Alex Richards
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We are so going to need a new epic map after this. Feel free to drop me a note if you want/need to. I can't promise a Nugaxian wonder like the old ENA Neapolitan but I can certainly do my best.
Look to the West: Thread III, Volume IV (Tottenham Nil)!
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
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Thande
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Thanks. Best to wait for a while as it'll take some years in-universe for the dust to settle on what will finally result from the war.
Wow, things are really starting to heat up.
Anyway, Thande, you promised that Australia would have some of this war-based action. It may (or may not, knowing Thande) have anything to do with the Adamantine republic in OTL Tasmania, of course.
Will we see that front later on in the Great American War proper series of posts, or as a separate post, to do with another war entirely?
Anyway, Thande, you promised that Australia would have some of this war-based action. It may (or may not, knowing Thande) have anything to do with the Adamantine republic in OTL Tasmania, of course.
Will we see that front later on in the Great American War proper series of posts, or as a separate post, to do with another war entirely?
Great update as always! Had entirely forgotten about the vacant Lordship Deputy! Let's see here...
Oh yes, I'm guessing Sir Edward Thatcher! Frederick II is a staunch abolitionist, and already agrees with Thatcher in sentiment, and now, thinking that it's only a question of time before the Carolinian rebellion is put down, he feels no need to go for a reconciliatory figure. He's gonna go for the fearless fire-eater!
...and we'll end up with an alternate terminology in this timeline pertaining to Thatcherism!
Oh yes, I'm guessing Sir Edward Thatcher! Frederick II is a staunch abolitionist, and already agrees with Thatcher in sentiment, and now, thinking that it's only a question of time before the Carolinian rebellion is put down, he feels no need to go for a reconciliatory figure. He's gonna go for the fearless fire-eater!
...and we'll end up with an alternate terminology in this timeline pertaining to Thatcherism!
Thande
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Part #194: Who Blinks First?
“If that conflict helped bring the sudden realisation to many that war is nothing more than futile slaughter, murder writ large, then it was accompanied by the second revelation that the great masses of the people are fundamentally unqualified to decide great world-changing affairs. Even those with the innate ability to rise beyond their titular class were hampered by lack of information and experience, with the result that votes would flip from one extreme of policy to the other for the most trivial and venal of reasons. That is, of course, something to be found in any so-called popular election, but was particularly noticeable in this case due to the weight of the decisions that would be made in this crucial time. The experience of the war encouraged many to seek to countermand and undermine the popularisation of policy that Europe had embraced following the wars of the ’Thirties[1] but had been a far more long-running process in the Americas. I do not applaud their moves, however. Too often it was patently obvious that this was simply a power grab by aristocratic classes, old or new, with the excuse that the popular will of the proletariat and perhaps even the bourgeoisie had led them to such disasters. Any man with any knowledge of history should have no sympathy with such a move: for, as countless previous generations can attest, a dictatorship of the aristocratic classes is just as capable as casually flinging thousands into the fire for the most banal of reasons. The greater bloodbath of the proletarian wars of the present day is as much a function of the concomitant rise of industry, which has multiplied both the productive and destructive capabilities of the human race, as of the shift in power. No; rule by any class solely out for its own ends will inevitably end in disaster, just as rule by some arbitrarily-chosen division cutting across classes (such as a linguistic sect) will do so. A new model is needed, a model in which unnecessary divisions are eliminated and all classes work together for the good of humanity as a whole...”
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From: “Golden Sun and Silver Torch: A History of the United Provinces of South America” by Benito Carlucci (1976)—
No less than the ENA, the UPSA’s conduct in the Great American War was hamstrung by the volatility of the popular will. The war had at first been fairly popular with most, save those who would rather focus on the romantic cause of Californian independence (which largely fell by the wayside and left the path open for more Russian influence in that quarter). True, the Nottingham Affair had been a relatively minor incident and one might imagine that it had little resonance with the people outside Buenos Aires; however, attacks on that city by foreign forces (especially Americans) was part of the founding mythos of the UPSA. The repulsion of the Anglo-American forces from the city by Platinean militiamen (with no help from their Spanish colonial overlords) during the First Platinean War in 1767 was the defining moment in which the people of the South American colonies had felt they could stand on their own two feet, and had proved it less than two decades later in the Second Platinean War, where they had gone on to repulse the French from a similar invasion. In the nineteenth century successive Meridian governments had trumpeted the fact that the UPSA had grown strong enough that its people need never again fear foreign-flagged ships sailing up the River Plate. Therefore, though the Nottingham Affair was more of a fracas than an actual attack on Buenos Aires, it roused a patriotic spirit across all the Meridian domains, from Matto Grosso to Tierra del Fuego (and beyond to the Meridians’ effective vassal states). The reported victories of Flores on land and Insulza at sea were popular and widely reported: even when the ENA was not seen as the UPSA’s enemy, it was definitely its rival—the ‘two great American nations’ as President-General Mateovarón had called them years ago—and Meridians liked the idea of Americans being brought down a peg or two. Let them struggle to repulse an invasion of their homeland, so close to their capital, for a change! Let them run in fear before superior technology and tactics, the cycloguns of Flores and the armourclad of Insulza!
Pablo Sanchez was scarcely the only observer to note that the public mood proved fickle. The heat of the moment faded to a long slog where confused and debatable news trickled out of the combat zone so far to the north. The small international abolitionist faction within the UPSA (often stereotyped and attacked as a ‘foreign group’ due to the number of ex-Schmidtist German immigrants involved in it) condemned the idea of Meridian boys dying for the sake of Carolinians having the right to own slaves. That message gradually developed more public support over the course of the war, but more influential was the main opposition Unionists’ call for ‘peace with honour’, stating that the UPSA had had its revenge, had obtained its longstanding foreign policy aim of gaining Falkland’s Islands (or the Malvinas), had humiliated America, and now it was time to pull out and leave ‘the Carolinian affair’ to return to being the internal American dispute it should be. President-General Luppi was in a difficult situation. He had never particularly wanted this war but now felt he had to stick to his guns and see it through to the end. If an election had been looming, he might have thought differently, but due to an accident of history, the Meridian presidency was not up until 1855 and the Cortes election was successfully delayed by the Adamantines from 1852 to 1853. He therefore escaped the problem that afflicted his nation’s enemy...
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From “The Great American War” by Alexander Jenkins (1972)—
After the long, grinding, miserable struggles of 1852, October seemed to show a moment of hope for the Americans. General Fouracre had broken through the Concordat lines, Cravenville and Congaryton had fallen once again, and the road lay open to Ultima.[2] Perhaps the sacrifices of the people would not be in vain after all. The messages of Francis Bassett’s Patriots and their allies, Mo Quedling’s ‘Peace Independents’ and the Unconditional Imperialists, seemed to ring hollow for the first time in what seemed an age. Emperor Frederick rejected the pro-peace opposition’s call for negotiations and engagement by appointing the fiery abolitionist Sir Edward Thatcher as Lord Deputy, ensuring there could be no compromise with the Carolinian rebels. The weary people of America gathered themselves for one last push, winner take all. In November 1852, the Second Siege of Ultima began.
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From: “The Myth of America” by Colin Blaby and Myfanwy Hughes (1988)—
When one reads accounts of the final stages of the war, one is repeatedly struck by the fact that names one remembers from the earlier phase crop up once again. On the face of it that is hardly surprising, given the fact that the same territory was being fought over: but the difference is striking. Battles and skirmishes that in 1849 and 1850 were heroic clashes immortalised in paint and poesy are replaced by hellish drives of thousands against thousands, mud and blood and bullets, forgettable in their sheer ennui. Carolinian towns that had been occupied before and then proudly seen American troops leave with only a few scorch marks to show for it were now crushed beneath the weight of mass industrial warfare, sometimes never to rise again.The Second Siege of Ultima would not be one to have dramatic paintings like The King in Winter composed about it. The men on both sides were emotionally drained. This was simply a fight to the death.
Yet one thing had not changed since the early part of the war. Political concerns continued to hamstring military strategy. An election loomed. The government could try to use various procedural trickt to delay it, as Henry Frederick had done in Virginia for so long, but they continued to lose MCPs to the opposition and their majority had fallen to a knife-edge as it was. They needed a final victory that would show the war all but won. They needed to do what they had failed to do before. They needed to take Ultima.
To that end, tactics and strategy were devoted to their one, politically motivated goal, with the result that there were no further attempts to take Charleston following Barker’s repulse in September. Nor was there any strike at Savannah, even as General Cushing—who spearheaded the final assault on Ultima—continued to call for it, and as American naval power with the two armourclads Lord Washington and Lord Hamilton had never been greater. Therefore, the column driving at Ultima was heavy and powerful, composed of battle-hardened veterans equipped with the finest weaponry and logistics that America could offer—but it was a spearhead running far ahead of the mass of American forces, who continued to hold a line of control cutting through South Province.
Despite this obvious tactical flaw, the assault nearly succeeded. Cushing was a fine commander, as were his deputies (including Fouracre), the Carolinians had suffered terribly from their losses and were almost at the end of their tether, with mutinies in some garrisons, and the Meridians were unenthusiastic about spending further lives in the cause of the cobelligerents they were increasingly fractious with—not helped by orders out of date by a matter of months coming from Cordoba which told them not to get too close to the Carolinian cause. The Meridian armed forces were as subject to political considerations as their American foes: they merely had the advantage that they were further removed from their politicians and thus could get away with ignoring them more of the time.
Winter in Ultima was certainly not as bitter as in many lands, but 1852 happened to be a particularly sharp freeze. It nonetheless slowed the pace of the conflict and made it particularly miserable. Bodies were left unburied above ground too hardened to dig graves. While the last stages of the Great American War were not known for their cultural impact, Eliot Philipson’s graphic drawings of American soldiers suffering from frostbite shocked many back home in the north when represented in the newspapers he worked for—who were able to obtain the drawings easily by means of Optel code breaking them down iota by iota.[3] Meanwhile, the Carolinians benefited from the increased deployment of Lectel wires, partly driven by MacLean and Naughtie being hailed as national heroes (and how they, along with Watson, showed that Carolina could compete when it came to technological breakthroughs) and partly by the simple fact that Optel towers were prime targets for American forces, especially the bomb-and-run raids of the steerables of the First Imperial Aerial Legion. Regardless of how much the Aeronauts captured the public imagination as heroes, ‘knights of the air’, their impact on the war was minimal save in this regard: fragile Optel towers were one of the few targets where the limitations of the bombs that the steerables could carry did not render them ineffective. In any case, with its Optel system in ruins and Lectel lines proliferating, Carolina would be one area that never saw any significant Telegraph Wars.
The Lectel lines were partly built and laid by Meridian companies, requiring the sharing of the patent against the wishes of the Carolinian government, and Meridian companies were also responsible for building more railway lines and roads to link Ultima to the reduced domains under rebel control, allowing the rapid shift of troops and materiel from one end of the Kingdom to the other. All of this was paid for by big loans borrowed against the presumed cotton and fruit profits of the future. “Every day we seem to extend the debt by another generation,” Governor Belteshazzar Wragg lamented in his diary, “yet what else can we do? Better any debt to an honest broker than to deal with those who cannot even recognise a man’s property for what it is.” Yet that so-called property was not always inclined to remain in thrall to their ‘owners’. With Carolina’s towns and cities drained of able-bodied men, slaves often escaped. With American troops advancing, some found refuge in either the main body of American forces in South Province and Franklin, while others fell in with Cushing’s advancing spearhead as camp followers, and still others formed anew the Caesar Bell-inspired maroon groups in isolated places. Only those who went westward, to the Cherokee Empire and then onto Louisiana and beyond, would ultimately succeed in this. The rest would be hunted down by the ‘Irregular Garrison’, as they were named, the shady auxiliaries recruited from Guyana, Pernambuco and elsewhere by the Meridians, often from jail cells or the waiting line for the rope. Oh, they were quite willing to publicly torture captured escaped slaves for the delight of vengeful Carolinian villagers, but as the war wore on, sufficient rumours escaped government censorship to suggest that they were just as willing to do much the same in private to any white woman lacking powerful relations to protest...
However, all the infrastructure built during the year of success of 1851 now swung into action when it came to the year of peril that was 1852. It was this that allowed Ultima to hold on when greatly outnumbered by Cushing’s forces. There were none of the clever and bold tactics of General Jones from the early part of the war: there was simply no room for them. It was a slogging match where numbers were all, nothing more, nothing less. Small wonder that it was from this time when Pablo Sanchez’s young movement, almost forgotten in the background, received many new recruits who now believed in ‘the banality of war’. Ironically, given future Combine policies, many of them were veterans of the conflict...
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From “The Great American War” by Alexander Jenkins (1972)—
The American defeat and retreat at the Second Siege of Ultima is often presented as coming as a natural consequence of the death of General Cushing to a sniper’s bullet on December 15th 1852. While that certainly played a role, it is clear that the American position was already collapsing. No matter how great their legions and how their steam-guns ran riot over the inferior Carolinians and few Meridians, they were unable to breach the defences of Ultima. Morale was already low and Cushing’s death was only the last straw. The Americans could not have known how close they came to victory. Though Ultima remained strong and resupplied by its enhanced railway network, public opinion in Carolina had come down to breaking point and many were ready to chuck in the towel and suffer the consequences. Perhaps if it had not been for the Emperor’s bald statement against compromise by appointing Thatcher as Lord Deputy—a statement aimed more at his own political opposition than at the Carolinians themselves—it might have been enough to bring down the rebel government. As it was, that one victory at just the right time kept them in place. For now.
It is easy to debate what might have happened if the defeat had been isolated and the Americans had remained in a strong position. It is much harder to actually come up with an answer. All we can do is recount what did happen: that, thrust into command by the death of a superior once more, General Day struggled to turn his column around and retreat (perhaps truly hampered by indecisiveness, as his enemies contended) and the isolated spearhead was trapped by a Cannae of Carolinian reinforcements, what Wragg described as ‘the last drop squeezed out of the last stone in the last ditch’, tipped by Meridian troops that Flores had hesitated to engage with before, but now sensed his chance. Not all the Americans were trapped, and once again General Fouracre with his charmed life managed to escape with perhaps a quarter of the force and return north to Congaryton, but the majority were forced into a surrender on December 25th—which became known as Black Christmas to the Americans. They would join with General Jones and his men languishing in the prisoner-of-war camp in Denbigh, where Jones was planning an escape attempt. Too late...
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From – “New World: A Political History of the Americas and their Peoples” by Sir Liam O’Leary (1960) –
The defeat of the Second Siege of Ultima and Black Christmas was the final straw for American popular support of the war, and came at the worst possible time as far as the government was concerned—shortly before the election on January 10th as the government’s majority collapsed. With a heavy heart, the Continental Parliament was dissolved not by Emperor Frederick but by the newly-appointed Lord Deputy Thatcher. Even as the MCPs left the building to return to their constituencies and campaign, Mo Quedling was struck down by a knife-wielding assassin, a Pennsylvanian named Paul George Botney, who screamed that it was the pacifists who had strung the war out this long and led to the death of Botney’s brother only days before. Botney would be executed a few months later (hardly what Quedling would have wanted, given his opposition to the death penalty) but the attack drew renewed sympathy for Quedling’s pacifist movement and may have had a crucial effect on the election results. It is difficult to measure.
Voting was strung out longer than usual by the winter conditions, but it did not take long before a picture emerged. The Supremacist vote had collapsed everywhere outside their heartland of New York, where the party remained strong due to outrage over the Manhattan Massacre and public scepticism that the Delacey confederate government was being too soft on the Howden in contrast to his rival Avery’s hardline approach. The Liberals lost seats but typically held on well in areas whose industries had benefited from the war, particularly coastal New England: the desire for rations for the troops and new tinning and preservation processes invented in the course of the war had led to a boom in profits for New England’s fishermen. Elsewhere, Bassett’s Patriots broke through. The party now had little in common with the old party of the Hamiltons, the party of doradist economics and national heritage. They held on to the Anti-Reform coalition that Studholme had built in 1848 and to it added many ‘Peace at any cost’ voters whom Bassett attracted—in particular those businesses that had not benefited from the war but had instead gone through rough times; not merely those dependent on Carolina, but on trade with New Spain and the UPSA as well. All three parties together encompassed a smaller number of seats than might be espected, however, for many MCPs—including some big names—were toppled by ‘Pro-Peace Independents’ or ‘Unconditional Imperialist Independents’, some running in the name of Mo Quedling’s memory and others in areas that would never vote Patriot but simply wanted to protect unity at any cost. Vanburen himself fell to one such independent in Amsterdam Province by a margin of a handful of votes, running considerably behind his party in neighbouring seats: faced with such humiliation, he retired from politics for life and refused elevation to the House of Lords. Matthew Clarke, Supremacist leader again by default after Peter Martin’s suicide, was returned in his own constituency of Flushing but more narrowly so than for a long time, and would face a successful leadership challenge as soon as peace had broken out.
One factor in the election was that the areas of Carolina under American control were allowed—in some cases practically forced—to elect MCPs of their own. The Whig Party was banned, of course. Whitefort and Franklin actually elected Liberals, but almost the entirety of the redeemed Carolinian provinces elected Pro-Peace Independents who were Whigs in all but name—except for North Province which returned the Petty brothers to power. The Petties, descendants of the Carteret nobles who had formerly possessed Granville District in the north of the province and who had moved to it after the rise of the Populists in Britain, had always been Patriots by inclination and only reluctantly gone over to the Whigs in 1844; having been lukewarm about the secession from the start and tried to keep neutrality, they returned to the Patriot fold and preached a message of reconciliation and repair to the devastating damage that North Province had seen. Eastern Virginia mostly also elected Pro-Peace Independents, and Maryland’s contribution to that informal caucus was none other than the inevitable George H. Steuart III. While some of the Pro-Peace group supported the Anti-Reform message of Bassett, others like Steuart supported Reform (in Steuart’s case for the obvious reason that he wanted Maryland to break away from Virginia). In years to come that division would become crucial, but for now Reform was a minor matter besides Peace.
Bassett’s Patriots ended up the largest party, but far from a majority—it was only by relying on these Independents that he was able to secure power. He was helped by an opposition that was divided and, in the case of the Liberals, leaderless. Emperor Frederick remained silent, recognising that he could not be seen to go against the will of the people, but allowed Thatcher to be vocal about what contempt he felt for the only government that was numerically possible to form. Having said that, there has been considerable debate of late whether the victory of Bassett and his allies really represented the will of the people, considering how many seats were won on small pluralities with non-cooperating Supremacists and Liberals splitting the ‘pro-war’ vote. At the time, national popular vote figures were not even consistently recorded, and the Independents complicate matters considerably, so the question will never be satisfactorily answered. Nonetheless, specific examples of the figures from individual seats in the 1853 election would go on to be continuously repeated exemplars by the nascent electoral reform movement, though that would not see success for another quarter-century...
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“By the Grace of God, by the will of His Imperial Majesty, and by the support of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons I accept the great power and responsibility of the office of Lord President of the Empire of North America.
When I ask myself, as Lord President, the question ‘what is my first duty?’ I feel the answer is obvious: ‘TO PRESERVE THE EMPIRE!’ Yet too many of my predecessors seem to have felt quite differently. In fact their goals appear to be quite the opposite: not to preserve this great Empire of North America, the greatest nation that ever was or will be, but to destroy it!
What other motivation can justify the conduct of this nation’s government in recent years?
It has deliberately embarked on policies that not only undermine the hard-fought and long-held rights and privileges of its Confederations Five and its people multitudinous, but baldly and proudly seek to eradicate them altogether.
It has provoked and attacked our American brothers in Carolina until they found the situation so intolerable that they began to openly discuss the Empire’s end.
It responded to that danger not by reassuring the Carolinians that the Empire would not fall, but by confirming their fear!
It has sought to redraw boundaries sealed into stone centuries ago by charters Royal and Imperial, to take from the American people of the west to privilege to name themselves Pennsylvanian or Virginian, to make a hollow mockery of the ways of this nation that have made it an object of envy across the terraqueous globe.
Ultimately, it has sought nothing more or less than the goal that America as we know it should perish from this world.
We can only be thankful that there is still time. It is not too late! The Empire can yet be saved. And we, those few still in touch with the fundamental sanity of the American people, will be the ones to save it.
As the late lamented Mr Wyndham observed in our mother country, there is a way back to the glory that was. It may not simply be retracing our steps, it may require a new path, but it exists, and by God, we shall take it.
Firstly, let us eliminate all the nonsense that led to this grotesque situation in the first place. America divided! Families torn asunder! Foreign troops on American soil! Horrible new machines of war trampling our fields and hills! Anyone with half a brain can see that all of this could have been avoided, if he merely cast his gaze back to the events of a generation before, to the crisis in Virginia that was the ultimate trigger for this tragedy.
It was the idea that a petty division over a government policy somehow had moral priority over that first duty that I began with: the duty to preserve the Empire. Personally, I do not regard slavery as a particularly positive institution. It is not one I would care to partake in. But by God if other Americans disagree, my response is not the insanity to declare them un-American because of their disagreement! What is next, I ask you? If New England, New York and Virginia want a particular tariff and Pennsylvania and Carolina disagree, should we turn this nation into a battlefield because of that? Or if some Confederations desire that the flag should be one shade of blue and the rest a different one, is that a good enough reason to stain it red with our blood instead? The whole matter is laughably absurd, no less than tearing Lilliput apart by the division over which end to open a boiled egg at.[5] I like to think that America is a better nation than Lilliput, inhabited by men greater than Lilliputians in maturity of mind as well as stature.
To that end, if we take the sane approach that preserving national unity is a cause that stands head and shoulders above any other, our response should be obvious.
The quixotic madness that began the last Parliament shall be abandoned. Like the reign of terror of Cromwell in the mother country, it is best if we simply act as though it had never happened, though legislation will be forthcoming to formalise that. The devastation that masqueraded under the name of Reform shall not be allowed to afflict this nation further.
And yes – and yes – part and parcel of that is the absurd warmongering that the so-called Convention decided to indulge in. This great Parliament should not have the right to tell the people of Carolina how they may live their lives by the alleged virtue of tyranny of the majority. (Interruption) Sir – I say – history will judge us. History will judge us. In centuries hence, when our descendants fill this chamber alongside our Carolinian brothers as friends and allies, not with the cold atmosphere that pervaded here even before the conflict, that is when men may judge whether our course is right or not. Yes, Mr Clay’s inflammatory ultimatum should never—(Interruption) – recognised – august body. And I do not recognise it, and by representative vote I believe this Parliament shall choose not to recognise it. Let us eliminate division, not embrace it. And let us go on together—I do not say forward, for our current course under the last government was poised to send us over a cliff—no, let us go backward together.
I thank you, may (Interruption) – may God bless you all, and may God bless the Empire of North America. United.”
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From “The Great American War” by Alexander Jenkins (1972)—
Many regarded the ceasefire of February 1853 as only a temporary break in hostilities, not without some reason given the volatile situation at the time; few would have predicted how little change there would be in the status quo in the next seven decades. The new Lord President Bassett called for Carolina to return to the fold as a Confederation in return for the reversal of the Clay Proclamation: slavery would return to Carolina. The news was greeted with mingled joy and horror in the areas of Carolina still under American occupation—Franklin province and, of course, the Negroes themselves viewed it as a betrayal and a stab in the back, while the beaten-down whites of the other provinces, especially the ravaged North Province, felt a glimpse of hope. We should not exaggerate the import of this, however: by this point many of the poorer whites would have been quite willing to abandon slavery if it was the price for reconstruction of their devastated homes. Many had not owned slaves in the first place. Nonetheless, those who continued to dominate politial discourse in the occupied provinces regarded the olive branch of Bassett with cautious optimism.
In the remaining ‘free’ Kingdom of Carolina, on the other hand, the still-bombastic Speaker Uriah Adams was quite ready to bite off the hand proffering the olive branch, and it was at this point that a long-planned plot swung into action. Governor Belteshazzar Wragg had come to the conclusion months ago that the dream of full independence for the whole of Carolina had died, and all he could do was come out of the war with the best deal possible for his people. Speaker Adams was a problem for his unwillingness to compromise: the Virginia Crisis had been his chief formative political experience[6] and he was convinced that any engagement with the northern foe would be the thin end of the wedge. In the last months of the war he often quoted King William III’s aphorism that “There is one way to never see your country come to ruin, and that is to die in the last ditch”. To which Wragg felt he might have replied with Quedling’s rejoinder to George Spencer-Churchill the Younger: “Fine words. Let’s see you wash the blood off your hands with them.” But he did not: instead, he plotted.
Wragg plotted with opposition forces within the Whig Party (Carolina remaining an effectively one-party state) in the decamped Assembly in Ultima—where it would remain for the entirety of independent Carolina’s existence. He also plotted with the Meridians, who were keen to end the war in a manner that benefited themselves as much as possible, and recognised that Wragg’s vision was the best way to do that. Crucially, an unexpected link in the chain was none other than Henry Frederick Owens-Allen, who was recuperating from his wound in Williamsburg sustained in August 1851. By this point he had largely recovered and was occasionally wheeled out by the Whigs to raise morale as a celebrity: whatever the original motivations behind his pursuit of Virginian neutrality in the opening phase of the war, the Carolinian people were convinced that he had done it to benefit them, and Owens-Allen did nothng to dissuade that impression. Adams regarded Owens-Allen as nothing more than a lucky dilettante and dismissed him from his own calculations in intrigue, which is what allowed the plot to succeed.
Even as Adams was celebrating the capture of General Day’s army, he was removed from office as Speaker and replaced with the pliable Duncan Beauchamp, who functioned chiefly as Wragg’s mouthpiece. Adams retired to a decades-long sulk on the backbenches and eventually turned to writing. Beauchamp’s new government accepted Bassett’s offer in principle but stated that Carolina wanted to remain a Kingdom in free association and personal union with the Empire, though it was willing to return to prewar levels of cooperation. Bassett would not accept that at the negotiations (held in Charleston, still stubbornly rebel-held but surrounded on three sides at the time of the ceasefire). It contradicted his desire to preserve Imperial unity at any cost, which was not merely propaganda but an accurate description of his own core beliefs. Negotiations almost broke down, but as a delaying action Beauchamp suggested that the rebel-held Kingdom of Carolina provinces might be amenable to rejoining the currently Imperial-held Confederation of Carolina provinces, but only if the Americans withdrew their troops from the latter. Bassett, who despite contemporary satirical representations was not stupid, smelled a rat that the rebels sought to gain an advantageous position and then resume the war. Bassett sought to drive a wedge between the Carolinians and their Meridian allies by stating that the Americans might consider a withdrawal but only if the Meridians left the rebel provinces first. The Meridians rejoinded that they would do so when, and only when, the American government apologised for the Nottingham Affair and paid reparations. With Meridian forces having been instrumental in far more damage to many ENA cities than Captain Benton and the Harrisville had ever done to Buenos Aires, Bassett angrily rejected this idea, and therefore the negotiations deadlocked.
War might have resumed, save for the fact that the UPSA too was subject to the whims of elections, and the Cortes election of 1852—delayed by procedural tricks to 1853—took place at this point, showing a punishing victory for the Unionists and some confused success for parts of the Colorado Party which would lead to a split in 1854 with the Germanophile pro-peace faction leaving as the Mentian Party. The Adamantines suffered a heavy defeat and Luppi, now having to deal with a hostile Cortes, pushed for a swift resolution to the crisis. The Meridians took the unprecedented step of suggesting a plebiscite of all Carolinians to decide between Confederation and Kingdom. In his major political misstep, Bassett agreed. He had become convinced by the horror stories of the Irregular Garrison that the Carolinian people had turned against the Meridians and that they could see that a rump Kingdom of Carolina would be dominated by the UPSA. As a carrot for the Carolinians to choose the Confederation option, Bassett offered to pay the war debts that the rebel government owed to the UPSA and fund reconstruction of Carolina’s devastated cities.
All of this might have worked if the vote had actually been free and fair on either side, which it emphatically was not. All the provinces with Meridian troops and Irregular Garrison bullyboys in them voted for Kingdom by 90%-10% margins, all the provinces with American troops in them voted for Confederation by similar margins. The only exceptions were Franklin, which actualy voted for Confederation by a 76%-24% margin (clearly the American troops had seen they didn’t need to interfere with that one as the people genuinely wanted it, so it was a free and fair result) and South Province, which was a close 52%-48% for Kingdom purely because half the province was in American hands and half in Meridian hands.
The ‘national’ vote across the whole of Carolina was incredibly close but Kingdom narrowly edged out Confederation by a 50.5%/49.5% margin. The result was close enough and the votes questionable enough that Bassett baldly rejected the result and demanded a re-run, which the rebel government and the Meridians refused. America almost went to war again at that point, but Bassett’s government would have fallen if he had tried: he relied too much on ideological pacifist independents in the Quedling mould who would always say no to war, and while the opposition would support a war in principle, they would first vote to topple Bassett from the head of any war coalition first. Bassett found his hands tied and was left in the humiliating position of declaring the plebiscite illegitimate and demanding that Meridian forces withdrew from the south. The Meridians and rebel Carolinians said the same about American troops in the north. So the two forces watched each other across what had been a ceasefire line and now increasingly looked like an international border.
Indeed, some forgot that the plebiscite had not been held on a provincial basis, for all the provinces that had voted for Kingdom (except half of South Province) were now treated as the Kingdom, and all the northern provinces that had voted for Confederation were treated as a continuing fifth Confederation of the Empire of North America, just by default. That Confederation might have a rather toothless assembly in Newton, North Province, which existed only at the sufferance of the American occupying forces and in which the Whig Party was banned—but the southern Kingdom was proving increasingly under the influence of Meridians who began to look more and more like an occupying force themselves. Towards the end of 1853, General Flores—effectively functioning as envoy extraordinary—brought a suggestion from the Unionist-controlled Cortes that as Emperor Frederick refused to take the throne as King of Carolina that the Carolinians had reluctantly offered him, Carolina should choose another head of state. In fact he asked Wragg if he would like to be President-General of a Carolinian Adamantine Republic, but Wragg was shocked by the thought. To many of the conservative old Whigs, republicanism was still synonymous with Jacobin phlogisticateurs. He was receptive to the idea that they should turn their back on an Emperor they regarded as being a traitor to his subjects, however. But where was Carolina to find a king? “Well, we do have a spare one lying around,” Beauchamp pointed out wryly.
Henry Frederick Owens-Allen, popular with the people for his actions in the early part of the war, was crowned King of Carolina in November 1853, met by huge protests in America and particularly in Virginia. He was not particularly enthusiastic about the role himself, recognising that every office in Carolina was becoming nothing more than a puppet of the Meridians, but—as he wrote to his daughter shortly after his coronation—“When one has been reduced to the status of a mere bargaining chip, one tends to cast aside any considerations of the nature of the hand offering one a crown”.[7] He thus acquired the unusual distinction of being King of two entirely unconnected countries with a democratically elected mandate in between. Aged fifty-seven, having been widowed during the Popular Wars, he took Governor Wragg’s sister Susanna to wife and in 1855 they produced an heir, named William Daniel after Henry Frederick’s long-suffering adjutant Wilhelm von der Trenck and the Biblical book from which the Wragg family traditionally took their names...[8]
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From – “New World: A Political History of the Americas and their Peoples” by Sir Liam O’Leary (1960) –
In other areas of the ENA the Patriot government once again tried to run the country as though it was still the 1810s. The angry westerners, their chance at establishing their own Confederations snatched away, were up in arms—sometimes literally. Alec Jaxon and the Carolinian 74th, the ‘Devil’s Own’, remained active as Kleinkriegers in the west and while most ended up falling in with the Superior Republic, some helped westerners violently protesting against the Anti-Reform policies of the government and the continuation of the idea that the Confederate boundaries should extent all the way to the Pacific, Five Eternal Confederations Forever.
It was clear to everyone that the war was not truly settled, but when hostilities eventually would resume, it would not be in quite the same way everyone probably imagined. For now, the embattled Bassett remained Lord President. He was not only the seventeenth Lord President of the Empire of North America, but the seventh Lord President from the Patriot Party, America’s oldest and proudest political party.
He would also be the last.
[1] Sanchez is referring to the Popular Wars, but the term did not exist yet at the time of his writing.
[2] As noted in the last segment, whether Fouracre was really that responsible or whether he was just very good at manipulating the press to emphasise his role is debated by historians.
[3] Iota being the TTL term for pixel.
[4] The Lords President are numbered by individual, not by term, so Martin was the sixteenth but Vanburen was not the seventeenth as he had already had a term as Lord President before.
[5] Gulliver’s Travels was published in 1726, the year before this timeline’s POD.
[6] See Part #144.
[7] See Part #139.
[8] Strictly speaking, ‘Susanna’ is from an apocryphal part of the Book of Daniel and not present in Protestant Bibles, but the Jansenist Catholic influence on Carolina at this point (as well as the Wraggs’ extensive trade with Catholic countries) means they are familiar with it.
“If that conflict helped bring the sudden realisation to many that war is nothing more than futile slaughter, murder writ large, then it was accompanied by the second revelation that the great masses of the people are fundamentally unqualified to decide great world-changing affairs. Even those with the innate ability to rise beyond their titular class were hampered by lack of information and experience, with the result that votes would flip from one extreme of policy to the other for the most trivial and venal of reasons. That is, of course, something to be found in any so-called popular election, but was particularly noticeable in this case due to the weight of the decisions that would be made in this crucial time. The experience of the war encouraged many to seek to countermand and undermine the popularisation of policy that Europe had embraced following the wars of the ’Thirties[1] but had been a far more long-running process in the Americas. I do not applaud their moves, however. Too often it was patently obvious that this was simply a power grab by aristocratic classes, old or new, with the excuse that the popular will of the proletariat and perhaps even the bourgeoisie had led them to such disasters. Any man with any knowledge of history should have no sympathy with such a move: for, as countless previous generations can attest, a dictatorship of the aristocratic classes is just as capable as casually flinging thousands into the fire for the most banal of reasons. The greater bloodbath of the proletarian wars of the present day is as much a function of the concomitant rise of industry, which has multiplied both the productive and destructive capabilities of the human race, as of the shift in power. No; rule by any class solely out for its own ends will inevitably end in disaster, just as rule by some arbitrarily-chosen division cutting across classes (such as a linguistic sect) will do so. A new model is needed, a model in which unnecessary divisions are eliminated and all classes work together for the good of humanity as a whole...”
– Pablo Sanchez, Twilight Reflections, 1866
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From: “Golden Sun and Silver Torch: A History of the United Provinces of South America” by Benito Carlucci (1976)—
No less than the ENA, the UPSA’s conduct in the Great American War was hamstrung by the volatility of the popular will. The war had at first been fairly popular with most, save those who would rather focus on the romantic cause of Californian independence (which largely fell by the wayside and left the path open for more Russian influence in that quarter). True, the Nottingham Affair had been a relatively minor incident and one might imagine that it had little resonance with the people outside Buenos Aires; however, attacks on that city by foreign forces (especially Americans) was part of the founding mythos of the UPSA. The repulsion of the Anglo-American forces from the city by Platinean militiamen (with no help from their Spanish colonial overlords) during the First Platinean War in 1767 was the defining moment in which the people of the South American colonies had felt they could stand on their own two feet, and had proved it less than two decades later in the Second Platinean War, where they had gone on to repulse the French from a similar invasion. In the nineteenth century successive Meridian governments had trumpeted the fact that the UPSA had grown strong enough that its people need never again fear foreign-flagged ships sailing up the River Plate. Therefore, though the Nottingham Affair was more of a fracas than an actual attack on Buenos Aires, it roused a patriotic spirit across all the Meridian domains, from Matto Grosso to Tierra del Fuego (and beyond to the Meridians’ effective vassal states). The reported victories of Flores on land and Insulza at sea were popular and widely reported: even when the ENA was not seen as the UPSA’s enemy, it was definitely its rival—the ‘two great American nations’ as President-General Mateovarón had called them years ago—and Meridians liked the idea of Americans being brought down a peg or two. Let them struggle to repulse an invasion of their homeland, so close to their capital, for a change! Let them run in fear before superior technology and tactics, the cycloguns of Flores and the armourclad of Insulza!
Pablo Sanchez was scarcely the only observer to note that the public mood proved fickle. The heat of the moment faded to a long slog where confused and debatable news trickled out of the combat zone so far to the north. The small international abolitionist faction within the UPSA (often stereotyped and attacked as a ‘foreign group’ due to the number of ex-Schmidtist German immigrants involved in it) condemned the idea of Meridian boys dying for the sake of Carolinians having the right to own slaves. That message gradually developed more public support over the course of the war, but more influential was the main opposition Unionists’ call for ‘peace with honour’, stating that the UPSA had had its revenge, had obtained its longstanding foreign policy aim of gaining Falkland’s Islands (or the Malvinas), had humiliated America, and now it was time to pull out and leave ‘the Carolinian affair’ to return to being the internal American dispute it should be. President-General Luppi was in a difficult situation. He had never particularly wanted this war but now felt he had to stick to his guns and see it through to the end. If an election had been looming, he might have thought differently, but due to an accident of history, the Meridian presidency was not up until 1855 and the Cortes election was successfully delayed by the Adamantines from 1852 to 1853. He therefore escaped the problem that afflicted his nation’s enemy...
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From “The Great American War” by Alexander Jenkins (1972)—
After the long, grinding, miserable struggles of 1852, October seemed to show a moment of hope for the Americans. General Fouracre had broken through the Concordat lines, Cravenville and Congaryton had fallen once again, and the road lay open to Ultima.[2] Perhaps the sacrifices of the people would not be in vain after all. The messages of Francis Bassett’s Patriots and their allies, Mo Quedling’s ‘Peace Independents’ and the Unconditional Imperialists, seemed to ring hollow for the first time in what seemed an age. Emperor Frederick rejected the pro-peace opposition’s call for negotiations and engagement by appointing the fiery abolitionist Sir Edward Thatcher as Lord Deputy, ensuring there could be no compromise with the Carolinian rebels. The weary people of America gathered themselves for one last push, winner take all. In November 1852, the Second Siege of Ultima began.
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From: “The Myth of America” by Colin Blaby and Myfanwy Hughes (1988)—
When one reads accounts of the final stages of the war, one is repeatedly struck by the fact that names one remembers from the earlier phase crop up once again. On the face of it that is hardly surprising, given the fact that the same territory was being fought over: but the difference is striking. Battles and skirmishes that in 1849 and 1850 were heroic clashes immortalised in paint and poesy are replaced by hellish drives of thousands against thousands, mud and blood and bullets, forgettable in their sheer ennui. Carolinian towns that had been occupied before and then proudly seen American troops leave with only a few scorch marks to show for it were now crushed beneath the weight of mass industrial warfare, sometimes never to rise again.The Second Siege of Ultima would not be one to have dramatic paintings like The King in Winter composed about it. The men on both sides were emotionally drained. This was simply a fight to the death.
Yet one thing had not changed since the early part of the war. Political concerns continued to hamstring military strategy. An election loomed. The government could try to use various procedural trickt to delay it, as Henry Frederick had done in Virginia for so long, but they continued to lose MCPs to the opposition and their majority had fallen to a knife-edge as it was. They needed a final victory that would show the war all but won. They needed to do what they had failed to do before. They needed to take Ultima.
To that end, tactics and strategy were devoted to their one, politically motivated goal, with the result that there were no further attempts to take Charleston following Barker’s repulse in September. Nor was there any strike at Savannah, even as General Cushing—who spearheaded the final assault on Ultima—continued to call for it, and as American naval power with the two armourclads Lord Washington and Lord Hamilton had never been greater. Therefore, the column driving at Ultima was heavy and powerful, composed of battle-hardened veterans equipped with the finest weaponry and logistics that America could offer—but it was a spearhead running far ahead of the mass of American forces, who continued to hold a line of control cutting through South Province.
Despite this obvious tactical flaw, the assault nearly succeeded. Cushing was a fine commander, as were his deputies (including Fouracre), the Carolinians had suffered terribly from their losses and were almost at the end of their tether, with mutinies in some garrisons, and the Meridians were unenthusiastic about spending further lives in the cause of the cobelligerents they were increasingly fractious with—not helped by orders out of date by a matter of months coming from Cordoba which told them not to get too close to the Carolinian cause. The Meridian armed forces were as subject to political considerations as their American foes: they merely had the advantage that they were further removed from their politicians and thus could get away with ignoring them more of the time.
Winter in Ultima was certainly not as bitter as in many lands, but 1852 happened to be a particularly sharp freeze. It nonetheless slowed the pace of the conflict and made it particularly miserable. Bodies were left unburied above ground too hardened to dig graves. While the last stages of the Great American War were not known for their cultural impact, Eliot Philipson’s graphic drawings of American soldiers suffering from frostbite shocked many back home in the north when represented in the newspapers he worked for—who were able to obtain the drawings easily by means of Optel code breaking them down iota by iota.[3] Meanwhile, the Carolinians benefited from the increased deployment of Lectel wires, partly driven by MacLean and Naughtie being hailed as national heroes (and how they, along with Watson, showed that Carolina could compete when it came to technological breakthroughs) and partly by the simple fact that Optel towers were prime targets for American forces, especially the bomb-and-run raids of the steerables of the First Imperial Aerial Legion. Regardless of how much the Aeronauts captured the public imagination as heroes, ‘knights of the air’, their impact on the war was minimal save in this regard: fragile Optel towers were one of the few targets where the limitations of the bombs that the steerables could carry did not render them ineffective. In any case, with its Optel system in ruins and Lectel lines proliferating, Carolina would be one area that never saw any significant Telegraph Wars.
The Lectel lines were partly built and laid by Meridian companies, requiring the sharing of the patent against the wishes of the Carolinian government, and Meridian companies were also responsible for building more railway lines and roads to link Ultima to the reduced domains under rebel control, allowing the rapid shift of troops and materiel from one end of the Kingdom to the other. All of this was paid for by big loans borrowed against the presumed cotton and fruit profits of the future. “Every day we seem to extend the debt by another generation,” Governor Belteshazzar Wragg lamented in his diary, “yet what else can we do? Better any debt to an honest broker than to deal with those who cannot even recognise a man’s property for what it is.” Yet that so-called property was not always inclined to remain in thrall to their ‘owners’. With Carolina’s towns and cities drained of able-bodied men, slaves often escaped. With American troops advancing, some found refuge in either the main body of American forces in South Province and Franklin, while others fell in with Cushing’s advancing spearhead as camp followers, and still others formed anew the Caesar Bell-inspired maroon groups in isolated places. Only those who went westward, to the Cherokee Empire and then onto Louisiana and beyond, would ultimately succeed in this. The rest would be hunted down by the ‘Irregular Garrison’, as they were named, the shady auxiliaries recruited from Guyana, Pernambuco and elsewhere by the Meridians, often from jail cells or the waiting line for the rope. Oh, they were quite willing to publicly torture captured escaped slaves for the delight of vengeful Carolinian villagers, but as the war wore on, sufficient rumours escaped government censorship to suggest that they were just as willing to do much the same in private to any white woman lacking powerful relations to protest...
However, all the infrastructure built during the year of success of 1851 now swung into action when it came to the year of peril that was 1852. It was this that allowed Ultima to hold on when greatly outnumbered by Cushing’s forces. There were none of the clever and bold tactics of General Jones from the early part of the war: there was simply no room for them. It was a slogging match where numbers were all, nothing more, nothing less. Small wonder that it was from this time when Pablo Sanchez’s young movement, almost forgotten in the background, received many new recruits who now believed in ‘the banality of war’. Ironically, given future Combine policies, many of them were veterans of the conflict...
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From “The Great American War” by Alexander Jenkins (1972)—
The American defeat and retreat at the Second Siege of Ultima is often presented as coming as a natural consequence of the death of General Cushing to a sniper’s bullet on December 15th 1852. While that certainly played a role, it is clear that the American position was already collapsing. No matter how great their legions and how their steam-guns ran riot over the inferior Carolinians and few Meridians, they were unable to breach the defences of Ultima. Morale was already low and Cushing’s death was only the last straw. The Americans could not have known how close they came to victory. Though Ultima remained strong and resupplied by its enhanced railway network, public opinion in Carolina had come down to breaking point and many were ready to chuck in the towel and suffer the consequences. Perhaps if it had not been for the Emperor’s bald statement against compromise by appointing Thatcher as Lord Deputy—a statement aimed more at his own political opposition than at the Carolinians themselves—it might have been enough to bring down the rebel government. As it was, that one victory at just the right time kept them in place. For now.
It is easy to debate what might have happened if the defeat had been isolated and the Americans had remained in a strong position. It is much harder to actually come up with an answer. All we can do is recount what did happen: that, thrust into command by the death of a superior once more, General Day struggled to turn his column around and retreat (perhaps truly hampered by indecisiveness, as his enemies contended) and the isolated spearhead was trapped by a Cannae of Carolinian reinforcements, what Wragg described as ‘the last drop squeezed out of the last stone in the last ditch’, tipped by Meridian troops that Flores had hesitated to engage with before, but now sensed his chance. Not all the Americans were trapped, and once again General Fouracre with his charmed life managed to escape with perhaps a quarter of the force and return north to Congaryton, but the majority were forced into a surrender on December 25th—which became known as Black Christmas to the Americans. They would join with General Jones and his men languishing in the prisoner-of-war camp in Denbigh, where Jones was planning an escape attempt. Too late...
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From – “New World: A Political History of the Americas and their Peoples” by Sir Liam O’Leary (1960) –
The defeat of the Second Siege of Ultima and Black Christmas was the final straw for American popular support of the war, and came at the worst possible time as far as the government was concerned—shortly before the election on January 10th as the government’s majority collapsed. With a heavy heart, the Continental Parliament was dissolved not by Emperor Frederick but by the newly-appointed Lord Deputy Thatcher. Even as the MCPs left the building to return to their constituencies and campaign, Mo Quedling was struck down by a knife-wielding assassin, a Pennsylvanian named Paul George Botney, who screamed that it was the pacifists who had strung the war out this long and led to the death of Botney’s brother only days before. Botney would be executed a few months later (hardly what Quedling would have wanted, given his opposition to the death penalty) but the attack drew renewed sympathy for Quedling’s pacifist movement and may have had a crucial effect on the election results. It is difficult to measure.
Voting was strung out longer than usual by the winter conditions, but it did not take long before a picture emerged. The Supremacist vote had collapsed everywhere outside their heartland of New York, where the party remained strong due to outrage over the Manhattan Massacre and public scepticism that the Delacey confederate government was being too soft on the Howden in contrast to his rival Avery’s hardline approach. The Liberals lost seats but typically held on well in areas whose industries had benefited from the war, particularly coastal New England: the desire for rations for the troops and new tinning and preservation processes invented in the course of the war had led to a boom in profits for New England’s fishermen. Elsewhere, Bassett’s Patriots broke through. The party now had little in common with the old party of the Hamiltons, the party of doradist economics and national heritage. They held on to the Anti-Reform coalition that Studholme had built in 1848 and to it added many ‘Peace at any cost’ voters whom Bassett attracted—in particular those businesses that had not benefited from the war but had instead gone through rough times; not merely those dependent on Carolina, but on trade with New Spain and the UPSA as well. All three parties together encompassed a smaller number of seats than might be espected, however, for many MCPs—including some big names—were toppled by ‘Pro-Peace Independents’ or ‘Unconditional Imperialist Independents’, some running in the name of Mo Quedling’s memory and others in areas that would never vote Patriot but simply wanted to protect unity at any cost. Vanburen himself fell to one such independent in Amsterdam Province by a margin of a handful of votes, running considerably behind his party in neighbouring seats: faced with such humiliation, he retired from politics for life and refused elevation to the House of Lords. Matthew Clarke, Supremacist leader again by default after Peter Martin’s suicide, was returned in his own constituency of Flushing but more narrowly so than for a long time, and would face a successful leadership challenge as soon as peace had broken out.
One factor in the election was that the areas of Carolina under American control were allowed—in some cases practically forced—to elect MCPs of their own. The Whig Party was banned, of course. Whitefort and Franklin actually elected Liberals, but almost the entirety of the redeemed Carolinian provinces elected Pro-Peace Independents who were Whigs in all but name—except for North Province which returned the Petty brothers to power. The Petties, descendants of the Carteret nobles who had formerly possessed Granville District in the north of the province and who had moved to it after the rise of the Populists in Britain, had always been Patriots by inclination and only reluctantly gone over to the Whigs in 1844; having been lukewarm about the secession from the start and tried to keep neutrality, they returned to the Patriot fold and preached a message of reconciliation and repair to the devastating damage that North Province had seen. Eastern Virginia mostly also elected Pro-Peace Independents, and Maryland’s contribution to that informal caucus was none other than the inevitable George H. Steuart III. While some of the Pro-Peace group supported the Anti-Reform message of Bassett, others like Steuart supported Reform (in Steuart’s case for the obvious reason that he wanted Maryland to break away from Virginia). In years to come that division would become crucial, but for now Reform was a minor matter besides Peace.
Bassett’s Patriots ended up the largest party, but far from a majority—it was only by relying on these Independents that he was able to secure power. He was helped by an opposition that was divided and, in the case of the Liberals, leaderless. Emperor Frederick remained silent, recognising that he could not be seen to go against the will of the people, but allowed Thatcher to be vocal about what contempt he felt for the only government that was numerically possible to form. Having said that, there has been considerable debate of late whether the victory of Bassett and his allies really represented the will of the people, considering how many seats were won on small pluralities with non-cooperating Supremacists and Liberals splitting the ‘pro-war’ vote. At the time, national popular vote figures were not even consistently recorded, and the Independents complicate matters considerably, so the question will never be satisfactorily answered. Nonetheless, specific examples of the figures from individual seats in the 1853 election would go on to be continuously repeated exemplars by the nascent electoral reform movement, though that would not see success for another quarter-century...
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“By the Grace of God, by the will of His Imperial Majesty, and by the support of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons I accept the great power and responsibility of the office of Lord President of the Empire of North America.
When I ask myself, as Lord President, the question ‘what is my first duty?’ I feel the answer is obvious: ‘TO PRESERVE THE EMPIRE!’ Yet too many of my predecessors seem to have felt quite differently. In fact their goals appear to be quite the opposite: not to preserve this great Empire of North America, the greatest nation that ever was or will be, but to destroy it!
What other motivation can justify the conduct of this nation’s government in recent years?
It has deliberately embarked on policies that not only undermine the hard-fought and long-held rights and privileges of its Confederations Five and its people multitudinous, but baldly and proudly seek to eradicate them altogether.
It has provoked and attacked our American brothers in Carolina until they found the situation so intolerable that they began to openly discuss the Empire’s end.
It responded to that danger not by reassuring the Carolinians that the Empire would not fall, but by confirming their fear!
It has sought to redraw boundaries sealed into stone centuries ago by charters Royal and Imperial, to take from the American people of the west to privilege to name themselves Pennsylvanian or Virginian, to make a hollow mockery of the ways of this nation that have made it an object of envy across the terraqueous globe.
Ultimately, it has sought nothing more or less than the goal that America as we know it should perish from this world.
We can only be thankful that there is still time. It is not too late! The Empire can yet be saved. And we, those few still in touch with the fundamental sanity of the American people, will be the ones to save it.
As the late lamented Mr Wyndham observed in our mother country, there is a way back to the glory that was. It may not simply be retracing our steps, it may require a new path, but it exists, and by God, we shall take it.
Firstly, let us eliminate all the nonsense that led to this grotesque situation in the first place. America divided! Families torn asunder! Foreign troops on American soil! Horrible new machines of war trampling our fields and hills! Anyone with half a brain can see that all of this could have been avoided, if he merely cast his gaze back to the events of a generation before, to the crisis in Virginia that was the ultimate trigger for this tragedy.
It was the idea that a petty division over a government policy somehow had moral priority over that first duty that I began with: the duty to preserve the Empire. Personally, I do not regard slavery as a particularly positive institution. It is not one I would care to partake in. But by God if other Americans disagree, my response is not the insanity to declare them un-American because of their disagreement! What is next, I ask you? If New England, New York and Virginia want a particular tariff and Pennsylvania and Carolina disagree, should we turn this nation into a battlefield because of that? Or if some Confederations desire that the flag should be one shade of blue and the rest a different one, is that a good enough reason to stain it red with our blood instead? The whole matter is laughably absurd, no less than tearing Lilliput apart by the division over which end to open a boiled egg at.[5] I like to think that America is a better nation than Lilliput, inhabited by men greater than Lilliputians in maturity of mind as well as stature.
To that end, if we take the sane approach that preserving national unity is a cause that stands head and shoulders above any other, our response should be obvious.
The quixotic madness that began the last Parliament shall be abandoned. Like the reign of terror of Cromwell in the mother country, it is best if we simply act as though it had never happened, though legislation will be forthcoming to formalise that. The devastation that masqueraded under the name of Reform shall not be allowed to afflict this nation further.
And yes – and yes – part and parcel of that is the absurd warmongering that the so-called Convention decided to indulge in. This great Parliament should not have the right to tell the people of Carolina how they may live their lives by the alleged virtue of tyranny of the majority. (Interruption) Sir – I say – history will judge us. History will judge us. In centuries hence, when our descendants fill this chamber alongside our Carolinian brothers as friends and allies, not with the cold atmosphere that pervaded here even before the conflict, that is when men may judge whether our course is right or not. Yes, Mr Clay’s inflammatory ultimatum should never—(Interruption) – recognised – august body. And I do not recognise it, and by representative vote I believe this Parliament shall choose not to recognise it. Let us eliminate division, not embrace it. And let us go on together—I do not say forward, for our current course under the last government was poised to send us over a cliff—no, let us go backward together.
I thank you, may (Interruption) – may God bless you all, and may God bless the Empire of North America. United.”
– Francis Bassett, inaugural speech as seventeenth[4] Lord President of the Empire of North America. Note: This is a cleaned-up ‘textbook’ version of the speech ignoring most of the pauses and resumptions due to several interruptions from the House floor; alternative and more ‘realistic’ transcriptions are available.
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From “The Great American War” by Alexander Jenkins (1972)—
Many regarded the ceasefire of February 1853 as only a temporary break in hostilities, not without some reason given the volatile situation at the time; few would have predicted how little change there would be in the status quo in the next seven decades. The new Lord President Bassett called for Carolina to return to the fold as a Confederation in return for the reversal of the Clay Proclamation: slavery would return to Carolina. The news was greeted with mingled joy and horror in the areas of Carolina still under American occupation—Franklin province and, of course, the Negroes themselves viewed it as a betrayal and a stab in the back, while the beaten-down whites of the other provinces, especially the ravaged North Province, felt a glimpse of hope. We should not exaggerate the import of this, however: by this point many of the poorer whites would have been quite willing to abandon slavery if it was the price for reconstruction of their devastated homes. Many had not owned slaves in the first place. Nonetheless, those who continued to dominate politial discourse in the occupied provinces regarded the olive branch of Bassett with cautious optimism.
In the remaining ‘free’ Kingdom of Carolina, on the other hand, the still-bombastic Speaker Uriah Adams was quite ready to bite off the hand proffering the olive branch, and it was at this point that a long-planned plot swung into action. Governor Belteshazzar Wragg had come to the conclusion months ago that the dream of full independence for the whole of Carolina had died, and all he could do was come out of the war with the best deal possible for his people. Speaker Adams was a problem for his unwillingness to compromise: the Virginia Crisis had been his chief formative political experience[6] and he was convinced that any engagement with the northern foe would be the thin end of the wedge. In the last months of the war he often quoted King William III’s aphorism that “There is one way to never see your country come to ruin, and that is to die in the last ditch”. To which Wragg felt he might have replied with Quedling’s rejoinder to George Spencer-Churchill the Younger: “Fine words. Let’s see you wash the blood off your hands with them.” But he did not: instead, he plotted.
Wragg plotted with opposition forces within the Whig Party (Carolina remaining an effectively one-party state) in the decamped Assembly in Ultima—where it would remain for the entirety of independent Carolina’s existence. He also plotted with the Meridians, who were keen to end the war in a manner that benefited themselves as much as possible, and recognised that Wragg’s vision was the best way to do that. Crucially, an unexpected link in the chain was none other than Henry Frederick Owens-Allen, who was recuperating from his wound in Williamsburg sustained in August 1851. By this point he had largely recovered and was occasionally wheeled out by the Whigs to raise morale as a celebrity: whatever the original motivations behind his pursuit of Virginian neutrality in the opening phase of the war, the Carolinian people were convinced that he had done it to benefit them, and Owens-Allen did nothng to dissuade that impression. Adams regarded Owens-Allen as nothing more than a lucky dilettante and dismissed him from his own calculations in intrigue, which is what allowed the plot to succeed.
Even as Adams was celebrating the capture of General Day’s army, he was removed from office as Speaker and replaced with the pliable Duncan Beauchamp, who functioned chiefly as Wragg’s mouthpiece. Adams retired to a decades-long sulk on the backbenches and eventually turned to writing. Beauchamp’s new government accepted Bassett’s offer in principle but stated that Carolina wanted to remain a Kingdom in free association and personal union with the Empire, though it was willing to return to prewar levels of cooperation. Bassett would not accept that at the negotiations (held in Charleston, still stubbornly rebel-held but surrounded on three sides at the time of the ceasefire). It contradicted his desire to preserve Imperial unity at any cost, which was not merely propaganda but an accurate description of his own core beliefs. Negotiations almost broke down, but as a delaying action Beauchamp suggested that the rebel-held Kingdom of Carolina provinces might be amenable to rejoining the currently Imperial-held Confederation of Carolina provinces, but only if the Americans withdrew their troops from the latter. Bassett, who despite contemporary satirical representations was not stupid, smelled a rat that the rebels sought to gain an advantageous position and then resume the war. Bassett sought to drive a wedge between the Carolinians and their Meridian allies by stating that the Americans might consider a withdrawal but only if the Meridians left the rebel provinces first. The Meridians rejoinded that they would do so when, and only when, the American government apologised for the Nottingham Affair and paid reparations. With Meridian forces having been instrumental in far more damage to many ENA cities than Captain Benton and the Harrisville had ever done to Buenos Aires, Bassett angrily rejected this idea, and therefore the negotiations deadlocked.
War might have resumed, save for the fact that the UPSA too was subject to the whims of elections, and the Cortes election of 1852—delayed by procedural tricks to 1853—took place at this point, showing a punishing victory for the Unionists and some confused success for parts of the Colorado Party which would lead to a split in 1854 with the Germanophile pro-peace faction leaving as the Mentian Party. The Adamantines suffered a heavy defeat and Luppi, now having to deal with a hostile Cortes, pushed for a swift resolution to the crisis. The Meridians took the unprecedented step of suggesting a plebiscite of all Carolinians to decide between Confederation and Kingdom. In his major political misstep, Bassett agreed. He had become convinced by the horror stories of the Irregular Garrison that the Carolinian people had turned against the Meridians and that they could see that a rump Kingdom of Carolina would be dominated by the UPSA. As a carrot for the Carolinians to choose the Confederation option, Bassett offered to pay the war debts that the rebel government owed to the UPSA and fund reconstruction of Carolina’s devastated cities.
All of this might have worked if the vote had actually been free and fair on either side, which it emphatically was not. All the provinces with Meridian troops and Irregular Garrison bullyboys in them voted for Kingdom by 90%-10% margins, all the provinces with American troops in them voted for Confederation by similar margins. The only exceptions were Franklin, which actualy voted for Confederation by a 76%-24% margin (clearly the American troops had seen they didn’t need to interfere with that one as the people genuinely wanted it, so it was a free and fair result) and South Province, which was a close 52%-48% for Kingdom purely because half the province was in American hands and half in Meridian hands.
The ‘national’ vote across the whole of Carolina was incredibly close but Kingdom narrowly edged out Confederation by a 50.5%/49.5% margin. The result was close enough and the votes questionable enough that Bassett baldly rejected the result and demanded a re-run, which the rebel government and the Meridians refused. America almost went to war again at that point, but Bassett’s government would have fallen if he had tried: he relied too much on ideological pacifist independents in the Quedling mould who would always say no to war, and while the opposition would support a war in principle, they would first vote to topple Bassett from the head of any war coalition first. Bassett found his hands tied and was left in the humiliating position of declaring the plebiscite illegitimate and demanding that Meridian forces withdrew from the south. The Meridians and rebel Carolinians said the same about American troops in the north. So the two forces watched each other across what had been a ceasefire line and now increasingly looked like an international border.
Indeed, some forgot that the plebiscite had not been held on a provincial basis, for all the provinces that had voted for Kingdom (except half of South Province) were now treated as the Kingdom, and all the northern provinces that had voted for Confederation were treated as a continuing fifth Confederation of the Empire of North America, just by default. That Confederation might have a rather toothless assembly in Newton, North Province, which existed only at the sufferance of the American occupying forces and in which the Whig Party was banned—but the southern Kingdom was proving increasingly under the influence of Meridians who began to look more and more like an occupying force themselves. Towards the end of 1853, General Flores—effectively functioning as envoy extraordinary—brought a suggestion from the Unionist-controlled Cortes that as Emperor Frederick refused to take the throne as King of Carolina that the Carolinians had reluctantly offered him, Carolina should choose another head of state. In fact he asked Wragg if he would like to be President-General of a Carolinian Adamantine Republic, but Wragg was shocked by the thought. To many of the conservative old Whigs, republicanism was still synonymous with Jacobin phlogisticateurs. He was receptive to the idea that they should turn their back on an Emperor they regarded as being a traitor to his subjects, however. But where was Carolina to find a king? “Well, we do have a spare one lying around,” Beauchamp pointed out wryly.
Henry Frederick Owens-Allen, popular with the people for his actions in the early part of the war, was crowned King of Carolina in November 1853, met by huge protests in America and particularly in Virginia. He was not particularly enthusiastic about the role himself, recognising that every office in Carolina was becoming nothing more than a puppet of the Meridians, but—as he wrote to his daughter shortly after his coronation—“When one has been reduced to the status of a mere bargaining chip, one tends to cast aside any considerations of the nature of the hand offering one a crown”.[7] He thus acquired the unusual distinction of being King of two entirely unconnected countries with a democratically elected mandate in between. Aged fifty-seven, having been widowed during the Popular Wars, he took Governor Wragg’s sister Susanna to wife and in 1855 they produced an heir, named William Daniel after Henry Frederick’s long-suffering adjutant Wilhelm von der Trenck and the Biblical book from which the Wragg family traditionally took their names...[8]
*
From – “New World: A Political History of the Americas and their Peoples” by Sir Liam O’Leary (1960) –
In other areas of the ENA the Patriot government once again tried to run the country as though it was still the 1810s. The angry westerners, their chance at establishing their own Confederations snatched away, were up in arms—sometimes literally. Alec Jaxon and the Carolinian 74th, the ‘Devil’s Own’, remained active as Kleinkriegers in the west and while most ended up falling in with the Superior Republic, some helped westerners violently protesting against the Anti-Reform policies of the government and the continuation of the idea that the Confederate boundaries should extent all the way to the Pacific, Five Eternal Confederations Forever.
It was clear to everyone that the war was not truly settled, but when hostilities eventually would resume, it would not be in quite the same way everyone probably imagined. For now, the embattled Bassett remained Lord President. He was not only the seventeenth Lord President of the Empire of North America, but the seventh Lord President from the Patriot Party, America’s oldest and proudest political party.
He would also be the last.
[1] Sanchez is referring to the Popular Wars, but the term did not exist yet at the time of his writing.
[2] As noted in the last segment, whether Fouracre was really that responsible or whether he was just very good at manipulating the press to emphasise his role is debated by historians.
[3] Iota being the TTL term for pixel.
[4] The Lords President are numbered by individual, not by term, so Martin was the sixteenth but Vanburen was not the seventeenth as he had already had a term as Lord President before.
[5] Gulliver’s Travels was published in 1726, the year before this timeline’s POD.
[6] See Part #144.
[7] See Part #139.
[8] Strictly speaking, ‘Susanna’ is from an apocryphal part of the Book of Daniel and not present in Protestant Bibles, but the Jansenist Catholic influence on Carolina at this point (as well as the Wraggs’ extensive trade with Catholic countries) means they are familiar with it.
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Yes! I predicted Lord Deputy Sir Edward Thatcher right! 
Do I get a prize for this, like a cameo or something? Macintosh "Macky" McKeehan or something?
Joking aside, also, nice we finally got to know what country that Owens-Allen (is it back to calling him Henry (II) Frederick again, now that he's royalty once more?) became king of.
Very nice twist that you've made a country in North America become a banana republic (cotton kingdom?) of a great power in South America. I wonder what the constitutional set-up of the Kingdom of Carolina will be. I reckon that the ever republican Meridians will push them to abolish notions such as a House of Lords in favor of a Senate, and strip the monarchy of any level of influence beyond that of a figurehead monarch.
Do I get a prize for this, like a cameo or something? Macintosh "Macky" McKeehan or something?
Joking aside, also, nice we finally got to know what country that Owens-Allen (is it back to calling him Henry (II) Frederick again, now that he's royalty once more?) became king of.
Very nice twist that you've made a country in North America become a banana republic (cotton kingdom?) of a great power in South America. I wonder what the constitutional set-up of the Kingdom of Carolina will be. I reckon that the ever republican Meridians will push them to abolish notions such as a House of Lords in favor of a Senate, and strip the monarchy of any level of influence beyond that of a figurehead monarch.
Thande
Donor
I can't remember where I first came across the name Myfanwy but it wasn't the song. Something set in Wales (obviously) but can't remember what.
You can if you want one, I always appreciate your comments. We are going to cover Scandinavia fairly soon (hopefully) so you can have a less Anglo-Saxon cameo if you want...Yes! I predicted Lord Deputy Sir Edward Thatcher right!
Do I get a prize for this, like a cameo or something? Macintosh "Macky" McKeehan or something?
I like the phrase 'cotton kingdom'...might have to steal it
That's a very good question. I knew Churchill already existed (it always struck me as a bizarre quirk of history that the place at the back of beyond on Hudson Bay is named for the 17th century Churchill, while the apparently more accessible river in Labrador is named for the 20th century one). I hadn't thought of that though. Might have to add a nod to it in a future update.So, would the correct UCS colour for Carolina be Prussian Blue?
Totally unrelated (at I probably asked this before) but has Churchill (Manitoba) and the river been renamed due to bad vibes around the name?
Oh. Why, I'm honoured.
Well, then... Seeing Scania is part of Denmark again, so a Danification of my name. Taking into account the fact that hyphenated names were surprisingly common among 19th century Danish people of note... You end up with Mads Jenby-Lind. Either that, or you could make use of the fact that it was very common for people who went to university to chose as surname a latinization of the town they were from, so then you might go for Mads Svedalius. Or whatever you can figure out on your own.
I like the phrase 'cotton kingdom'...might have to steal it
Please, feel free.
Wow, that was unexpected. Are the Caribbean provinces of Carolina part of the Kingdom?
Also, are Spanish and Portuguese being spoken more and more in Carolina due to the presence of Meridian "allies"? I'd imagine that Spanish at the very least is making a comeback in Cuba and Hispaniola.
Also, are Spanish and Portuguese being spoken more and more in Carolina due to the presence of Meridian "allies"? I'd imagine that Spanish at the very least is making a comeback in Cuba and Hispaniola.
Thande
Donor
I feel a pun coming on...Oh. Why, I'm honoured.
Well, then... Seeing Scania is part of Denmark again, so a Danification of my name. Taking into account the fact that hyphenated names were surprisingly common among 19th century Danish people of note... You end up with Mads Jenby-Lind. Either that, or you could make use of the fact that it was very common for people who went to university to chose as surname a latinization of the town they were from, so then you might go for Mads Svedalius. Or whatever you can figure out on your own.
I wasn't able to fit all the details I wanted into this segment so that'll come later - I wasn't able to wrap up what was happening to the POWs either, so that'll come in a future segment.
There will have been a smattering of that already due to the influence of partly-assimilated middle-class bilingual peoples from the islands into Carolinian society. As you suspect, more will be on the way.
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Little Britain, maybe
And a Hohenzollern on the Carolinian throne.....I wonder if the rest of the family even cares about that, or if Owens Allen is permanently wiped from the minds of the rest of the family.
Cyanide might, indeed, be appropriate.So, would the correct UCS colour for Carolina be Prussian Blue?
I SUSPECT Beedok meant the Churchill river running from Alberta to Hudson's Bay. Which was named after the same guy as the port.
By the way, what language is generally spoken by Guyanese at this point? They were still a Dutch trading post, essentially, minus the direct link to the Netherlands, correct? Or has Spanish supplanted Dutch as a common language across the region? Then again, Portuguese is spoken across much of the territory Guyana now commands. And none of that is even addressing the diversity of native languages across the region, and whatever Native-European creoles that have developed.
I assume Pernambuco is still speaking Portuguese.
And what's happening to the Meridian Philippines? The UPSA has begun running major naval and land offensives across the Caribbean and Atlantic Ocean, and presumably is using its allies' ports as coaling stations. The Meridians haven't had any major military action in the Pacific this round, but between their interest in California and the Philippines I'd be shocked if they weren't building up a system of colonial garrisons and coaling stations. This would definitely have some interesting political and cultural consequences in the recently Meridianized Philippines.
I assume Pernambuco is still speaking Portuguese.
And what's happening to the Meridian Philippines? The UPSA has begun running major naval and land offensives across the Caribbean and Atlantic Ocean, and presumably is using its allies' ports as coaling stations. The Meridians haven't had any major military action in the Pacific this round, but between their interest in California and the Philippines I'd be shocked if they weren't building up a system of colonial garrisons and coaling stations. This would definitely have some interesting political and cultural consequences in the recently Meridianized Philippines.
Sure hope Dutch doesn't die out. I've always loved Suriname in that aspect that there in South America amongst these Spanish and Portuguese countries was this one country where they spoke Dutch.
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