I just want to say that I wholly love the tern the Washington DC Necropolitan Area.
I totally demand one of those bone churches as well!!!!
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
I just want to say that I wholly love the tern the Washington DC Necropolitan Area.
I totally demand one of those bone churches as well!!!!
That would make one hell of a Great American War memorial.I just want to say that I wholly love the tern the Washington DC Necropolitan Area.
I totally demand one of those bone churches as well!!!!
It’s not that there’s no suburbs or cars at all, as you point out, just better design. It’s always interesting in Europe going to suburban areas because they’re very much car-dependent, too, but you don’t see the absurd sprawliness of here and there’s simply superior urban design.
The other thing that’ll help of course is not blasting giant highways through city centers - perhaps that more than anything!
Since car culture won’t be taking off until the early 1920s in the US, and at a slower pace as the economy recovers more gradually, you’ll see a big delay in how that culture develops which allows cities to thrive and survive
Agreed entirely except for the personalist part - as OTL India has recently shown, you can have a giant country with a successfully personalist government
I’m excited to develop it!
Most likely. Either that or it happens when France is dealing with the consequences of the CEW. I suspect maybe unrest in parts of Africa, Asia or maybe even a full blown rebellion in Vietnam.
The French Navy can’t be everywhere at once, after all…
OT: since this TL’s POD had its genesis in Mexico, I strongly recommend everyone check out the Netflix doc “1994” about the murder of Luis Donaldo Colosio and all the other chaos that engulfed Mexico in that specific year. It’s a bit hagiographic towards Colosio - from what I’ve gleaned, he was an internal reformer in a generational sense within the PRI but nonetheless a party man through and through, and especially loyal to his benefactor Salinas - but it’s still really interesting and I’ve found myself glued to the TV
Republic Reborn
"...events of Wednesday, December 8th, 1915 in Austin. The chaos that unfolded that day and its aftermath echo long into the present; while it is possible that Texas would have seceded from the Confederacy regardless, especially as Confederate military, industrial and even societal capabilities eroded to the point of evaporation over the ensuing eleven months, the outrage caused by Pa Ferguson at the State Capitol that day would leave his name a bitter one in Texan annals from then on and foreclose any type of reconciliation between Texas and Richmond. Ironically, whether Ferguson's decision to attempt to intimidate the State Legislature as it gathered to vote for a new Senator was done at the behest of Richmond is a matter of some academic debate on both sides of the Sabine, though Texan historians in particular shrug such questions off as missing the forest for the trees. To most Texans, Ferguson's loyalty was clearly no longer to the state of Texas, and even if his behavior was not explicitly asked for by his allies in the national capital, it was plain as day why he was doing it.
As the legislators gathered in a special joint session that morning, Ferguson was addressing a gathering of Texas Rangers and members of the state militia across the street at the Governor's Mansion, and in his fiery speech he declared, "Texas shall never surrender, neither to the Yanks, nor to their bootlickers here in Austin across the street!" What happened next changed the course of history. For the first time, Ferguson had directly suggested that Gore, Rayburn, Garner et al of the Texas Party were Yankee sympathizers rather than what they really were, which was Texas nationalists. This was above and beyond anything that any of the Cattlemen's Association cronies would have stated even months earlier during the Impeachment Crisis, and a personal attack like that dramatically raised the temperature that day on either side of 11th Street. It has been pondered that Ferguson, aware of his deep unpopularity both with the Legislature and the public, was trying desperately to capture the fiery spirit of Vardamanite language, having already maneuvered himself into a state-level subsidiary of the National Alliance for Victory, but he chose a conspicuously loaded moment to first debut such demagogy publicly, especially in front of armed men largely loyal to him.
Of course, with the Texas Capitol just meters away, news of Ferguson's diatribe rapidly arrived in the House chambers, where Rayburn was still taking roll call, and the Speaker for the first time in his life went beet red and "shook with an apocalyptic rage few had ever seen the otherwise mild-mannered schoolteacher display." Rayburn thus changed his mind in a subtle way - rather than hold a vote on multiple candidates and eliminate them per ballot until there was a winner for the Senate seat, he instead declared that the legislature would vote up-down on whether to "consider the re-nomination and re-election of Senator Charles Culberson as the business of this special session." Essentially, it was now not a ballot of the unpopular Culberson and others, which he was unlikely to win as it was, but now a ballot to vote on whether Culberson would even be a candidate. This small change, taken unilaterally by Rayburn (contra to how Speakers typically operated), was quickly seconded by Johnson.
A mere hour of debate was presented and the joint session steamed through with these approved rules of debate by party-line voice vote, which foretold everything anybody needed to know about how the vote was going to go in an hour. No sooner had Rayburn cheerfully boasted, "The ayes have it!" than several armed Texas Rangers entered the chambers, rifles slung over their shoulders and hands tucked on their pistol holsters. As the debate continued over the next hour, about a dozen more Rangers appeared, as well as several members of the State Militia. Finally, Gore, near the end of his speech, pointed to the present Rangers and denounced their curious presence as "an act of criminal intimidation by a criminal governor at the behest of a criminal national government!" TUV members angrily shouted him down and fistfights broke out on the floor, and the Rangers quickly intervened, with one of them handcuffing the blind Gore to the House lectern despite him not having been involved in the brief scuffle.
Fearing further escalation, Rayburn and Johnson quickly walked across the street, through a lawn filled with Militiamen who looked ready to seize the Capitol, to speak with Ferguson, and the exchange that followed is largely corroborated by all three men's subsequent diaries and memoirs. Ferguson asked them, politely, whether Culberson was going to win the vote, and Johnson replied diplomatically that it was "unlikely." Ferguson icily replied that that was "unfortunate" and asked how such an, again, "unfortunate" situation could be remedied. Rayburn managed not to lose his composure, replying that "the mood of the House and Senate do not suggest possible remedies." Ferguson, displeased, conceded that due to his numerous scandals, Culberson indeed perhaps was unlikely to "sustain a majority on any ballot," but then pointedly floated the idea of "alternatives" that could "command a substantial majority." Johnson did not attempt to clarify Ferguson's very obvious implication, stating that several "fine statesmen" had put their names forward and that the Legislature would give them all "due consideration." Ferguson, undeterred, accepted this answer but continued that, "Texas needs an advocate who can push ahead with winning this war," and then allegedly threatened to intervene in the proceedings of the Legislature to see to it that such a candidate emerged victorious.
The exact nature of Ferguson's threat is unclear as this is where all three recollections of the conversation wildly diverge. Rayburn's thorough diary of December 8th's events describe an open, deliberate threat by the Governor to use force to interfere in the vote unless it presented a Senator associated with himself and the TUV, which considering the fact that the Senate President was handcuffed to the lectern by one of his goons across the street was a live risk. Ferguson's posthumous memoir denied any such declaration, rather stating that he did indeed merely mean that whoever the Legislature eventually voted for needed to indeed be a fierce advocate for the state, and even suggested that he was sympathetic to the Texas Party's grievances against Culberson but had simply not wanted to "rock the boat" (a superficial defense, considering how many anti-Alliance for Victory Senators were cashiered by state legislators elsewhere in the Confederacy in 1915-16). Johnson's notes from the infamous three-way discussion in the Governor's living room land somewhere in the middle, presenting a conversation in which Ferguson did not openly threaten the two legislators but rather "implied" that he would acquiesce to Culberson's dismissal and de-escalation of the situation across the street if the Legislature, via Rayburn, would see to it that a Senator aligned with him who could deliver federal patronage to Ferguson's friends and cronies was the appointee. This version of events is the one broadly accepted by mainstream Texan historians today, both as it was within Ferguson's longstanding reputation as a corrupt boss, and that his alignment with the Martin-Vardaman faction ascendant in Richmond was borne of opportunism rather than genuine belief that the Confederacy had any chance of winning at this point in the war. This suggests that the debacle of December 8th was a continuation of Ferguson's longstanding feud with the Legislature that had begun with his potentially fraudulent election and his post-inauguration attempts to reshape state government as a patronage vehicle for himself and his friends.
Even though Johnson's understanding of the conversation was as a much milder demand from Ferguson than Rayburn's, both men were nonetheless offended. While greased palms and quid pro quos were indeed how government business was done in Texas, and the Governor trying to wheel-and-deal an ally into the Confederate Senate would have raised zero eyebrows in the age of Roger Mills, the relationship was too tattered at that point to do anything. Rayburn demanded that the Rangers release Gore from the lectern and the Rangers refused, and Rayburn subsequently announced that the vote would be called off so that instead articles of impeachment could be drafted against the remaining federal officers still appointed in Texas as well as Governor Ferguson, despite the Senate lacking the two-thirds majority to remove him from office.
Ferguson, upon hearing of this, ordered the State Militia to seize the Capitol, arrest the Legislature's leaders, and in a memorandum announced he was assuming "emergency war powers" as head of the State Militia to fight "the Yankee invasion." To ordinary Texans already fed up with Ferguson, it was a grotesque power grab and a Rubicon that could not be uncrossed, and the fingerprints of Richmond's new autocrats appeared very obviously to be all over it..."
- Republic Reborn
As the legislators gathered in a special joint session that morning, Ferguson was addressing a gathering of Texas Rangers and members of the state militia across the street at the Governor's Mansion, and in his fiery speech he declared, "Texas shall never surrender, neither to the Yanks, nor to their bootlickers here in Austin across the street!" What happened next changed the course of history. For the first time, Ferguson had directly suggested that Gore, Rayburn, Garner et al of the Texas Party were Yankee sympathizers rather than what they really were, which was Texas nationalists. This was above and beyond anything that any of the Cattlemen's Association cronies would have stated even months earlier during the Impeachment Crisis, and a personal attack like that dramatically raised the temperature that day on either side of 11th Street. It has been pondered that Ferguson, aware of his deep unpopularity both with the Legislature and the public, was trying desperately to capture the fiery spirit of Vardamanite language, having already maneuvered himself into a state-level subsidiary of the National Alliance for Victory, but he chose a conspicuously loaded moment to first debut such demagogy publicly, especially in front of armed men largely loyal to him.
Of course, with the Texas Capitol just meters away, news of Ferguson's diatribe rapidly arrived in the House chambers, where Rayburn was still taking roll call, and the Speaker for the first time in his life went beet red and "shook with an apocalyptic rage few had ever seen the otherwise mild-mannered schoolteacher display." Rayburn thus changed his mind in a subtle way - rather than hold a vote on multiple candidates and eliminate them per ballot until there was a winner for the Senate seat, he instead declared that the legislature would vote up-down on whether to "consider the re-nomination and re-election of Senator Charles Culberson as the business of this special session." Essentially, it was now not a ballot of the unpopular Culberson and others, which he was unlikely to win as it was, but now a ballot to vote on whether Culberson would even be a candidate. This small change, taken unilaterally by Rayburn (contra to how Speakers typically operated), was quickly seconded by Johnson.
A mere hour of debate was presented and the joint session steamed through with these approved rules of debate by party-line voice vote, which foretold everything anybody needed to know about how the vote was going to go in an hour. No sooner had Rayburn cheerfully boasted, "The ayes have it!" than several armed Texas Rangers entered the chambers, rifles slung over their shoulders and hands tucked on their pistol holsters. As the debate continued over the next hour, about a dozen more Rangers appeared, as well as several members of the State Militia. Finally, Gore, near the end of his speech, pointed to the present Rangers and denounced their curious presence as "an act of criminal intimidation by a criminal governor at the behest of a criminal national government!" TUV members angrily shouted him down and fistfights broke out on the floor, and the Rangers quickly intervened, with one of them handcuffing the blind Gore to the House lectern despite him not having been involved in the brief scuffle.
Fearing further escalation, Rayburn and Johnson quickly walked across the street, through a lawn filled with Militiamen who looked ready to seize the Capitol, to speak with Ferguson, and the exchange that followed is largely corroborated by all three men's subsequent diaries and memoirs. Ferguson asked them, politely, whether Culberson was going to win the vote, and Johnson replied diplomatically that it was "unlikely." Ferguson icily replied that that was "unfortunate" and asked how such an, again, "unfortunate" situation could be remedied. Rayburn managed not to lose his composure, replying that "the mood of the House and Senate do not suggest possible remedies." Ferguson, displeased, conceded that due to his numerous scandals, Culberson indeed perhaps was unlikely to "sustain a majority on any ballot," but then pointedly floated the idea of "alternatives" that could "command a substantial majority." Johnson did not attempt to clarify Ferguson's very obvious implication, stating that several "fine statesmen" had put their names forward and that the Legislature would give them all "due consideration." Ferguson, undeterred, accepted this answer but continued that, "Texas needs an advocate who can push ahead with winning this war," and then allegedly threatened to intervene in the proceedings of the Legislature to see to it that such a candidate emerged victorious.
The exact nature of Ferguson's threat is unclear as this is where all three recollections of the conversation wildly diverge. Rayburn's thorough diary of December 8th's events describe an open, deliberate threat by the Governor to use force to interfere in the vote unless it presented a Senator associated with himself and the TUV, which considering the fact that the Senate President was handcuffed to the lectern by one of his goons across the street was a live risk. Ferguson's posthumous memoir denied any such declaration, rather stating that he did indeed merely mean that whoever the Legislature eventually voted for needed to indeed be a fierce advocate for the state, and even suggested that he was sympathetic to the Texas Party's grievances against Culberson but had simply not wanted to "rock the boat" (a superficial defense, considering how many anti-Alliance for Victory Senators were cashiered by state legislators elsewhere in the Confederacy in 1915-16). Johnson's notes from the infamous three-way discussion in the Governor's living room land somewhere in the middle, presenting a conversation in which Ferguson did not openly threaten the two legislators but rather "implied" that he would acquiesce to Culberson's dismissal and de-escalation of the situation across the street if the Legislature, via Rayburn, would see to it that a Senator aligned with him who could deliver federal patronage to Ferguson's friends and cronies was the appointee. This version of events is the one broadly accepted by mainstream Texan historians today, both as it was within Ferguson's longstanding reputation as a corrupt boss, and that his alignment with the Martin-Vardaman faction ascendant in Richmond was borne of opportunism rather than genuine belief that the Confederacy had any chance of winning at this point in the war. This suggests that the debacle of December 8th was a continuation of Ferguson's longstanding feud with the Legislature that had begun with his potentially fraudulent election and his post-inauguration attempts to reshape state government as a patronage vehicle for himself and his friends.
Even though Johnson's understanding of the conversation was as a much milder demand from Ferguson than Rayburn's, both men were nonetheless offended. While greased palms and quid pro quos were indeed how government business was done in Texas, and the Governor trying to wheel-and-deal an ally into the Confederate Senate would have raised zero eyebrows in the age of Roger Mills, the relationship was too tattered at that point to do anything. Rayburn demanded that the Rangers release Gore from the lectern and the Rangers refused, and Rayburn subsequently announced that the vote would be called off so that instead articles of impeachment could be drafted against the remaining federal officers still appointed in Texas as well as Governor Ferguson, despite the Senate lacking the two-thirds majority to remove him from office.
Ferguson, upon hearing of this, ordered the State Militia to seize the Capitol, arrest the Legislature's leaders, and in a memorandum announced he was assuming "emergency war powers" as head of the State Militia to fight "the Yankee invasion." To ordinary Texans already fed up with Ferguson, it was a grotesque power grab and a Rubicon that could not be uncrossed, and the fingerprints of Richmond's new autocrats appeared very obviously to be all over it..."
- Republic Reborn
Oh, Ferguson made a move that would succeed in a place that either he had the support of or a place filled with apathetic population.
Sadly, he did the coup in Texas, which seems to dislike him immensely and has a population that showed they were not apathetic by electing anti-Confederate politicians when his units caused a battle to emerge with Mexicans who just wanted to leave the country.
Also, a state that is probably filled with lots of weapons, both in civilian hands and in army depots which is protected by people who would behave like the Grenztruppen during the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
So, I could see a mini civil war breaking out (Self-Declared Republic of Texas consisting of an angry public with guns and some defectors from the state militia and the rangers vs. the Confederate Government of Texas who has the main armed force in the region), before some commander in the State Militia betraying Ferguson, in exchange of a pardon, obviously, after realizing all fighting will do is to ensure every single one of them will be lynched by the public.
Looks like I should have followed my first instinct and picked 11/11/16 as the surrender date
Oh, this is interesting indeed *grabs popcorn*
I'm really wondering how the war and these events are going to influence a young Robert E. Howard. He's too young to serve in the war (he'd only be 10, after all) but is at an age where he'd going to be paying a lot of attention to the events around him. And considering the views he'd eventually develop about barbarism, the decline of civilization, and the frontier - an autocratic governor effectively declaring martial law and seizing power is going to definitely loom large over his imagination.
I just hope he lives longer in this ATL and has a happier life. Besides, i could see him becoming THE seminal literary figure to emerge in the Second Texas Republic (which, considering his usual sort of story, is going to cast a rather fascinating shadow over Texas literature )
I'm really wondering how the war and these events are going to influence a young Robert E. Howard. He's too young to serve in the war (he'd only be 10, after all) but is at an age where he'd going to be paying a lot of attention to the events around him. And considering the views he'd eventually develop about barbarism, the decline of civilization, and the frontier - an autocratic governor effectively declaring martial law and seizing power is going to definitely loom large over his imagination.
I just hope he lives longer in this ATL and has a happier life. Besides, i could see him becoming THE seminal literary figure to emerge in the Second Texas Republic (which, considering his usual sort of story, is going to cast a rather fascinating shadow over Texas literature
)Speaking of which- that’s pretty damn close to date of the U.S. Presidential election. Which fell on November 7th of that year.Looks like I should have followed my first instinct and picked 11/11/16 as the surrender date
This is a fairly sound prediction
Guess you should have! 😜Looks like I should have followed my first instinct and picked 11/11/16 as the surrender date
I definitely think that Conan being the dominant fantasy literature of TTL rather than LoTR would be an interesting avenue to explore. Would def help keep the genre grounded in pulpOh, this is interesting indeed *grabs popcorn*
I'm really wondering how the war and these events are going to influence a young Robert E. Howard. He's too young to serve in the war (he'd only be 10, after all) but is at an age where he'd going to be paying a lot of attention to the events around him. And considering the views he'd eventually develop about barbarism, the decline of civilization, and the frontier - an autocratic governor effectively declaring martial law and seizing power is going to definitely loom large over his imagination.
I just hope he lives longer in this ATL and has a happier life. Besides, i could see him becoming THE seminal literary figure to emerge in the Second Texas Republic (which, considering his usual sort of story, is going to cast a rather fascinating shadow over Texas literature
This is not by accident
Programming Note: I have a few more posts for 1915, including the follow-up to Texas’ December Crisis and a check-in on India, where I’ve admittedly written myself into a corner with the Ghadar Mutiny.
1916 will see less North American content as the GAW wraps up so we can return our focus elsewhere in the world. This is not meant to skimp, merely that as I’ve mentioned previously I find writing battles/military campaigns hugely tedious and I want to refocus things a bit
1916 will see less North American content as the GAW wraps up so we can return our focus elsewhere in the world. This is not meant to skimp, merely that as I’ve mentioned previously I find writing battles/military campaigns hugely tedious and I want to refocus things a bit
By the way, @KingSweden24 , if you need a historian to describe the history of Texas and the Indian Territory: may I introduce you to: Walter P Webb (long remembered by me due to his very detailed chapter on Barbed Wire in his seminal History of the Great Plains, which I had to read for my Masters degree )
en.wikipedia.org
)Walter Prescott Webb - Wikipedia
Making Sense of the Senseless: The Great American War at 100
"...ongoing political crisis that had started with the election of Ferguson in November of 1914 into an armed conflict that would by the end of the following year have led Texas out of the Confederacy entirely. The Second Texas Revolution was far from inevitable, and it required a series of severe missteps by Ferguson, a man who held the legislature, the people of his state and the rule of law in contempt, to so provoke the opposition Texas Party that they saw rebellion and secession as not only noble but the only viable options. The men who gathered on December 8th, 1915 to oust Charles Culberson from the Senate did not gather with any interest in seceding, and as they fled to Laredo the following night, they surely did not think that their flight south would be the last time they left Austin as state legislators rather than republican ones.
But the rifts and grievances that led to the December Crisis could have been seen from well across the vast Texan grazelands. It was the Confederacy's largest state, home to close to a quarter of her population, the fastest-growing and also her wealthiest (by most measurements). Its cities large and small had budding industrial bases, it was the world's most valuable cattle producer after Argentina, and it exported more oil than Mexico and more timber than the United States. Not only did Texas have these innate advantages in which her citizens were hugely proud, but the state was steeped in a deep history of having been an independent republic that threw off Santa Anna's Mexico and joined the United States by request, and then left "Washington's yoke" when they were offended by the anti-slavery movement's ascendancy and its perceived infringement on popular state sovereignty to self-regulate the peculiar institution. [1] In that sense, then, Texans were a people who had a passion for their home as deep as any nationalist, perhaps uniquely so in a Confederacy in which association with one's home state was already as strong or stronger than one's association with the country as a whole, and also had a very ingrained sense of believing that Texans had a unique, God-given mission to revolt when aggrieved. It was hard to regard Ferguson's behavior in office, and his affiliation with increasingly despised figures in the Confederacy, as anything other than such a grievance.
The Texas Party was also uniquely positioned to take advantage of this Texan sentiment - it had indeed been founded upon it and its political survival long after the physical decline and death of its founder Roger Q. Mills was entirely dependent on flaming it. Texas had the largest Congressional delegation (larger than neighboring Arkansas and Louisiana combined) yet just as many Senators as every other state, and despite its boomtimes in the 1890s and 1900s, especially after several oil strikes in 1907 onwards, the feelings of being slighted by Richmond common to the Trans-Mississippi remained. The Texas Party thus regarded its mission, beyond preserving the state's uniquely agrarian populist traditions, as defending Texan interests as its sole partisan purpose, and its decision to go to political war with Ferguson and his political benefactors in Richmond was part and parcel with that.
The choice by Ferguson to attempt to intimidate or even force via violence a legislature that already despised him and had impeached all of his federal allies, but lacked the numbers to impeach him or state officials, was thus a grievous escalation that was seen as the moment that Texas could no longer reasonably trust Richmond to defend her interests, especially after the violence with retreating Mexican soldiers that had caused heavy damage and bloodshed on Texan soil and with the United States Army already camped out in Amarillo, Lubbock, Texarkana and crucial El Paso, with cavalry raids now pushing past Wichita Falls and Gainesville south to the outskirts of Dallas and Fort Worth, arguably the heart of the Texan railroad system and its connection to Shreveport and Little Rock, on which Texans elsewhere were heavily dependent on supplies. Richmond had left Texas to rot, the thinking quickly emerged, and now was attempting to effectively execute a putsch against its legitimate legislature because it would not bend to the will of the allies of the incoming administration of James Vardaman.
These were the grievances, though perhaps not to the point of outright revolt, that were on the minds of the legislators the evening of December 8th, when Speaker Sam Rayburn had declared that all federal appointees in Texas would be impeached immediately and that the House would adjourn for the drafting of articles of impeachment against James Ferguson. The reason why he adjourned was that Rayburn was bluffing, and Ferguson's allies on the House floor immediately began to instigate yet another brawl. In this scuffle, [Thomas] Gore, who had been handcuffed to the lectern during an earlier fistfight that day, was approached by an unidentified Texas Ranger who unlocked his shackles and encouraged him and his comrades to flee Austin that night. The fully blind Gore would later remark, "It was a historical moment of profoundly absurd luck, that in that hour I was approached by a man who chose to slip a key into the locks which bound me, rather than the blade of a knife between my ribs." Gore eventually found Rayburn and informed him that they needed to flee, and later that night it emerged that Ferguson had called a state of emergency in Texas, assumed war powers and ordered the arrests of several legislators for fomenting rebellion. By the next evening, most members of the Texas Party would have reconvened in Laredo, ready to slip to Mexico if needed, where they declared that Ferguson had illegally usurped their constitutional role and demanded his resignation, with hundreds of sympathetic state militiamen moving south to meet them and the Mexican Army, having just left the war, suddenly having to place two divisions across the Rio Bravo in case they were suddenly in a shooting battle with Texan forces.
In Richmond, the Texas Party's unofficial leaders - Congressman John N. Garner and Senator Morris Sheppard - addressed their respective chambers for the last time on the morning of December 10th, when word of just how absurd the outrages in Texas arrived. Sheppard's remarks, which he later quipped were an "unknowing farewell address," called upon Ferguson to resign for the good of not only Texas but the war effort, decrying that the state could not credibly defend itself and provide for the Confederacy if it was "turning brother against brother," though Ferguson's actual popular base of support wound up being much narrower than thought and quickly required mercenaries and Confederate troops. Garner was more pointed - he angrily denounced Ferguson, praised the flight of the Texas Party's legislative caucuses to Laredo, and to a chorus of boos from both Bourbon and Democratic colleagues declared, "Texas will never suffer such outrages sitting down!" and promptly led thirty-five of his thirty-eight Texas Party colleagues to walk out of the House chambers, both to prove a point and, as Garner admitted in later years, to avoid being attacked and perhaps assassinated by Vardaman's "deranged" Red Scarves. None of them would ever set foot in the Confederate Capitol again, either as Congressmen or as anything else..."
- Making Sense of the Senseless: The Great American War at 100
[1] Lest anyone think I have any doubts what "state's rights" really meant
But the rifts and grievances that led to the December Crisis could have been seen from well across the vast Texan grazelands. It was the Confederacy's largest state, home to close to a quarter of her population, the fastest-growing and also her wealthiest (by most measurements). Its cities large and small had budding industrial bases, it was the world's most valuable cattle producer after Argentina, and it exported more oil than Mexico and more timber than the United States. Not only did Texas have these innate advantages in which her citizens were hugely proud, but the state was steeped in a deep history of having been an independent republic that threw off Santa Anna's Mexico and joined the United States by request, and then left "Washington's yoke" when they were offended by the anti-slavery movement's ascendancy and its perceived infringement on popular state sovereignty to self-regulate the peculiar institution. [1] In that sense, then, Texans were a people who had a passion for their home as deep as any nationalist, perhaps uniquely so in a Confederacy in which association with one's home state was already as strong or stronger than one's association with the country as a whole, and also had a very ingrained sense of believing that Texans had a unique, God-given mission to revolt when aggrieved. It was hard to regard Ferguson's behavior in office, and his affiliation with increasingly despised figures in the Confederacy, as anything other than such a grievance.
The Texas Party was also uniquely positioned to take advantage of this Texan sentiment - it had indeed been founded upon it and its political survival long after the physical decline and death of its founder Roger Q. Mills was entirely dependent on flaming it. Texas had the largest Congressional delegation (larger than neighboring Arkansas and Louisiana combined) yet just as many Senators as every other state, and despite its boomtimes in the 1890s and 1900s, especially after several oil strikes in 1907 onwards, the feelings of being slighted by Richmond common to the Trans-Mississippi remained. The Texas Party thus regarded its mission, beyond preserving the state's uniquely agrarian populist traditions, as defending Texan interests as its sole partisan purpose, and its decision to go to political war with Ferguson and his political benefactors in Richmond was part and parcel with that.
The choice by Ferguson to attempt to intimidate or even force via violence a legislature that already despised him and had impeached all of his federal allies, but lacked the numbers to impeach him or state officials, was thus a grievous escalation that was seen as the moment that Texas could no longer reasonably trust Richmond to defend her interests, especially after the violence with retreating Mexican soldiers that had caused heavy damage and bloodshed on Texan soil and with the United States Army already camped out in Amarillo, Lubbock, Texarkana and crucial El Paso, with cavalry raids now pushing past Wichita Falls and Gainesville south to the outskirts of Dallas and Fort Worth, arguably the heart of the Texan railroad system and its connection to Shreveport and Little Rock, on which Texans elsewhere were heavily dependent on supplies. Richmond had left Texas to rot, the thinking quickly emerged, and now was attempting to effectively execute a putsch against its legitimate legislature because it would not bend to the will of the allies of the incoming administration of James Vardaman.
These were the grievances, though perhaps not to the point of outright revolt, that were on the minds of the legislators the evening of December 8th, when Speaker Sam Rayburn had declared that all federal appointees in Texas would be impeached immediately and that the House would adjourn for the drafting of articles of impeachment against James Ferguson. The reason why he adjourned was that Rayburn was bluffing, and Ferguson's allies on the House floor immediately began to instigate yet another brawl. In this scuffle, [Thomas] Gore, who had been handcuffed to the lectern during an earlier fistfight that day, was approached by an unidentified Texas Ranger who unlocked his shackles and encouraged him and his comrades to flee Austin that night. The fully blind Gore would later remark, "It was a historical moment of profoundly absurd luck, that in that hour I was approached by a man who chose to slip a key into the locks which bound me, rather than the blade of a knife between my ribs." Gore eventually found Rayburn and informed him that they needed to flee, and later that night it emerged that Ferguson had called a state of emergency in Texas, assumed war powers and ordered the arrests of several legislators for fomenting rebellion. By the next evening, most members of the Texas Party would have reconvened in Laredo, ready to slip to Mexico if needed, where they declared that Ferguson had illegally usurped their constitutional role and demanded his resignation, with hundreds of sympathetic state militiamen moving south to meet them and the Mexican Army, having just left the war, suddenly having to place two divisions across the Rio Bravo in case they were suddenly in a shooting battle with Texan forces.
In Richmond, the Texas Party's unofficial leaders - Congressman John N. Garner and Senator Morris Sheppard - addressed their respective chambers for the last time on the morning of December 10th, when word of just how absurd the outrages in Texas arrived. Sheppard's remarks, which he later quipped were an "unknowing farewell address," called upon Ferguson to resign for the good of not only Texas but the war effort, decrying that the state could not credibly defend itself and provide for the Confederacy if it was "turning brother against brother," though Ferguson's actual popular base of support wound up being much narrower than thought and quickly required mercenaries and Confederate troops. Garner was more pointed - he angrily denounced Ferguson, praised the flight of the Texas Party's legislative caucuses to Laredo, and to a chorus of boos from both Bourbon and Democratic colleagues declared, "Texas will never suffer such outrages sitting down!" and promptly led thirty-five of his thirty-eight Texas Party colleagues to walk out of the House chambers, both to prove a point and, as Garner admitted in later years, to avoid being attacked and perhaps assassinated by Vardaman's "deranged" Red Scarves. None of them would ever set foot in the Confederate Capitol again, either as Congressmen or as anything else..."
- Making Sense of the Senseless: The Great American War at 100
[1] Lest anyone think I have any doubts what "state's rights" really meant
mortonofski
Donor
Excellent update! Eagerly anticipating Ferguson's downfall. Does the Second Texan Republic count as a seventh flag over Texas, or does the first republic's flag do double-duty (thus giving us the Six Flags amusement park, as OTL)?
So basically if literally anyone else in the state other than Pa Ferguson was Governor Texas would remain Confederate? A somewhat unhappy part of the Confederacy but still a part nonetheless.
I look forward to seeing Texan independence; hopefully this Texas diversifies its economy to avoid being too dependent on oil. Though the question remains: what will happen to the “peculiar institution” in Texas post-war?