Civil War timeline?

Eh, not really. I’m not that interested in war in and of itself and there are plenty of actual ACW timelines and threads. Many of them are quite good. I’m much more interested in the aftermath of the war.

So this is ASB?

Again, not really. Although the crux of the timeline in and of itself is rather implausible, I’m going to do my best to keep things more or less reasonable-with a few exceptions. Any butterflies are things I want to happen for dramatic/fun purposes. The purpose of this isn’t a serious counterfactual. It’s really just to set up a world I’ve been thinking a lot about and I’d like to do something productive with it.

Ah. So vanity?

Sure. And to explore a few ideas that I’ve had bouncing around in my head for a while that I think are pretty neat.

Can I complain about the implausibility?

To a point, but you’ll hurt my feelings. Now hush and enjoy. Or don’t.


The telephote beeped on and Sam settled into the couch with her cup of coffee and a banana. She wrapped her robe around her to keep out the cold October Ohio morning. Two anchors peered out of the TP set. The reporter on the left was a woman, with gray hair salting her curly black hair. Seated by her side was a youngish blond man. The female reporter had been speaking when Sam turned it on.

“…Premier Deering will be laying the wreath later today at the Harper’s Ferry Rising Memorial. At the ceremony, President Averill and the other American heads of state will be in attendance, including President Alonzo, taking a break from campaigning against Texit and the Fraserlander Chancellor McDevitt, attending despite calls for her resignation from her cabinet.” The older anchor stopped and turned to look at and listen to her younger, blond co-anchor. The young reporter began in a deep baritone.

“And in commemoration of this special anniversary of John Brown’s ill-fated slave revolt as a sign of reconciliation, the great-great grandson of Robert E. Lee and mayor of Washington, Fitz Lee will speak. We will be broadcasting this commemoration live later today at two. For now, we’ll go over to Jeremy to talk sports. Jer?”

Sam took a sip. Then she started eating the banana.

“Thanks Jim. Last night, Forest City was able to tie the series with the Knickerbockers in game six of the Fall Classic, ensuring that FCs will stay alive and make it to game seven after the John Brown Day break.”

Sam zoned out. Forest City wasn’t the Bucks, therefor not worth the attention. She checked her pocket phone to see when the parade was scheduled today. She was supposed to meet up with her boyfriend and watch it go through the downtown. But given the forecast, it didn’t look like good parade weather. They’d find something else to do instead. Sam turned back to the TP and realized that they had switched to their Southron politics correspondent. Sam tried to follow it but switched the TP off. Their politics don’t really make sense anyway she thought. No matter how many times her boyfriend tried to explain the way things worked in his homeland, she still didn’t get it.

So Sam got up, finished banana and tossed the peel into the compost bucket. She made a mental note to take it outside to the municipal bin. It’d been two days and Sam didn’t like the smell. She padded across her apartment to her closet sized bedroom to get dressed. Her phone buzzed. It was Booker, her boyfriend.

>I’ll meet you at the corner of Third and Broad in 20. Sound good?

Sam grumbled to herself and grabbed her sweater

>r u sure its not 2 cold?

>JB Day is important. You like parades anyway!

Sam thought the cold thing would’ve worked. Oh well. Southron political priorities trumped weather concerns. She grabbed her keys and walked out the door to catch the streetcar down from the Campus area to Downtown.

>ok. ill b there


From How the 1864 Election Ended the War of the Secession by Geoffrey Miller. Santa Fe State University, 2009

“The victory over the union by the Confederate States of America was brought on by many factors but the most prominent of these was the 1864 election where the Republican President Simon Cameron failed to defeat his main opponent, Governor Horatio Seymour. This defeat was largely due to Usonian defeats in the field and the poor leadership by the President Simon Cameron’s administration, compared to the much more skilled leadership of President Alexander Stephens. If he had won the 1864 election, the war would likely had dragged on until the United States conquered the Confederacy.”

Professor Emiliano Enriquez-Garcia took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph this paper is pure shit. He continued reading Geoffrey’s paper for a while. Maybe not pure shit. More like four fifths shit, one tenth decent historical analysis and the last tenth is just bad writing. It figures. Geoff barely ever showed up for class and his paper showed it. Usually a paper with a grade this early in the semester would serve as a wake-up call to get his act together and actually show up for class. Emiliano finished reading, picked up his pen and wrote on the back of the final sheet:

From Grading Comments for: How the 1864 Election Ended the War of the Secession by Geoffrey Miller by Emiliano Enriquez-Garcia, Ph.D. Santa Fe State University, 2009

“Geoff, it’s clear that you’ve been skipping too many lectures. You oversimplify incredibly complex events during the War of the Succession and this is, simply put, not university level writing. I will enumerate some of the problems with your analysis.

1. You say that there were other reasons for the CSA’s victory besides the 1864 election. Can you state them instead of glossing over them?
2. It is unbecoming to make value judgements in a history course. Is it fair to say that P. Cameron had a bad administration? Elaborate more!
3. You cast the US as the “good guys” and the CS as the “bad guys”. While according to our modern sensibilities, the US was far superior to the CS but at the time the two were just differing, undemocratic capitalist regimes
4. Hindsight bias: there is no way the people of the time had any idea of what tomorrow would bring. You can’t write, judging our ancestors and blame them for not knowing how their actions would have played out.

Once you have fixed these problems, I’d recommend taking your paper to the University Writing Center. And if you have any questions, please stop by after class or visit me during my office hours. Remember that the final draft of this paper is 50% of your grade.


D-“

 

[Guildencrantz]

The Burgist[1] and the Aristocratic Republics: The USA and CSA before the Revolutions by Dale Huckabee, Ph.D. Ozark University Press, 2007

During its inception, the party system of the Confederate States of America was much like the United States during the American War for Independence- nonexistent. That soon changed after the Treaty of Lisbon in 1865. Just like in the United States after her independence, partisanship quickly crept into Confederate politics. Stephens was unlike his template president, George Washington, in how quickly he picked up a party affiliation.

He decided to side with the Protectionist Democrats almost as soon as the war was over. Stephens was instrumental in the early creation of that party, setting its pro-tariff and pro-industrialization platform. In Stephens’ mind, he wanted the CSA to become self-sufficient and not overly reliant on foreign, particularly Usonian, industrial production. As a result, the foreign policy of the Protectionists was born from their economic policy. They favored an antagonistic relationship with the USA and friendly relations with Europe and Latin America. The Protectionists were wholly against expanding the CSA southwards into the Caribbean and Mexico. Their domestic program also stemmed from their pro-industrialization stances, advocating for relaxing the slave codes in order to allow slaves to become literate, therefor making them better manufactory workers. They eventually became a pro-immigration party and were fiercely opposed to organized labor and workplace democracy. This caused them to become the party of the city, liberals, former Whigs, and burgesses.

Their more electorally successful opponents, the agrarian minded Constitutionalists quickly became the standard bearer for states’ rights. While early Protectionists like Stephens and Early were strong advocates for states’ rights, their party eventually abandoned the position in favor of more centralized power to allow for stronger currency and central banking, both anathema to slavocrats. The Constitutionalists were the clearer successors to the Southern Democratic Party, espousing a platform built on soft currency, low tariffs, détente with the US, a paternalistic idea of slave welfare, and states’ rights. They began, just like the Protectionists, as a faction of the Democratic Party and received their name from their strict reading of the Confederate constitution. They became the natural ruling party of the Confederacy, due to the widespread property and literacy requirements for voting keeping political power safely in the grasp of both planters and burgesses.

The third and underappreciated force in Confederate politics was the Populist Party. The party of the hardscrabble farmers in Appalachia, poor whites, and the proletariat, they were mostly kept out of office through state level ballot box restrictions put in place by Constitutionalists. And wherever the franchise was less restricted, outright electoral fraud kept the Populists out of power. While they were widely popular with the Confederate lower classes, they were notoriously unable to get elected to any offices of substance. There was never a Populist POTCS and only a handful of Populists became Congressmen, usually caucusing with the Protectionists. The Populists never had much of a coherent platform, but they were largely speaking less white supremacist than the other parties. [2] Their popularity but lack of electoral success is likely one of the major contributing factors that may have led to the growing class consciousness amongst Southrons [3]

As for the enslaved, they often secretly held abolitionist viewpoints in their hearts but as Usonian and homegrown leftists began to quietly disseminate Marxist and Libertarian thought, often coded inside of religious language in order to hide it from their oppressors. It became clear that among the enslaved there were two major prophets promising their liberation: Moses and Marx…[4]


WI: Jefferson Davis did not die? from counter_factual:board

Alexander Stephens is often called the Accidental George Washington of the Confederacy and is always remembered as the first president of the CSA. What would the consequences have been if Jefferson Davis didn’t die of malaria a month into his term of office and served out his full term as POTCS? [5]

I’d guess that with Davis’ military experience, since he was the Secretary of War and fought in the Mexican-Usonian War, he’d appoint better generals and would be an overall better commander-in-chief of the Confederates than Stephens was.

Yeah. I reckon the South would’ve won Missouri, Kentucky, and Upper Virginia in the peace treaty.

And with all that added industrial areas, perhaps the Red Rising would have happened earlier? I know here in UV, the coal miners were a major component of the Radical Labor Movement here in the States.

@Squithrile Maybe. Although that assumes that they’d still go red. Remember that even though the Upper Virginian miners were far left, the miners in Kentucky founded a rather conservative trade union that was more than happy to cooperate with the capitalists. So it could go either way.

Wasn’t Davis a Traditionalist Democrat? I don’t think he would have approved of Stephens’ Protectionism or advocated for tariffs as hard as Stephens did

He was. Although we don’t really know a lot about him, other than he definitely would be more of a Constitutionalist. He was a slavocrat from Mississippi and cared a lot about so-called states’ rights than Stephens. So the CSA probably would've been even more decentralized than OTL. [6]

Since he loved States Rights so much, maybe S.R. Gist [7] would have gotten his endorsement in the 1868 election?

[1] Marx was translated a bit differently

[2] This is a nuance that Dr. Huckabee kinda glosses over in his attempt to portray the Populists as the good guys. The Populists, in truth never had much of a coherent platform on slavery or race relations. Populist politicians often had positions that ran the gamut from maintaining the status quo to just short of emancipation, and a few oddballs who wanted to deport black folks to Africa.

[3] See why he wanted to portray the Populists as the good guys? Dr. Huckabee isn’t exactly a bad historian for doing this, by the way. He’s just human, flawed, and a bit stuck in his ways.

[4] Not exactly. As we will later find out, American leftism, particularly in the South, is not exactly Orthodox Marxism. The variant that takes off the strongest among the slaves and the few free blacks is closer to OTL Maoism, with a few students of Bakunin running around. In fact, I'd call it a sort of Folk-Marxism, where it's mostly passed down and disseminated as an oral tradition

[5] This is somewhat contrived, but considering how much Davis struggled with malaria throughout his life, it’s not totally out of the question, imho

[6] They aren’t remembering that Stephens was an early Protectionist and was much more on board with a decentralized Confederacy than Davis was. Not everybody can be good at history

[7] States Rights Gist really existed and he’s my favorite treasonous aristocrat, just because of how beautifully ridiculous his name is

 

[Guildencrantz]

This is a little experiment in footnote heavy AH writing, where I created an incredibly flawed piece of history and fill in the gaps with what I conceived of actually happening. Please, let me know if you guys think there are too many footnotes


From: Our Fair Commonwealth! An Introduction to the History of Kentucky for Young Readers by Timothy Clooney. Bluegrass Press. 1952.

Chapter 4: The Great American War and Kentucky’s Road to Independence

1861 was a pivotal year in all of America, but especially in Kentucky. The beginnings of the Great American War [1] tore the United States in half, and threatened to tear Kentucky along with it. If it were not for the statesmen put into place by the people of the Commonwealth. [2] Statesmen like Lynn Boyd, the governor who was able to maintain the main factions from joining either the Union or the Confederacy, [3] John Crittenden, who tirelessly worked to maintain support for Boyd’s neutrality [4]. While many detracted from Kentucky’s neutrality, considering it to be impossible, these two men found themselves at odds with both the North and South and soldiered on to maintain Kentucky’s sovereignty over her own land. Boyd stated that “No Federal or Rebel trooper shall gallop on our bluegrass. No Yankee or Confederate shells will bombard the property of the people of Kentucky. No Northern or Southern regiment will dare cross the Ohio or the Alleghenies.” [5]

The people of Kentucky were themselves initially skeptical of neutrality, with pro-Union and pro-Confederate secret organizations forming all over the state. As the war raged on around Kentucky and Kentuckians who had volunteered with both sides reported home, the people of Kentucky grew to appreciate the choice of neutrality they had made. Later, Kentuckians were subjected to occupation from both sides as the war continued onwards. [6] Confederate troops under Albert S. Johnston [7] and Union troops under Don Carlos Buell [8] tore up the Kentucky countryside and drove thousands of Kentuckians out of their homes.

This caused any Secessionist and Unionist Kentuckians to sour on both the US and the CS, and led to the Bluegrass Revolt of 1864, where the town of Lexington rose up against Confederate forces and retook control of the town. Linking up with independence minded insurgents from the hills [9], they marched on Frankfort. There, they held out against Southron forces until the end of the war in March of 1865. Even though a pro-Confederate state government had been set up in Mayfield [10] and Kentucky was represented on the Confederate flag, due to anti-Confederate guerilla warfare, Alexander Stephens was reluctant to incorporate Kentucky into the CSA. And because so many Kentuckians had become disillusioned with the Union, the Kentuckian delegation to Lisbon, James Fisher Robinson and Beriah Magoffin refused Kentucky’s reentry to the Union.[11] So Kentucky was declared a neutral and sovereign Commonwealth by the Treaty of Lisbon on May 26, 1865.

If it were not for Kentucky’s historical neutrality, it is likely that Kentucky would have been partitioned by the larger powers that surround her, much like Virginia was partitioned between Upper Virginia and Old Virginia. [12]




[1] This is the most politically neutral way to say the OTL American Civil War ITTL. There’s a reason why Kentucky uses it

[2] Well, the people of Kentucky who didn’t have the misfortune of being black or a woman.

[3] This isn’t strictly true. What Boyd was able to do was maintain the pro-neutrality consensus amongst the Unionists and Secessionists, something the governor IOTL, Beriah Magoffin, was unable to do very well, since he was seen as too firmly pro-States Rights for the Unionists to stomach, but too wishy washy for the Secessionists to take seriously. This was largely due to Boyd’s defter hand at politicking. Boyd, IOTL was considered in ’59 to run as governor, but he wanted to run for POTUS in 1860. So they Kentucky Democrats let him be lieutenant governor. He died shortly after taking office of complications from inflamed kidneys. ITTL, he decides to run for governor and got his kidneys treated earlier.

[4] Also not totally true. But at least more true than the other statement. Crittenden, IOTL, tried to negotiate a compromise between the North and South, bless his heart. ITTL, the Cameron administration is much more pissy about secession, which causes Crittenden to adopt a Mercutio-esque approach to the two sides.

[5] Tim Clooney, for all his charm and wit, has failed to mention the rest of the speech, about how Boyd wouldn’t let Kentuckians help dismember the Union and how Kentucky will sit out of the conflict until “Cooler heads prevail and a compromise is reached that will restore the Union”. But that wouldn’t make him out to be a Kentucky patriot, now would it?

[6] That’s a hyperbolic way of putting it, but even though US and CS troops were hailed as liberators by different groups in different regions of KY, being a literal battleground does a lot to drain the war enthusiasm of the folks living there. Plus, it wasn’t helpful that the areas the Union army was occupying leaned towards succession (Western Kentucky) and the region the Confederate army was operating out of was more Union (Eastern Kentucky)

[7] Guess who didn’t die in battle? Especially at a battle that didn’t happen ITTL!

[8] Guess who doesn’t get fired for being a less than stellar commander!

[9] Independence minded is a bit of a stretch-they were really more “Get these idjits off my land” minded

[10] IOTL, this happened in Russelville

[11] What Clooney failed to mention the reason why Kentucky was reluctant to rejoin the US-slavery. ITTL, their version of the Emancipation Proclamation, drafted by different people in the Cameron administration, is much more conciliatory to Radical Republicans in a failed attempt to keep them in the party. (I’ll get to that later) IOTL slavery was the main reason why Kentucky became neutral in the first place. They were too afraid of Federal troops to secede but too afraid of abolition to be confidently Unionist. ITTL, by the time the peace negotiations come about, it’s clear that Kentucky was a poisoned gift for whoever gets it, thanks to the unrest against Union and Confederate forces. Also, at this point, the Seymour administration just wanted peace, at almost any price. It’s much easier to let them do their own thing and reincorporate them later thought both the CS and the US diplomats.

[12] Note that Clooney, an ardent Kentucky patriot, has neglected the idea that Kentucky probably would have been happily reabsorbed into the Union if TTL’s version of the Emancipation proclamation were more like ours.

 

[Guildencrantz]

From The Blue Cockerel’s Cry: The Rise, Ascendency, Fall, and Rebirth of the Democratic Party by Barry Dunham[0] PhD. University of Chicago Press
Introduction to Chapter 4: A Divided Continent
The Democratic victory in the 1864 elections was almost entirely due to the Northern losses in the field. Consequently, the converse was true, since the 1862 elections were a resounding victory for the Republicans. However, as the war continued to shift in the South’s favor and as Usonian enthusiasm waned, the Peace Democrats began to become more important in the party leadership. While Vallandigham, originally the leader of the Copperheads, had been imprisoned and died in prison[1] many Copperheads were able to defeat Radicals, Republicans, and Unionists for House seats. It was especially helpful to the Democrats that the Radicals had split the Republicans, which caused many districts to become four or five way races. [2] As a result, no one faction had a majority in the House and the tendency of some Liberals[3] to cross the aisle and vote with the Radicals did little to help the situation for the Republicans and Unionist Democrats. These pro-war Democrats had largely lost control of the party by the 1864 Democratic National Convention. Even though the party nominated MacClelland to unseat Cameron was moderately pro-war, the platform that the DNC chose had explicitly pro peace planks and McClelland's running mate and soon to be President George Pendleton was the inheritor of the leadership of the Copperheads. This shows how much this election was a referendum on the war itself, which was getting more and more unpopular with the Usionan citizenry after increasingly sour news from the front. It was this referendum that allowed the Democrats to become the undisputed masters of Usonian politics for the next half century.

[0] No relation. Honest.
[1] Spoilers: he gets pardoned by the next president. Posthumously. Also, note that he was imprisoned rather than exiled-again, without habeas corpus. Lincoln was able to abuse civil rights to the benefit of the war, but Cameron wasn't quite as good at it as Lincoln. His incompetent overreach caused the Copperheads to be more popular ITTL, combined with the losses in the field, due to Cameron's poor understanding of military matters-and unlike Lincoln, Cameron is a textbook Dunning-Kruger style manager. Vallandigham being in prison rather than abroad also allows him to be able to be a rallying figure after he dies. Also, note that he's held up as a leader-that's due to the Copperheads actually having leadership after his death galvanizes and polarizes Democrats. IOTL, Peace Democrats were never very well organized.
[2] Simon Cameron and his lackeys are almost hilariously incompetent ITTL. So much so that Fremont was able to actually run as an independent and he wasn't finagled back into the fold.
[3] The Republicans at this point have split into three factions: Radicals, who wanted emancipation in the US and to harshly punish the South, Liberals who wanted to continue the war as it was going and resolve the slavery issue in the border states at a later time, and the Cameron loyalists, who were backing the POTUS no matter what. Note how two of them have names but the third doesn't? Well, that's because one of these factions disintegrates once Cameron fails to get reelected. The other two continue onwards and become different political parties.

Interlude
Jim was bored. Very, very bored. Everything in the Province House's historical display room was dusty and smelled vaguely of dust and he was standing too far away from Olivia and he was paired up with the class's resident " comedian" Billy, and he just wanted to hold Olivia's hand so damn badly and be literally anywhere other than this stupid field trip. The group was stopped in front of a gallery of portraits from the mid 1800s. It registered to Jim that Billy made some shitty joke about one of the Confederation Fathers' hair style, causing Mr. Smith to call Billy out. Jim thought the tour guide looked embarrassed. I'd be embarrassed too, Kate from Nova Scotia. Hell, I AM embarrassed about having such a smoothbrain in my class.
"Anyway, a fun fact about the Conference is that there was a circus in town that garnered more attention by the locals than the foundation of the Maritime Confederation" I know a circus would be more interesting than this damn field trip. Maybe I'd be able to sit next to Olivia and low key put my arms around [CENSORED FOR BEING A WEIRD ADOLESCENT FANTASY I THINK YOU GET THE IDEA THAT THIS KID IS BORED LEARNING ABOUT HIS COUNTRY'S FOUNDING]
Jim realized the group was moving on so he shuffled along with them. Kate from Nova Scotia pointed out the table that the Articles were drafted on and ecstatically remarking on the ring that one of the delegates, most likely George Cole, claimed Kate from Nova Scotia, left on the table from his beer. She also pointed out an inkspot, indicating where the Fathers of the Confederation actually stood and signed the Articles. The group moved out of the musty cavernous hall. Jim stuck around for a bit longer, staring at the Blue Ensign of the Maritime Union noticed his class had started piling into the bus. Jim briskly walked out.

 

[Guildencrantz]

From The Unofficial Washington Guide for Tourists. Chapter Five: Monuments

Washington is home to over 150 monuments and memorials [1], more than New York, Douglass, [2] and Ottawa, hence the nickname "District of Commemoration. [3] While it is theoretically possible to see all of the monuments and memorials on a trip to Washington, most tourists prioritize what they visit in order to fully enjoy their visit to the Marble Marvel. In this chapter, we will do our best to tell you how and when to see the most popular and most crowded sites. […]

Section 3: The Universal Emancipation Monument
This is certainly the most crowded and most popular monument that isn't on the mall. In fact, it's the most removed monuments that we discuss in this guide. Nestled within the Fort Kemble Park, within the quiet residential neighborhood of Upper Georgetown [4] This otherwise unremarkable spot became host to this striking memorial to liberation from bondage largely through happenstance. Originally this was the the pedestal to the President George McClellan Memorial, standing roughly 300 meters from the spot where he was assassinated by Pvt. Benjamin Yarborough (or perhaps Youngman) Blake[5]. However during the Third Battle of Washington in the US Civil War, the original statue was destroyed by Red Guardsmen. For years, the pedestal stood empty save for the bronze McClellan's left shoe. At the conclusion of the Southron Revolution, in order to commemorate the demilitarization of Washington and the 25th anniversary of the passage of the Manumission Act, a bronze statue of a slave breaking his bonds was commissioned. President William Jennings Bryan and Premier George A. Logan presided over the rededication of the familiar memorial we all know and love today.

[6]

[1]IOTL, it's about 160.
[2] Birmingham
[3] No one calls it this, except for the DC tourism board
[4] IOTL, this area is called the Palisades. But it didn't get that name until the turn of the last century, so I improvised the name, since the neighborhood upriver from Georgetown
[5] This guy actually existed and his unit was stationed at that battery. I don't know what the Y stood for and neither do people ITTL https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search...oldierId=D4020183-DC7A-DF11-BF36-B8AC6F5D926A
[6] This is a real statue, but it's in Barbados, commemorating emancipation in Barbados. Barbadians call it Bussa, after the leader of a slave revolt, but it wasn't explicitly modeled after Bussa


By the by, here's what the Maritime Union Blue Ensign, featured in the previous update, looks like.