Look to the West: Thread III, Volume IV (Tottenham Nil)!
- Thread starter Thande
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Somewhat less than I expected, but then again, if Louisiana has achieved the same sort of reputation as Canada had received in OTL compared to the United States at the same time (not really a nation of their own, merely a British colony, and one that is terribly backwards if not reactionary in its system of government), then it's only to be expected that they are not to get the bulk of the immigrants from the Old World, but losing them to the United Provinces (as Canada lost many immigrants to the US). Probably even more so seeing it still seems to follow a largely unreformed old Bourbon style of government.
Hurray, French-speaking Louisiana!
Was a bit worried there that things were evolving towards a scenario where only the ruling elite spoke French while most of the population conversed in English or Spanish.
How hard was the potato famine for Ireland in TTL? Such as I had understood it (from media such as this), the British response to the Irish famine was largely influenced by Malthusian doctrine, with deliberate action being taken to keep the Irish from receiving the most meagre of aid.
Have they got a cardinal of their own yet? John McCloskey was installed as America's first cardinal in OTL in 1864, but then it's worth to note that the United States wasn't a Catholic majority country. Add to it the fears of losing congregants to the Jansenist influence, and it doesn't appear unlikely that Innocent XIV would establish a cardinalate in Nouvelle-Orléans to assure the population of the Roman Curia's spiritual presence.
Thande
Donor
Not initially but I did realise the resemblance once I began plotting it out, so I added some more specific references (the place where the preacher is standing where the bank gets hit is pretty much the site of the Twin Towers in OTL, but at the time in TTL is an area called George Parade; OTL it was simply 'the Parade' with Fort George south of it, so that seems a reasonable nomenclature evolution).
It was covered back in part #98 (see the main TL page here) that the famine wasn't as bad as OTL and the British response was better, though still dogged with controversy at times, in part because Lord Mornington was more sympathetic to the Irish. Having said that - and not to derail this thread into an argument - the Malthusian aspect of the British response to the Irish famine in OTL has been rather exaggerated as a 'black legend' (to use the Spanish terminology) in the USA for political reasons. The analogy I used is that it's basically like telling Obama now that in order to save people starving in Puerto Rico, he needs to repeal the Affordable Care Act, his signature legislative achievement. The British government at the time was made up of people who had spent most of their political careers working towards repealing the Corn Laws so that bread would be cheaper in Britain and the people would not starve at the expense of the landlords lining their pockets off the bread tax. The idea that FREE TRADE was the ultimate goal that would end starvation and lead to plenty had become so ingrained that the government simply could not accept that government intervention was needed to help the Irish. This doesn't mean that the leadership wasn't sympathetic to the starving population there: this was the same Robert Peel government that at the same time took on a stark partisan divide over its decision to fund Catholic education in Ireland, with the support of the Queen. At the same time, Peel also cracked down on the unrest in Ireland caused by the famine with authoritarian laws, but my point is just to illustrate that it was a complex situation and not one that should be seen through a lens of moustache-twirling. Never assume malicious intent when it can adequately be explained by incompetence, and all that.
I should think that would have happened around the same time Louisiana was made a Grand Duchy in the 1810s, indeed.
Capital update as always Thande, here's a timeline so good it inspired me to at long last make an account as opposed to lurking. Seems like the Supremacists are going to get quite the boost in New York at the next batch of elections.
On another note, I think I might venture a guess at your intentions for dear old Owens-Allen, now that he's lost his governorship. If memory serves, the tensions between the government in England and their America loving emperor are only growing, with particular ire in the military. And, unless Im entirely mistaken, I believe you once made reference to a third glorious revolution one day occurring in Albion. So, idle speculation of course, they might inport themselves another German King, though one with no existing dominion and experience in working in a democracy. And as Henry Fredrick himself remarked to his daughter in that teasingly smudged letter, he wasn't in a position to refuse a crown that was offered.
On another note, I think I might venture a guess at your intentions for dear old Owens-Allen, now that he's lost his governorship. If memory serves, the tensions between the government in England and their America loving emperor are only growing, with particular ire in the military. And, unless Im entirely mistaken, I believe you once made reference to a third glorious revolution one day occurring in Albion. So, idle speculation of course, they might inport themselves another German King, though one with no existing dominion and experience in working in a democracy. And as Henry Fredrick himself remarked to his daughter in that teasingly smudged letter, he wasn't in a position to refuse a crown that was offered.
Owens-Allan hasn't committed treason against the Crown of Great Britain, I think, and we haven't really committed ourselves to the defeat of the traitors in Ultima.
Thande
Donor
Part #193: The Grapple
“Really, any war is as miserable and worthless as another, but curiously there are periods in which the scales fall from the eyes of even the nationalistically blinded and they dimly perceive the horrors that they would usually cheer on with mindless fervour. I was once called callous for apparently welcoming the ‘Malaise of ‘52’ as it has since been dubbed; I would say that if there must be such tragedy—and, of course, that is not the case, it can and should be prevented—that at least let there be no illusions about it. In the end, it rallied many more to witness the truth of the observation of which I am only one among many over the years to have made: that murder is murder no matter how many flags it is wrapped in...”
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From: “The Septentrial Annals: A History of North America” by P. D. Juncker (1959)—
The final year of the Great American War, from the expulsion of the Concordat forces from Virginia in October 1851 to the Armistice in January 1853, represented a significant change to the conflict. Prior to the Retreat from Fredericksburg, the war had always possessed a certain vitality in the popular imagination: its ultimate cause might be morally repugnant and its casualties bloody, but there were instances of storied heroism on both sides, brilliant breakthroughs in military technology and tactical savvy that would remain nestled in public conceptions of history to the present day. It is telling, then, that the same members of the public who can describe in detail Mr Watson’s ironshark or the foul-mouthed genius of General Jones racing to Whitefort are found to invariably struggle when asked to describe the closing stages of the war. There are few films and plays concerning that bitter year, the ‘Malaise of ‘52’ as it was named in the UPSA, for there was little to celebrate on any side...
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From “The Great American War” by Alexander Jenkins (1972)—
In October-November 1851 American forces once again crossed from Virginia into Carolinian territory, though to baldly state this misses the fact that, in the west at least, they had never left. Whitefort and Franklin province remained under the control of General Cushing’s troops and the Concordat forces had not made a serious attempt to eject them, focusing on the drive to Fredericksburg. Cushing had hoped to take the retreating Carolinians and Meridians in the flank as they withdrew, but was instead ordered to sweep west as additional troops were sent down through what were then the western provinces of Virginia, finally allowing access to the western Carolinian provinces of Tennessee, Arkensor and Gualpa. These provinces’ governments had theoretically supported the Carolinian secession, but with counter-revolutionary Franklin in the way had remained largely out of the war—except in that they contributed troops to quelling the slave rebellions in the Cherokee Empire. These western troops then either moved on to join the swelling main Carolinian army in Georgia (coming at the crucial time just after the First Siege of Ultima was broken in May 1850) or occasionally into Louisiana, being instrumental in seizing control (sometimes with the approval of the locals) after the death of Grand Duke Jean-Luc in October 1852. The provinces themselves were less enthusiastic about going to war in defence of slavery compared to the core of Carolina, but this was a matter of degree, as many over-optimistic northerners soon found when attempting to administer the provinces. For they were conquered by Cushing and the reinforcements from Virginia—many of them indeed from Virginia, considered less unreliable in that secondary theatre—and the last organised resistance was crushed around April 1852 when the fortified city of Nashborough fell, though Kleinkrieger activity continued in isolated areas. Cushing was then largely drained of troops due to other fronts taking priority, sometimes impairing his ability to keep order and sparking minor revolts; the only further offensive action taken by the Army of Whitefort was to push somewhat incoherently into the northern Cherokee Empire lands and occupy those as well.
But this was background detail to many, just like the war in California where the Russians were increasingly gaining the upper hand as the dominant part of the anti-New Spanish force allied to the rebels. All American eyes were focused on the eastern front as generals like Day, Jones and the newcomer Sir David Fouracre[1] from western Pennsylvania, promoted and knighted after a heroic action in defence of the Norfolk Redoubt. It is possible to criticise Emperor Frederick’s decision to elevate Fouracre so swiftly and there were certainly political reasons behind it—Fouracre was associated with the defence of the Lord Washington as it was repaired and his new celebrity helped to remind the American public that there was another such armourclad being prepared besides the tragic Lord Hamilton. However, Fouracre rose to the challenge and was highly praised by Jones for his dynamism: of course it is worth remembering that, at the time, both men shared a Confederation...
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From: “The Septentrial Annals: A History of North America” by P. D. Juncker (1959)—
...eastern front in the final year of the war was a fitting example of the phrase coined almost contemporaneously by the High Saxon Chancellor Albert Karl von der Goltz, ‘shadowy fire, bloody steel’. Gone were the days of new wonder weapons like armourclads and cycloguns: from the repair of the Lord Hamilton in November 1851 and that of the Lord Washington in January 1852, both sides deployed armourclads—though in one of history’s great unanswered questions, the two sides’ armourclads would never meet in battle—and though American attempts at duplicating the cyclogun would not meet with success until after the war was over, new tactics were developed to help neutralise the deadly weapons, principally using quickshot galloper guns equipped with Major Stanley’s new miniaturised three-inch hailshot shell to shred gunners as soon as they manned the unprotected cyclogun. This led to some Meridian officers experimenting with makeshift armour plates to protect the cyclogun mount, thus debatably producing the first true protgun,[2] but in practice given the limitations of engines at this point this just slowed the steam guns to a crawl and made them easy pickings for heavier American artillery.
The crucial point was that after all the drama of the early part of the war, with the Retreat from Fredericksburg, it suddenly seemed plunged into a bathetic anticlimax with no end. Families watched in despair as official letters informing them of deaths and injuries mounted up, ‘all North Province shall be nothing but one great cemetary’ in the words of the poet Peter Nickson, yet the movement of the front line slowed to a snail’s pace. As the Carolinians’ reserves ran dry and the influx of reinforcements fell to a trickle—the Luppi government was embattled back home in Cordoba as the war grew increasingly unpopular—the Americans continued to grind slowly south and there was little in the way of counterattacks or even brief turning points, but the price of blood seemed to win little reward. The vast majority of the final year of the war was fought within North Province, a region which had changed hands rapidly in the earlier years of the conflict yet now seemed an inescapable quagmire. Even the hippophagiacs of Crosscreek went hungry, for horses were increasingly relegated to logistics as anti-infantry weapons proliferated and armies approached something we would now consider modernisation. Industrial warfare in all its bitterness had reached America, and the Nightmare War in Europe of the last generation paled into insignificance beside it...
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From “The Great American War” by Alexander Jenkins (1972)—
Elsewhere, things moved at a faster pace. With two armourclads eventually under its control, the American Navy took action to sweep the Concordat forces out of their formerly dominant position in the eastern part of the West Indies, though a channel of control remained in the west. Admiral Warner’s Marines in Cuba were reinforced and American forces pushed west from St James,[3] the city they held though surrounded by conscripts from Guyana and Pernambuco. (Such men, often former criminals or rebels offered a way out, were also used to help keep the peace in the Cherokee Empire and eventually parts of Carolina proper that had been stripped almost bare of adult men by the draft; at this point stories of the more controversial side of their notion of justice remained hushed up by Carolinian newspaper censorship as ‘contrary to the pursual of the war effort’, but these were only the birth pangs of what was to come). By the time of the ceasefire at the turn of 1853, the Americans would hold the east of Cuba, almost half of the island, aided and abetted by escaped slave Kleinkriegers but struggling to build bridges with the Catholic Hispanic middle classes who had mostly remained loyal to Charleston. American control over Hispaniola and the former Carolinian Leeward Islands was also consolidated, but efforts in Jamaica and the Bahamas ultimately met with defeat. Of course the situation in the West Indies would not be as long-lasting as the other lines on the map that would result from the war, but that is another tale...
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From “The Can-Do Confederation: A History of New York” by Evan Pollard (1988)— [4]
The Manhattan Massacre of June 1851 was not only a huge turning point in the history of the Confederation of New York but also of the Empire of North America as a whole. The pressure of tensions between the Seven Nations of the Howden and the Confederate government and people, which had been building up for decades like one of the steam boilers proliferating at the time, finally exploded into action. At the time of the attack a Supremacist minority government was based in George House[5] – at least, before Speaker Charles Avery made the much-criticised decision to decamp to a military encampment in the sleepy suburb of Yonkers ‘for the duration of the crisis’, ostensibly to avoid further attacks by ‘murderous aboriginals’ but in practice to escape the mobs of protestors. Avery and the Supremacists had been champing at the bit for years for an excuse to strike at the Howden, whom they regarded as having existed under an overly comfortable arrangement with the Patriot-dominated New York government for decades, while undermining and cheating said government at every turn. With fire and death staining America’s greatest city and the public baying for blood, they had never had a better opportunity.
‘Avery’s Choice’, as it was later known, put the Howden people between Scylla and Charybdis: “Are you with us, or are you against us?” he declared in a speech. “If the first, then prove it by becoming real Americans: if the second, get out of the land you have betrayed!” Essentially this was an ultimatum for the Howden to effectively abandon their independence and submit to the authority of the confederate government, with everything that came with it—the loss of tariff revenues to central government, the ending of the toleration of heterodox religious practices and the traditional Howden cultural mores, the loss of power of the Grand Council of Sachems. Furthermore under the Howden system of government, women (or rather mothers specifically) had enjoyed considerable political power, including taking the lead in choosing the (male) Sachems. Under the American system, where women’s suffrage (save occasionally in exceptional cases) was still nothing more than a pipe dream, this would be a serious blow against the foundations of Howden society.
Avery was obviously being provocative, trying to go over the heads of the cooler-headed Grand Council members to encourage those sympathisers with Johnson to escalate to all-out conflict, and to an extent he succeeded. While the ‘Howden War’ was not quite the all-out conflict that the name implies, there were considerable loss of life on both sides before the controversy over Major Bockee’s exoneration at court-martial over his actions in the Oswego revenge attack of September 4th 1851.[6] This led to the Patriot and Liberal opposition at George House (or, rather, the Yonkers camp) uniting to defeat Avery’s government in July 1852 and Patriot leader Augustus Delacey took power as Speaker heading a coalition government. Delacey cut back on the state of emergency that Avery had passed and, though continuing the general course of the ultimatum in demanding that the Howden lands become provinces of the Confederation of New York, he was far more lenient in allowing the Howden to retain their autonomy and practices. After all, the ENA had several provinces that had unusually powerful provincial governments as a relic of the fact that they had formerly been colonies in their own right, such as Delaware, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island and the proverbially never-satisfied Maryland.
However, in many ways this was too little, too late. Blood had already been shed in the battles between Howden and New York fighters (both militiamen and regular army troops), families had been divided, old commercial alliances broken, trust had been severed and would never truly heal. Just over half the pre-war Howden population would remain in the former Confederacy lands as they became the New York provinces of ‘Howden’ (south of Lake Ontario), ‘Ontario’( north of the eponymous lake) and ‘Chersonesus’ (the former strip of Howden land north of Portland province but also taking in the rest of the peninsula, which had previously been part of the Susan-Mary penal colony and then an unorganised territory).[7] The losses in the war had been numerically not that large (though given the Howden’s numbers had never been that great, proportionately they were felt sorely) and the reduction in numbers were instead the result of many Howden, predominantly the angry and the young, rejecting the humiliation of the Treaty of Rowley and instead taking up Avery’s alternative of leaving. Some gave up on the way of course and these mostly remained in Chersonesus, where they effectively stymied any attempt by the Supremacists and their sympathisers to turn the new province into a culturally Anglic region. Many however continued on their westward journey and would eventually join up with the Indian Confederacy/Superior Republic in the Red River region, typically settling around Lake Superior. It was through their contacts with their old Huron enemies that the alliance was made, and these rebel Howden rejected the anglicised version of their name Haudenosaunee that had become the norm after it was endorsed by Prince Frederick in 1734.[8] Instead, ironically perhaps, the rebels embraced the old name that they had often been known by, the derogatory name given to them by the Huron and then filtered through French spelling conventions: Iroquois. The name meant ‘black adders’, a Huron insult, but the rebels held that they would strike from the shadows to bite and poison any Supremacist New Yorker who thought he could continue to push ever further and further west until every last Indian was dead or in chains.
From then on, both names were therefore in use and the distinction became political: the Howden who accepted the unequal and punishing settlement of the Treaty of Rowley, and the Iroquois who rejected it and gave up their homeland to keep their freedom. Naturally, a question that has bamboozled historians ever since is what name to use for the Confederacy during the long years of peace and coexistence with New York preceding the Manhattan Massacre: the Howden at the time rejected the name Iroquois, yet some argue that the name Howden has become tainted by subservience and the free and independent Confederacy of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries should be given the name Iroquois, having more in common with those rebels who refused to bow the knee to New York. Needless to say, this has become a Heritage Point of Controversy, and heated opinions vary...[9]
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From “The Great American War” by Alexander Jenkins (1972)—
...not only did the ‘Howden War’ in New York open up what was somewhat grandiosely described as a ‘second front’ by some (mostly Supremacists) and drain valuable New York troops and resources that could have been sent to the front line with Carolina, it also increased the friction between the parties in government. The Supremacist caucus remained unhappy with Vanburen’s leadership of the coalition and their tensions with the Emperor, formerly held in check by Martin’s leadership, began to re-emerge. For the Liberals’ part, they regarded the ‘bloody distraction’ (in Whipple’s words) of the Howden War to be a problem of the Supremacists’ making, and doubted the Supremacists’ commitment to the war. Certainly, Supremacist rhetoric was increasingly shifting back towards the line they had taken prior to the Constitutional Convention, when Clarke had implied that they would not shed a tear if Carolina had left over the abolition of slavery or, indeed, if the ENA kicked them out by force. Some of this was certainly due to Supremacists trying to triangulate as the war grew bloodier and the expiration of the Parliamentary term loomed: the war was becoming increasingly unpopular in many of their home constituencies, with both Mo Quedling’s Pacific League and the broader Unconditional Imperialist movement gaining ground. A disproportionate quantity of Parliamentary business seemed to be devoted to finding a legal loophole that allowed the expulsion of Mo Quedling himself from the chamber, but it seemed only the dreaded election would allow that opportunity. And all the time, MCPs were slowly being shed from the governing coalition to become ‘Peace Independents’, allied to the Patriots as Unconditional Imperialists, whether out of true conviction or simply a desire to keep their seats as public opinion turned against what remained, in theory, a victorious war...
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From: “The Myth of America” by Colin Blaby and Myfanwy Hughes (1988)—
Emperor Frederick II retained a keen sense of political awareness. He would not still be in his position if that was not the case, not with his adventures in the American field of government beyond those of any monarch since his namesake, nor with the fact that he had remained King of Great Britain despite its Inglorious Revolution. Thus he was acutely aware that his direct role in overseeing the war, as well as his friction with the Supremacists following Lord President Martin’s suicide, imperilled his position as neutral monarch and, more importantly, the good governance of America. To that end—and probably also to distract from the repulse from Charleston of American naval forces in September 1852 in a fruitless attempt to replicate the easy victory of Admiral Barker four short years ago; it seemed more like four centuries—Frederick announced that he would finally accomplish the deed that he had originally voyaged to America for and choose a new Lord Deputy to act in his name. He had five names on his shortlist, all who had obtained knighthoods for their service either as Governor of one Confederation or another or for diplomatic or military service. Sir William Cortland, a New Yorker with Patriot sympathies, would be a slap in the face to the Supremacists. The Pennsylvanian Sir Michael Barrett would reach out to the Carolinians, having fought alongside the Carolinian forces of John Alexander in his youth in the Jacobin Wars and being counted a friend by Alexander. Sir Edward Thatcher of New England was a fire-breathing abolitionist and would present a hostile face to the forces of the enemy. Sir David Lyle, a western Virginian but one respected by easterners for his service heading up the Virginian Post Office, would help heal the wounds of Virginian neutrality—which, now that the threat of Carolinian invasion had receded again, threatened to reawaken. Finally there was Sir Thomas Jenkins, a New Englander who had spent most of his career abroad on diplomatic service, principally as American Ambassador to the UPSA in Cordoba. His appointment would indicate that Frederick regarded the presence of the Meridians in Carolina as more important than the Carolinian rebels themselves.
Frederick spent some time considering his decision, and finally invited all five of the men to Little St. James in order to announce it. His diaries make it clear that he was uncertain almost up until the point that he opened his mouth to speak, and indeed cover his agonising between one choice or another in great detail—to the point that they became the basis for the 1922 play An Emperor’s Choice, later filmed as American Destiny: An Emperor’s Choice in 1939 (the title having been changed due to a copyright dispute). Sadly, though well received at the time, the more blatant Black Scare propaganda overtones in the film outweigh its artistic conception and the excellent performance of the lead, Rudolfo Gambetti, as Emperor Frederick. To the current generation it seems that the forgotten story is only recalled by the farcical comedic parody made in 1952, Five Knights at Freddy’s.
As Frederick relates in his diaries, and as the dramatic adaptations all faithfully (if over-dramatically) record, even as he gathered the Lord Deputy candidates into the room to declare his choice on October 4th 1852, he was interrupted by a messenger bringing a telegraphic message—an Optel message, for at the time only the shrinking Kingdom of Carolina had access to the new technology of Lectel. The troops who had been struggling in South Province for months had finally broken through, not needing support from an amphibious descent on Charleston after all: new steam-gun tactics by General Fouracre were credited, though even at the time Frederick must have guessed that that claim owed as much to Fouracre’s skill at massaging the newspapers as to that which he possessed on the battlefield. Regardless, the path to Ultima once again lay open.
Emperor Frederick crumpled the message into a ball and made his choice. And, as the 1939 film in particular recognised, made the choice that, long after his death, would determine the fate of the North American continent...
[1] This is the same family as the OTL Governor of Ohio Joseph Foraker – he was the first of his line to spell it phonetically rather than the old Devon way.
[2] The TTL term for tank, more or less.
[3] OTL Santiago de Cuba.
[4] The title of the book refers to the motto of the Confederation of New York in TTL, Si Je Puis or “I Will If I Can”. This is the motto of the Livingston family, one of the most powerful families in New York in the eighteenth century, which in TTL eventually managed to get it applied to the confederation as well. Note that the OTL motto of New York, Excelsior, is a Revolutionary motto from 1778 and thus was never adopted in TTL.
[5] In both OTL and TTL New York colonial government was based in Fort George (which had various other names over the years) at the southernmost point of Manhattan, south of Bowling Green. In TTL after changing hands repeatedly during the American Revolutionary War it was demolished and a presidential palace called Government House built there (this being when it was assumed that New York City would be the post-war capital of the USA). The palace was never occupied and was eventually demolished in turn in 1815. In TTL Fort George was also eventually demolished and reconstructed into a more fitting complex for a civilian government named George House, but this did not take place until the 1820s.
[6] Oswego already existed before the POD as a fort and in TTL grew into a major Howden town. NB the court-martial was months after the attack itself.
[7] In OTL terms, Chersonesus roughly equates to the northern three-fifths of the state of Michigan but minus the Upper Peninsula.
[8] Way back in part #3.
[9] Hence why some of the history books quoted in previous segments have used ‘Howden’, some have used ‘Iroquois’, and some have used both.
“Really, any war is as miserable and worthless as another, but curiously there are periods in which the scales fall from the eyes of even the nationalistically blinded and they dimly perceive the horrors that they would usually cheer on with mindless fervour. I was once called callous for apparently welcoming the ‘Malaise of ‘52’ as it has since been dubbed; I would say that if there must be such tragedy—and, of course, that is not the case, it can and should be prevented—that at least let there be no illusions about it. In the end, it rallied many more to witness the truth of the observation of which I am only one among many over the years to have made: that murder is murder no matter how many flags it is wrapped in...”
– Pablo Sanchez, Twilight Reflections, 1866
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From: “The Septentrial Annals: A History of North America” by P. D. Juncker (1959)—
The final year of the Great American War, from the expulsion of the Concordat forces from Virginia in October 1851 to the Armistice in January 1853, represented a significant change to the conflict. Prior to the Retreat from Fredericksburg, the war had always possessed a certain vitality in the popular imagination: its ultimate cause might be morally repugnant and its casualties bloody, but there were instances of storied heroism on both sides, brilliant breakthroughs in military technology and tactical savvy that would remain nestled in public conceptions of history to the present day. It is telling, then, that the same members of the public who can describe in detail Mr Watson’s ironshark or the foul-mouthed genius of General Jones racing to Whitefort are found to invariably struggle when asked to describe the closing stages of the war. There are few films and plays concerning that bitter year, the ‘Malaise of ‘52’ as it was named in the UPSA, for there was little to celebrate on any side...
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From “The Great American War” by Alexander Jenkins (1972)—
In October-November 1851 American forces once again crossed from Virginia into Carolinian territory, though to baldly state this misses the fact that, in the west at least, they had never left. Whitefort and Franklin province remained under the control of General Cushing’s troops and the Concordat forces had not made a serious attempt to eject them, focusing on the drive to Fredericksburg. Cushing had hoped to take the retreating Carolinians and Meridians in the flank as they withdrew, but was instead ordered to sweep west as additional troops were sent down through what were then the western provinces of Virginia, finally allowing access to the western Carolinian provinces of Tennessee, Arkensor and Gualpa. These provinces’ governments had theoretically supported the Carolinian secession, but with counter-revolutionary Franklin in the way had remained largely out of the war—except in that they contributed troops to quelling the slave rebellions in the Cherokee Empire. These western troops then either moved on to join the swelling main Carolinian army in Georgia (coming at the crucial time just after the First Siege of Ultima was broken in May 1850) or occasionally into Louisiana, being instrumental in seizing control (sometimes with the approval of the locals) after the death of Grand Duke Jean-Luc in October 1852. The provinces themselves were less enthusiastic about going to war in defence of slavery compared to the core of Carolina, but this was a matter of degree, as many over-optimistic northerners soon found when attempting to administer the provinces. For they were conquered by Cushing and the reinforcements from Virginia—many of them indeed from Virginia, considered less unreliable in that secondary theatre—and the last organised resistance was crushed around April 1852 when the fortified city of Nashborough fell, though Kleinkrieger activity continued in isolated areas. Cushing was then largely drained of troops due to other fronts taking priority, sometimes impairing his ability to keep order and sparking minor revolts; the only further offensive action taken by the Army of Whitefort was to push somewhat incoherently into the northern Cherokee Empire lands and occupy those as well.
But this was background detail to many, just like the war in California where the Russians were increasingly gaining the upper hand as the dominant part of the anti-New Spanish force allied to the rebels. All American eyes were focused on the eastern front as generals like Day, Jones and the newcomer Sir David Fouracre[1] from western Pennsylvania, promoted and knighted after a heroic action in defence of the Norfolk Redoubt. It is possible to criticise Emperor Frederick’s decision to elevate Fouracre so swiftly and there were certainly political reasons behind it—Fouracre was associated with the defence of the Lord Washington as it was repaired and his new celebrity helped to remind the American public that there was another such armourclad being prepared besides the tragic Lord Hamilton. However, Fouracre rose to the challenge and was highly praised by Jones for his dynamism: of course it is worth remembering that, at the time, both men shared a Confederation...
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From: “The Septentrial Annals: A History of North America” by P. D. Juncker (1959)—
...eastern front in the final year of the war was a fitting example of the phrase coined almost contemporaneously by the High Saxon Chancellor Albert Karl von der Goltz, ‘shadowy fire, bloody steel’. Gone were the days of new wonder weapons like armourclads and cycloguns: from the repair of the Lord Hamilton in November 1851 and that of the Lord Washington in January 1852, both sides deployed armourclads—though in one of history’s great unanswered questions, the two sides’ armourclads would never meet in battle—and though American attempts at duplicating the cyclogun would not meet with success until after the war was over, new tactics were developed to help neutralise the deadly weapons, principally using quickshot galloper guns equipped with Major Stanley’s new miniaturised three-inch hailshot shell to shred gunners as soon as they manned the unprotected cyclogun. This led to some Meridian officers experimenting with makeshift armour plates to protect the cyclogun mount, thus debatably producing the first true protgun,[2] but in practice given the limitations of engines at this point this just slowed the steam guns to a crawl and made them easy pickings for heavier American artillery.
The crucial point was that after all the drama of the early part of the war, with the Retreat from Fredericksburg, it suddenly seemed plunged into a bathetic anticlimax with no end. Families watched in despair as official letters informing them of deaths and injuries mounted up, ‘all North Province shall be nothing but one great cemetary’ in the words of the poet Peter Nickson, yet the movement of the front line slowed to a snail’s pace. As the Carolinians’ reserves ran dry and the influx of reinforcements fell to a trickle—the Luppi government was embattled back home in Cordoba as the war grew increasingly unpopular—the Americans continued to grind slowly south and there was little in the way of counterattacks or even brief turning points, but the price of blood seemed to win little reward. The vast majority of the final year of the war was fought within North Province, a region which had changed hands rapidly in the earlier years of the conflict yet now seemed an inescapable quagmire. Even the hippophagiacs of Crosscreek went hungry, for horses were increasingly relegated to logistics as anti-infantry weapons proliferated and armies approached something we would now consider modernisation. Industrial warfare in all its bitterness had reached America, and the Nightmare War in Europe of the last generation paled into insignificance beside it...
*
From “The Great American War” by Alexander Jenkins (1972)—
Elsewhere, things moved at a faster pace. With two armourclads eventually under its control, the American Navy took action to sweep the Concordat forces out of their formerly dominant position in the eastern part of the West Indies, though a channel of control remained in the west. Admiral Warner’s Marines in Cuba were reinforced and American forces pushed west from St James,[3] the city they held though surrounded by conscripts from Guyana and Pernambuco. (Such men, often former criminals or rebels offered a way out, were also used to help keep the peace in the Cherokee Empire and eventually parts of Carolina proper that had been stripped almost bare of adult men by the draft; at this point stories of the more controversial side of their notion of justice remained hushed up by Carolinian newspaper censorship as ‘contrary to the pursual of the war effort’, but these were only the birth pangs of what was to come). By the time of the ceasefire at the turn of 1853, the Americans would hold the east of Cuba, almost half of the island, aided and abetted by escaped slave Kleinkriegers but struggling to build bridges with the Catholic Hispanic middle classes who had mostly remained loyal to Charleston. American control over Hispaniola and the former Carolinian Leeward Islands was also consolidated, but efforts in Jamaica and the Bahamas ultimately met with defeat. Of course the situation in the West Indies would not be as long-lasting as the other lines on the map that would result from the war, but that is another tale...
*
From “The Can-Do Confederation: A History of New York” by Evan Pollard (1988)— [4]
The Manhattan Massacre of June 1851 was not only a huge turning point in the history of the Confederation of New York but also of the Empire of North America as a whole. The pressure of tensions between the Seven Nations of the Howden and the Confederate government and people, which had been building up for decades like one of the steam boilers proliferating at the time, finally exploded into action. At the time of the attack a Supremacist minority government was based in George House[5] – at least, before Speaker Charles Avery made the much-criticised decision to decamp to a military encampment in the sleepy suburb of Yonkers ‘for the duration of the crisis’, ostensibly to avoid further attacks by ‘murderous aboriginals’ but in practice to escape the mobs of protestors. Avery and the Supremacists had been champing at the bit for years for an excuse to strike at the Howden, whom they regarded as having existed under an overly comfortable arrangement with the Patriot-dominated New York government for decades, while undermining and cheating said government at every turn. With fire and death staining America’s greatest city and the public baying for blood, they had never had a better opportunity.
‘Avery’s Choice’, as it was later known, put the Howden people between Scylla and Charybdis: “Are you with us, or are you against us?” he declared in a speech. “If the first, then prove it by becoming real Americans: if the second, get out of the land you have betrayed!” Essentially this was an ultimatum for the Howden to effectively abandon their independence and submit to the authority of the confederate government, with everything that came with it—the loss of tariff revenues to central government, the ending of the toleration of heterodox religious practices and the traditional Howden cultural mores, the loss of power of the Grand Council of Sachems. Furthermore under the Howden system of government, women (or rather mothers specifically) had enjoyed considerable political power, including taking the lead in choosing the (male) Sachems. Under the American system, where women’s suffrage (save occasionally in exceptional cases) was still nothing more than a pipe dream, this would be a serious blow against the foundations of Howden society.
Avery was obviously being provocative, trying to go over the heads of the cooler-headed Grand Council members to encourage those sympathisers with Johnson to escalate to all-out conflict, and to an extent he succeeded. While the ‘Howden War’ was not quite the all-out conflict that the name implies, there were considerable loss of life on both sides before the controversy over Major Bockee’s exoneration at court-martial over his actions in the Oswego revenge attack of September 4th 1851.[6] This led to the Patriot and Liberal opposition at George House (or, rather, the Yonkers camp) uniting to defeat Avery’s government in July 1852 and Patriot leader Augustus Delacey took power as Speaker heading a coalition government. Delacey cut back on the state of emergency that Avery had passed and, though continuing the general course of the ultimatum in demanding that the Howden lands become provinces of the Confederation of New York, he was far more lenient in allowing the Howden to retain their autonomy and practices. After all, the ENA had several provinces that had unusually powerful provincial governments as a relic of the fact that they had formerly been colonies in their own right, such as Delaware, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island and the proverbially never-satisfied Maryland.
However, in many ways this was too little, too late. Blood had already been shed in the battles between Howden and New York fighters (both militiamen and regular army troops), families had been divided, old commercial alliances broken, trust had been severed and would never truly heal. Just over half the pre-war Howden population would remain in the former Confederacy lands as they became the New York provinces of ‘Howden’ (south of Lake Ontario), ‘Ontario’( north of the eponymous lake) and ‘Chersonesus’ (the former strip of Howden land north of Portland province but also taking in the rest of the peninsula, which had previously been part of the Susan-Mary penal colony and then an unorganised territory).[7] The losses in the war had been numerically not that large (though given the Howden’s numbers had never been that great, proportionately they were felt sorely) and the reduction in numbers were instead the result of many Howden, predominantly the angry and the young, rejecting the humiliation of the Treaty of Rowley and instead taking up Avery’s alternative of leaving. Some gave up on the way of course and these mostly remained in Chersonesus, where they effectively stymied any attempt by the Supremacists and their sympathisers to turn the new province into a culturally Anglic region. Many however continued on their westward journey and would eventually join up with the Indian Confederacy/Superior Republic in the Red River region, typically settling around Lake Superior. It was through their contacts with their old Huron enemies that the alliance was made, and these rebel Howden rejected the anglicised version of their name Haudenosaunee that had become the norm after it was endorsed by Prince Frederick in 1734.[8] Instead, ironically perhaps, the rebels embraced the old name that they had often been known by, the derogatory name given to them by the Huron and then filtered through French spelling conventions: Iroquois. The name meant ‘black adders’, a Huron insult, but the rebels held that they would strike from the shadows to bite and poison any Supremacist New Yorker who thought he could continue to push ever further and further west until every last Indian was dead or in chains.
From then on, both names were therefore in use and the distinction became political: the Howden who accepted the unequal and punishing settlement of the Treaty of Rowley, and the Iroquois who rejected it and gave up their homeland to keep their freedom. Naturally, a question that has bamboozled historians ever since is what name to use for the Confederacy during the long years of peace and coexistence with New York preceding the Manhattan Massacre: the Howden at the time rejected the name Iroquois, yet some argue that the name Howden has become tainted by subservience and the free and independent Confederacy of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries should be given the name Iroquois, having more in common with those rebels who refused to bow the knee to New York. Needless to say, this has become a Heritage Point of Controversy, and heated opinions vary...[9]
*
From “The Great American War” by Alexander Jenkins (1972)—
...not only did the ‘Howden War’ in New York open up what was somewhat grandiosely described as a ‘second front’ by some (mostly Supremacists) and drain valuable New York troops and resources that could have been sent to the front line with Carolina, it also increased the friction between the parties in government. The Supremacist caucus remained unhappy with Vanburen’s leadership of the coalition and their tensions with the Emperor, formerly held in check by Martin’s leadership, began to re-emerge. For the Liberals’ part, they regarded the ‘bloody distraction’ (in Whipple’s words) of the Howden War to be a problem of the Supremacists’ making, and doubted the Supremacists’ commitment to the war. Certainly, Supremacist rhetoric was increasingly shifting back towards the line they had taken prior to the Constitutional Convention, when Clarke had implied that they would not shed a tear if Carolina had left over the abolition of slavery or, indeed, if the ENA kicked them out by force. Some of this was certainly due to Supremacists trying to triangulate as the war grew bloodier and the expiration of the Parliamentary term loomed: the war was becoming increasingly unpopular in many of their home constituencies, with both Mo Quedling’s Pacific League and the broader Unconditional Imperialist movement gaining ground. A disproportionate quantity of Parliamentary business seemed to be devoted to finding a legal loophole that allowed the expulsion of Mo Quedling himself from the chamber, but it seemed only the dreaded election would allow that opportunity. And all the time, MCPs were slowly being shed from the governing coalition to become ‘Peace Independents’, allied to the Patriots as Unconditional Imperialists, whether out of true conviction or simply a desire to keep their seats as public opinion turned against what remained, in theory, a victorious war...
*
From: “The Myth of America” by Colin Blaby and Myfanwy Hughes (1988)—
Emperor Frederick II retained a keen sense of political awareness. He would not still be in his position if that was not the case, not with his adventures in the American field of government beyond those of any monarch since his namesake, nor with the fact that he had remained King of Great Britain despite its Inglorious Revolution. Thus he was acutely aware that his direct role in overseeing the war, as well as his friction with the Supremacists following Lord President Martin’s suicide, imperilled his position as neutral monarch and, more importantly, the good governance of America. To that end—and probably also to distract from the repulse from Charleston of American naval forces in September 1852 in a fruitless attempt to replicate the easy victory of Admiral Barker four short years ago; it seemed more like four centuries—Frederick announced that he would finally accomplish the deed that he had originally voyaged to America for and choose a new Lord Deputy to act in his name. He had five names on his shortlist, all who had obtained knighthoods for their service either as Governor of one Confederation or another or for diplomatic or military service. Sir William Cortland, a New Yorker with Patriot sympathies, would be a slap in the face to the Supremacists. The Pennsylvanian Sir Michael Barrett would reach out to the Carolinians, having fought alongside the Carolinian forces of John Alexander in his youth in the Jacobin Wars and being counted a friend by Alexander. Sir Edward Thatcher of New England was a fire-breathing abolitionist and would present a hostile face to the forces of the enemy. Sir David Lyle, a western Virginian but one respected by easterners for his service heading up the Virginian Post Office, would help heal the wounds of Virginian neutrality—which, now that the threat of Carolinian invasion had receded again, threatened to reawaken. Finally there was Sir Thomas Jenkins, a New Englander who had spent most of his career abroad on diplomatic service, principally as American Ambassador to the UPSA in Cordoba. His appointment would indicate that Frederick regarded the presence of the Meridians in Carolina as more important than the Carolinian rebels themselves.
Frederick spent some time considering his decision, and finally invited all five of the men to Little St. James in order to announce it. His diaries make it clear that he was uncertain almost up until the point that he opened his mouth to speak, and indeed cover his agonising between one choice or another in great detail—to the point that they became the basis for the 1922 play An Emperor’s Choice, later filmed as American Destiny: An Emperor’s Choice in 1939 (the title having been changed due to a copyright dispute). Sadly, though well received at the time, the more blatant Black Scare propaganda overtones in the film outweigh its artistic conception and the excellent performance of the lead, Rudolfo Gambetti, as Emperor Frederick. To the current generation it seems that the forgotten story is only recalled by the farcical comedic parody made in 1952, Five Knights at Freddy’s.
As Frederick relates in his diaries, and as the dramatic adaptations all faithfully (if over-dramatically) record, even as he gathered the Lord Deputy candidates into the room to declare his choice on October 4th 1852, he was interrupted by a messenger bringing a telegraphic message—an Optel message, for at the time only the shrinking Kingdom of Carolina had access to the new technology of Lectel. The troops who had been struggling in South Province for months had finally broken through, not needing support from an amphibious descent on Charleston after all: new steam-gun tactics by General Fouracre were credited, though even at the time Frederick must have guessed that that claim owed as much to Fouracre’s skill at massaging the newspapers as to that which he possessed on the battlefield. Regardless, the path to Ultima once again lay open.
Emperor Frederick crumpled the message into a ball and made his choice. And, as the 1939 film in particular recognised, made the choice that, long after his death, would determine the fate of the North American continent...
[1] This is the same family as the OTL Governor of Ohio Joseph Foraker – he was the first of his line to spell it phonetically rather than the old Devon way.
[2] The TTL term for tank, more or less.
[3] OTL Santiago de Cuba.
[4] The title of the book refers to the motto of the Confederation of New York in TTL, Si Je Puis or “I Will If I Can”. This is the motto of the Livingston family, one of the most powerful families in New York in the eighteenth century, which in TTL eventually managed to get it applied to the confederation as well. Note that the OTL motto of New York, Excelsior, is a Revolutionary motto from 1778 and thus was never adopted in TTL.
[5] In both OTL and TTL New York colonial government was based in Fort George (which had various other names over the years) at the southernmost point of Manhattan, south of Bowling Green. In TTL after changing hands repeatedly during the American Revolutionary War it was demolished and a presidential palace called Government House built there (this being when it was assumed that New York City would be the post-war capital of the USA). The palace was never occupied and was eventually demolished in turn in 1815. In TTL Fort George was also eventually demolished and reconstructed into a more fitting complex for a civilian government named George House, but this did not take place until the 1820s.
[6] Oswego already existed before the POD as a fort and in TTL grew into a major Howden town. NB the court-martial was months after the attack itself.
[7] In OTL terms, Chersonesus roughly equates to the northern three-fifths of the state of Michigan but minus the Upper Peninsula.
[8] Way back in part #3.
[9] Hence why some of the history books quoted in previous segments have used ‘Howden’, some have used ‘Iroquois’, and some have used both.
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A FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S REFERENCE?
REALLY?
I'M FACEPALMING, HERE.
D)
I'll give a more detailed post soon.
BUT REALLY?
REALLY?
I'M FACEPALMING, HERE.
D)I'll give a more detailed post soon.
BUT REALLY?
Alex Richards
Donor
Ah, so it really does look like an eventual peace treaty on the principles of uti possidetis. And A rump Confederation of Carolina incorporating the North (and possibly South?) provinces and maybe Franklin may well be in the cards.
Not to mention the strong hints of a new Western Confederacy beyond the Appalachians.
Not to mention the strong hints of a new Western Confederacy beyond the Appalachians.
I'm pretty interested in how the Superior Republic is going to form up. Such as how the tribes within are going to form a government, and what the society will evolve more into as we go further along.
So, unless I misread this, the Howden province will remain the only former territory with a predominant Haudenosaunee population, while the other two will largely, if not wholly, become Anglicized?
So, unless I misread this, the Howden province will remain the only former territory with a predominant Haudenosaunee population, while the other two will largely, if not wholly, become Anglicized?
Yet another very good update. Can't wait to see who was picked.
Unless things have changed since 1815, yes. I suppose that either that area is now part of Algonkia province, leaving a rather small Ontario, or it is part of Ontario province, meaning a break from the straight-line confederal borders.
Unless things have changed since 1815, yes. I suppose that either that area is now part of Algonkia province, leaving a rather small Ontario, or it is part of Ontario province, meaning a break from the straight-line confederal borders.
I believe Chersonesis/northern Lower Peninsula Michigan is the Iroquoized province. Howden/Ontario Provinces will be the anglicized ones (helped along by already-existing American populations nearby, easy access, and the City of Rowley smack in the middle of the Howden's *southern Ontario lands).
I would honestly feel it'd be best to retcon it so 'Ontario Province' is nonexistent and split between Yorker Niagara (which would include Rowley) and Yankee Algonkia (which would massively benefit from Lake Ontario access, if the population and power would shift there).
I'd say that too, but there's the fact the capital is there, along with the homeland and much of the Iroquois government leaders. It did state they were still rather autonomous.
Oh, I get what you're saying! I just feel Howden is probably going to be anglicized sooner or later compared to Chersonesus, even as the original Howden/Iroquois homeland, because it's directly accessible from Philly-Shire, Albany-Shire, and Pittsylvania and a direct way to Niagara. @_@
Chersonesus, at least, has the benefit of the forests beneath it and all the water everywhere else to protect its cultural autonomy.
Thande
Donor
To clarify on the matter Othyrsyde asked about, it meant that the area that became Chersonesus had not had that large a Howden population before and thus might have been swamped and completely anglicised by colonists, but the more fainthearted rebels giving up and settling there frustrated attempts to do so by Supremacist groups. As far as Howden province (aka Howdenshire, like the one in Yorkshire) and Ontario are concerned, those have too large populations to begin to be fully anglicised, though now there will be no restrictions on settlement: basically, think somewhere like Oklahoma or Arizona in OTL in terms of cultural balance, if a bit more tilted towards the Indian side.
Thanks, have corrected.
They have territory north of what the New York/New England borderline would imply (though note that their territory has shrunk a bit from 1815, see the map I posted here: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/attachment.php?attachmentid=236487&d=1407578428 ) but all of that is being annexed to New York. New England won't be happy but they will be getting the autonomous pocket of Ottawa Indians to the north that previously existed as a sort of only very tenuously connected exclave of the Howden Confederacy. Note that the map shows Rowley (OTL Toronto) as a New York exclave within the Howden land that has now become Ontario - the Supremacists would have wanted it to be part of the same new province as Rowley, but this move was a compromise by the more Howden-friendly Delacey government so the Howden in Ontario can't be easily outvoted by the whites in Rowley.
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