Longstreet: A most curious Chinese tale.

Boomstick's Ted's Excellent Adventure, Pt. 1:

On the recommendation of former President James G. Blaine, and current President James Garfield, Boomstick Ted was made president of the board of New York City Police Commissioners. Ted agreed, and pursued his job with vigor. His tireless fight against corruption meant that in no time at all, he had made enemies of every law enforcement official in New York. Of course, with the rigorously physical standards he implemented, some of the fatter officers began to hate him too. Ted, who did not sleep very much, spent many nights personally walking the beat of night patrol officers, punishing those he found slacking off. Ted also spent a great deal of time personally enforcing the laws of the city. Being a superb marksman, many criminals (1) met their end at his hand. Many residents of New York began to speak of Ted in hushed whispers of awe. Ted encouraged and extended this view by personally appointing trusted officers to help apprehend violent suspects. America's first Special Weapons Assault Team (2) was formed in 1891. At first, the unit was a well kept secret. Why asked why the unit existed, Ted replied with:

"Speak softly and carry a big stick."

Ted spoke very softly. The police department during his time as commissioner became a brutal, highly secretive organization which depended a great deal on spies and police informers to intrude upon the personal lives of criminal and citizen alike. The police disappeared from the streets, moving into the shadows. Criminals lived in fear of being taken away by police in the middle of the night. And so, the more influential crooks began turning towards Tammany Hall for help. Tammany Boss Charles Sullivan considered his options. Boomstick Ted was a popular hero amongst the voting populace and the press, due to his ability to fight crime and clean out corruption in the police force. At Sullivan's signal, officers of the Special Weapons Attack Team burst into the meeting hall and arrested all the criminals present. Crime in New York fell to record lows. And Ted knew this because he had hired statisticians to keep track of crime rates.

Meanwhile, President James Garfield was replaced by President William Jennings. However, before stepping out of office, Garlfield engineered a false flag operation to complicate the incoming president's life. He ordered that his Foreign Service agents blow up the USS Baltimore moored in Havanna, and blame the Spanish government for the incident. When the powder stores of the Baltimore exploded, all 598 sailors onboard were killed, and the United States found itself in a war with Spain. Boomstick Ted, jumping at the chance, immediately quit his job as New York City police commissioner and raised a volunteer ranger regiment of former pirate hunters, policemen, cowboys, woodsmen and sailors. Boomstick Ted somehow managed to wrangle the rank of Colonel out of his political patrons, and his unit, known as the Swamp Rats, were shipped off to the Philippines.

The Spanish, fearing a Chinese takeover of the islands, had provided a great deal weapons to the locals, and had been posting pro-Spanish propaganda on the islands since the 1860s, while at the same time, relaxing many racial restrictions, in order to pacify the populace. However, Spain was not a wealthy nation, and could not afford to expand its fleet much. The US Pacific Fleet under Admiral George Dewey blew the Spanish Pacific Fleet out of the water at the Battle of Manila Bay, losing only one man (3). However, the 8 batteries of coastal guns defending the harbor made a landing impossible. Complicating the matter were the hundreds of naval mines in the harbor itself. However, the Swamp Rats had been inserted at Cavite south of the city several days beforehand, overwhelming a small local garrison. This gave the United States Marines a beach to land on and secure. Also, Colonel Roosevelt had mapped out the forts defending Manila, which were guarded by machine guns, barbed wire and heavy artillery. Initially, General William McKinley, commanding officer of the ground forces for the Philippines Campaign felt that he lacked the forces necessary to take Manila, however, Ted disagreed.

Previous to Ted's deployment to the Philippines, Ted had been contacted by Andrew Carnegie, his patron and mentor. In a letter, Carnegie revealed the dissatisfaction of the local ethnic Chinese community, who wished to establish an indepedent nation (4). A fluent speaker of Chinese, Ted made contacts with multiple elements of the Filipino colonial military, including one Captain Emilio Aguinaldo, who controlled a key fort in Manila's defenses. Captain Aguilnaldo and his men agreed not to mount resistance when Ted's Swamp Rats attacked that night. Soon, Ted was able to get behind the Spanish lines and take two more forts. American forces surged through the breaches in the lines, taking the city. For his actions, Ted was awarded the Medal of Honor, his first (5). But whatever understanding Ted had with Captain Aguilnaldo was not to last. American troops rushed to the area in order to garrison it.

What came next was the most brutal counter-insurgency campaign ever conducted by American forces, and the Swamp Rats would be at its forefront.

~*~*~
(1): And some innocent people. Boomstick Ted shot first and left the questions for the medical examiner.
(2): SWAT. They were also the first to use the radio to communicate with one another.
(3): To heatstroke.
(4): Carnegie himself was working for the Chinese government.
(5): He would earn his second 20 years later.
 
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Boomstick Ted's Excellent Adventure Pt. 2:

For his own part, Emperor Gong stayed quiet about the Philippines, while providing funding and weaponry for the rebels. Andrew Carnegie was getting filthy rich smuggling in guns and explosives for the rebellion that formed around Emilio Aguinaldo. In the south, the Moro strapped sticks of Chinese TNT to their bodies and detonated themselves next to American troop columns; one of history's first instances of organized suicide bombing. In the United States, President William Jennings Bryan, an avowed anti-Imperialist, had no choice but to bow to massive popular sentiment and the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and other Spanish colonies. The constant attacks from Filipino guerrillas, as well as the tropical heat, were taking their toll on American troops. The first massacre of civilians was conducted by the 1st Nebraska Infantry, which torched a village on Mindoro, then shot the survivors as they fled (1). Torching of villages became so common, that in order to facilitate this, troops in the warzone developed a mixture of palm oil and gasoline, which became known as napalm.

Colonel Roosevelt recommended to General McKinley, commander of the Philippine Theater, that civilians be relocated to concentration camps, or quietly massacred.

"If they are but a few fish swimming in the sea, then drain the ocean."

McKinley agreed, and hundreds of thousands of Filipinos were transferred to concentration camps established by American authorities. Many of them died of disease in the overcrowded camps, while the guerillas in the bush went insane knowing that their families were being held by the Americans. Much of the guerilla activity across the Philippines stopped. Aguinaldo was captured by American forces. However, Colonel Roosevelt intervened to prevent his hanging. With the rebellion over for the time being, Roosevelt and McKinley returned home. General Leonard Wood, a friend of Boomstick Ted, was appointed Governor General of the Philippines. In the meantime, General McKinley and Colonel Roosevelt returned to the United States, where they declared their intention to run in the presidential election of 1900. Being popular war heroes, their election was all but assured, especially after an economic panic in 1898.

Speaking of economics, the next entry will be about the Yukon Gold rush.

~*~*~
(1) Except the ones they raped.
 
That answer your question Hamburger?

It sure does, thanks for updating! That was a pretty good read.

I have a suggestion. How about starting a second insurgency in the Philippines? This time centered around the leaders of an obscure pre-Hispanic shaman cult that partook in the OTL Philippine Revolution;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dios_Buhawi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papa_Isio
I guess concentration camps wouldn't be enough to stop their guerrillas, possibly being more radical and fanatic than Aguinaldo's men because of their religious cause. In OTL the rebels under Papa Isio's command were actually the last to surrender to American troops in 1907 way after the end of the mainstream revolutionary movement. I always wanted to see the Filipino shaman-revolutionaries in AH and I think maybe this TL could have a place for them.
 
The Yukon:

Most schoolchildren learn that prospector Flapjack Bob Johnson discovered gold in the Yukon region, thus precipitating the Yukon Gold Rush.

This however, was pretty much a load of bullshit. Jim Mason, a Tagish First Nation, was the first person to discover gold in the Yukon. Flapjack Bob was merely the first person to steal Mason's claim. Flapjack Bob was also the first person to get rich off the gold rush, and the first person to completely piss away his fortune in Gordon Wu's Opium Den somewhere in Seattle. While morphine had been invented sometime prior to the Civil War, the more potent variation of Heroin had been invented by Bayer some time during the 1880s. Heroin was an extremely potent drug, and many of the Chinese immigrants in the US were making a killing growing opium poppies. In fact, by the 1890s, Cai Haosheng or "Big Rat" was one of the wealthiest men in America. Big Rat's pharmaecutical corporation, Heaven and Earth Industries, was processing 60,000 tons of opium per year and supplying much of the world with heroin. Much this product ended up in opium dens in the cities of Europe. Little Rock, Arkansas, Big Rat's base of operations, became known as the heroin capital of the world.

Big Rat was about to get even richer when he began fleecing miners returning from the gold fields of the Yukon. He sent his lieutenant, Gordon Wu, to Seattle, in order to set up an opium den in Seattle. Many miners ended up losing everything they made in the Yukon on heroin. They reclined back on couches and vaporized doses of heroin with the traditional wooden pipes used for smoking opium. Many of the miners, returning home, took their heroin addictions with them. Obssessed with chasing the dragon and unable to hold down steady employment, they began turning to crime. What made things even worse were veterans returning from wars in the Philippines and Cuba. Because PTSD would go unrecognized until the First World War, many of the young veterans returned as shell shocked wrecks. They found solace in heroin, a cheap, easily available and highly potent drug.

When William McKinley was elected President in 1900, he promised to fight heroin and other forms of drug abuse in the United States. The Drug Act of 1900 was meant to levy a steep tax on heroin, cocaine and other substances, in order to curb its use and production. Big Rat decided to go along with the tax, knowing that it was less costly to him and his business to comply with it, rather than smuggle in drugs illegally. Although drugs continued to be smuggled in illegally, the price of heroin increased sharply. This, combined with the Garrison-Niles Narcotics Act enacted in Britain at around the same time, made it much more difficult for people to get their hands on drugs. However, General McKinley didn't get too far in his presidency when he was shot in the head at point blank range by one Frank James, a recently retired colonel in the United States Army. Frank's brother, Jesse, was head of security for the Carnegie Corporation, and it was a well known fact that Andrew Carnegie was a bigger fan of Boomstick Ted than General McKinley. Conspiracy theories swirled around for years about whether or not Carnegie and Ted arranged for McKinley's murder so that Ted could seize the US Presidency. It was confirmed true in 1993, after a joint investigation by the American and Chinese governments into the activities of the Carnegie Corporation.

And so, the first of Boomstick Ted's five terms as president began.
 
BUMP!!!!

Please update this TL of yours, YLi! What happens with Boomstick Ted as President? And what of his son, Andrew Jackson Roosevelt? :confused:
 
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