Let Us Have Peace

Outstanding work Anywhere! Well done, sir, well done. :cool:

Thank you very much. It's been a long while in the making, but Wyatt Outlaw's story has finally been told!

Just thought I'd comment to state how much I've enjoyed reading this. Truly outstanding in every way.

Glad that you enjoyed it, it was lovely to write. And a big thank you as well for your readership.

Awesomely well done.

Best,

Thank you.

Oy gewalt, but this is an update and a half. Wow!

A few minor quibbles:


Is this a typo, a deliberate mangling, or what?

A deliberate mangling. Lily was being a jerk to poor old Custis.

father and me
That form of grammatical mistake is, I believe, a modern one.

Hmm. I did not know that. Good catch.

Why were the guns shipped without bullets? Where were they going to get bullets from? This seems ... odd to me.

Now that you mention it that was a lapse of mine. I'll change that over to Outlaw keeping the powder and bullets elsewhere, perhaps so that Paisley's people aren't able to use the rifles if it comes to an armed confrontation between them and Outlaw.

Covered in enough ice to keep them cool in hot, humid weather? without any insulation? Where did he get that amount of ice from?

I'll change that to lime...which I actually mentioned earlier but completely forgot to keep using for some reason.

Coca addict?
was cocaine much used at the time (aside from as an ingredient in various patent medicines)? And would they say 'coca' rather than 'cocaine'.

It's my understanding that 'coca' was more widely used than 'cocaine' when referring to the use of such a plant and its products. At least back in the 1860s.

Addison, surely.

Yep. A slip-up on my part.

“You’re hurt, Wyatt.”
needs a comma

Fixed. Good catch.

Err... What?

When I first introduced Lily Fowler as a character many thousands of words ago (back on Post #212) it was in a scene where she was hunting with her father just before the war started. In that scene she unwittingly awakened some buried sadistic tendencies through shooting and wounding a rabbit.

So just as a rabbit took her into a life of cruelty and insanity, so a rabbit guides her out.

....
Also, there's WAY too much blasphemy (taking the LORD's name in vain) for the time period, I believe. The profanity sounds very 20th century to my ears.

I'm of the opinion that people have always been foul mouthed heathens, even during the puritanical strictures of the Victorian era. That being said, the number of 'goddamnits' and such is probably excessive.

While reading this I kept thinking that this wold make a great film.

Thank you. I've always liked to write in a pretty cinematic fashion, with lots of detail and such.
 
Chapter 50
And now back to Grant and co.

50.

North Carolina had been under martial law for nearly two weeks by the time Grant returned from his trip to the state. In that time Governor Holden had effectively declared war on the Ku Klux Klan and its affiliates and incited the rage of the Democrats of the state legislature, who were currently calling for his removal.

Sitting at the head of the table, his cabinet arrayed around him, Grant sighed to himself.

“We may have to act sooner than we thought.” He said. General Thomas nodded solemnly, Attorney General Hoar looked grim.

“Our thrust was supposed to begin in December,” he fretted, “it’s barely June, we do not have the resources in place…”

“I’m not talking about the entire South,” Grant said, “just North Carolina.” Thomas stirred.

“There is serious danger of the Klan rising to action in neighboring states,” he warned, “especially since you’ve nominated this Outlaw character as a candidate for the Marshal Service. The night riders are frightened and upset Mr. President, there will be a severe uptick in violence if we do not act quickly and decisively.” Grant was quiet for a few moments.

“You’re right George,” he said, “but as Mr. Hoar has noted, we do not have the resources in place to contain this swell of violence. So I propose that we focus on North Carolina, to finish crushing the night riders and their sympathizers in that state.”

“Speaking of which,” Secretary of State Fish said from his place next to Grant, “how’s Holden faring? I haven’t exactly been keeping up with that situation.” Grant couldn’t blame him. His secretary of State had been kept busy with foreign affairs, ranging from a somewhat chaotic scene in China to the beginnings of negotiations with Santo Domingo regarding potential annexation.

“The Democrats wish to impeach him for declaring martial law and suspending habeus corpus,” Hoar said gloomily, “and they just might get their way…regardless of the thirty odd corpses that this mess in Alamance County has produced.” Thomas cast a look over to Grant.

“What really upset them,” he said, “was that you took the man who almost singlehandedly resolved the situation and elevated him in a very public manner. They hate that an appointee of Governor Holden is now an appointee of the President as well.” Grant smiled.

“I spoke with Wyatt Outlaw when I visited Graham. He’s a good man, level headed, deeply religious, has a family. I don’t particularly care what the Democrats think of me elevating him, especially since it’s the duty of the Senate to decide what to do with him, and both senators from North Carolina seem inclined to vote in his favor.”

“I’m not doubting your judgement,” Thomas said, “just noting that there are dangerous levels of unrest in North Carolina right now, and they are very likely to spread into other states if we do not act.”

“What do you propose we do General?” Fish asked. Thomas didn’t hesitate.

“A full enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment, using military force and loyal integrated militias to augment our forces where we’re shorthanded. If we can get each state house in the south to codify the equality of the Negro then we will win, the night riders will not be able to attack without inviting a military response.” The silence was decidedly uncomfortable.

“That’s all very good,” Fish said with a nervous laugh, “but if we do that then we lose both houses of congress in the midterms and doom the south, and the nation by proxy, to Democratic domination until the end of time.” Hoar put both hands over his face in evident agitation.

“Mr. Fish is right,” he spoke through his hands, sounding weary and demoralized, “Charles Sumner would balk at a plan like that, we’d probably end up being pursued with impeachment like Governor Holden in Raleigh.”

“I’m just Treasury Secretary,” Boutwell said from his corner of the table, “but I must express my agreement with Mr. Hoar and Mr. Fish. You cannot think of this as purely a military campaign George, because it’s not. This is political warfare, our reality against theirs. We must act more subtly if we are to win this.” The eyes of the cabinet turned to Grant, who was quietly listening.

“So,” said Fish, “what say you?”

“I am a moderate Republican with Radical leanings,” Grant said, “so while I do find myself feeling some sympathy for George’s plan, it has inherent flaws that present worrying implications down the road. If we allow the military and the federal government the right to decide state affairs practically at will, then we run the risk of creating a tyrannical central government down the line. We don’t want that, that’s what we created this country to escape. But neither do we want the sort of decentralized supremacy of state’s rights that allowed slavery to flourish for so long. We have to strike a balance. And in my mind that involves using the judiciary to establish some footholds for us.” Hoar had dropped his hands from his face and was listening intently now, obviously realizing that his part of the government was being discussed.

“Footholds.” He echoed. Grant nodded.

“Exactly. Do you believe that you could find reason for the Attorney General’s office to investigate some of the Democratic state legislators in North Carolina? To perhaps convince them that impeaching Holden would be a bad idea?” Hoar was quiet for a few moments, then he nodded.

“I suppose I could.” Fish looked conflicted.

“Isn’t this a bit…risky?” He asked.

“We’re pursuing corruption in government,” Thomas answered blandly, “what more is there to it?”

_______

Elsewhere, Sumner and Wade were discussing current events as well, sitting in a parlor on the first floor of Sumner’s home.

“Sam has been being very nice to us lately,” Sumner said, swirling a splash of brandy around in the bottom of his glass, “…which probably means that he’s getting ready to do something horrible again.” Wade sighed.

“He has been somewhat…divisive lately. But this situation in North Carolina, as horrible as it is, has really done wonders to bring the party together once more, don’t you think?” Sumner nodded gravely.

“More than thirty dead, including a magistrate and the director of a company town…and the Democrats are still blaming it all on us.”

“Such is the way of the world.” Wade sighed.

“This goes beyond the pale though,” Sumner protested, “they’re trying to impeach a sitting governor for protecting his own constituents.”

“That’s not how the Democrats see it. All they see is that a couple of Negroes with guns whupped the hell out of their night riding pals…and then Holden swooped in to mop up the rest. They don’t have a case worth a damn, but that doesn’t matter when they’ve a majority of the votes in the legislature.”

“Tyrants,” Sumner fumed, “I bet they wouldn’t like it if we impeached every Democratic governor with a Republican legislature.”

“Now now Charles,” Wade said with a humorless smile, “if we did that then we’d hardly be any better than them.”

“Stuff! Even if Lincoln and Grant were the kind of autocrats the Democrats described them as we’d still have the moral high ground over those troglodytes.” Sumner poured himself a finger of brandy and downed it all in one gulp, like a man swallowing medicine. His every motion was angry.

“Sam did hand us a marvelous Marshals candidate to vote on.” Wade said, shifting the topic of conversation ever so slightly. At this Sumner perked up a bit.

“I suppose he did. Good thing too, I was wondering when he’d show some initiative in appointing Negro law enforcement to federal roles.”

“He has a lot on his plate right now,” Wade said, “but I think he’s doing well so far…even if his biggest success to date was to our detriment.”

“Don’t even remind me,” Sumner groaned, “what a mess the Tenure of Office Act turned out to be…we came this close to a party split.” He held his thumb and index finger perhaps an inch apart and grimaced.

“Do you think anything similar might happen over Santo Domingo?” Wade asked. Sumner shook his head.

“That’s different, with Santo Domingo it’s not just Radicals against what Sam’s doing. We have allies, and that’ll ease the minds of the more nervous amongst our ranks.”

“The Democrats.” Wade said.

“No, I have it on good authority that some of them support annexation…but if a few of them happen to vote the same way we do, so be it. That doesn’t dampen the legitimacy of our cause.”

“Of course not,” Wade agreed, “a stopped clock is right twice a day after all.”

“The Democrats are right a lot less than that,” Sumner said with a wicked grin, “but the basic concept is true. We’ll need all the votes we can get to crush this Santo Domingo thing.” Wade chuckled at his friend’s ire.

“And if Douglass and I come back from our trip born again believers in annexation…?” Sumner rolled his eyes.

“If.”

_______

Treasury Secretary Boutwell sold the first batch of gold at a little past noon, June 2, 1869. Using the revenues incurred from this sale the Treasury bought up great quantities of greenbacks and other bonds. This was in line with Grant’s fiscal platform, which valued ‘hard money’ over things like greenbacks and sought to increase the value of the dollar.

Elsewhere, armed with information sold to them by their mole within the treasury Department, James Fisk and Jay Gould preemptively bought a large amount of this gold, nearly twenty percent of what Boutwell had authorized to be sold.

With more sales to be announced throughout the summer, Gould and Fisk sat secure, knowing that if everything went to plan then by September they would have access to nearly three million dollars worth of gold.

The profit margin of selling that amount of gold all at once, perhaps in December or January, wouldn’t be anything spectacular…but the real benefit stood in the stock market, which would all but collapse as gold devalued. This would allow Fisk and Gould, as the only financiers left standing, to assert financial dominance over the country.

“Ben Wade had no idea what he was poking his nose into when he meddled with us.” Gould said fiercely, sipping a celebratory flute of champagne as he looked over the sales receipts of the fifty thousand dollars worth of gold that he had purchased that day.

“And he never will.” Fisk said serenely.

Their scheming continued.
 
I was thinking a shoggoth, from the Illuminatus! trilogy allusions--dunno if a resemblance to Bugs Bunny is supposed to go back to something Lovecraft wrote or not. Wilson and Shea have Adam Weishaupt saying "Du hexen Hasse!" on seeing an image of a shoggoth.

God, Lily did leave a long trail of blood behind her. I was horrified enough that she's kill Frost (not that I wasn't expecting him to come under fire, it's like the gravestone that says "I expected this---but not so soon!":eek:) In retrospect it makes sense that she'd flash and burn up overnight; I was figuring she'd draw things out for months, going on the warpath, hiding, striking with her gang of desperadoes like a Bonnie who doesn't need a Clyde. Or worse still, move in the shadows, striking but never getting caught, so that even Wyatt Outlaw, who might well guess who is the culprit, would have a hard time proving it, and so his hands would be tied. She and he playing cat and mouse for weeks...:eek:

No, it seems clear enough now, most of the Night Riders were none too bright nor brave; they'd fall away from her. And she was so driven, so maniacal, she couldn't hold back from trying to do it all at once. Which at least got her a posse of sorts, before the realization of how screwed they were had time to sink in among the NRs. And before they quite realized what she could do and had already done.

Addison...poor poor man, glad he could die brave. And it horrified me to think what sort of life he'd have if he could have been saved, after Lily was done playing with him.

As with Lily, I was expecting Paisley to be drawn out a lot longer. But I guess the unholy alliance I wondered at was too impossible, with the night riders reacting the way they do to any African. I do think if he'd gotten Lily's ear before being shot, she'd have taken him with. And perhaps used him for information, before betraying him. Again, Lily's own shelf life was just too short for that kind of scenario to play out for long.

There are still some serious anachronisms in there, but on the whole I could buy that this was the late 1860s, in the South.

As far as dirty words go...quite a lot of them are ancient, and while writing them down in literal words was absolutely banned from polite society, we can tell from the euphemisms people wrote instead just what sort of foul language people were actually speaking. And so could they. I suppose we are considerably more casual about it now, but it's still the same bad words pretty much.
 
Screw those two greedy pricks. I hope their schemes blow up in their faces.

Their scheme blew up pretty spectacularly IOTL, so naturally it will probably follow the same path here. Also, I don't believe I've seen you comment here before, so welcome to the thread!

I may or may not have been saying "the rabbit better be Satan" repeatedly out loud when I read that line. :D

Well, given the humble rabbit's long history of association with witchcraft and the occult...

I was thinking a shoggoth, from the Illuminatus! trilogy allusions--dunno if a resemblance to Bugs Bunny is supposed to go back to something Lovecraft wrote or not. Wilson and Shea have Adam Weishaupt saying "Du hexen Hasse!" on seeing an image of a shoggoth.

No shoggoths in Outlaw's story. That I know of at least...

God, Lily did leave a long trail of blood behind her. I was horrified enough that she'd kill Frost (not that I wasn't expecting him to come under fire, it's like the gravestone that says "I expected this---but not so soon!":eek:) In retrospect it makes sense that she'd flash and burn up overnight; I was figuring she'd draw things out for months, going on the warpath, hiding, striking with her gang of desperadoes like a Bonnie who doesn't need a Clyde. Or worse still, move in the shadows, striking but never getting caught, so that even Wyatt Outlaw, who might well guess who is the culprit, would have a hard time proving it, and so his hands would be tied. She and he playing cat and mouse for weeks...:eek:

No, it seems clear enough now, most of the Night Riders were none too bright nor brave; they'd fall away from her. And she was so driven, so maniacal, she couldn't hold back from trying to do it all at once. Which at least got her a posse of sorts, before the realization of how screwed they were had time to sink in among the NRs. And before they quite realized what she could do and had already done.

I was considering having her melt away into the woods to be used as a villain for future stories...but from what I've read of psychopaths that really doesn't fit their m.o. Usually when they snap, like Lily did upon her father being killed, then they just keep going and going until they burn out. Like sparklers.

Addison...poor poor man, glad he could die brave. And it horrified me to think what sort of life he'd have if he could have been saved, after Lily was done playing with him.

Not sure what it says about me, but if I'm writing a stand-alone piece there'll usually be an incredibly uncomfortable torture scene in there somewhere.

As with Lily, I was expecting Paisley to be drawn out a lot longer. But I guess the unholy alliance I wondered at was too impossible, with the night riders reacting the way they do to any African. I do think if he'd gotten Lily's ear before being shot, she'd have taken him with. And perhaps used him for information, before betraying him. Again, Lily's own shelf life was just too short for that kind of scenario to play out for long.

Yep, Paisley had the bad luck of going up against Harmon Schultz, who spends the entire story solidly in 'angry bigot' territory and gets no arc whatsoever before being unceremoniously burned to death. Had Lily been the one listening then she might have let him go. But she might have also shot him then and there. Kinda hard to tell with Lily.

There are still some serious anachronisms in there, but on the whole I could buy that this was the late 1860s, in the South.

Good, my mission is accomplished.

As far as dirty words go...quite a lot of them are ancient, and while writing them down in literal words was absolutely banned from polite society, we can tell from the euphemisms people wrote instead just what sort of foul language people were actually speaking. And so could they. I suppose we are considerably more casual about it now, but it's still the same bad words pretty much.

Yep. Considering that there are dirty jokes scrawled on the walls of Pompeii, humanity has always been a ribald, crude bunch of fuckers.
 
Chapter 51
A very short update today due to time constraints.

51.

The departure of Benjamin Wade and Fredrick Douglass to Santo Domingo was a festive event, with a cheerful crowd seeing the two men off from New Jersey Avenue Station in Washington. Their journey would take them all the way to Charleston, from where they would travel by water to the island nation.

Accompanied by patriotic music and cordoned by soldiers, Vice President Wade spoke at length about self determination and freedom. Both him and Douglass remained mum about their own views on the annexation, and did not speak of the administration’s desire to annex Santo Domingo.

Despite the presence of several protesters, there to hurl abuse at Douglass, the event proceeded smoothly and both men left on schedule, their train chugging industriously along the track, delivering them to their destination.

_______

George Bancroft, Ambassador to Berlin and a close friend of Otto Von Bismarck, was frightened for the future of Europe. France and Prussia were drifting ever closer to outright war, and Bismarck, rather than preferring diplomacy, seemed to be doing his best to fan the flames rather than smother them.

Truth be told this wouldn’t exactly be out of Bismarck’s repertoire of tricks, he had after all gone to war in order to secure valuable alliances and regional dominance before. But whereas before his fights had been fairly sharp and limited, this new one had the potential to turn all of Europe onto its head.

France stood to the east. France with its strictly trained and professional military. France with its superior population. The math favored them, yet Bismarck still seemed intent on taking them on.

“There will be bloodshed by the New Year.” One of Bancroft’s aides had predicted boldly a few weeks before. Bancroft found it ghoulish to be betting on the expenditure of human lives but supposed, pessimistically, that his aide could be right.

One thing was for sure. There would be war soon. And Europe would never be the same, no matter who won.

_______

Aboard their luxury boxcar, Wade and Douglass settled down for lunch as the countryside of northern Virginia swept by. Douglass watched the woods and streams and towns pass, eyeing what had, until recently, been the very bastion of slavery.

“Do you think that Sam’s getting in over his head?” He asked at last. Wade, distracted, cocked his head.

“About the annexation? Yes. Absolutely…”

“No. About Reconstruction. Is he biting off more than he can chew with this militia plan?” Wade contemplated.

“I don’t know. It’s a double edged sword…on the one hand it is keeping Sumner in line, on the other if the role of the administration in it is discovered then we’d be facing the scandal of the decade.” Douglass nodded slowly at that.

“If he hasn’t gotten himself in over his head with the militias then he most definitely has with this proposed funding increase for the Freedmen’s Bureau. There’s serious talk of not funding the Bureau at all for 1870…I don’t know how Sam is going to sell congress on the idea of not only saving the Bureau but giving it six million more dollars than it already had.” Douglass sounded vaguely unhappy. Wade sighed, no longer feeling especially hungry.

“The funding battle is one that has to be won,” he said, “otherwise we’ll be stuck supplying our militias piecemeal like we are now. And that would be too slow, we’d have only handed out half the rifles we want to by the time reelection role around.”

“You have the Radicals onboard…” Douglass said.

“We do. And some of the moderates wouldn’t be adverse…but we have to get this tar baby through the House and Senate. That’s going to be a difficult task even with Radical leadership in both chambers.” It was discomforting speaking about the funding increase, a part of the militia plan that Wade viewed charitably as the weakest link in the entire chain.

“And there’s this ugliness in North Carolina as well.” Douglass mused. Wade frowned.

“There is. Sam told me he’s planning on defending Holden.” Douglass smiled wanly.

“Good. We need every governor’s mansion we can get. Especially in the south.” Very true.

“If this militia plan works,” Wade said, “if we force congress to save the Bureau and force the Democrats to leave Holden alone, we might just win this thing.” Douglass tucked his napkin into his collar as their food arrived, borne via trolley by a smartly attired soldier.

“Reconstruction isn’t a thing that can be won Ben,” Douglass said solemnly, “it’s a collection of steps and struggles and views that can be roughly cobbled together into a better tomorrow…but also erased very easily.”

“Very…pessimistic of you,” Wade frowned, “you make it sound like all of the goals and plans of this administration are just a single raindrop falling upon the face of a vast ocean of struggle. What would be the point if something like that were true?” Douglass smiled.

“What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?”

_______

There was something odd about the sales receipts, but Boutwell couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Rather than an outright indication that something was wrong, an irritating sense of unease lingered within him. Unease that was growing quite annoying.

Mathias,” he called for his secretary, “will you fetch me the other receipts please?” Popping up from behind a stack of papers on his desk, Mathias nodded dutifully and went hunting for the requested receipts.

Furrowing his brow, Boutwell paced around his office as he stared at the list of names and companies and banks and conglomerates that had purchased the latest batch of gold he’d put up for sale. Ordered alphabetically, they went on for nearly the entire page, followed by a dizzying spiral of figures and specie and other measurements that would have put the average man down with a migraine in no time flat.

Right here sir.” Preened Mathias, clearly quite proud of himself for his speedy work. Retiring to his desk, Boutwell looked over the receipts. Especially the names. Something about them wasn’t quite right. It niggled at the back of his mind, like a string of meat stuck between two back teeth.

Deep in thought, Boutwell began to cross off names that appeared on only one receipt. Emptied by a few names the list was hardly any shorter…but…the winnowing had revealed something interesting. None of the names were those of individuals…except for one at the very bottom of the receipt Boutwell was examining. Thoughts lurching towards an unwelcome conclusion, he looked over at every single receipt.

Sure enough, twenty percent of each batch had been purchased by a certain Mr. Gould. The exact same percentage, time and time again, bought when the gold had just been introduced…almost as though he knew that it was coming.

“Mathias,” Boutwell said, “we may have a problem.”
 

Zek Sora

Donor
*chants growing in the distance*

build the wall
build the wall
build the wall
build the wall
build the wall
build the wall
build the wall

:D
 
Was expecting an April Fools update but instead got an actual one. I approve 100%!

But was it really? evil laughter

Great update! Can't wait to see the outcome of the expedition to San Domingo in TTL! Also, happy April Fools Day to you too ;)

Happy April Fools Day! (Which I'm saying at the end of the month for some reason...)

I see what you did there.

Good. I was slightly concerned that it would be too subtle, but much like all of the references and coded target words directed at the sleeper agents that I hide in my writing, you clever folks picked it out instantly.

*chants growing in the distance*

build the wall
build the wall
build the wall
build the wall
build the wall
build the wall
build the wall

:D

God bless America.

_______

Hiatus! Or, why I'm a terrible person

Yep. I'm putting this on hiatus and starting another project. This is definitely a smart move and will in no way lead to me abandoning yet another promising timeline with its own clutch of fans.

But as it is I've grown pretty dispirited with this work and need a break to recharge and reboot. I think me writing the whole gritty Outlaw epic sorta burnt me out on the 19th century for a while.

So instead I'm going to write a fun little 20th century timeline called Saturation Point. It won't be too long and shouldn't take me more than a few months to complete. I've been planning it forever and might as well get it started so that I'm working on something rather than sitting around banging my head against my keyboard because I can't write anything new into this or my sci-fi anthology in the Writer's Forum that nobody reads.

So. Adios for now.

Until I return.

Feel free to shame me for abandoning Grant once more and being an awful role model.
 
Hiatus! Or, why I'm a terrible person

Yep. I'm putting this on hiatus and starting another project. This is definitely a smart move and will in no way lead to me abandoning yet another promising timeline with its own clutch of fans.

But as it is I've grown pretty dispirited with this work and need a break to recharge and reboot. I think me writing the whole gritty Outlaw epic sorta burnt me out on the 19th century for a while.

So instead I'm going to write a fun little 20th century timeline called Saturation Point. It won't be too long and shouldn't take me more than a few months to complete. I've been planning it forever and might as well get it started so that I'm working on something rather than sitting around banging my head against my keyboard because I can't write anything new into this or my sci-fi anthology in the Writer's Forum that nobody reads.

So. Adios for now.

Until I return.

Feel free to shame me for abandoning Grant once more and being an awful role model.

Not at all, you've reached a good point to take a break. The Outlaw saga has come to a conclusion [perhaps to be seen again later], Grant has settled in as President and won some battles, but more there is more to come. The delegation to Santo Domingo just got there, etc.

Take as long as you need Anywhere, just make sure to post here with a link to the new story when you post so we don't miss it. I'm sure you'll be back to Grant and company before we know it.
 
Hiatus! Or, why I'm a terrible person

Yep. I'm putting this on hiatus and starting another project. This is definitely a smart move and will in no way lead to me abandoning yet another promising timeline with its own clutch of fans.

But as it is I've grown pretty dispirited with this work and need a break to recharge and reboot. I think me writing the whole gritty Outlaw epic sorta burnt me out on the 19th century for a while.

So instead I'm going to write a fun little 20th century timeline called Saturation Point. It won't be too long and shouldn't take me more than a few months to complete. I've been planning it forever and might as well get it started so that I'm working on something rather than sitting around banging my head against my keyboard because I can't write anything new into this or my sci-fi anthology in the Writer's Forum that nobody reads.

So. Adios for now.

Until I return.

Feel free to shame me for abandoning Grant once more and being an awful role model.
Well, it was good while it lasted; just be sure to let us (or at least me) know if you decide to start this up again. Thanks for the TL ABH!
 
Take all the time you need! This TL has been fascinating so far and the Outlaw saga was an amazing bit of literature! I can completely understand how it would burn someone out for a while :)

I'm sure you'll be back to this eventually and sincerely look forward to whatever work you come up with in the near future!
 
As far as dirty words go...quite a lot of them are ancient, and while writing them down in literal words was absolutely banned from polite society, we can tell from the euphemisms people wrote instead just what sort of foul language people were actually speaking. And so could they. I suppose we are considerably more casual about it now, but it's still the same bad words pretty much.
Dirty words? Yes, sure. Blasphemy? Not so much in that time period, IMO. They used the darnedest shootcuss words to avoid coming even close to taking the name of the Lord in vain.
 
Aboard their luxury boxcar, Wade and Douglass settled down for lunch as the countryside of northern Virginia swept by. Douglass watched the woods and streams and towns pass, eyeing what had, until recently, been the very bastion of slavery.​
Railcar. A box car, by definition is a freight car. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxcar
 
Dirty words? Yes, sure. Blasphemy? Not so much in that time period, IMO. They used the darnedest shootcuss words to avoid coming even close to taking the name of the Lord in vain.
So when a Jack London character says "Hully Jee," in no way would this character, even if he is in fact the lowest sort of lowlife, ever be saying in any sort of company, "Holy Jesus?" He's always actually saying "Hully Jee?"

I could be wrong, but I doubt this was always true. Otherwise who would know what the euphemisms actually were meant to refer to?

It's possible they didn't, and went around saying stuff like "Jeepers!" with the same sort of rules that would guide my use of the phrase "Jesus Christ!" today. Certainly I needed an author (Joe Haldeman) to assert in a story the opposite of what you are claiming here, that in fact people were saying the same bad words they generally do today, and the acceptable euphemisms in the press were perfectly transparent to people who did not manage to totally isolate themselves from ever overhearing anyone say the basic version. Once Haldeman's character in first person narration dropped this penny for me, it then seemed quite apparent that the basic lexicon of cussing was quite ancient and had not evolved a whole lot in the past century either. To say that people were careful not to say these things in the wrong places and times, and that some people indeed made the effort not to even try to understand them in the hope of avoiding picking bad language up and therefore these people either really were innocent of such language or anyway repressed it very effectively seems clear. But to suggest that all of society, top to bottom and off to all the sides in a diversely settled place like the USA (or all the country and Cockney dialect in a place like Victorian England) managed to completely purge itself of the actual use of the terrible words...that seems extreme indeed. And I wonder how you would go about demonstrating it was so?

I do agree that in those days, the range of places and situations where even very marginal people would strictly police themselves from ever saying any of these offensive things, and while they were at it control their use of the technically tolerable euphemisms as well, was much wider and stronger. I would think that a single slip-up in the wrong place could have massive consequences for anyone who had any social ambition whatsoever, and even people who despaired of status would know better than to utter certain things lest they suffer immediate physical punishment along with of course putting another layer of filthy lacquer on their dead social status.

Nevertheless, I am pretty sure that, although those sanctified circles did openly and boldly assert the right and duty to annex all language to themselves and reform or anyway strictly police the coarser element they sincerely deplored, nevertheless those coarse and rowdy circles were never suppressed completely, and the cities and countryside resounded with nasty talk once safely far away from the more sacrosanct spaces and people, and indeed these rowdy fellows (and dames, I suppose, in the 1930s movie sense of the word) took great pleasure in shocking the sensitive whenever they judged they could safely get away with it. (Which meant sometimes they didn't, but often they did). There would be entire domains--prisons, ships at sea, railroad workings, probably many factory floors, dangerous alleys in dangerous neighborhoods, and course many if not all saloons, where anything horrible one hears today could be heard then.

It may be that the literally sacred, the names of God and the saints and so forth, did indeed have defenders beyond the aspiring, self-improving middle classes who so zealously tried to scrub out uncleanliness in general; that among the lowest classes you'd find lots of people who would object, in various but sincere tones, to actual blasphemy. And that the stubborn blasphemer was likely, sooner or later, to meet up with a particularly belligerent defender of this aspect of propriety, and quite possibly a whole gang of them to beat some inhibitions into the offender.

But again I am pretty certain that while this sort of language particularly may have been more broadly and enthusiastically repressed than any other (and surely in my own life, where I generally grew up in the South in the 1970s, it was specifically blasphemous language a number of shocked Southerners were most alarmed by and quite intolerant of) it still was not silenced completely, and large communities existed where it went on quite normally.

This marked one as a social inferior of course, and as I say I suppose those who could hardly control blasphemous utterances in their routine lives still had the conditioning to clamp down on it where people would effectively object and retaliate. But take the name of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Moses, and all the saints in vain...I'm morally certain millions of Americans were doing this all the time. (And indeed many of the worst offenders were quite devout or even fanatical in devotion to the same religion they so abused). My experience suggests to me that taking strict offense at this sort of blasphemy is a marker of the English Protestant tradition, and violation of the rule might have been actually exaggerated by Catholics as a tribal response to the contempt it brought on them from Protestants.

It makes me wonder now whether in fact the general slippage into general public language of bad bad words, of all kinds, blasphemous or scatological, was related to the rise of Catholic Americans as socially equivalent to Protestant in American society, a breakthrough I'd identify with the period 1930-1960. It may be a coincidence, what with all the other social transformations going on at the time, but I suspect that it was indeed Catholics and those more or less of that tradition who grew exasperated (or rather, could now get away with showing their exasperation they'd always felt) with what looked to them like Pharisaical self-righteousness of the dominant Protestant hegemony.

This is focused on US society of course but I suspect something parallel was happening in Britain too at the same time, and the rise of the English speaking Dominions was also largely a tale, at least mythically, of low-class origin self-made men many of whom were indeed Catholic--if not in Canada so much, anyway Australia.

So yes, I'd agree than in 1900 there were wide and powerful circles protecting quite substantial communities in which any form of "taking the name of the Lord in vain" was effectively suppressed and truly scandalous whenever any sort of slip did happen, and people living deep in these circles might indeed perceive that in the United States at any rate, most people were respectable--and respectable people had proper shame about the sin and did not commit it.

And included in this circle was the respectable press, and the power of the law could suppress the unrespectable press physically and effectively, so it behooved anyone who wanted to write down this sort of misbehavior to keep their writings safely out of the gimlet eye of Mrs Grundy. The American self-image was Protestant and serious on this matter.

But this is merely to say that vast millions of other Americans were successfully wallpapered over and kept off the record, while the euphemisms (which are in fact generally blasphemous and not scatological--I don't know about you, but I am very casual about abusing religious references but literally dirty language tends to disturb me more and make me feel I'm dealing with dangerous people) record the whole raucous chorus they also censored.
 
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