Good old Blaine.
Between you and @KingSweden24 has made me love the Blaine Presidency.
Between you and @KingSweden24 has made me love the Blaine Presidency.
He’s high on a list of “Best Presidents we Never Had”Good old Blaine.
Between you and @KingSweden24 has made me love the Blaine Presidency.
Good old Blaine.
Between you and @KingSweden24 has made me love the Blaine Presidency.
He's certainly an interesting character, and he certainly would have left a mark in a way that Rutherford "my only claim to fame is losing the popular vote" Hayes didn't.He’s high on a list of “Best Presidents we Never Had”
Would have been a big improvement over a number of the late 19th century CTRL+V gang we actually wound up with
Thanks! A lot of the stuff with abolition is kind of uncharted territory so I'm glad it seems plausible.Interesting stuff. Seems a pretty realistic take on how abolition would be handled by a Southern state in the late 1870s
And I’m impressed, you’ve made Hendricks even more of a goon than I did!
I don't plan for socialism to be much more influential than OTL in the USA, but I could se the ideology of Mazzini catching on in some American circles. Labor reform TTL will look a lot more like La Follette than Debs, though.Should be interesting here... I wonder what effects this will have with socialist influence.
Socialism is going to be different ITTL in other ways, given the POD ahead of the 1848 revolutions and the ramifications that has on Marx's ideological trajectory. I wonder if Senator Lincoln is exchanging letters with Marx ITTL as well...I don't plan for socialism to be much more influential than OTL in the USA, but I could se the ideology of Mazzini catching on in some American circles. Labor reform TTL will look a lot more like La Follette than Debs, though.
I was actually thinking that Bakunin's brand of communism is more influential for revolutionaries (especially in Brazil), while Mazzini appeals to bourgeoisie types who want reform and welfare but not violent upheavals and redistributionism.Socialism is going to be different ITTL in other ways, given the POD ahead of the 1848 revolutions and the ramifications that has on Marx's ideological trajectory. I wonder if Senator Lincoln is exchanging letters with Marx ITTL as well...
I don't think Bakunin will be any more successful or influential ITTL than he was IOTL, considering that "radical reformism as the real revolution" is a stronger, not weaker argument against "violent revolution might still not be enough" from OTL.I was actually thinking that Bakunin's brand of communism is more influential for revolutionaries (especially in Brazil), while Mazzini appeals to bourgeoisie types who want reform and welfare but not violent upheavals and redistributionism.
The implications of an extant, successful and undeniably revolutionary government in one of Europe's most famous cities will have very intriguing butterflies.As for Lincoln, it's possible he exchanged letters with Marx but I think he would also correspond with Mazzini, who's an actual head of state TTL.
Well it depends on the country -- democratic societies with strong civil liberties like the US or the UK would be less receptive to preachers of violent revolution, but a country like, say, Russia (IOTL) or Brazil (at least the way it'll turn out TTL) would be more open to the idea of a violent Bakuninist revolution. On a global scale, TTL will see less communism of any stripe.I don't think Bakunin will be any more successful or influential ITTL than he was IOTL, considering that "radical reformism as the real revolution" is a stronger, not weaker argument against "violent revolution might still not be enough" from OTL.
The implications of an extant, successful and undeniably revolutionary government in one of Europe's most famous cities will have very intriguing butterflies.
Well that was horrific to read.
Yeah one of the things I feel I haven't gone into until now is the horrors of slavery. Focusing on the efforts of abolitionists is only half of the story, the violence inherent in slavery is the other half.Well that got ugly really fast.
That is curious, can't think of anything in this TL that would cause such massive cultural change as to allow widespread violence of that level.Brazil (at least the way it'll turn out TTL)
Yeah, southerners where terrified out of their minds about a slave insurrection and even Unionists like Frank Blair went around warning that blacks would rise up and kill the white people if they were freed. Here that paranoia boils over into mass murder.Yeah that is about the expected result of a looming spectre of end of slavery, but no real power pushing it that way across the South given the unusual* level of concern about what the former slaves would then do.
*I say unusual because it feels to me that while other places with racism based slavery talked much of the same points there was a sort of wide-spread assumption the ex-slaves wouldn't amount to anything, so just releasing them all and moving on settled everything, where (Southern) Americans of the time tended to argue what blacks would do afterwards as one of the key points of maintaining slavery.
My test thread has a rough sketch of how Brazil ends up, but the empire survives under an unpopular son of Pedro II, who gets into a war with Argentina that destabilizes the country. There are some very loose parallels to Russia there, I guess. The outcome, an anarcho-communist federation, is rather different from Russia.That is curious, can't think of anything in this TL that would cause such massive cultural change as to allow widespread violence of that level.
Hum... Maybe the Old Republic is more of a disaster and even the terrible government they eventually built never materializes, so you get a bunch of bad regional governments limping along for decades until someone gets into power(probably in the most theoretically powerful parts), decides to get centralization going again, is powerful enough to disrupt the other governments, then botches it so badly it all just collapses?
A rather unlikely set of circumstances either ITTL or OTL, but it could plausibly happen and is the most likely scenario I can think of for violence to become widespread.
Pretty much, yeah. Gambetta's much smarter about courting the Left than OTL. And you're right about the Party of Order, the Moderates end up losing most of their membership to either the insurgent Radical Union or the PofO.Interesting to see how M. Gambetta has held together enough of his followers while at the same time consolidating support among the Radicals to obtain a legislative mandate and enact his policies. If I was to guess; the Party of Order will over time evolve into something like the Progressists (sans the followers of Waldeck Rousseau) and move further to the right.
From what I've read Gambetta died of an intestinal inflammation (possibly caused by cancer) so if it's not cancer, it's pretty easy to push the guy's death back a decade or so. Probably not more, as he suffered from chronic intestinal ailments but long enough to at least somewhat entrench his party. After his death though, the socialists will split off and form their own party while still, as you said, supporting RU reforms.There won't be much of an anticlerical influence due the presence of a large number of monarchist liberals. But I suspect that the party or at least what ever it becomes will consolidate more firmly on the defense of the existing social order (probably won't touch the religious question to avoid rifts with the moderate republicans). At the same time I believe that Gambetta's faction will splinter (if he dies in 1881 IOTL) ; the radicals will form a separate block in the legislature but they'll cooperate enough with the Radical Union to push through many of the turn of the century reforms passed by the governments of Combes, Waldeck Rousseau and so forth much sooner.
The center-right of the Moderate Republicans leaves after Gambetta's death, as he was what welded them to the radicals. I think something like the DRA would emerge much earlier TTL, possibly around 1890 or so. Combes would likely be the heir to Gambetta's center-left followers.Much will depend though on whether the socialist movement is able to gain enough traction and so possibly weaken the left's momentum as time wears on. Maybe it might be the road to rapprochement between the followers of Gambetta (i.e. Poincare, Barthou) and so forth with those of Meline, Freycinet and Ferry; especially seeing as I think ITOL the Democratic-Republican Alliance became more tied to business interests and became more hostile to socialism.