the US has
E Pluribus Unum
you need
hmmm...
I WAS going to say 'E Quarto Unum', making the number ablative - but that is the ordinal 'fourth' not the cardinal 'four'.

So....
E Quattuor Unum
Maybe?
 
As noted above, the remarkable part about the Peninsular War was that it did not escalate. The French government announced support for the North Italians and Carlotta loyalists, openly sending military aid and occasionally aiding in false flag naval operations (most notably at the Battle of Salina in 1868, in which most of Paolo’s navy was sunk). The French assumed that the Germans would seize this opportunity to back the other side and escalate to a direct war between the powers. In fact, in the real world away from self-sustaining French alarmism, the young Germany was still struggling with its own internal divisions. The Kulturkrieg had not truly begun, but the Emperor and Bundesdiet were already facing problems such as the mutiny of troops in Swabia against the rotation system. (Which, it is worth briefly digressing to point out, was certainly not the inspiration for the Societist Zonal Rotation, as is often claimed: not only was the German method merely a refinement of an ancient practice, but Sanchez had already written about the Zonal Rotation idea years before—ironically, in the original published edition of Pax Aeterna, considering it only to reject it as unfeasible).

So, I'm guessing there's some sort of regular forced population transfer amongst the Unfree World? Mix up all the people so that various regions don't develop heresies or political quirks.
 

Thande

Donor
Part #211: Breaking the Yoke

“No I did not tell that Herald journalist the human trafficking subcommittee would be cut, are you mad?! Can you imagine what hay the Racists would make with that if they thought we had no control over our diversity quotas? She’s putting words in my mouth. Schedule a meeting with the Interior Secretary for 9 a.m. tomorrow, I’m going to go over to Fleet Street right now and get tomorrow’s edition of the paper pulped or else I will be on the quister to Cooper, Cooper and Cooper and we’ll have the trial of the century...”

—From the Correspondence of Bes. David Batten-Hale (New Doradist Party--Croydon Urban)​

*

From: “A History of the Americas, 1788-1988” by Peter Linley (2000)—

It is true to say that the UPSA was no stranger to finding itself in a confused and contradictory position with regards to the institution of slavery, subject to accusations of rank hypocrisy by outsiders. Yet until the mid-nineteenth century such accusations had been muted. The UPSA had first and foremost been an object of admiration by many, an example of a vast and diverse yet functional state which successfully reconciled a republican model of government with stability and the retention of everyday freedoms. Barring the odd interlude like some of the excesses of Castelli’s Partido Solidaridad, the UPSA had been a model of ideological and religious toleration without resorting to an avowedly secular mode of government that many still associated with the militant deistic-atheism of Hébert and the early Jacobin Revolution. But, most importantly, the UPSA was the underdog. The nation’s overseas admirers pointed to how the brave Meridians had resisted foreign attacks in both the First and Second Platinean Wars—in the earlier case, before they even were a country. Paradoxically Castelli’s more aggressive actions in the Third Platinean War did not dent this impression, precisely because of the failure of Hector Fernández to conquer Mexico, the loss of Peru and the Meridians once again being on the defensive against Anglo-American and Portuguese-Brazilian forces closer to home: it seemed that once again the Silver Torch of Liberty was in danger of being snuffed out.

Following that war, while there might be disagreements over details such as Roberto Mateováron’s rapproachment efforts with the ENA and Britain, there was a consensus among all the UPSA’s political strains that the nation’s top priority must be ensuring that she could never again be so threatened in her home waters. Such a goal necessitated an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy to make sure that any future confrontation would take place at arm’s length, not within sight of Buenos Aires. To be sure, not all the specific objectives could be met immediately: Mateováron’s peaceful outreach to the Hanoverian world ensured that the Malvinas would remain Falkland’s Islands for another generation or two. But the UPSA’s other rivals could be dealt with, whether directly or indirectly. And so came the Brazilian War, first and in some ways most significant of all fronts of the Popular Wars. Not only did the Meridians severely reduce Portuguese Brazil to a rump and acquire the north bank of the River Plate, but they also effectively subordinated the Empire of New Spain by making the exilic Bourbons’ Reconquista possible—at the cost of many of the Meridians’ own ships in the infamous false flag operation at Third Cape Finisterre in 1830. Yet even this did not damage the UPSA’s reputation too much, though some muttered at the false flag fleet and wondered out loud if the UPSA saw itself as being above international law. Certainly Meridian Exceptionalism, though dented by the failure of the Third Platinean War, bounced back with a vengeance in the mid-nineteenth century as the Southern Condor spread her wings over the world. The destruction of the Dutch Republic presented another opportunity for the Meridians, and all three exilic Dutch successor republics rapidly came under strong Meridian influence.

The 1850s saw the final step of the plan, the plan not conceived by any single statesman but collectively if vaguely constructed simultaneously in the mind of every Meridian citizen after the defeat of the Third Platinean War: We shall be conquered no more! From now on, we shall be the conquerors! Brazil was eliminated as a threat, and soon Portugal would be nothing more than an exilic Brazilian kingdom under the Condor’s wing, much of her overseas possessions absorbed into the same informal empire as those of the Dutch, whom not so long ago had been her fierce colonial rival. The world had changed. New Spain had been subordinated, Peru virtually absorbed back into the Meridian economic area as though her loss had never been. There were even increased trade contacts with the ENA, though admittedly with the Confederation of Carolina and her islands, which had clearly been drifting away from mainstream American politics for years. Now, at last, was the time to complete the plan and eliminate the UPSA’s last and greatest rival: the Empire of North America. The two great American powers had been born together in the late eighteenth century, under circumstances very different yet tied together: largely peaceful transition in the north, war and revolution in the south. Like rival twins, they insisted on and emphasised their differences, yet had more in common than they would like to think. And both were determined to be number one. The Carolinian secession and the Great American War brought the opportunity that the UPSA had long been waiting for.

Of course, the Meridians themselves did not consciously see it that way. Indeed, if anything their initial interest in the Great American War was rather in the Californian Revolution, partly inspired by their own, which would have set them on the opposite side to the Carolinian rebels. But pragmatisme trumped ideological sympathies: the Nottingham Affair is often highlighted as an example of an event that changed the course of history, but it was merely the convenient casus belli that the Meridians’ long-term plan required to bring them into conflict with the ENA. If that spark had not emerged to light the powder keg, another would have been found.[1]

From a purely pragmatiste point of view, the intervention certainly appeared to be a great success. The UPSA had secured access to its markets in the West Indies and at least part of the former Confederation of Carolina, as well as weakening the ENA and putting it on the defensive in its own backyard—reversing the positions of fifty years before that had led to such bitter determination on the part of the Meridians. The grand plan was finally complete. The UPSA was no longer vulnerable to a strike at its heart, but was now the centre of a globe-spanning informal empire—soon formalised into the Hermandad. There was only one small problem: suddenly the UPSA was no longer an object of international admiration.

This fact was (and is) often ascribed to the fact that the UPSA, an icon to abolitionists for being the first major power to abolish slavery (however theoretically) in 1784, had intervened on the side of slaveholders in a war fought explicitly over that institution. The Meridian intervention had prolonged the life of that hated practice in a land where American forces could have abolished it at gunpoint. No matter how many speeches made by Mo Quedling and his Pacific imitators argued that such a violent abolition would only lead to counter-revolutionary bloodshed and a miserable climate of fear for the freed black population as bad as slavery itself; no matter how many Meridian politicians claimed that their country’s actions were purely born of the desire to punish the ENA for the Nottingham Affair—as far as the world was concerned, Liberty’s Great Hope had turned to the dark side.

The effect of this shift on the Meridian national character was profound, not least because so many more Meridians were travelling abroad thanks to the increasingly global nature of trade—transformed in part due to a Meridian invention, the Standard Crate. The Meridian character had always been founded on the assumption that, aside from their country’s particular enemies, any randomly encountered foreigner would display enthusiasm and praise for the UPSA and a desire that his own country should be more like it. And indeed there had been some truth to this in the past, if a tad exaggerated. But pulling Carolina’s bacon out of the fire had severely damaged the country’s image, and it was ordinary Meridians who suffered as a result. La Lupa de Cordoba and many other newspapers were full of lurid tales of Meridian traders and tourists being attacked abroad and subject to protests by local abolitionist groups. One effect of the Great American War was to polarise opinion over slavery across the world, or at least the European-derived world. For the first time many in Europe expressed an opinion, and with the institution in most countries having been either abolished or died out simply through colonial retreat, it had become sufficiently alien that the same types of people who would have been apathetic in the 1780s were now firmly against the practice. The rise of more bourgeois and proletarian-focused religious groups such as the Wesleyans and Jansenists also brought an anti-slavery message to the masses, and to a certain extent the newly revived issue of galley slavery of Christians in the Mediterranean helped bring it home as something that was not merely the province of dark-skinned Africans in foreign climes.

This general sense of malaise, even as the country grew richer (though not all of its people enjoyed those proceeds of empire) fuelled the defeat of the incumbent Adamantines in 1855. There were few Adamantine candidates willing to take the plunge, especially given that the party was now also in opposition in the Cortes. In the end President-General Luppi persuaded the Intendant of Salta Province, Guillermo Medina, to stand. Luppi also connived to finally annex the Cisplatine and Riograndense Republics, long maintained as separate dependencies so that Meridian corporations could take advantage of laxer labour laws, in the hope that their newfound citizens would reward the Adamantine Party with their votes. The rather reluctant Medina did not campaign effectively and was decisively defeated 57%-31% by the Unionist candidate Ignacio Insulza, brother of the war hero Admiral Francisco Insulza. (The remaining 12% was split between 7% for Colorado Alejandro Muñiz standing once again, 4% for Manfred Landau of the new Mentian Party, and 1% scattering).

The election of President Insulza was a rather ambiguous act by the voters and open to different interpretations by the Meridian news media. Some claimed that the people giving their votes to Admiral Insulza’s brother represented an enthusiastic endorsement of the late war, scornfully shunning the dull Medina and pointing to the fact that Luppi and many Adamantines had sometimes seemed rather reluctant to press the war further—in contrast to the proactive moves of Admiral Insulza and General Flores. Others, however, pointed out that the UPSA was increasingly a two-party system (the Colorados not being considered a credible alternative and the Mentians largely just being the party of German immigrants) and so if a voter wanted to cast a vote against the war, he would have no choice but to vote for the other party to President Luppi’s. The general thrust of the historical narrative both before and since the election certainly implies that it was the second interpretation that was more correct—though we cannot discount that peculiar phenomenon of the voter who is against a war yet idolises the generals of said war, which has since been noted in more than one nation.

Regardless, Insulza rapidly proved not to be the candidate of those who wanted a clean break from the policy choices of the Great American War. Indeed in many ways he was more a continuity candidate for Luppi than Medina would have been. It was Insulza who conceived La Hermandad de las Naciones, the Sisterhood of Nations, generally known simply as the Hermandad. Whereas the Adamantines generally desired an expansion of the UPSA that would convert current independent nations into provinces full of new citizens, the Unionists drew more votes from those corporate interests that benefited from having separate dependencies not under Meridian—as well, increasingly, as from some working-class ‘Old Meridians’ who resented immigration of rival workers and believed annexation would increase the flow, yet viewed the Jacobin Racist Colorados as too extreme or a wasted vote. Insulza’s idea was therefore to formalise the UPSA’s current de facto ties with dependencies across the world, creating an organisation that would both promote a free trade customs union and also pledge the UPSA military to defend those nations and colonies if threatened. With the absorption of the Riograndense and Cisplatine Republics, the remaining post-Popular Wars Brazilian successor state of the Pernambucano Republic was the first nation to join in 1857. Soon afterwards the Guayana Republic—its shaky government already closely economically tied to the UPSA by necessity for their shared exploitation of the Amazon—also joined. In the following years the Hermandad spread its net ever further, and throughout the 1860s the international community would murmur in surprise as the Batavian and Cape Republics joined, explicitly bringing the UPSA into confrontation with those republics’ foe Belgium—a confrontation which Belgium backed down from, showing how the balance of power had changed. The conversion of other Meridian colonies and interest areas into Hermandad members, culminating with the Philippine Republic in 1880, would continue throughout the era known somewhat erroneously as the Long Peace.

But would this policy go unchallenged? Increasingly the European powers, even those like France who were both concerned about Meridian moves and had the power to back it up, were more concerned with affairs closer to home. New Spain continued to be in a state of decline, with open questions over whether the lost Californian republic might join the Hermandad (in the end it did not) and whether King Francis of Peru might seek for his kingdom to become a member of the Hermandad as well as a component Kingdom of the Empire of New Spain (and whether that was even legally possible). No: if there would be a challenge to the Hermandad, it would come from the ENA. And following the demise of the do-nothing Bassett government in 1857 and the election of Studebaker’s Supremacists with their radical reforms, the ENA was ready for a comeback.

Of course, the immediate effect of this was the rebellion of imperial Carolina and a land grab by royal Carolina, with tacit if unofficial Meridian aid. But when the ENA pressed the matter, the Meridian General and effective resident Julián Barboza took orders from Insulza to hand over some Carolinian ringleaders, indicating that Insulza’s reading of the public mood was that they would not sustain a renewal of hostilities. Perhaps sensing this weakness—and certainly still sore over the territorial losses to royal Carolina, if small—Studebaker conceived the Caracas Intervention. In 1860 the ENA stretched out its arm once again, no longer willing to concede the undeclared battlefield of the Americas to Meridian interests. The American Foreign Ministry and its spies had noticed an opportunity: one impact of the Great American War and the following twisting of the West Indies towards Meridian interests had been a deleterious effect on the economy of the Captaincy-General of Venezuela, a rather neglected part of the Kingdom of New Granada. In that era before oil was a hugely desirable commodity, Venezuela’s chief exports were coffee and cocoa, two products which other parts of South America or the West Indies already under Meridian control could also produce and were favoured by the new economic consensus. Furthermore, Venezuela had long had a disputed border with what was now the Guayana Republic, and Meridian pressure on the side of her Hermandad subject had recently ensured that the dispute was resolved in favour of the Guayanans, while the New Spanish were unable or unwilling to support the Venezuelan side. These factors combined with the same longstanding grievances about arbitrary and often incompetent New Spanish rule which to an extent were present everywhere throughout New Spain, and in 1859 a rebellion broke out in the Captaincy-General’s capital of Caracas (properly Santiago de León de Caracas).

This was scarcely the first revolt that had ever occurred in New Spain, and could have been crushed quickly if the Meridians had aided the New Granadines, but in the end Cordoba hesitated and dithered, doubtless wondering if backing the rebels might be a better option and create another California-style republic which could be drawn into the Hermandad. New Spain was clearly doomed one day, after all. But in the short term, perhaps it would be better... As the Meridians argued, the ruthless Supremacist government of the ENA intervened with ‘volunteer brigades’ that unaccountably happened to look like American regulars in nondescript uniforms who one might imagine had no particular personal investment in the fortunes of a distant Catholic captaincy-general. But then this was something that had already been seen in the Californian Revolution. Again, if the Meridians had escalated by resorting to their own fake ‘volunteers’ then the Long Peace might have come to a rather abrupt end. But again Insulza showed he did not have his brother’s decisiveness and backed down. By 1862, the revolutionaries held control of the former Captaincy-General and a little more, and the New Granadine army had been defeated in the field at the Battle of Barinas. Though New Spain would refuse to recognise Venezuelan independence for years, de facto the situation had changed irrevocably. There was more ammunition for those doomsayers who saw New Spain as about to collapse any day now and the Meridians had been caught flat-footed—though New Spain’s failure at least meant that King Francis came down on the side of the Kingdom of Peru joining the Hermandad, no longer fearing reprisals from Mexico or Santa Fe.

For the first time in years there was a serious challenge to Meridian authority in South America, with the Americans having obtained a foothold on the continent to counter the Meridians’ presence in royal Carolina—now the only Carolina, after Studebaker had abolished imperial Carolina as part of his reforms. Furthermore, Venezuela would not be the Adamantine Republic that some Meridians had hoped for, but a federal constitutional monarchy designed to replicate the American model. The Americans had even found a suitable Catholic monarch to rule in Caracas without alienating those proletarian revolutionaries who had desired the common touch of a republic. Albert Stonor was an adventurer who had made headlines in Britain and Ireland when he had persuaded King Frederick that he was an eligible descendant of the Irish baronetcy of Camoys, which had been held in abeyance since 1426.[2] Stonor had reclaimed his title but alienated many members of British and Irish high society who saw him as a charlatan, and had promptly high-tailed it to Maryland, which with the loss of Carolina had regained its title as the most Catholic-friendly part of the ENA—something which men like George H. Steuart III emphasised to promote their vision of Maryland exceptionalism. Stonor had wowed Fredericksburg society and Studebaker doubtless felt it was poetic justice to do unto Venezuela as Henry Frederick Owens-Allen, a past toast of that same society, had done unto Carolina. Stonor therefore went from being a commoner to a baron and then to a king within the space of ten years, a career trajectory that would impress anyone outside of William the Conqueror. Venezuela was locked into an alternative American economic hegemony now competing for the West Indies, centred on Imperial Cuba: if she had exchanged one whip hand for another, as Societist writers opined, then at least the Americans were a master who more greatly prized coffee and cocoa—and, eventually, oil.

Studebaker’s bold move only deepened the so-called Glacial Aeon between Fredericksburg and Cordoba, and once again shooting war was threatened. Three things prevented it: Insulza’s continued indecision (which some called cowardice), his party being rejected in the 1861 Meridian election, and the unexpected result of the American election the year after. Studebaker was popular, and would have been riding high in the polls if they had been invented yet. However, his own radical reforms had almost doubled the size of the American Continental Parliament and redistributed its seats beyond all recognition, so that no-one could quite guess what would happen. As Dr Adrian Cooke had pointed out, the Liberals had after all actually won more votes, though fewer seats, than the Patriots last election: but for now the experiment in Boston that might prevent such arbitrary results was still in its infancy.

The upshot of this was that the Liberals won a shock victory with 130 seats, a little short of a majority in the new 296-seat parliament. The Supremacists took 115, with the rump Patriots on 31—barely more than they had won in the last parliament, which had been barely half the size—and twenty candidates reported as ‘Other’ in the papers. Some of these were independents elected by the distant new provinces of Cygnia and Drakesland, who would only take on an allegiance once they had settled into Parliament, while others achieved the shock result of displacing the Supremacists in some of New York City’s seats, as well as in Philadelphia. America’s own Mentian Party had raised its head above the parapet. Thomas Whipple therefore became Lord President—or merely ‘President’ as the office became known after both Studebaker’s reforms and his own. Whipple, who had worked closely with Studebaker over the last few years, paid tribute to his departing rival and promised to continue his work, with his presidency seeing the reform of the House of Lords. America’s peerage had always been a little small and arbitrary to deliver a really effective upper chamber even if one accepted the hereditary principle, and nowadays not everyone did—at least for any office other than that of the Emperor. To the small number of hereditary peers, Whipple added a larger number of ‘Lords Confederal’ who were appointed to fixed terms by the legislatures of each Confederation. This was a neat counterbalance to the accusations of centralisation of parliamentary power and riding roughshod over Confederal rights (and indeed redrawing Confederal boundaries) that the Supremacists had been accused of. The apportionment of Lords Confederal was deliberately disproportionate, with more populous Confederations possessing more Lords than smaller ones but not reflecting a simple mathematical multiplier—supposedly ensuring those smaller Confederations’ voices would not be drowned out. Unlike the coeval House of Knights in Great Britain, Whipple’s reforms cemented the American Lords’ position as subordinate to that of the Commons and merely consultative, with the Commons able to overrule the Lords if they could summon a two-thirds majority. Some objected to this, especially the remains of the Patriots, but it seemed unlikely that in the fragmented American political landscape anyone could obtain a two-thirds majority for anything other than the most universally held positions.

Meanwhile in the UPSA, Insulza’s chosen successor (and Foreign Minister) Alejandro Magaña lost the 1861 election to the Adamantines’ Pedro Alende in a result almost as decisive as Insulza’s election of six years before. There was a definitive rejection of the legacy of the war, and Alende had run—to the opposition of some in his party—on a platform that suggested that Hermandad membership should require a nation to embrace certain ‘Meridian Values’, which were not specified but heavily implied to include the abolition of slavery. It remains unclear if there was any attempt by the Carolinian government to influence the results or even assassinate Alende, with one disputed assassination attempt potentially being the work of a half-dozen groups. Regardlessly, Alende won in the first round with 51% of the vote to Magaña’s 34%, 11% for the Colorado candidate Hipólito Gálvez, a steady 4% for the Mentians and 1% scattering. The slight Colorado surge compared to 1855 is perhaps the result of some Racist Adamantine voters disliking the idea of an anti-slavery campaign, but these were clearly few in number.

Despite the fears of some, Alende’s reforms to the Hermandad did not initially include any moves on slavery, which was practiced by the Pernambucano and Guayana Republics as well as the Kingdoms of Brazil and Carolina, the latter two having joined the Hermandad earlier in 1861 in the wake of the American Caracas Intervention. Both now attempted to backpedal on their membership and were met with both a steel-backed warning from Cordoba and, in Carolina’s case, some loud and pointed military manoeuvres in what had once been imperial Carolina.

Indeed, the new Whipple regime—made up in part of veterans of the Great American War, though it also included fresh-faced new MCPs like Michael Chamberlain—was keen to grasp the advantage of the split caused by the resurrection of the slavery issue. Things came to a head in 1863 with the WorldFest in Buenos Aires, in which the UPSA’s attempt to showcase both itself and its Hermandad subjects went horribly wrong with the scandal of the Carolinian contribution having been constructed by smuggled-in slaves, who under Meridian law were controversially (in Carolina) then freed upon their discovery. This, perhaps, was the decisive point that accelerated Alende towards pushing for what the slaveholders had feared. He gave a speech to the assembled Cortes Nacionales that has rightly been praised as one of the greatest in history, when he spoke of how the UPSA’s once great reputation had been blackened terribly by its role in preserving slavery in Carolina. “Terribly, but not irrevocably. Like Señor Tacaño, we can still change. We can still do good, put right what we have done wrong. And that is what Almighty God calls upon us to do.” Alende was referencing the then recent story El Milagro de Navidad (AKA ‘A Christmas Miracle’ in the English-speaking world) in which the miserly Señor Tacaño is shown the error of his ways and turns over a new leaf. It was a clever double reference, as not only did the UPSA’s position resonate with Señor Tacaño’s, but the story was also an example of how a Meridian author (Fernando Alemán) had produced a work that was already beloved across the world in spite of the UPSA’s generally poor reputation at present—it showed that all was not lost. Indeed, the fact that the tale retains its popularity in the face of the association of South America with Societism displays its power today.

Of course, Alende could not persuade the slaveholders of Carolina with mere words. It is instructive to contrast Brazil with Carolina. Brazil—officially the Kingdom of Portugal in Brazil—was not only closer to and more economically integrated with the UPSA and so more receptive to threats, but viewed slavery as a purely economic issue. If Brazilian slaveholders were compensated for the loss of their property and persuaded that new technology would do the job better and cheaper anyway, then they were satisfied. Carolina, on the other hand...Carolina might have been the same way a hundred years ago, perhaps. But not now, not after decades of ideological conflict and partisan divides and Burdenism. Carolina was full of people—not exclusively composed of them, but full of them—who genuinely believed it was a moral duty for them as a white to enslave black men and women even if it put they, the white man, out of pocket and made their quality of life worse. Abolitionists had long become the other, the devil, and it was no longer possible to see a mainstream government initiative as divorced from that image. The Carolinian government might be pliable after Barboza’s gentle prods here and there (and handing over its more troublesome members to the Americans after the 1857 uprising), but its people were another matter.

And so, with threats of Meridian military action already on the way, 1864 saw the Ultima Coup. Belteshazzar Wragg was overthrown and imprisoned, many senior members of the government were killed, and Barboza was forced to retreat into East Florida when the Carolinian military went over to the coup plotters—unsurprising when they included General Duncan Gordon, one of the most respected commanders in the army since the death of Alf Stotts four years before. Rutledge, the other great high-profile veteran of the Great American War, passed away during the violence, supposedly of natural causes but possibly because he would not join the plotters. Gordon’s regime announced Carolina’s unilateral secession from the Hermandad but offered a message of continued friendship to the UPSA: he was realistic enough to know that Carolina could scarcely go it alone. His plan was dealt a severe blow, however, when King Henry Frederick and his family evaded the same 'protective custody' that had claimed Wragg and escaped to Florida as well, condemning the coup and legitimising the UPSA military forces. First and foremost, Henry Frederick knew which side his bread was buttered.

Ultimately Barboza was able to hold on in East Florida long enough to be relieved by a fleet from the Guayana Republic—which had a similar attitude towards slavery as Brazil—and then one from the UPSA proper. It was during the ensuing fighting in late 1864 that President Whipple held his famous cabinet meeting in which he proposed an intervention that would take advantage of the chaos and regain all the ENA’s lost territories, absolving the stain of the Great American War forever. Throughout the cabinet meeting, Admiral Benjamin Franklin Barker, now America’s First Sea Lord, nodded along throughout Whipple’s description and his subordinates’ sycophantic additions. Finally, at the end of the meeting—a scene dramatised in several films—Barker asked “May I ask one question?”

“Of course,” Whipple said uncertainly.

Barker, now somewhat elderly, cleared his throat at length, then dropped his bombshell. “Why?”

The astonished Whipple pointed out that at another cabinet meeting sixteen years ago, Barker had been the one demanding an intervention against the rebel Carolinians and it had been Whipple who had been cautious. [3] “Yes,” Barker agreed, “and those sixteen years have showed me one thing. Mo Quedling was right.” Whipple’s face was thunderstruck and Barker laughed. “Not about everything. I’m not about to say we should abolish our navy and join hands with our foes. But he was right about one thing.” Barker jabbed a finger at the map. “The blacks, the Negroes. Whoever sticks his foot into that mess and tries to do something about them is going to get that foot gnawed off by the white men. It was bad enough in the old northern provinces a few years back when Mr. Studebaker intervened. What d’you think is going to happen now? Chaos. And who’s going to catch the brunt of it?”

After a moment, Whipple nodded. “The Meridian occupiers.”

“And they’re going to have to send more troops if they want to hold it down. More and more, just to keep this foothold in North America. Now we have one in the South, they’ll be more desperate than ever to save face. And all the time, bombings and knives across the throat in the night and prostitutes hacking off—” Barker trailed off when he saw Whipple’s expression. “Well, all the things we’ve heard from the northern provinces, but ten times worse. And their troops will be a long way from home. They’ll fear being sent to Carolina. It’ll be a death sentence. Let it be one for them, not us.”

“Let it become their Bavaria?” Whipple wondered.

“If you like. And Bavaria’s looking better these days. Maybe Carolina will get sane one day. But let the damn torchie bastards be the ones who get burnt for a change in the process.”

The details of this scene may have been exaggerated by diarists, but certainly American plans for an intervention were dialled back and the ENA contented itself with selling weapons to both sides (and the many ex-slave rebels who broke away and eventually joined up with the Meridian regulars). As soon as Meridian troops began flowing into Carolina with their cycloguns and early protguns, the conflict was effectively over, with none of the heroic last-ditch actions that General Gordon (who shot himself in February 1865) might have dreamed of. On May 9th, 1865, slavery was proclaimed illegal throughout all Hermandad nations, including the Kingdom of Carolina. As Michael Chamberlain would observe two years later, all that blood that Carolina had spent to preserve its ‘peculiar institution’, all that betrayal and bitter struggle, had ultimately bought them just twelve more years with the whip hand over their Negroes.[4] Whipple’s decision not to intervene remains a controversial and much-debated one, and may have played a role in his government’s defeat in the elections of 1867, though Barker’s prophecy of Carolina turning into a charnel house for the Meridians certainly came true. Indeed, in time the Glacial Aeon would thaw in part to American public opinion actually becoming more sympathetic towards the Meridians when news of particularly grotesque attacks by Carolinian Kleinkriegers leaked out. The Seventies Thaw would see the eventual construction of a new economic system once again in the West Indies, one which benefited both the Americans and Meridians, and would last until the ticking time-bomb of the Americas finally went off in 1896...






[1] As you can probably tell, this historian has an axe to grind about his grand unifying theory of international relations; others would disagree with his assessment about the Meridian national character at this time.

[2] This happened in OTL, albeit with a descendant named Thomas Stonor who persuaded Queen Victoria of the same.

[3] See Part #181.

[4] See Part #200.
 
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Thande

Donor
Minor correction - one earlier part referred to an incumbent President-General Magaña when I meant to say Insulza.
 
Sounds like an interesting time. I'm guessing Carolina ends up a lot less populous than the same regions were iOTL with all that fighting?
 
I'm wondering whether Barker's decision might have backfired.......
And Batten-Hale really is a character, isn't he?
 
Slavery was at last abolished in Carolina.

Good.

I do wonder a bit if during those sixteen years and the ENA's 1857 Constitutional Convention, Barker's subtly representing a newfound view of the Empire: that they have found themselves not just a different nation from Carolina (as Carolina began to did pre-independence), but better off without them. After all, the last post focusing on the Americans made it clear they were springing back admirably well post-Convention.

Carolina will not be a happy place in TTL, that's for sure.
 

Faeelin

Banned
Hah. I am still in the fence about the USPA, but I am loving this outcome.

Also how the USPA sees itself the way America in OTL did.
 
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Thande

Donor
Hah. I am still in the fence about the USPA, but I am loving this outcome.

Also how the USPA sees itself the way America in OTL did.

Well, it is a rough analogue in some ways, though hopefully not in a too Turtledovey way.

Also I realised I forgot to mention Henry Frederick(!) so I added a sentence about him.
 
I'm tempering my joy at the abolition of slavery until I learn what this actually means for black people in a country now filled with Burdenist kleinkreigers.

Having spent about a month reading through the timeline I'm finally caught up! (I think this is the first non-pop-culture timeline I've read. I decided to start small. ;)) I love the level of detail and I'm really interested to see where it goes next.

I'm also really enjoying the glimpses of the future seen in Dr Lister's rummage through DBH's letters. So if a quister is a phone, is quistext SMS or e-mail? Or maybe something that's kind of both?
 
I'm tempering my joy at the abolition of slavery until I learn what this actually means for black people in a country now filled with Burdenist kleinkreigers.

Having spent about a month reading through the timeline I'm finally caught up! (I think this is the first non-pop-culture timeline I've read. I decided to start small. ;)) I love the level of detail and I'm really interested to see where it goes next.

I'm also really enjoying the glimpses of the future seen in Dr Lister's rummage through DBH's letters. So if a quister is a phone, is quistext SMS or e-mail? Or maybe something that's kind of both?

It wouldn't surprise me if the majority of Carolina's blacks simply migrate, either back to Africa or to the ENA. Which given what is coming is probably about the best they can hope for.

teg
 

Thande

Donor
I'm tempering my joy at the abolition of slavery until I learn what this actually means for black people in a country now filled with Burdenist kleinkreigers.

Having spent about a month reading through the timeline I'm finally caught up! (I think this is the first non-pop-culture timeline I've read. I decided to start small. ;)) I love the level of detail and I'm really interested to see where it goes next.

I'm also really enjoying the glimpses of the future seen in Dr Lister's rummage through DBH's letters. So if a quister is a phone, is quistext SMS or e-mail? Or maybe something that's kind of both?

Thank you for the kind words. As you say, it doesn't map exactly to any specific technology in OTL, it has elements of both of those.
 
This is going to be a very hard fall from this height for the UPSA.

Carolina's going to be... interesting place. To say the least.

I've asked this before, but what exactly is an 'Adamantine republic'?

And again, I hate you, Thande. This time for splitting Venezuela from New Granada. :D

Keep 'em comin'! :cool:
 

Thande

Donor
I've asked this before, but what exactly is an 'Adamantine republic'?

A republic constructed after the ideals proposed by Henri Rouvroy, which can roughly be summarised as 'do whatever you can to do the best for as many people as possible without rocking the boat too much'. Adamantianism holds that republicanism is a preferable form of government but not if it requires overthrowing an existing regime violently because that will ultimately hurt more people than it harms: so if given a choice to start a country from scratch Adamantines will build an Adamantine Republic, but if a country is already a stable constitutional monarchy (as with France) they will work within that system.

Basically it is a rejection of revolutionary radicalism, somewhat analogous to social democracy in OTL.
 

Faeelin

Banned
It wouldn't surprise me if the majority of Carolina's blacks simply migrate, either back to Africa or to the ENA. Which given what is coming is probably about the best they can hope for.

Would the ENA take them? I'm wondering lately if they're going to end up as bad guys, with a view of the best of humankind being WASPY New Englanders.
 
Would the ENA take them? I'm wondering lately if they're going to end up as bad guys, with a view of the best of humankind being WASPY New Englanders.

Isn't the ENA going to be the Diversitarian superpower matching the UPSA's Societist superpower?
 
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