I would think in the next 5-10 many civic and religious groups in the United States would help freed negroes find work and set up lives across the country.
 
"The Army was not the only group that got a vote on such matters, though, and the Navy - represented at Mount Vernon by Admirals Knight, Sims, and the hero of Hilton Head, Belknap - wanted to see to it that the Congress led to benefits for them beyond merely limiting the Confederacy to a cutter service. Knight and Sims, both close personally to Lodge, presented another plan that essentially solidified facts on the ground: the acquisition of the Florida Keys by the United States. The initial proposal presented by Sims in fact was more modest than what Lodge eventually got into the final agreement, proposing only to seize the Keys from Duck Key and west, roughly the lower half of the island chain. There were a number of problems with this, however, including concerns from Belknap about provisioning such a territory, and Lodge was unsure why to "settle for a half measure" when the whole chain could simply be snapped up. Accordingly, the "Gibraltar of the Caribbean" at Key West was not only attached to the treaty, but the entire archipleago starting at Elliott Key at the south end of Biscayne Bay was attached, and the United States would "enjoy unfettered and unmolested road and rail access to the mainland from the Keys" in perpetuity. The Florida Keys Territory was, officially, an insular territory of the United States along with the Virgin Islands, Samoa, the Wake and Midway Atolls, and the Port Hamilton and Chusan Islands territories in East Asia..."

Great as always! I have a couple questions on the Florida cession.

First, is the US annexing just the major keys, or the smaller ones to the north of the main chain? I think they're mostly uninhabited, but depending on how hard the US navy want's to lock down the strait they could be useful.

Second, where does this leave Blackwater Sound? If the US controls Cross and Bottle Key (and potentially Shell Key) this effectively makes the sound US territorial waters. If one or more of those keys remains in the CSA it makes it a very complicated waterway.

"During the course of the war, it is thought that somewhere in the proximity of four hundred thousand Negroes died of starvation or other war-related mortalities, while close to a million more fled north by late 1916 as order collapsed or the Yankee armies approached. As many as a quarter million such souls made it over the Ohio River either through evading river patrols, bribing military officers, or through petition; hundreds of thousands of others turned around and joined the fight, while their comrades remained largely camped in Kentucky, particularly a belt running approximately from Paducah in the west to Louisville within seventy kilometers of the river. As tens of thousands of white Kentuckians fled east and south from the fighting, this had had the impact of almost overnight changing the demographics across much of the Bluegrass state, and in the months between November 11th and the Mount Vernon Congress, thousands more Negro refugees, often runaway slaves or those freed by advancing Yankees, streamed into Kentucky by the day, hoping to either escape across the river into the United States, or at least concentrate themselves in what was rapidly emerging as a promised land for the freedman."

So these demographic changes raise the possibility of Kentucky not just being spit between the USA and CSA but also between 'white" and 'black' halves. Could we see three way division, with Western Kentucky forming a black state or free commonwealth, central Kentucky forming a white state or client, and eastern Kentucky remaining Confederate?

That would leave western Kentucky in much better shape since they would not only have Louisville but but the western coalfields, some of the states best farmland, and several rivers with good potential for hydroelectric plants. Plus Mammoth Cave with the potential for a tourist industry. Central Kentucky in comparison has decent farmland but few natural resources, and apart from the horse industry (which was mostly a post civil war thing otl so may not have taken off here) few economic options. Could be interesting!

Also, a highly specific Kentuckian question, do we think Louisville retains it's (correct ;)) local pronunciations of "luhvul/loovul" or develops a more deep southern pronunciation of "looeevil" from refugees further south? Could lead to a Derry vs. Londonderry situation.
 
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These numbers seem familiar…
I think we were always using 1/3 of the Confederacy was Black, maybe that was just slaves. But 9.5/25.25(picking a quarter for change) =37%. The only war I can think of where that many people in an area wanted to cross the prewar line would have *maybe* been the Indo-Pakistani war of 1947-1948. Beyond *that*? And that would be adding roughly 10% to the Population of the United States, probably focused into the states that border the Confederacy.
Not sure what the population of Arizona was pre-war,, but I'm not honestly sure that formerly confederate Arizona could support 9.5 M people with that technology (I'm not sure that that much water can be taken from the Rio Grande and the Colorado that quickly and distributed.

OTL USA in 1910 had 92M. Assuming that the combined population of the USA and CSA is *about* that, that means roughly 67M in the US . The 9.5 M blacks, if they all moved to the United States would be about the same as the Population of the largest USA state: New York. So if they all moved into Kentucky and the US allowed for Kentucky to join the Union, you'd have a single almost entirely black state as the largest in the US. (It would be one way to prevent the need to get rid of the Electoral College. :) ) (mild OTL politics) This makes the OTL concerns about Hawaii statehood and possible Puerto Rican Statehood look like a walk in the park. This is closer to trying to get every Mexican State north of the State of Mexico admitted into the US at the same time at some point in the last 50 years.
To the Author, just curious, at what point in writing this timeline did the issue of what to do with the absolute *FLOOD* of former slaves caused by the later defeat but not absorption of the Confederacy become a significant issue.?
 
[2] This is years ago in both the TL and the lives of all of us readers, but the first Panamerican Congress had a failed clause pushed by Blaine to forbid wars of territorial conquest in the Americas, so Root is very directly operating contrary to how Blaine and Hay had hoped the Americas would govern themselves. As @Curtain Jerker has pointed out more than once, the GAW can very much be considered the endpoint of the failure of Hay's pretty naive vision of a semi-collaborative American system of international relations that nonetheless has the USA as the sun the other planets orbit.
I hate John Hay, don't get me wrong, but let's point always and forever that the single biggest reason the Four Horsemen visited these fair shores is because the Confederacy invited them in.

Not that you are saying otherwise, but I don't want any Southern revisionist historian to blame a guy who's been in the ground for 15 years before the guns started firing.

And yes, this is me defending the most influential Liberal between Blaine and Hughes. But fair is fair after all.
 
I hate John Hay, don't get me wrong, but let's point always and forever that the single biggest reason the Four Horsemen visited these fair shores is because the Confederacy invited them in.

Not that you are saying otherwise, but I don't want any Southern revisionist historian to blame a guy who's been in the ground for 15 years before the guns started firing.

And yes, this is me defending the most influential Liberal between Blaine and Hughes. But fair is fair after all.
Whoa, @Curtain Jerker is defending Liberals for a change. Gotta say, it’s nice to see some character growth in my favorite commenter here. Who knows, @KingSweden24 might even get you to root for a Liberal.

PS: that last suggestion was a joke (unless the Dem nominee is an irredeemable monster, like Anthony Weiner; we all know that would never happen, right?)
 
Gotta say, it’s nice to see some character growth in my favorite commenter here.
You flatter me!

Also, I have no problem attacking Democrats here. I've been railing against Al Smith for months now after he and the rest of the NY Dem leadership gave away the 1914 Senate seat for no real reason.
 
These numbers seem familiar…
Extrapolated forward from the 1910 figures but, yes, your numbers were pretty close
I would think in the next 5-10 many civic and religious groups in the United States would help freed negroes find work and set up lives across the country.
Definitely. That’s in part what ONE is all about.

That said, not everybody in the US feels that way, to put it mildly.
Great as always! I have a couple questions on the Florida cession.

First, is the US annexing just the major keys, or the smaller ones to the north of the main chain? I think they're mostly uninhabited, but depending on how hard the US navy want's to lock down the strait they could be useful.

Second, where does this leave Blackwater Sound? If the US controls Cross and Bottle Key (and potentially Shell Key) this effectively makes the sound US territorial waters. If one or more of those keys remains in the CSA it makes it a very complicated waterway.



So these demographic changes raise the possibility of Kentucky not just being spit between the USA and CSA but also between 'white" and 'black' halves. Could we see three way division, with Western Kentucky forming a black state or free commonwealth, central Kentucky forming a white state or client, and eastern Kentucky remaining Confederate?

That would leave western Kentucky in much better shape since they would not only have Louisville but but the western coalfields, some of the states best farmland, and several rivers with good potential for hydroelectric plants. Plus Mammoth Cave with the potential for a tourist industry. Central Kentucky in comparison has decent farmland but few natural resources, and apart from the horse industry (which was mostly a post civil war thing otl so may not have taken off here) few economic options. Could be interesting!

Also, a highly specific Kentuckian question, do we think Louisville retains it's (correct ;)) local pronunciations of "luhvul/loovul" or develops a more deep southern pronunciation of "looeevil" from refugees further south? Could lead to a Derry vs. Londonderry situation.
I’m sure the US would see to it that they have no risks to their control of their islands. However thar shakes out.

I’ll take your word for it that indeed the West of Kentucky is the part worth having - and so much flow northwards from the Deep South probably indeed causes a “ok I know where you’re really from” situation in the city haha
I think we were always using 1/3 of the Confederacy was Black, maybe that was just slaves. But 9.5/25.25(picking a quarter for change) =37%. The only war I can think of where that many people in an area wanted to cross the prewar line would have *maybe* been the Indo-Pakistani war of 1947-1948. Beyond *that*? And that would be adding roughly 10% to the Population of the United States, probably focused into the states that border the Confederacy.
Not sure what the population of Arizona was pre-war,, but I'm not honestly sure that formerly confederate Arizona could support 9.5 M people with that technology (I'm not sure that that much water can be taken from the Rio Grande and the Colorado that quickly and distributed.

OTL USA in 1910 had 92M. Assuming that the combined population of the USA and CSA is *about* that, that means roughly 67M in the US . The 9.5 M blacks, if they all moved to the United States would be about the same as the Population of the largest USA state: New York. So if they all moved into Kentucky and the US allowed for Kentucky to join the Union, you'd have a single almost entirely black state as the largest in the US. (It would be one way to prevent the need to get rid of the Electoral College. :) ) (mild OTL politics) This makes the OTL concerns about Hawaii statehood and possible Puerto Rican Statehood look like a walk in the park. This is closer to trying to get every Mexican State north of the State of Mexico admitted into the US at the same time at some point in the last 50 years.
To the Author, just curious, at what point in writing this timeline did the issue of what to do with the absolute *FLOOD* of former slaves caused by the later defeat but not absorption of the Confederacy become a significant issue.?
How to handle the Great Migration-as-postwar-refugee-crisis has been on my radar as a major writing/demographic math problem for a long time haha
I hate John Hay, don't get me wrong, but let's point always and forever that the single biggest reason the Four Horsemen visited these fair shores is because the Confederacy invited them in.

Not that you are saying otherwise, but I don't want any Southern revisionist historian to blame a guy who's been in the ground for 15 years before the guns started firing.

And yes, this is me defending the most influential Liberal between Blaine and Hughes. But fair is fair after all.
Oh, totally. More me pointing to the irony of Root - Hay’s protege - rejecting the vision of Blainism in practice
 
Extrapolated forward from the 1910 figures but, yes, your numbers were pretty close

Definitely. That’s in part what ONE is all about.

That said, not everybody in the US feels that way, to put it mildly.

I’m sure the US would see to it that they have no risks to their control of their islands. However thar shakes out.

I’ll take your word for it that indeed the West of Kentucky is the part worth having - and so much flow northwards from the Deep South probably indeed causes a “ok I know where you’re really from” situation in the city haha

How to handle the Great Migration-as-postwar-refugee-crisis has been on my radar as a major writing/demographic math problem for a long time haha

Oh, totally. More me pointing to the irony of Root - Hay’s protege - rejecting the vision of Blainism in practice
I notice you didn't disagree with my numbers here... :)

I do honestly wonder, if all confederates who lived in Arizona were to move back, and you had a referendum...

  • Confederate Arizona is landlocked
  • It probably is less destroyed than most of the rest of the Confederacy (just due to the fact it was conquered so quickly, Pershing really didn't stop until he hit El Paso)
  • It is separated from the confederacy by over 500 miles (driving OTL, Hobbs NM to Shrevesport is 583 miles)
  • The basket case that is the Confederacy.

So, join the US, join Mexico, join Texas, stay with the Confederacy, go independent...

I'm *guessing* joining Texas would win???
 
Divide between all three....?
Mexico gets the Gadsden Purchase back, Texas gets back the portion of Southern New Mexico that they claimed in 1845 (which is all East of the Rio Grand) and the US gets Arizona between the Gadsden and the 34th Parallel plus some of the portion of OTL SW New Mexico.


Note, just like the Author's story with the US taking back all of Confederate Arizona, this leads to the US/Texas/Mexico Tripoint being at El Paso.

(Note, not sure if this belongs in this thread or the other, if it belongs in the other, I will delete and recreate)

I was wondering how significant El Paso is relative to OTL North American Tripoints.
iOTL, there are only *two* tripoints in North America. 1) The Guatemala/Honduras/El Salvador which is mostly surrounded by National/Biological Parks, with the Tripoint apparently only accessibly by Hiking (nearest road is almost 5 miles away as the crow flies) and 2) The Mexico/Belize/Guatemala tripoint which is in many ways even more remote.
By 2023 iTTL, from what we know, there will be the following tripoints north of Mexico City (we haven't gotten much clue what happens to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador)
US/Canada/Quebec tripoint. Major population center is Cornwall Ontario, neither PQ or NY have significant cities near there.
US/Quebec/AU tripoint (Current Maine/Quebec/New Brunswick tripoint). Middle of nowhere (mostly logging)
(possible US/KY/CS tripoints, still to be determined)
US/Sequoya/CS tripoint, (Current OK/MO/AR tripoint). Not isolated, just not much there.
US/Sequoya/Texas tripoint. I believe that the border is simply Texas taking north of where the state of Texas has iOTL. Again, not isolated, not much there.
US/Texas/Mexico tripoint. See above, El Paso Metro. Might be more populated in the US part of the tripoint compared to the New Mexico but I simply can't see it being significantly smaller than OTL, and the idea of it being larger is definitely in the cards.
 
Mexico gets the Gadsden Purchase back, Texas gets back the portion of Southern New Mexico that they claimed in 1845 (which is all East of the Rio Grand) and the US gets Arizona between the Gadsden and the 34th Parallel plus some of the portion of OTL SW New Mexico.

A division that won't happen, but when you think about it, makes some sort of sense.,
Texas to the Rio Grande sounds cool and epic, tbh.
 
Mexico gets the Gadsden Purchase back, Texas gets back the portion of Southern New Mexico that they claimed in 1845 (which is all East of the Rio Grand) and the US gets Arizona between the Gadsden and the 34th Parallel plus some of the portion of OTL SW New Mexico.


Note, just like the Author's story with the US taking back all of Confederate Arizona, this leads to the US/Texas/Mexico Tripoint being at El Paso.

(Note, not sure if this belongs in this thread or the other, if it belongs in the other, I will delete and recreate)

I was wondering how significant El Paso is relative to OTL North American Tripoints.
iOTL, there are only *two* tripoints in North America. 1) The Guatemala/Honduras/El Salvador which is mostly surrounded by National/Biological Parks, with the Tripoint apparently only accessibly by Hiking (nearest road is almost 5 miles away as the crow flies) and 2) The Mexico/Belize/Guatemala tripoint which is in many ways even more remote.
By 2023 iTTL, from what we know, there will be the following tripoints north of Mexico City (we haven't gotten much clue what happens to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador)
US/Canada/Quebec tripoint. Major population center is Cornwall Ontario, neither PQ or NY have significant cities near there.
US/Quebec/AU tripoint (Current Maine/Quebec/New Brunswick tripoint). Middle of nowhere (mostly logging)
(possible US/KY/CS tripoints, still to be determined)
US/Sequoya/CS tripoint, (Current OK/MO/AR tripoint). Not isolated, just not much there.
US/Sequoya/Texas tripoint. I believe that the border is simply Texas taking north of where the state of Texas has iOTL. Again, not isolated, not much there.
US/Texas/Mexico tripoint. See above, El Paso Metro. Might be more populated in the US part of the tripoint compared to the New Mexico but I simply can't see it being significantly smaller than OTL, and the idea of it being larger is definitely in the cards.
Which makes me wonder - was Phoenix founded ITTL, and is its location in New Mexico or Arizona? I wonder if the situation that allowed it to balloon to its absurd OTL size would exist, and if doesn't, that could potentially affect water availability in the West overall. In any case I could see Tucson (which is in the Gadsden Purchase area) and Las Cruces (which is right on the Rio Grande, called the Rio Bravo in CdM) as potential capitals for Arizona if Phoenix can't be it for whatever reason.
 
Ima stay out of the partitioned Adizona conversation since I can emphatically State that’s not happening
Which makes me wonder - was Phoenix founded ITTL, and is its location in New Mexico or Arizona? I wonder if the situation that allowed it to balloon to its absurd OTL size would exist, and if doesn't, that could potentially affect water availability in the West overall. In any case I could see Tucson (which is in the Gadsden Purchase area) and Las Cruces (which is right on the Rio Grande, called the Rio Bravo in CdM) as potential capitals for Arizona if Phoenix can't be it for whatever reason.
Yea, Phoenix is there.

On the one hand youd think Phoenix is smaller without being the path of least resistance from California to Texas and the South, but without a Florida you’d probably see SoCal and Arizona (here stretching east west rather than north south) attract even more retirees/snowbirds who don’t want to deal (at least until NAFTA makes it easier in the 2010s) with going out of the country for warmer weather
 
I’ll take your word for it that indeed the West of Kentucky is the part worth having - and so much flow northwards from the Deep South probably indeed causes a “ok I know where you’re really from” situation in the city haha
All the regions have their strengths and good qualities, but the west has the most potential to be economically viable on its own. I think ultimately any partition would leave the components weaker than they would be together, which I'm sure we'll be seeing postwar.
 
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Which makes me wonder - was Phoenix founded ITTL, and is its location in New Mexico or Arizona? I wonder if the situation that allowed it to balloon to its absurd OTL size would exist, and if doesn't, that could potentially affect water availability in the West overall. In any case I could see Tucson (which is in the Gadsden Purchase area) and Las Cruces (which is right on the Rio Grande, called the Rio Bravo in CdM) as potential capitals for Arizona if Phoenix can't be it for whatever reason.
OTL Phoenix is in the Confederacy, but not by much. The EW line that was proposed was on 34 degrees North, Phoenix is at 33.6 degrees north according to google maps. On the one hand was founded in 1867 in OTL, so it might not exist, on the other hand, it is at the confluence of the Salt and Gila Rivers, which probably gives it some of the best water sources in the Western half of Confederate Arizona until you get all the way to the Colorado river at the USA border. (Basically Western Confederate Arizona gets watered by the Gila and its tributaries and Eastern Confederate Arizona by the Rio Grande. (The Continental Divide runs just on the OTL New Mexico/Arizona border.

(Which is why the idea of the USA suggesting to the State of New Mexico that after grabbing Confederate Arizona that New Mexico choose to split so that states that align with OTL isn't an insane idea as opposed to either keeping the OTL EW stretches for both old and new or making it one state.
 
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The Root of the Problem: The Tumultuous Term of America's 29th President
"...advancement of the war and intense propaganda, particularly from Theodore Roosevelt's empire of nearly thirty newspapers across the country, had by the conclusion of fighting successfully persuaded the American public of the moral depravity of the enemy and the "fundamental evilness of the foundations of their un-Christian civilization - the enslavement of their fellow man." The bravery of Negro soldiers, not only those from the United States but eager Dixie freedmen who in some cases begged to be given a rifle to use to fight for the freedom of their fellows, had impressed itself upon even virulent racists, and while white supremacy was by no means gone from American politics - as any Chinese or Japanese on the West Coast could have easily attested - there was no constituency for slavery's perpetuation. Indeed, it was regarded as a fait accompli at a bipartisan level in Congress that between the Army's policy of freeing slaves upon encounter and the various revolts that erupted across the Confederacy in the last six months of 1916, there was no way to put Pandora back in the box.

To say that this was the most difficult problem left for the United States to tackle at Mount Vernon - that, and how exactly to deal with Texas, which was an issue for similar slavery-related reasons - would be a profound understatement. Purely from a legal perspective, the United States would be hard-pressed to enforce a ban on slavery in the Confederacy; Article I Section 9 of the Confederate Constitution had several clauses explicitly preventing this in practice at the federal level, and unless every Confederate state on its own banned slavery individually (highly unlikely) then any ban in any other state was toothless due to privileges afforded to "property" taken from state to state. Amending this clause would be difficult as well, requiring constitutional conventions in three separate Confederate States before being sent to the other states to ratify. And the legal aspect was only part of it; the preservation of slavery had been among the cassus belli of Richmond in the first place and the "peculiar institution" was part of the cultural and social fabric of Dixie in a way that went beyond mere politics and economics. Its elimination would in many ways cease to make the Confederacy the Confederacy, and there were few doubts that there would be fighting to the death to prevent its abolition by force.

How exactly, then, the United States was to impose this upon the conquered polity was unclear to even talented lawyers and diplomats like Root, Turner or Lodge. Here Turner and Lodge, otherwise close collaborators on matters of foreign policy despite their myriad disagreements on matters of domestic law, differed sharply. Despite his loathing of the institution of slavery, Turner was extremely skeptical that there was any way that the United States could in fact impose wholesale abolition even with the Confederacy in a state of near-collapse and Patton et al eager to restore order; he (correctly) predicted "there will be an insurgency of such force and violence against us from every corner of this land should we make the suspension of the Southern way of life a prerequisite for peace." Rather, he proposed a provision that all "unattached" property at the time of armistice would, like the economic provisions earlier in the treaty, be subject to the "regulation of the United States;" it was a flowery way, essentially, of saying that all freed slaves would stay freed whether the United States had actively liberated them or not, but that Philadelphia understood it had no effective or feasible way of actually enforcing the emancipation of slaves still held under bondage in unoccupied parts of the Confederacy. In practice, this would still have left something on the order of two million souls as chattel, and implicitly suggested an American acknowledgement that the Negro slave could in fact be legal property. Turner himself admitted in his diaries that "this was a grim compromise, but one that promises dignity to the free Negro, peace for our country, and can be enforced rapidly and eagerly until such a time that a permanent solution to the chattel question can be found."

Root found the idea persuasive "purely in the context of Mount Vernon," and he concurred with Turner both that there was little way that millions of freedmen would accept slavery again but also that "the GI cannot go farm to farm cutting chains." Lodge, however, was vehemently opposed, and threatened on February 12th to abandon Mount Vernon entirely if Root agreed to move ahead with the Turner Proviso. "Our names would be damned in the mouths of every American for the next century," Lodge declared angrily at a dinner for the American delegation, "if we abandon the Negro to his shackles now at this hour upon which our bootheel stands upon the throat of the Confederate." Going even further, he openly accused Turner of "moral and personal cowardice" and being sympathetic to "the cause of the slaver," deeply wounding a shocked Turner and permanently destroying the relationship between the two men [1] who had more than anybody else firmed the United States' resolve ahead of war and been famed on the Foreign Relations Committee for setting partisanship aside and being friends. Lodge instead produced a maximalist approach - that the Confederacy, having acceded already to occupation for the payment of all economic penalties, would suffer that occupation until every state agreed to a constitutional amendment which banned slavery forever. Root suggested at this point, seeking to lower the tensions, instead a "law of free birth" that would declare every Negro born after a certain date be formally free, a proposal that several British diplomats also pushed for, while moving ahead with the Turner Proviso. Lodge again did not yield and privately the next night informed Root that he would refuse appointment to the position of Secretary of State if his demands did not carry. [2]

Lodge's hatred of slavery and sympathy for Negroes both free and in bondage alike was genuinely felt - a curious thing, considering his vehement opposition to the immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans or East Asians to the United States, describing them as little better than illiterate barbarian hordes - but also borne of some level of political expediency. His native Massachusetts was, along with Philadelphia, the beating heartland of North American abolitionism, and his conversion to emancipation's most dogged champion had been driven over many years by his exposure to the men and women who had never ceased calling for the liberty of all on the continent even after the trauma of 1863, and by the election of 1912 the Liberal Party was highly reliant on activists who viewed slavery even more than drink as the great public sin of the time. As such, unlike a great many other things, abolition was the one place where Lodge could not and would not yield, for reasons both personal and political.

Root traveled for a two-day interregnum to Baltimore to confer with Hughes, relaying to him that it was looking likelier that the Congress of Mount Vernon would not be finished by March 4th. Hughes, who personally did not care for Lodge, surprised his successor by conceding that Lodge was right. "The evils of this war and the oceans of blood spilt, the lives of young men in opposing trenches thrown away, will all have been for naught if some good does not come of it." To Hughes, who was always much less hawkish than Root or either of the Senators crafting the eventual peace, destroying the Confederacy's capacity to wage war was obviously a grim necessity after how untrustworthy Richmond had proven itself in 1913, but more than that, he viewed it as a moral imperative that after all the darkness of the war, that "a better world of better angels follow such an apocalypse." Abolition was that "absolution," as the devoutly Baptist Hughes saw it, and without abolition the war would have been a senseless slaughter all for nothing.

Lodge thus had (for the first and last time) a powerful advocate and ally for his position in the outgoing President Hughes, and that essentially eliminated any chance of Turner's practical but politically difficult and morally unsatisfying short-term solution carrying the day. The considerably more difficult maximalist position of Lodge had won, and with it the Mount Vernon Congress immediately went from not merely an imposition of war terms but a complete annihilation of the Confederate society, threatening to detonate the ceasefire completely..."

- The Root of the Problem: The Tumultuous Term of America's 29th President

[1] Probably not a good idea for the Secretary of State to so alienate somebody who is likely to be Foreign Relations Committee Chair again and who now sees you as a former friend who personally betrayed him rather than just any old partisan adversary
[2] I feel like this is true to the character and personality of OTL's Lodge, whom McKinley, Hay, Wilson, Hughes, pretty much everybody loathed and who is the only US Senator (as far as we know) who physically assaulted a constituent for pissing him off.
 
I sure hope they go all the way and enforce the emancipation with a full occupation.
Then again this approach will most likely ultimately prove to be politically untenanbe as casualties begin to mount.
 
On the one hand, I feel like this will backfire for the US down the road, even though it is the moral option (for the slaves anyway, the average white Confederate probably disagrees). This, combined with Chile, will give the US a reputation of not only utterly destroying anyone who gets in their way, but destroying their identity and then forcing them to stay down and not recover. I suspect this will mean that while the US may be more like a giant OTL Canada ITTL, they may not have the friends or reputation to go with it (but then again, the US doesn't need allies OTL and can freely stomp literally everyone, so that might be the same ITTL just restricted mostly to the Americas)

On the other hand, the author can just make it not do that, and have the slaughter continue with no repercussions for the US.
 
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