Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
From what I can tell, Kentucky is going to be a short-lived version of Puerto Rico in the TL. I would expect the US to spend a lot of money on KY reconstruction and slowly deport or relocate black refugees to the state.
It's too probably early in the TL, but:
en.wikipedia.org
You can butterfly MLK Jr out of existance
It's too probably early in the TL, but:
Martin Luther King Sr. - Wikipedia
You can butterfly MLK Jr out of existance
“Stop exploding you cowards!”Luigi Cadorna before every battle of the Isonzo
I hadn't thought of that; in my notes he's still Benny the Moose.
We shall
One of the few provisions of Mount Vernon that was wholly and fully perpetual
This is... yes, this is entirely 1000% accurate
Granted something like that may be an arrangement at the state rather than federal level; no way Richmond ever lets black-majority states get carved off on their own, but "autonomous districts" within, say, Mississippi or Arkansas? Sure.
I do enjoy reading the bets and predictions - often I get great ideas for content from them!
Puerto Rico isn't the immediate example I thought of but, yes.From what I can tell, Kentucky is going to be a short-lived version of Puerto Rico in the TL. I would expect the US to spend a lot of money on KY reconstruction and slowly deport or relocate black refugees to the state.
It's too probably early in the TL, but:
Martin Luther King Sr. - Wikipedia
You can butterfly MLK Jr out of existance
I haven't entirely decided what to do with the Kings, but I'd like them to make an appearance. (My original idea was MLKJr = Mandela but it was pointed out that that's quite cliche and I liked Jesse Jackson = Gerry Adams better anyways haha)
wikipedia.en - Charles Evans Hughes
Charles Evans Hughes (April 11, 1862 - June 30, 1941 [1]) was an American Liberal politician, lawyer, and statesman who served as the 29th President of the United States from 1913 to 1917, almost exactly coterminous with the Great American War. He also served previously as Governor of New York from 1907-1910, and after his Presidency served on a variety of international missions, including a brief permanent on the Permanent Court of Arbitration, among the most prominent Americans to hold such a role and the only President to ever serve in an international diplomatic body.
The son of Welsh immigrants, Hughes was part of the progressive-reformist wing of the Liberal Party and was elected Governor of New York in 1906 as his first elective office and rapidly became a leader of the party's moderate faction, particularly after its crushing defeat to William Randolph Hearst in 1908, and by 1912 was considered one of its preeminent leaders. Despite his reluctance, he entertained overtures to run for President and successfully defeated Hearst in what would have been an unprecedented third term for the incumbent fellow New Yorker, although his victory was narrower than anticipated. His Presidency began towards the end of a decade-long deterioration of relations with the Confederate States as well as the CSA's allies in Brazil, Chile and Mexico, which the Hearst administration had managed to delay from becoming outright war for three years but not prevent the belligerent course of Richmond. While initially intended to focus on domestic issues, the expiration of the Havana Treaty governing navigation on the Mississippi in July 1913 and the collapse of the Niagara Conference brokered by Britain to find a compromise triggered the Summer Crisis, which concluded with the Confederate seizure and sinking of American vessels upon the Mississippi and finally a declaration of war on the United States on September 9th, 1913, which coincided with a surprise attack upon Washington and Baltimore that same morning, triggering the Great American War.
Hughes led the United States through the war to the final days before the Treaty of Mount Vernon was signed. At first, the American mobilization was slow, and Hughes fired two Secretaries of War in the first eighteen months as they became political and strategic liabilities, but the United States successfully halted the main Confederate offensive in early 1914 and would remain on the front foot for the remainder of the conflict. As President, Hughes' administration inadvertently oversaw a massive expansion in government power and authority as it aimed to coordinate the massive industrial war economy; its naval building program in particularly rapidly delivered a disproportionate advantage over enemy fleets, and Chile (Desventuradas, April 1914) and the Confederate States and Brazil (Hilton Head, May 1915) had their navies annihilated in decapitating battles that ended the threat to American shipping. His administration's diplomacy successfully avoided European intervention, particularly after his War Order 708 mandating the emancipation of slaves encountered in theaters of war by the US Army effectively made the war one intended to end slavery.
Despite successes on the battlefield coming with grueling fighting, the bloodshed and pressures of wartime exhausted Hughes, and his administration was damaged by missteps with Congressional leaders of both parties and his Navy Secretary was forced to resign over potential war profiteering in the Ballinger Affair; his expansive view of government powers and poor relations with conservative factions of the Liberals eventually caused major rifts in the party papered over only by successes on the fronts. Hughes surprised observers by announcing at the 1916 Liberal Convention that he would not run for a second term despite his reelection being regarded a shoe-in, and he was instrumental in building support for his Secretary of State, Elihu Root, to succeed him as the continuity candidate. By the time he left office on March 4, 1917, the war had been effectively over for months and only the final points of the Treaty of Mount Vernon remained to be agreed upon with the Confederacy; all other Bloc Sud members had been out of the conflict for over a year, defeated by the United States and a coalition including Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and to a lesser extent Haiti. Hughes refused multiple entreaties in 1920, 1928, and 1932 to consider returning to public office by running for President, and declined an offer to become what would have been an effective "co-President" on matters of diplomacy as Secretary of State in 1933 by John Pershing. [2] He helped negotiate a variety of international treaties in the 1920s as a neutral arbitrator, and served in the Hague on the Court of Arbitration for two years 1928-30, and encouraged his son Charles Evans Hughes, Jr. to accept an offer in 1933 to serve on the Supreme Court. He would die aged 79 in June of 1941.
Hughes' legacy as the President who steered the country through war is complicated and gone through multiple revisions and reappraisals. In his lifetime, he was considered one of the country's foremost statesmen and held in the same esteem as Washington and other Founding Fathers, particularly by Liberal partisans, and he was a mentor and model for Liberal luminaries such as Pershing, Henry Stimson, Bainbridge Colby, and countless others. After his death, however, his legacy was reevaluated, both by conservative and progressive figures, and by the early 1970s he had sunk on Presidential rankings, regarded as both too timid in his treatment of the Confederates at Mount Vernon in a period of extreme trans-Ohio tensions and also a statist who irreversibly expanded American government by the budding ultraliberal movement ascendant on the Liberal Right at that time; his judgement in many of his Cabinet hires, and his decision to stand down after one term and leave the postwar depression and Confederate insurgency for his successor Root to deal with, also became a major point of academic criticism. By the late 1990s and a surge of public interest in the Great American War, however, Hughes' reputation enjoyed a brief renaissance for about a decade as a capable wartime leader and one of the founders of the modern American administrative state alongside his predecessor and rival Hearst, and as of present day he is held in good esteem, though not nearly to the extent of his reputation from 1920-41.
[1] With the stress of the war years, Hughes loses some years off his life; I used the day he resigned from the Supreme Court OTL as a good and straightforward alt-date of death.
[2] Whoever had this one guessed, congrats.
The son of Welsh immigrants, Hughes was part of the progressive-reformist wing of the Liberal Party and was elected Governor of New York in 1906 as his first elective office and rapidly became a leader of the party's moderate faction, particularly after its crushing defeat to William Randolph Hearst in 1908, and by 1912 was considered one of its preeminent leaders. Despite his reluctance, he entertained overtures to run for President and successfully defeated Hearst in what would have been an unprecedented third term for the incumbent fellow New Yorker, although his victory was narrower than anticipated. His Presidency began towards the end of a decade-long deterioration of relations with the Confederate States as well as the CSA's allies in Brazil, Chile and Mexico, which the Hearst administration had managed to delay from becoming outright war for three years but not prevent the belligerent course of Richmond. While initially intended to focus on domestic issues, the expiration of the Havana Treaty governing navigation on the Mississippi in July 1913 and the collapse of the Niagara Conference brokered by Britain to find a compromise triggered the Summer Crisis, which concluded with the Confederate seizure and sinking of American vessels upon the Mississippi and finally a declaration of war on the United States on September 9th, 1913, which coincided with a surprise attack upon Washington and Baltimore that same morning, triggering the Great American War.
Hughes led the United States through the war to the final days before the Treaty of Mount Vernon was signed. At first, the American mobilization was slow, and Hughes fired two Secretaries of War in the first eighteen months as they became political and strategic liabilities, but the United States successfully halted the main Confederate offensive in early 1914 and would remain on the front foot for the remainder of the conflict. As President, Hughes' administration inadvertently oversaw a massive expansion in government power and authority as it aimed to coordinate the massive industrial war economy; its naval building program in particularly rapidly delivered a disproportionate advantage over enemy fleets, and Chile (Desventuradas, April 1914) and the Confederate States and Brazil (Hilton Head, May 1915) had their navies annihilated in decapitating battles that ended the threat to American shipping. His administration's diplomacy successfully avoided European intervention, particularly after his War Order 708 mandating the emancipation of slaves encountered in theaters of war by the US Army effectively made the war one intended to end slavery.
Despite successes on the battlefield coming with grueling fighting, the bloodshed and pressures of wartime exhausted Hughes, and his administration was damaged by missteps with Congressional leaders of both parties and his Navy Secretary was forced to resign over potential war profiteering in the Ballinger Affair; his expansive view of government powers and poor relations with conservative factions of the Liberals eventually caused major rifts in the party papered over only by successes on the fronts. Hughes surprised observers by announcing at the 1916 Liberal Convention that he would not run for a second term despite his reelection being regarded a shoe-in, and he was instrumental in building support for his Secretary of State, Elihu Root, to succeed him as the continuity candidate. By the time he left office on March 4, 1917, the war had been effectively over for months and only the final points of the Treaty of Mount Vernon remained to be agreed upon with the Confederacy; all other Bloc Sud members had been out of the conflict for over a year, defeated by the United States and a coalition including Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and to a lesser extent Haiti. Hughes refused multiple entreaties in 1920, 1928, and 1932 to consider returning to public office by running for President, and declined an offer to become what would have been an effective "co-President" on matters of diplomacy as Secretary of State in 1933 by John Pershing. [2] He helped negotiate a variety of international treaties in the 1920s as a neutral arbitrator, and served in the Hague on the Court of Arbitration for two years 1928-30, and encouraged his son Charles Evans Hughes, Jr. to accept an offer in 1933 to serve on the Supreme Court. He would die aged 79 in June of 1941.
Hughes' legacy as the President who steered the country through war is complicated and gone through multiple revisions and reappraisals. In his lifetime, he was considered one of the country's foremost statesmen and held in the same esteem as Washington and other Founding Fathers, particularly by Liberal partisans, and he was a mentor and model for Liberal luminaries such as Pershing, Henry Stimson, Bainbridge Colby, and countless others. After his death, however, his legacy was reevaluated, both by conservative and progressive figures, and by the early 1970s he had sunk on Presidential rankings, regarded as both too timid in his treatment of the Confederates at Mount Vernon in a period of extreme trans-Ohio tensions and also a statist who irreversibly expanded American government by the budding ultraliberal movement ascendant on the Liberal Right at that time; his judgement in many of his Cabinet hires, and his decision to stand down after one term and leave the postwar depression and Confederate insurgency for his successor Root to deal with, also became a major point of academic criticism. By the late 1990s and a surge of public interest in the Great American War, however, Hughes' reputation enjoyed a brief renaissance for about a decade as a capable wartime leader and one of the founders of the modern American administrative state alongside his predecessor and rival Hearst, and as of present day he is held in good esteem, though not nearly to the extent of his reputation from 1920-41.
[1] With the stress of the war years, Hughes loses some years off his life; I used the day he resigned from the Supreme Court OTL as a good and straightforward alt-date of death.
[2] Whoever had this one guessed, congrats.
List of Future Presidents?
So, he kinda has the Ulysses S Grant treatment in historicity?
Maybe more the latter than the former
We’ll touch on the comparison to his successor next, in the form of an AH.com post.
But, yes, decent is where I’d put him. Duller narratively than other Presidents in the TL so far it turned out and I’d slot him just behind Blaine and Hearst, personally.
Jesus what the hell happened there
Maybe, maybe not
Oh no hahaha
Yeah behind Blaine and Hearst but ahead of Hay, and then the mediocrities of Foraker and Custer, the non-entity of Ingalls, the disaster of Hill, and I dunno about Hoffman, Hendricks and Seymour.
Interesting retrospective. It's nice to see that Jr. will end up on the Supreme Court (I've always got a soft spot for political dynasties) - and based on his abilities as a lawyer he would probably prove a good one. Good foreshadowing, and I'm interested in seeing what the trans-ohio tensions are in the 1970s and what instigates it - I'm of the opinion that the CSA is probably never going to want to tussel with the US again; but it also has a vested interest in being stringent in the face of "Yankee moralism" from time to time - both for domestic consumption, but also so the US doesn't come around to viewing the CS as a mere vassal.
I’m rereading the early chunk of the TL and Seymour is actually not that bad a President. Hendricks is by far the worst, Hoffman is probably about even with Seymour.
That said outside of the Big 3 of Blaine, Hearst and Hughes there’s not much to write home about Presidentially TTL, it’s a big drop off from them to all the others. And Root will land very close to the bottom for his part
You can make a strong case (in fact I would) that the wrong Hughes was appointed to the bench in the OTL 1930s, since Senior was no longer the Holmes acolyte he was 1910-16.
And we’ll foreshadow a bit more of that coming up!
Okay, *when* are we being told about the Dem president(s) in 1921-29?
We've been told the Lib nominee in 1920 IIRC. We know Al Smith serves 1929-33. John Pershing is presumably elected in '32 and may or may not run for re-election in '36. But who is going to serve through the 1920s?
We've been told the Lib nominee in 1920 IIRC. We know Al Smith serves 1929-33. John Pershing is presumably elected in '32 and may or may not run for re-election in '36. But who is going to serve through the 1920s?
If you are rereading some if the earlier parts of the TL a few posts mention Blaine surviving until 1890.
....
So I'm assuming you changed a few things as you went along.
I’d like to play coy as long as possible - I kept Elihu Root a surprise, after all.
Indeed
Nah. Root is the direct Hoover analogue.
Smith is more of a Truman/HW Bush type