The Dead Skunk
- Thread starter Lycaon pictus
- Start date
Oh, I can just imagine him seething all the way through the peace negotiations. Followed by trying to find an advantage or angle ('does it matter where new slave-states are created, so long as they're created?'), which is again followed by seething as the Northerners and the new, formerly-Canadian territories soundly reject any advancement of slavery in their borders.
I hope it gives him apoplexy, the egotistical moronic son of a bitch.
Donald Reaver
Donor
I doubt this group of people's descendants will be happy seeing the U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Loyalist
Several months/a year later if the two of them meet at the peace conference (unlikely but still):
Berrien: "I want Florida, it is vital for our security. And tell the Spanish we own Tejas now."
Brougham: "Mr. President, how many times now has your army tried and failed to conquer Florida?"
Berrien: "It doesn't matter. We hold a large part of Upper Canada and the Atlantic Provinces. You have been defeated. I'd be willing to hand those bac, in exchange for-"
Brougham (exasperated): "Those lands are far from our most important. We recognize that you hold them, and would be willing to cede them to you, if you accept a status quo ante in the south..."
Berrien: "That is unacceptable, I will not shed so much American blood along our southern borders for nothing!"
Brougham: "In that case, we can just keep Canada. Oh, and by the way, I daresay our people in Florida deserve some compensation for the activities of your army. How about adjusting the boundaries of Florida in our favor?"
Berrien (seething): "You'd DARE to turn portions of my home state over to those damned upstart-"
(The rest of his remark was too inappropriate to be reprinted here)
Brougham (smirking): "Mr. President, calm down. I am offering you a very reasonable trade. we let you hold onto Canada so you can say you gained something, and the South reverts to status quo. Take it or leave it."
(Again, not what actually happens, but it's how I'm imagining it)
Berrien: "I want Florida, it is vital for our security. And tell the Spanish we own Tejas now."
Brougham: "Mr. President, how many times now has your army tried and failed to conquer Florida?"
Berrien: "It doesn't matter. We hold a large part of Upper Canada and the Atlantic Provinces. You have been defeated. I'd be willing to hand those bac, in exchange for-"
Brougham (exasperated): "Those lands are far from our most important. We recognize that you hold them, and would be willing to cede them to you, if you accept a status quo ante in the south..."
Berrien: "That is unacceptable, I will not shed so much American blood along our southern borders for nothing!"
Brougham: "In that case, we can just keep Canada. Oh, and by the way, I daresay our people in Florida deserve some compensation for the activities of your army. How about adjusting the boundaries of Florida in our favor?"
Berrien (seething): "You'd DARE to turn portions of my home state over to those damned upstart-"
(The rest of his remark was too inappropriate to be reprinted here)
Brougham (smirking): "Mr. President, calm down. I am offering you a very reasonable trade. we let you hold onto Canada so you can say you gained something, and the South reverts to status quo. Take it or leave it."
(Again, not what actually happens, but it's how I'm imagining it)
I suppose there might just be enough TQ members of the Senate to allow him to cling on, perhaps the political furore happens during a major disaster on the battlefield, leading to both sides blaming the other and feeding into the Troubles?
Britain holding Astoria would ensure American gains will not be too great if their only success is in Canada. Astoria is incredibly valuable to the American Psyche as their foothold on the Pacific. And you can bet now that whether or not official war breaks out between New Spain and the Union the New Spanish in California will be lending what aid they can too support Britain's occupation to the north; retaking Astoria would be very daunting.
Canada may lose territory, but if the southern front holds Brougham's seizure of Astoria will blunt the damage.
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Dead of Winter (6)
Lycaon pictus
Donor
Interesting guesses, everybody! (And this is turning into a very long chapter.)
Daggett hasn't done much of anything as VP, and he's so old that he probably wouldn't stay on the ticket in 1840 no matter what happened.
Oh, and in case anyone's wondering if that awesome Oversimplified video might have exaggerated Gen. Harney's reputation as a beard with a trainwreck stuck to it… he was worse than you think.
May 12, 1838
south of Fort Little River[1], Arkansaw
Even from up here, Lieutenant Alexander Stephens[2] couldn’t tell if what they were following had started out as an Indian trail or just a game trail. The last few farmsteads were back on the other side of the Red River. Up ahead—somewhere in all this forest—was the border. Just beyond that was the town of Granicus. And somewhere beyond that were Lamar, Quitman, and their merry men.
And from the looks of things, Harney was somewhere out there too by now. Stephens signaled for them to start pulling on the rope. His balloon was hitched to the back of a wagon being pulled by a mule train—which probably slowed Taylor’s men down, not that cavalry could make good speed in this terrain anyway.
Stephens got out of the balloon. At least it was easy to see they were on the right path. The trail was heavily trampled, and after two cavalry forces had gone through, well-nigh everything a horse might choose to eat was browsed away. Which meant they couldn’t stay long.
This had been a very confusing few weeks. First they’d gotten orders from the President himself telling them that they were now at war with the Spanish Empire. Taylor had left Lauderdale in command of the fort with just enough men to defend it and taken the rest with him up the river.
Before they’d even made it into Arkansas, Taylor had gotten a notice from Speaker of the House Daniel Webster, co-signed by Senators Clay and Southard and Rep. Adams, informing them that in the interests of clarity, he should know that Congress had voted not to declare war on New Spain or the Spanish Empire.[3] This was accompanied by messages from Secretary Poinsett and General Scott, to the same effect. Shouldn’t Scott be on his way to Canada by now? Perhaps he sent the note just before he left.
Two days after that, when they were almost back to Natchez, word from the reserves at Coffeesburg had come.
General Harney had received direct orders from the president to march for Texas. As expected, he’d obeyed them.
As unexpected, he’d disregarded all subsequent communications.
His army had nearly had its own civil war. Harney had given his men some sort of speech, culminating with the words that “the knell of power was sounded in Europe when the first Pilgrim vessel sought a harbor on the western shores of the Atlantic.”[4] As many of the officers had pointed out—and as Taylor had certainly pointed out—they’d taken an oath to the Constitution, not to the fellow in the Oval Office, and the Constitution was very clear on who did and did not have the power to declare war. If Congress said there was no war, there was no war. That had been good enough for most of them, but not for General Harney and a couple of thousand young volunteers. They hadn’t all been cavalry, but Harney had swiped enough of the Army’s horses to get them all mounted.
Having heard this, Taylor sent the rest of his men back to Natchez under the command of Call[5] and gone in pursuit with three regiments of cavalry and a wagon team with an observation balloon.
But they were too late. Harney and his hooligans were somewhere on the wrong side of the border along with the filibuster. What they were going to eat over there was anybody’s guess.[6]
“So… no sign of them?” said Taylor.
“Sorry, sir.”
“Damnation.” Taylor shook his head. “‘Hero of Mount Hope.’ Five minutes’ conversation with that man and I was thinking to myself, ‘I am in the presence of a madman.’ Didn’t think he was this crazy, though. So now we probably will be at war before too long. Which means I need to get that fort ready for an attack, on top of everything else.”
“Everything else,” Stephens knew, meant preparing to invade Louisiana again and face Wellington and the Volonté in battle. More men were supposed to be coming to the Louisiana front, but no one seemed to expect anything to happen before September. Stephens had heard rumors of secret weapons being built somewhere upstream, but he had no idea what they were. If I did, they wouldn’t be secret weapons, now would they? Whatever they are, I doubt they’ll make as much difference as having a whole new enemy to fight.
May 15, 1838
north of Nacogdoches, Tejas
General José de Urrea leaned down and sniffed the waters of Bayou La Nana. Well, at least I know where they are now. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t stop him from pissing in it. So he didn’t need the report from his scouts to tell him where the enemy was. They were upstream—lots and lots of them.
What he did need his scouts for was to tell him if the enemy knew where he was, what they were planning to do, and—most importantly—if they were just a band of bandits or if there were real soldiers among them. That would tell him whether or not this was really a war. It would also tell him how likely he was to win the coming battle.
And here came one now, splash-galloping down the streambed.
“I was spotted, sir!” The scout gasped as if he’d been the one doing the running, not his horse. “A Yankee scout saw me and ran north.”
“How was he dressed?”
“Blue coat. Shiny buttons.”
Shit. That was a U.S. Army uniform.
So what were they going to do now? If they chose to attack, he would need to meet them, and the best way to do that would be to form a line of battle. If they chose to retreat, he would need to chase them, and the worst way to do that in these woods would be to form a line of battle.
“Thank you,” he said. “Now go back out there and see how many there are, and what they’re doing next.”
So. They have chosen violence. Any minute now, the Yankees—no regimental colors beyond a U.S. flag and something that might have been someone’s idea of a Texas state flag, but enough for about two regiments—would come charging down the streambed. Probably. It was the mostly likely avenue of attack for cavalry in this hilly, forested terrain.
“Fifth, forward twenty paces on the left, ten on the right! Nineteenth, foward ten paces on the left, twenty on the right!” He turned to one aide. “Bring forward the artillery. All of it.” He turned to another. “Tell Col. Comonfort[7] to go west, just, behind the ridge of those hills, and then bring his regiment north—and to take our remounts with him.”
“Remounts, sir?”
“Yes.”
Urrea spent the next few minutes refining the line of battle he’d ordered, shaping it into a crescent with the horns pointing north. This sort of complicated maneuver was more suited to the parade-ground than the battlefield—it taught men discipline and precise obedience. But it sometimes had its uses in combat, especially if you wanted to aim as many guns and cannon as possible at a narrow front, and you wanted the enemy to be able to see that you were doing it.
And, on his right… yes. It was just Col. Comonfort’s cavalry regiment behind the ridge, but the army’s remounts raised a cloud of dust that from here looked like it belonged to a force three or four times the size. Urrea allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. An impenetrable barrier to the south. A large cavalry force to the west. They’ll either retreat or go east. And if they go east, we can chivvy them southeast, away from town. Maybe they’ll find the road and take it back across the border—good riddance—or maybe they’ll keep going southeast. They’ll find the further you go, the thicker the woods get, until you realize you’ve blundered into the Conchate—the worst horse country north of Tehuantepec. Considering I had to come up with this plan on the spur of the moment… not bad.
And here they came, in a column, perhaps thirty or forty abreast. Urrea got back on his horse and took up position with his ranks. In a minute the enemy would be within volley range.
Thirty seconds.
Twenty seconds. Some of them were already shooting, the revolvers in their hands making unfamiliar little pops. The man in the lead had a particularly splendid beard.
Ten seconds. They’re not retreating. They’re not going east. They certainly aren’t in line of battle. Do they know something we don’t, or…
Never mind.
Now.
“FIRE!”
The noise of the volley from muskets and cannons blotted out all hearing, all thought, for a second or more. The smoke from it made it impossible to see. Urrea was counting out thirty seconds.
Three. Two. One.
“FIRE!”
Another volley, almost as crisp as the first. Somewhere in the smoke up ahead, the enemy was returning fire—returning quite a lot of it, far more than he would have expected from the size of the front line. But not enough to match a volley from Urrea’s line of battle—not even in bullets, let alone cannonballs. Even as he counted out thirty more seconds, he thought What the hell are they doing up there? Advancing? Retreating? Dancing the quadrille? They can’t defeat us like this. Is there some other enemy force we don’t know about, waiting to take us in flank?
“FIRE!”
After the third volley, the sound of gunfire from up ahead died down. Or I’ve just gone deaf… but if they were still coming, I think I’d still hear the hoofbeats. Wait for the smoke to clear. He looked down. The stream seemed to have shrunk, and was running with swirls of red. Mother of God, how many men did we just kill?
The wind picked up, and showed him. The stream up ahead was plugged with bodies. The water that was getting through was red with the blood of men and horses. It couldn’t have been more than a portion of the attacking army, but the rest of it was heading north into the distance.
Urrea ordered his men forward. He found the body of the bearded man wearing the general’s uniform, a bullet hole in the chest. Whoever you were, you were brave, thought Urrea. You were also an idiot. You didn’t even think to take the obvious avenue of escape. That was a waste of a perfectly good trap.
What to do next? He could go south back to town, then take the Royal Road over the border to Natchitoches, which was poorly defended and which the Americans would have trouble reinforcing with the Great Raft in the way… which also meant he could burn it to the ground without having any effect on their ability to invade. What a stupid place for a war. We’re like two men trying to slit each other’s throats with our toenails out here.
“First, we find some clean water,” he said. “Then we clean up this mess, before people back in town start getting sick. Then we go to Granicus.” If the Yankees had reinforcements, coming, it would be risky meeting them there… but if we don’t even try to defend our border, we never had any business calling this land our own in the first place.
Two other men came up, holding a third between them. “One of the prisoners, sir—we found him trapped under a fallen horse. I think he’s the one you wanted.”
General Urrea looked the wet, rumpled prisoner up and down, then smiled. “Señor Navarro,” he said. “The man who wanted slavery more than he wanted New Spain. They’ll be very pleased to see you down in México.”
May 26, 1838
The U.S./New Spain border
Literally and metaphorically, the town of Granicus smoldered behind Urrea as he prepared to meet whoever was in charge. A dozen buildings that Yankees had seen fit to shoot from had been burned yesterday.
Who knew there were this many of them? There are at least as many Yankee settlers in Tejas as ours, and ours are mostly Irish and Austrians and such.[8] We have let things slide, and now we either have to drive these people out or govern them and try to win their loyalty.
His men were keeping an eye on the sullen inhabitants as they paced out walls surrounding where the courthouse had once stood, where Urrea meant to build what he’d decided to call the Presidio San Agustín del Nuevo Tucsón[9].
A man on horseback was coming under a flag of truce, with an honor guard and some sort of wagon. The rope to an observation balloon was rising from the back of the wagon. Urrea had only ever seen such a balloon once before, inside Mayagüey when the rebels had it under siege. Most of the battlefields he’d fought on, there’d been too much cover for eyes in the sky to be any use.
We need to get some of those things. They know exactly what we have and where we have it, and I have no idea what they’ve got. That’s no way to win a battle.
But they were the ones who’d asked for a cease-fire. Which Urrea had agreed to, not least because he was running low on ammunition. A hastily-made coffin rested on the ground beside his horse, quite ripe on this hot day.
Which was good. It meant both he and Zachary Taylor—for that was the Yankee general’s name—had reason to get through the small talk as quickly as possible.
“The body of your general. He fell at Bayou La Nana, where we recovered this flag.” While the interpreter was translating that, Urrea presented Taylor with a pair of neatly folded U.S. flags. “Muddy, but a little cleaning will take care of that. And this flag”—the one underneath was much cleaner—“was raised over the town hall in Granicus. In the future, I recommend you keep them where they belong.”
One advantage of having a conversation through interpreters was that it gave you a moment to think. General Taylor showed no sign of either intimidation or anger at the warning, and he nodded as he inspected the flags for any sign of vandalism or dishonor. There were none. Urrea preferred to vent his fury on things that were a danger to him and his men.
“You requested this cease-fire,” said Urrea. “How long do you want it to last?”
“As far as I’m concerned, it can last till Judgment Day,” said Taylor. “We’re not supposed to be at war in the first place.”
Now that was news. “This general thought differently.”
“General Harney—that was his name, if you care—followed illegal orders. I don’t. You want a fight, you come to my fort and we’ll be happy to oblige. You don’t want one, you can stay right where you are.”
“It sounds like your army has come down with a bad case of politics,” said Urrea. “I know what that’s like.”
The expression of sympathy seemed to make Taylor angry rather than anything else. “It won’t happen here, by God. Not if I have anything to say about it. Until Congress declares war or your Viceroy declares war, there is no war. Not here. If it suits your purposes to tell ‘em back in your capital that you put the fear of God in me, you go right ahead and do that. You can guess what I’ll be telling ‘em back in Washington.” He turned to his men. “Take Harney here back to Little Rock, and see if that town has a proper mortician.”
As Taylor was turning away, Comonfort leaned in a little closer. “Do you trust him, sir?”
“I don’t trust. Let’s smile at them and keep our guns ready.”
“But not use them?”
Urrea shook his head. “Normally when planning battle, it’s best to imagine the worst,” said Urrea. “But in this case, let’s imagine the best. Suppose we win. Suppose we send these men skittering away like cockroaches and go forth in triumph. By the time we reach the Mississippi we’ll be making soup of our own boots. It is as much as our logistics train can do to sustain us here, let alone over the border.”
[1] Which is couple miles northwest of where Fulton, AR is IOTL.
[2] He’s been promoted twice since we last saw him—expanding armies need officers, and he’s an educated man from a literate family.
[3] Although Webster didn’t say so during the debate, he was smart enough to figure out the same thing Sumner did—that Berrien was in on this plan for a very long time—and that he might not respond well to having such a long-running plan thwarted at the last minute.
[4] An OTL Harney quote.
[5] General Richard Keith Call.
[6] I’m sure this will come as a great shock to everyone, but IOTL Harney was not good at keeping his men warm and well-fed, which was a problem when he marched through the Upper Midwest during the ’55-’56 winter.
[7] Ignacio Comonfort
[8] IOTL, by 1834 the Anglo-Americans in Texas considerably outnumbered the Mexicans.
[9] Urrea was born in Presidio San Agustín del Tucsón—modern Tucson, AZ IOTL.
David Daggett, of Connecticut (Berrien wanted to prove the Quids weren't just for Southerners anymore). He's racist even by 19th-century standards, but he's also a government-of-laws-not-of-men type who was an early proponent of a new state constitution for Connecticut, which was run by the 1662 charter until 1818.
Daggett hasn't done much of anything as VP, and he's so old that he probably wouldn't stay on the ticket in 1840 no matter what happened.
Not quite, but very soon. Not long, in fact, after they find out that Berrien ordered the Army to invade Texas anyway.
Oh, and in case anyone's wondering if that awesome Oversimplified video might have exaggerated Gen. Harney's reputation as a beard with a trainwreck stuck to it… he was worse than you think.
May 12, 1838
south of Fort Little River[1], Arkansaw
Even from up here, Lieutenant Alexander Stephens[2] couldn’t tell if what they were following had started out as an Indian trail or just a game trail. The last few farmsteads were back on the other side of the Red River. Up ahead—somewhere in all this forest—was the border. Just beyond that was the town of Granicus. And somewhere beyond that were Lamar, Quitman, and their merry men.
And from the looks of things, Harney was somewhere out there too by now. Stephens signaled for them to start pulling on the rope. His balloon was hitched to the back of a wagon being pulled by a mule train—which probably slowed Taylor’s men down, not that cavalry could make good speed in this terrain anyway.
Stephens got out of the balloon. At least it was easy to see they were on the right path. The trail was heavily trampled, and after two cavalry forces had gone through, well-nigh everything a horse might choose to eat was browsed away. Which meant they couldn’t stay long.
This had been a very confusing few weeks. First they’d gotten orders from the President himself telling them that they were now at war with the Spanish Empire. Taylor had left Lauderdale in command of the fort with just enough men to defend it and taken the rest with him up the river.
Before they’d even made it into Arkansas, Taylor had gotten a notice from Speaker of the House Daniel Webster, co-signed by Senators Clay and Southard and Rep. Adams, informing them that in the interests of clarity, he should know that Congress had voted not to declare war on New Spain or the Spanish Empire.[3] This was accompanied by messages from Secretary Poinsett and General Scott, to the same effect. Shouldn’t Scott be on his way to Canada by now? Perhaps he sent the note just before he left.
Two days after that, when they were almost back to Natchez, word from the reserves at Coffeesburg had come.
General Harney had received direct orders from the president to march for Texas. As expected, he’d obeyed them.
As unexpected, he’d disregarded all subsequent communications.
His army had nearly had its own civil war. Harney had given his men some sort of speech, culminating with the words that “the knell of power was sounded in Europe when the first Pilgrim vessel sought a harbor on the western shores of the Atlantic.”[4] As many of the officers had pointed out—and as Taylor had certainly pointed out—they’d taken an oath to the Constitution, not to the fellow in the Oval Office, and the Constitution was very clear on who did and did not have the power to declare war. If Congress said there was no war, there was no war. That had been good enough for most of them, but not for General Harney and a couple of thousand young volunteers. They hadn’t all been cavalry, but Harney had swiped enough of the Army’s horses to get them all mounted.
Having heard this, Taylor sent the rest of his men back to Natchez under the command of Call[5] and gone in pursuit with three regiments of cavalry and a wagon team with an observation balloon.
But they were too late. Harney and his hooligans were somewhere on the wrong side of the border along with the filibuster. What they were going to eat over there was anybody’s guess.[6]
“So… no sign of them?” said Taylor.
“Sorry, sir.”
“Damnation.” Taylor shook his head. “‘Hero of Mount Hope.’ Five minutes’ conversation with that man and I was thinking to myself, ‘I am in the presence of a madman.’ Didn’t think he was this crazy, though. So now we probably will be at war before too long. Which means I need to get that fort ready for an attack, on top of everything else.”
“Everything else,” Stephens knew, meant preparing to invade Louisiana again and face Wellington and the Volonté in battle. More men were supposed to be coming to the Louisiana front, but no one seemed to expect anything to happen before September. Stephens had heard rumors of secret weapons being built somewhere upstream, but he had no idea what they were. If I did, they wouldn’t be secret weapons, now would they? Whatever they are, I doubt they’ll make as much difference as having a whole new enemy to fight.
May 15, 1838
north of Nacogdoches, Tejas
General José de Urrea leaned down and sniffed the waters of Bayou La Nana. Well, at least I know where they are now. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t stop him from pissing in it. So he didn’t need the report from his scouts to tell him where the enemy was. They were upstream—lots and lots of them.
What he did need his scouts for was to tell him if the enemy knew where he was, what they were planning to do, and—most importantly—if they were just a band of bandits or if there were real soldiers among them. That would tell him whether or not this was really a war. It would also tell him how likely he was to win the coming battle.
And here came one now, splash-galloping down the streambed.
“I was spotted, sir!” The scout gasped as if he’d been the one doing the running, not his horse. “A Yankee scout saw me and ran north.”
“How was he dressed?”
“Blue coat. Shiny buttons.”
Shit. That was a U.S. Army uniform.
So what were they going to do now? If they chose to attack, he would need to meet them, and the best way to do that would be to form a line of battle. If they chose to retreat, he would need to chase them, and the worst way to do that in these woods would be to form a line of battle.
“Thank you,” he said. “Now go back out there and see how many there are, and what they’re doing next.”
***
So. They have chosen violence. Any minute now, the Yankees—no regimental colors beyond a U.S. flag and something that might have been someone’s idea of a Texas state flag, but enough for about two regiments—would come charging down the streambed. Probably. It was the mostly likely avenue of attack for cavalry in this hilly, forested terrain.
“Fifth, forward twenty paces on the left, ten on the right! Nineteenth, foward ten paces on the left, twenty on the right!” He turned to one aide. “Bring forward the artillery. All of it.” He turned to another. “Tell Col. Comonfort[7] to go west, just, behind the ridge of those hills, and then bring his regiment north—and to take our remounts with him.”
“Remounts, sir?”
“Yes.”
Urrea spent the next few minutes refining the line of battle he’d ordered, shaping it into a crescent with the horns pointing north. This sort of complicated maneuver was more suited to the parade-ground than the battlefield—it taught men discipline and precise obedience. But it sometimes had its uses in combat, especially if you wanted to aim as many guns and cannon as possible at a narrow front, and you wanted the enemy to be able to see that you were doing it.
And, on his right… yes. It was just Col. Comonfort’s cavalry regiment behind the ridge, but the army’s remounts raised a cloud of dust that from here looked like it belonged to a force three or four times the size. Urrea allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. An impenetrable barrier to the south. A large cavalry force to the west. They’ll either retreat or go east. And if they go east, we can chivvy them southeast, away from town. Maybe they’ll find the road and take it back across the border—good riddance—or maybe they’ll keep going southeast. They’ll find the further you go, the thicker the woods get, until you realize you’ve blundered into the Conchate—the worst horse country north of Tehuantepec. Considering I had to come up with this plan on the spur of the moment… not bad.
And here they came, in a column, perhaps thirty or forty abreast. Urrea got back on his horse and took up position with his ranks. In a minute the enemy would be within volley range.
Thirty seconds.
Twenty seconds. Some of them were already shooting, the revolvers in their hands making unfamiliar little pops. The man in the lead had a particularly splendid beard.
Ten seconds. They’re not retreating. They’re not going east. They certainly aren’t in line of battle. Do they know something we don’t, or…
Never mind.
Now.
“FIRE!”
The noise of the volley from muskets and cannons blotted out all hearing, all thought, for a second or more. The smoke from it made it impossible to see. Urrea was counting out thirty seconds.
Three. Two. One.
“FIRE!”
Another volley, almost as crisp as the first. Somewhere in the smoke up ahead, the enemy was returning fire—returning quite a lot of it, far more than he would have expected from the size of the front line. But not enough to match a volley from Urrea’s line of battle—not even in bullets, let alone cannonballs. Even as he counted out thirty more seconds, he thought What the hell are they doing up there? Advancing? Retreating? Dancing the quadrille? They can’t defeat us like this. Is there some other enemy force we don’t know about, waiting to take us in flank?
“FIRE!”
After the third volley, the sound of gunfire from up ahead died down. Or I’ve just gone deaf… but if they were still coming, I think I’d still hear the hoofbeats. Wait for the smoke to clear. He looked down. The stream seemed to have shrunk, and was running with swirls of red. Mother of God, how many men did we just kill?
The wind picked up, and showed him. The stream up ahead was plugged with bodies. The water that was getting through was red with the blood of men and horses. It couldn’t have been more than a portion of the attacking army, but the rest of it was heading north into the distance.
Urrea ordered his men forward. He found the body of the bearded man wearing the general’s uniform, a bullet hole in the chest. Whoever you were, you were brave, thought Urrea. You were also an idiot. You didn’t even think to take the obvious avenue of escape. That was a waste of a perfectly good trap.
What to do next? He could go south back to town, then take the Royal Road over the border to Natchitoches, which was poorly defended and which the Americans would have trouble reinforcing with the Great Raft in the way… which also meant he could burn it to the ground without having any effect on their ability to invade. What a stupid place for a war. We’re like two men trying to slit each other’s throats with our toenails out here.
“First, we find some clean water,” he said. “Then we clean up this mess, before people back in town start getting sick. Then we go to Granicus.” If the Yankees had reinforcements, coming, it would be risky meeting them there… but if we don’t even try to defend our border, we never had any business calling this land our own in the first place.
Two other men came up, holding a third between them. “One of the prisoners, sir—we found him trapped under a fallen horse. I think he’s the one you wanted.”
General Urrea looked the wet, rumpled prisoner up and down, then smiled. “Señor Navarro,” he said. “The man who wanted slavery more than he wanted New Spain. They’ll be very pleased to see you down in México.”
May 26, 1838
The U.S./New Spain border
Literally and metaphorically, the town of Granicus smoldered behind Urrea as he prepared to meet whoever was in charge. A dozen buildings that Yankees had seen fit to shoot from had been burned yesterday.
Who knew there were this many of them? There are at least as many Yankee settlers in Tejas as ours, and ours are mostly Irish and Austrians and such.[8] We have let things slide, and now we either have to drive these people out or govern them and try to win their loyalty.
His men were keeping an eye on the sullen inhabitants as they paced out walls surrounding where the courthouse had once stood, where Urrea meant to build what he’d decided to call the Presidio San Agustín del Nuevo Tucsón[9].
A man on horseback was coming under a flag of truce, with an honor guard and some sort of wagon. The rope to an observation balloon was rising from the back of the wagon. Urrea had only ever seen such a balloon once before, inside Mayagüey when the rebels had it under siege. Most of the battlefields he’d fought on, there’d been too much cover for eyes in the sky to be any use.
We need to get some of those things. They know exactly what we have and where we have it, and I have no idea what they’ve got. That’s no way to win a battle.
But they were the ones who’d asked for a cease-fire. Which Urrea had agreed to, not least because he was running low on ammunition. A hastily-made coffin rested on the ground beside his horse, quite ripe on this hot day.
Which was good. It meant both he and Zachary Taylor—for that was the Yankee general’s name—had reason to get through the small talk as quickly as possible.
“The body of your general. He fell at Bayou La Nana, where we recovered this flag.” While the interpreter was translating that, Urrea presented Taylor with a pair of neatly folded U.S. flags. “Muddy, but a little cleaning will take care of that. And this flag”—the one underneath was much cleaner—“was raised over the town hall in Granicus. In the future, I recommend you keep them where they belong.”
One advantage of having a conversation through interpreters was that it gave you a moment to think. General Taylor showed no sign of either intimidation or anger at the warning, and he nodded as he inspected the flags for any sign of vandalism or dishonor. There were none. Urrea preferred to vent his fury on things that were a danger to him and his men.
“You requested this cease-fire,” said Urrea. “How long do you want it to last?”
“As far as I’m concerned, it can last till Judgment Day,” said Taylor. “We’re not supposed to be at war in the first place.”
Now that was news. “This general thought differently.”
“General Harney—that was his name, if you care—followed illegal orders. I don’t. You want a fight, you come to my fort and we’ll be happy to oblige. You don’t want one, you can stay right where you are.”
“It sounds like your army has come down with a bad case of politics,” said Urrea. “I know what that’s like.”
The expression of sympathy seemed to make Taylor angry rather than anything else. “It won’t happen here, by God. Not if I have anything to say about it. Until Congress declares war or your Viceroy declares war, there is no war. Not here. If it suits your purposes to tell ‘em back in your capital that you put the fear of God in me, you go right ahead and do that. You can guess what I’ll be telling ‘em back in Washington.” He turned to his men. “Take Harney here back to Little Rock, and see if that town has a proper mortician.”
As Taylor was turning away, Comonfort leaned in a little closer. “Do you trust him, sir?”
“I don’t trust. Let’s smile at them and keep our guns ready.”
“But not use them?”
Urrea shook his head. “Normally when planning battle, it’s best to imagine the worst,” said Urrea. “But in this case, let’s imagine the best. Suppose we win. Suppose we send these men skittering away like cockroaches and go forth in triumph. By the time we reach the Mississippi we’ll be making soup of our own boots. It is as much as our logistics train can do to sustain us here, let alone over the border.”
[1] Which is couple miles northwest of where Fulton, AR is IOTL.
[2] He’s been promoted twice since we last saw him—expanding armies need officers, and he’s an educated man from a literate family.
[3] Although Webster didn’t say so during the debate, he was smart enough to figure out the same thing Sumner did—that Berrien was in on this plan for a very long time—and that he might not respond well to having such a long-running plan thwarted at the last minute.
[4] An OTL Harney quote.
[5] General Richard Keith Call.
[6] I’m sure this will come as a great shock to everyone, but IOTL Harney was not good at keeping his men warm and well-fed, which was a problem when he marched through the Upper Midwest during the ’55-’56 winter.
[7] Ignacio Comonfort
[8] IOTL, by 1834 the Anglo-Americans in Texas considerably outnumbered the Mexicans.
[9] Urrea was born in Presidio San Agustín del Tucsón—modern Tucson, AZ IOTL.
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Berrien, just what does he think will happen? Even many Quids will turn on him for this outlawery. The filibusters were one thing, heck even provoking some incident; but illegally ordering the army? There's no denying this or diverting it. He and Fanin are working out of same playbook it feels like.
Small wonder Berrien will be the last Quid president, all the effort to sell themselves as reasonable alternative to the DRP has gone up in smoke and they threw the torch themselves.
Is Lamar dead as well?
Small wonder Berrien will be the last Quid president, all the effort to sell themselves as reasonable alternative to the DRP has gone up in smoke and they threw the torch themselves.
Is Lamar dead as well?
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You know, May 1 is the Duke of Wellington’s birthday. It was very thoughtful of Berrien and Harney to try and give him such a lovely gift as a whole new ally to fight the war with.
Just thought I'd go back and read the thread because its been a while that I've read it fully, and well,....thank God. You then noticee a few things that you don't remember reading a long time ago.
Oddily enough this post was on the 26 October, 2021. Nearly a year now that Berrien has been power in this thread.
Well, that went even worse than expected. In a way, perhaps it was for the best that Taylor's men didn't catch up to the soldiers, could have led to a sort of civil war there and then. Hearing about this defeat certainly isn't going to do Berrien any favours neither. He's subverted the constitution and sent American forces to a bloody defeat in doing so while opening up another front of fighting. Even if there isn't a push from New Spain, there's going to need to be more soldiers on the border to defend it now.
Well, it is Zachary Taylor.Welll....Pre civil war generals with common sense? What have you done Lycoan
And Scott was mentioned earlier.
Yep. He of "I hate you! I've always hated you!" Fame.
And I've noticed another meme reference in the story, @Lycaon pictus . Spotted a few of them over updates and handled nicely as well.
Dead of Winter (7)
Lycaon pictus
Donor
As it happens, the answer is below.
This U.S. Army is definitely more professional. Thinking of the British Empire as the primary foe, instead of Native tribes with limited manpower and industry, will do that. There are exceptions, of course—like Twiggs, who learned early on that attacking as fast as possible with as many guys as you can bring frequently wins battles and never bothered to learn anything more complicated, or Harney, who's the kind of guy Elmar will invent the term "thopsocrat" to describe—somebody whose skill (note singular) is making the right friends.Welll....Pre civil war generals with common sense? What have you done Lycoan
I promise I'm getting to Canada.
June 4, 1838
Washington, DC
Secretary of War Joel Roberts Poinsett grited his teeth as he rode up Pennsylvania Avenue in the late-afternoon heat. The White House was along the way from Capitol Hill back to his office.[1] So—even after a long and wearying interrogation such as he had just experienced—there was no excuse not to visit the man at whose pleasure he served, and whom he had just… not exactly betrayed, but not served very well, either.
His driver stopped in front of the executive mansion. He hesitated a little before stepping out of the carriage. This is ridiculous. I confronted horse thieves in the Caucasus. I charged the Royalist guns at San Carlos and seized Talcahuano for the Chileans, for all the good it did. I fought off bandits in Gran Colombia[2]. I refuse to be intimidated by one portly old man. Poinsett chuckled a little at his own folly. He and the president were both men in their late fifties, and neither had aged well in the past fifteen months. If Berrien had run to fat instead of turning gaunt and grim like Poinsett, that was no great shame. Unlike some other things he’s done.
Waiting outside the oval office, Poinsett could hear a voice that wasn’t Berrien’s: “Mr. President, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to cut their wages to the bone. But if I cut them any further, they’ll join the Army for better pay, and then where will we be?”
It sounded like Berrien asked if there was any way of speeding up whatever they were talking about.
“Given the men and money available, the Navy Yard can rebuild the Election by the end of next year, and another one by 1840. No sooner.” So that was what it was about—more demologoi, and preferably seaworthy ones. Charleston had Fort Sumter, but Savannah and Mobile were still relatively unprotected. At the end of the discussion, Poinsett saw Isaac Chauncey of the Board of Navy Commissioners leaving, looking older and much more tired than either him or the president.[3]
The pleasantries between Poinsett and Berrien were over quickly. “So, what did Webster ask?”
“It took him several minutes to get around to the question. His first priority was to establish that he had indeed warned us about Astoria and its vulnerability. I presented the committee with Jesup’s estimate of the logistical requirements of sending regiments of infantry and artillery batteries along the whole length of the Trail to reinforce Astoria, and relayed your own opinion that it would be too great a strain on our resources, given our priorities.”
Berrien looked at him like a loving but disappointed father, which was downright risible coming from a man nearly two and a half years his junior. “So you made it clear that you yourself were not to blame.”
“It was the truth, Mr. President.”
“Well, you might have done worse,” he said. “They didn’t ask about Texas?”
“That was not the subject of today’s hearing. But I would imagine there will be other hearings before long.”
“And you will tell them…”
“The truth, Mr. President. That I first learned of the expedition on Friday the 13th of April, and had every reason to believe the same of you. That on the following Monday, when Congress voted against war, I sent a memorandum to field officers to that effect. And that I knew nothing of any word you might have sent to the contrary until last week. Which makes me wonder if I still have your trust.”
Berrien sighed. “You’re not the only one. I had to talk John out of resigning on the spot.” He looked pained as he said this. Poinsett knew the plan was for Tyler to succeed him, assuming the electorate ever trusted the Tertium Quids with high office again in any of their lifetimes. “He seemed wounded that I hadn’t let him in on my plans. I tried to explain to him that secrecy was of the utmost importance, but…”
Poinsett pictured the Spanish ambassador and the consul from New Spain visiting John Tyler in his office, asking him if the United States was or was not at war with them… and Tyler having no notion how to answer. But trying to explain to Berrien how this might have made it hard for the Secretary of State to do his job would have been as pointless as trying to explain the U.S. system of government to the Khan of Kuban.[4] And Berrien probably couldn’t replace anyone in his Cabinet if he wanted to—the Senate was not in a mood to confirm his appointments.
“And yesterday Calhoun came to me and suggested ‘in the interests of the party’ that I resign—step aside in favor of Daggett. Daggett! A man who knows no more of war than…”
“Henry Brougham?”
Berrien looked startled for a moment, then chuckled. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“I must remind you, Mr. President—Daggett was your choice.”
“Well, yes. I needed a northern man somewhere.”
Poinsett nodded. “Daggett was your choice—as was this war. You wanted it from the beginning, knowing he might be called upon to replace you. And to be honest, from what I saw and heard of the mood on Capitol Hill, it may yet happen.”
“Impeachment?”
“I’ve heard the word spoken. And none of the witnesses in that matter that the House has called have arrived yet.”
“Beau has already assured me he will go to prison rather than testify against me.” Seeing Poinsett’s reaction, Berrien lifted his hand. “You needn’t say it, Joel. Your loyalty is to the United States, not to myself.”
“Indeed, Mr. President.”
“In the past few days every officer of the Army and Navy, from Scott on down, has made a point of reminding me what they swore an oath to, and who they did not. Anyone would think I’d asked them to declare me their king and march on Congress.”
“Which means whatever the filibusterers do—those that survived—the officers won’t hesitate to testify against you. And you did put your instructions to them in writing.” Berrien nodded. “Forgive me, but, Mr. President, when you sent that order, with no authorization from Congress… what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking—mistakenly, as it seems—that the Dead Roses at least loved the nation more than they hated our peculiar institution. I was thinking that if we ended up with Texas, no one would much care how we got it. I was thinking that we cannot leave this war empty-handed.”
“We have Toronto.”
Berrien just gave him a look, as though that was too foolish to deserve a response.
“Ah,” said Poinsett. “We Americans have Toronto. We planters…”
Berrien nodded. “We Southern gentry. We true heirs of Washington and Jefferson and Madison[5]. We guardians of the institution that has brought this country untold wealth, which those people up north…” The president bit his lip. “I must not speak this way in public. I must needs present myself as president of the whole nation, North and South alike. But I maintain that those people are simply trying to make a virtue of envy. If there were a single cotton or sugarcane cultivar that could grow in New England’s climate and soil, all those fine moral philosophers would be bending their intellects to the task of maintaining the proper relation of the races instead of thinking up new reasons to undermine it.”
And if in my youth I had taken an interest in oratory rather than science, cultivating words instead of flowers, I would be sitting where you sit today, Mr. President. And I think the republic would be much the better for it.
[1] Recall that this D.C. never retroceded its land south of the Potomac back to Virginia, and that the Department of War is about where the Memorial Amphitheater is IOTL. Having land on both sides of the Potomac means that there’s been an incentive to build bridges sooner than IOTL. As of now, the largest bridges are the Aqueduct Bridge a little bit west of IOTL’s Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge, and the new road-rail bridge more or less where IOTL’s Arland D. Williams Memorial Bridge is, but the bridges Poinsett’s planning to use are a couple of drawbridges that cross Mason Island (Theodore Roosevelt Island IOTL).
[2] ITTL instead of being sent as special envoy to Mexico, he was sent to Gran Colombia in 1822. When he wasn’t advising the government, he explored the country as an amateur botanist and mixed it up with some bandits who tried to rob his caravan. He also found and attached his name to Jacaranda poinsettia (Jacaranda caucana IOTL) and, impressed by its big purple-blue blossoms, brought some seeds home. They had zero frost tolerance and got too tall for his greenhouse, so he donated them to the city of Pensacola, which is currently struggling to keep them alive in a public park. Since then he’s gone on other expeditions to South America, looking for medicinal plants that a certain dyes/pharmaceuticals/weapons firm can use. No real point to this story, except that Poinsett is a badass who really likes flowers and there should be more timelines about him.
[3] IOTL Chauncey died in 1840, a month short of 69.
[4] A small state north of the Caucasus and east of the Sea of Azov, which Poinsett visited on his travels.
[5] James Madison died in 1835 ITTL.
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