Well, this is punch two from the UK and, going by last updates, punches three and four are soon in coming as well. I can only imagine the uproar soldiers being executed for taking slaves will cause in the US, especially since they left a paper trail condemning themselves as well. What were the actual chain of events in Florida? The American forces spread out too fast and too far, allowing the British reinforcements to work with the Florida military forces to sweep them all up?
Pretty much. Johnston and Trousdale did make it to St. Augustine, but were unable to take the town—the recruits gathering there got an early introduction to combat—and their cavalry screen had so many holes in it that they woke up and found themselves surrounded.
The entire American military combined currently shares the same amount of IQ points as a fig.
Well in the Southern Theater at least. Remember they've been doing well in the Canadas.
The campaign in the Canadas is being run by professionals, even if one of them is "Pig War" Harney. The Florida campaign is at least half amateur hour—too many new regiments with no school-trained officers.

On top of that, a lot of the soldiers in the Florida campaign really don't get the idea that they can be punished for something they do to a nonwhite person. Hence the paper trail. (Note that Hooper Bragg, bitter and cynical as he is, doesn't have this problem—he doesn't even expect fairness, let alone favoritism. For him, this is just more shit life has sent his way.)
 
Just as a quick question, I'm surprised TTL has included both of the well known Jews in CSA leadership in Judah Benjamin and David Levy Yulee, was this intentional? However, given the David Levy Yulee did not add Yulee as a last name until 1846 soon after his marriage to Nancy Christian Wickliffe, daughter of ex-Governor Charles A. Wickliffe of Kentucky, I doubt he would be using it here.
 
If I have "Dixie's" number right; the failure of initial Florida invasion will set off panic, in at least Georgia, over a counterattack from Florida with slave uprisings to go with it. Even if the british plan on straying on the defensive, paranoia will run rampant I expect.

Which makes me wonder about the Cherokee. Berrien has been their enemy for quite awhile though not graduated to full war. Will he try and bury the hatchet to gain their strength this crisis? Will he stay the course of keeping them out of matters? Or will he tray an sapegoat them as traitors and spies for the British to explain the failure in Florida?
 
Just as a quick question, I'm surprised TTL has included both of the well known Jews in CSA leadership in Judah Benjamin and David Levy Yulee, was this intentional? However, given the David Levy Yulee did not add Yulee as a last name until 1846 soon after his marriage to Nancy Christian Wickliffe, daughter of ex-Governor Charles A. Wickliffe of Kentucky, I doubt he would be using it here.
It wasn't intentional. I was looking up early Florida settlers and Moses Levy's name came up. As for why David's named "Yulee" ITTL, it's because I didn't actually go beyond the Wikipedia article for every single historical figure, and back when I first mentioned him, the article was less thorough, so it was simpler for me to have him come up with a different reason for him to change his name.
If I have "Dixie's" number right; the failure of initial Florida invasion will set off panic, in at least Georgia, over a counterattack from Florida with slave uprisings to go with it. Even if the british plan on straying on the defensive, paranoia will run rampant I expect.

Which makes me wonder about the Cherokee. Berrien has been their enemy for quite awhile though not graduated to full war. Will he try and bury the hatchet to gain their strength this crisis? Will he stay the course of keeping them out of matters? Or will he tray an sapegoat them as traitors and spies for the British to explain the failure in Florida?
Georgia is definitely in a panic, and I'm afraid Berrien is blaming the Cherokees. Other TQs are sort of pretending to believe him, but the other parties aren't buying it. They knew Florida was going to be a strategic and logistical nightmare, and very soon the'll be hearing about the flank guards going off on slave raids instead of doing their jobs.
Also—I'll get to this in a later post—a large, economically important, slave-dependent industry in Georgia, which even abolitionist New Englanders would not care to lose, happens to be right near the border. So Northerners in Congress are demanding the army defend the border, and patch things up with the Cherokees if they'll go back to helping defend it, rather than launch any sort of crusade for vengeance.
 
It wasn't intentional. I was looking up early Florida settlers and Moses Levy's name came up. As for why David's named "Yulee" ITTL, it's because I didn't actually go beyond the Wikipedia article for every single historical figure, and back when I first mentioned him, the article was less thorough, so it was simpler for me to have him come up with a different reason for him to change his name.

Georgia is definitely in a panic, and I'm afraid Berrien is blaming the Cherokees. Other TQs are sort of pretending to believe him, but the other parties aren't buying it. They knew Florida was going to be a strategic and logistical nightmare, and very soon the'll be hearing about the flank guards going off on slave raids instead of doing their jobs.
Also—I'll get to this in a later post—a large, economically important, slave-dependent industry in Georgia, which even abolitionist New Englanders would not care to lose, happens to be right near the border. So Northerners in Congress are demanding the army defend the border, and patch things up with the Cherokees if they'll go back to helping defend it, rather than launch any sort of crusade for vengeance.

I'm imagining now what'll happen if Berrien fails to patch things up very quickly and instead goes to war with an ally defending your border against a foe that's already got a large amount of the local populace sympathetic to them. I know Berrien's already shot himself in the foot, but he's not going to kneecap himself at the same time, is he?
 
I'm imagining now what'll happen if Berrien fails to patch things up very quickly and instead goes to war with an ally defending your border against a foe that's already got a large amount of the local populace sympathetic to them. I know Berrien's already shot himself in the foot, but he's not going to kneecap himself at the same time, is he?
This is the slavery-era South we’re talking about. Of course he’s going to compound shooting himself in the foot by shooting himself in the kneecap.
 
Damn what a gut punch those last couple of chapters were! Never thought I would be looking forward to seeing where Braxton Bragg of all people ended up...
 
The Stablers Send Their Regards (1)
louisiane36.png

Unlike Gen. Gaines’ massive assaults on Fort-Nord-Est and Fort-Wellington, the attack on Fort-Douane on October 12 was a minor affair. In truth, no one expected it to succeed—the goal was merely to prevent a sally and force Louisiana to divert troops from its small army to defend the fort.

When Lieutenant General Zachary Taylor and his forces arrived, they found what their spies had already told them was there—a fortification much too strong to be taken by any assault they could possibly make. It stood at the bank of the Mississippi, surrounded by three slave-dug moats too deep to wade. There was only one path through the defensive lines that could bear the weight of artillery or supply wagons, and that path had guns of every size trained directly on it from the fortress walls. The wooden walls were faced with brick, making them fireproof. Most of all, it was surrounded by kilometers of flat floodplain which had been cleared of trees, leaving them with no cover of any kind from which to approach the fort.

When Fort-Douane had been built, it had been intended as a facility for use in war and in peace, and the keystone of the little republic’s defenses. The customs duties collected there were to have paid for the maintenance of the fort and the garrison.

These ambitions soon fell foul of reality. The trade between the United States and the new republic was too massive to pass through a single facility for inspection without creating an intolerable bottleneck. In addition, the fort was often flooded after heavy rains, to the point where the only way to protect gunpowder was to store it on roofed platforms that floated on the water table. Fort-Douane was also, of course, subject to malaria and (later) cholera—so much so that it would be abandoned before the war was even over.

The bureaucrats, less accustomed to hardship than soldiers, were the first to decamp. Since the trade goods were mostly too bulky to be smuggled easily, the customs offices moved to Quai-Trudeau[1] and St-Francisville. The inspectors who were left were those deemed least competent or honest. American traders could have offloaded their goods at Fort-Douane, paid a few bribes, and let everything through without duties or tariffs… if the fort had been at all suitable as a transshipment point.

As with the bureaucracy, so with the military. As of 1837, the garrison was at half-strength on paper, less than that in reality due to frequent outbreaks of disease, and generally regarded as a punishment for officers and enlisted men who had misbehaved or failed in some way. The walls were practically standing on the water table, which meant Taylor’s engineers had no way to tunnel under them, but the weight of the brickwork and cannon on the Mississippi silt was already beginning to cause subsidence that damaged the structure. (As this writer discovered, the remains of the fort can only be toured by raft today.)

But while Louisiana’s armored gunboat, Volonté de la République, was nearby, the fort was effectively immune to assault from any direction but the southeast. With the fort so strong and attacks thus constrained, that handful of the worst soldiers in Louisiana could have held off a full army of the finest soldiers in the world, let alone General Taylor’s three regiments of cavalry and his engineering detail.

Taylor, of course, knew all this before he even arrived. Every American who traded on the Mississippi had to at least pass by Fort-Douane as he crossed the border, and had a chance to grit his teeth at the apparent unconquerability of the fort.

With this in mind, he began his attack. Taking advantage of the cleared fields, he set up tripods at the one-kilometer range to northeast and southwest and fired twenty rockets at the boats on the northwest side of the fort, which overlooked the river. Twelve of these rockets had been filled with “Babbitt’s Best Incendiary,” while eight had been filled with “No. 19” from the Stabler manufactory in Martinsburg. Unlike the infamous concoction that would soon be introduced to the world, these were intended for use against sails and cordage (and personnel). They did, however, manage to set several boats on fire. The garrison immediately separated these boats from the others and used bargepoles to push them out into the river where they could safely burn themselves out. While they did this, Taylor withdrew. From the garrison’s point of view, the Americans had made a weak and ineffectual attack and were now giving up on the whole thing.

The second attack came at night. The night of October 12 was a full moon with relatively clear skies, allowing Taylor’s army to operate without need of lanterns. They used the wagon-path (macadam held in place by twin rows of larger stones atop an earthen causeway) to approach close before the garrison heard them and raised the alarm.

At this point, the battle became completely one-sided. The same moonlight that let Taylor see what he was doing let the garrison see the army—and even if they hadn’t, previous crews had made notes of which guns to fire at which angles with which quantity of powder to send a cannonball over a given part of the road at the correct height. Like a mortar crew in a later war, they had no need to see with their own eyes what they were shooting at.

Taylor fired his remaining rockets at the fort, but there is no record of anyone being killed by them—or by his own rifle and revolver fire. Meanwhile, the artillery was killing and maiming his own men. Eventually he was forced to retreat.

But while he and the others at the point of attack had been firing, his other officers had been at work further back on the wagon-path. Engineers are used to building roads in all sorts of places under all sorts of conditions, and even they find it easier to destroy than to create. As Taylor retreated, he ignited the charges his engineers had set, blowing up the path in stages.

Morning revealed the damage. So much of the wagon-path was gone that it could no longer be used to transport artillery. The garrison itself was still free to leave, having portable pontoon bridges with which to cross the moats, but could bring nothing with them that they couldn’t carry on their backs. Taylor had taken 177 casualties, and the garrison had not lost a single man—but Taylor had won the battle. He was free to go where he would in enemy territory.

Charles Cerniglia, 1837


November 27, 1837
No. 10 Downing Street

There was a rap of small knuckles on the open door.

“Begging your pardon, sir, a telegram just came from Russell’s office.” The boy handed Brougham the message.

“Thank you.” Brougham took the message. It was very short, handwritten in all capitals:

TRAFALGAR FLORIDA 071037 PNKT[2]
MORRISON SAYS SLAVER TRIAL OVER[3] PNKT
ALL GUILTY PNKT
SENTENCE DEATH PNKT
HANGING DEFERRED PNKT
AWAITING WHITEHALL DECISION PNKT

This new German invention was a wonder. Companies were already forming that would make use of it on a larger scale, first in London and then all over the island. Before too long, everyone would be able to exchange words with distant family, friends, and business partners for the price of a telegram, as they now did in Hanover. And that was good. It irked Brougham for the kingdom to have fallen behind any state, even a friendly one, in science and technology—and it surely wouldn’t do to fall behind France, which was also adopting the telegraph. But for the moment, the prime minister could communicate with all the ministries at once, in minutes instead of hours, and no one else in London enjoyed such an advantage.

Of course, the effect was rather lost when a message took most of a month to get to London in the first place. This one was dated October 7. And before he acted on it, he would of course make a point of reading the original missive, which should be on his desk within the hour and would no doubt be rich with nuance that was lost in the curt format of the telegram.

Even so, there were certain basic principles at work. Anyone who sought to kidnap Her Majesty’s subjects and carry them off into slavery in a foreign land needed to die by the hand of the law. The Yankees in particular needed to learn that fair skin and English ancestry were no bar to the Crown’s good justice. And the swart Floridians who would be doing most of the fighting to defend Florida needed to know that the Government took the safety of their families seriously. Governor Morrison would have been within his rights—and would have been right—to hang the lot the very next day where all Trafalgar could watch them swing.

So why had he not done so? Why was he offering the Prime Minister the opportunity to overrule his decision? If the last war against the Yankees had proven anything, it was that trying to manage every detail of a war from across the ocean was a fool’s errand.

He was doing it because they had been taken in war. And if Britain had many American prisoners of war—not only men taken in Florida, but from the many American merchant vessels that had been captured—America had British prisoners, soldiers taken in Upper Canada and New Brunswick and survivors pulled from the water after the catastrophe at Sinepuxent. If the two nations began a cycle of retaliation against each other’s prisoners, this war would turn far uglier than it needed to be.

So putting off the executions was not the worst idea. Those 247 men weren’t going anywhere. They could ornament a gallows at any time. But if it proved unwise to do so, they could never be un-hanged. And of course there was the invasion he had already deployed. A lot would depend on the outcome. But even if that failed, there were those other two expeditions he’d sent. He was confident the men sent to Louisiana would prevail. As for the men sent to Astoria… maybe he’d hear from them before the war was over.

Brougham considered these things for a moment. Then he laughed. Berrien, I have you now… punkt.


[1] OTL Tunica, LA
[2] In Gauss code, which has been exported to London and Paris with the telegraph, every sentence ends with punkt (German for period), which is rendered PNKT so as not to be mistaken for a word.
[3] The men charged with slave-catching were tried, convicted, and sentenced in twelve days, most of which was spent listening to the victims’ testimony. If this seems lightning-fast for a trial, remember that John Bellingham, who assassinated PM Spencer Perceval, was tried, convicted, and sentenced in only four days, and was hanged precisely one week after Perceval’s death. Judah Benjamin was wrong—when the evidence and issues are clear-cut enough, British law can sometimes move very quickly.
 
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And so another front starts. Taylor losses men but successfully invades the Republic. now the question is how he will fare crossing that hostile countryside.

But it seems Britain is laready making its own move to assist New Orleans and the Astoria project is under way. But what is the PM planning for those convicted slavers?
 
And so another front starts. Taylor losses men but successfully invades the Republic. now the question is how he will fare crossing that hostile countryside.

But it seems Britain is laready making its own move to assist New Orleans and the Astoria project is under way. But what is the PM planning for those convicted slavers?

Having their testimonies spread throughout the US to drive home the point that the war is nothing but a grab for slaves by Berrien, perhaps? Something to undermine the war effort and Berrien's Administration anyhow.
 
Having their testimonies spread throughout the US to drive home the point that the war is nothing but a grab for slaves by Berrien, perhaps? Something to undermine the war effort and Berrien's Administration anyhow.

Now there is an idea, try to break American unity and support for the war by pressing foot down on the running wound of the free states vs the slave states.

Perhpas even offer to return the men alive in exchange for a certain numer of slaves delivered into freedom? "Though their crimes warrant a bandits death; it is nobler to free cpatives than to simply murder their captors and leave them in bonds." Which would mean Berrien as to either bend for thr Empire and actually let salves go, or he lets them execute those good ol' boys and Southern Gents. Whichever way Berrien jumps he would lose.
 
With the border breached dose that make the conscription reform more likely then? And it sounds like the main American attack is coming into Northeastern Louisiana. So the time really is at hand for the Grand Army of the Republic to prove itself.
 
The Stablers Send Their Regards (2)
(Note: I apologize for any mistakes in this post or the next one. Chemistry, like rocketry, isn't my field, and I'm definitely not going to be experimenting with incendiaries in my apartment.)

In 1834, the boiler on USS Election—one of the two demologoi protecting the lower Chesapeake Bay—had exploded while it was in the mouth of the Potomac, returning to the Washington Navy Yard for maintenance. Rather than try to replace it, the Navy had decided that the Election was already in nearly the best possible place for defense of the capital, and simply towed it a few kilometers further upriver and anchored it there as a floating battery. The Representation was a faster vessel, and could cover the mouth of the Chesapeake.

When the Representation was out of action in Sinepuxent, Upshur realized that the Election had to be made seaworthy again, or at least bayworthy. He ordered that repairs to the vessel be expedited. On the advice of Captain S.S. Lee, he also ordered that each demologos have a company of U.S. Marines assigned to it, for the purpose of repelling boarders.

But the demologoi had never been intended to accommodate large bodies of troops. Sustaining Marines on them while they were on patrol required regular shipments of food and fresh water, and it was more practical to obtain permission from the shipowners to keep most of the Marines on the ships carrying this freight… or rather, it would have been more practical if this were peacetime.

But it was war, and before dawn on November 13, off Gwynn’s Island, the war came to the Election in the form of three companies of Colonial Marines in small boats. By the time the dozen or so U.S. Marines actually on board were ready to fight, the far more numerous Colonial Marines had already cast their grappling hooks and were climbing up rope ladders. The U.S. Marines might still have held off their counterparts by throwing off the grappling hooks, but the Colonial Marines had a much simpler job—not to take the Election, but to destroy it, throwing incendiaries onto the wooden deck behind the iron outer hull…

Charles Cerniglia, 1837


“Imagine that G.G. Elmar’s travels had ended with him drowning in a shipwreck. Imagine Feuerbach and Fitzhugh had both been in the path of stray musket-balls when war came to their respective hometowns (within a few years of each other—what a coincidence that is!) Imagine, more humanely, that Carlyle himself just hadn’t been so shoved down[1] as a schoolboy and had grown up healthier in spirit. What then? Would human civilization have spent the past hundred years luxuriating in a comfortable Golden Age of unchallenged liberal democracy and shared prosperity?

“Probably not. In the first place, I have no intention of lending any credence to the idea that ‘all history is but the biography of Great Men’…”

Jenny Flynn, Looking Back


November 15, 1837
Port Royal, Virginia

“We are now, therefore, got to that black precipitous Abyss; whither all things have long been tending; where, having now arrived on the giddy verge, they hurl down, in confused ruin; headlong, pellmell, down, down”[2]—George Fitzhugh was interrupted in his reading by a knocking at the door.

This had better be important, he thought. He was heartily glad his copy of Carlyle’s work had come before the war choked off trade with Britain.[3]

“Mistuh Fitzhugh,” said the house slave—what was her name again? Doris, probably—“it’s the militia.”

Sure enough, there was already a squad of men in red-trimmed blue coats over civilian clothes. “The British are coming up the river,” said the man who appeared to be in charge. “We need to mobilize now.”

Fitzhugh was not a martial man at all, and knew it. But he was a white man of property who could fire a gun, and he lived in plantation country on what was technically a part of the coast, since it was accessible—and apparently was now being accessed—by oceangoing ships. In the event of a slave revolt or invasion, everyone would expect him to fight, including himself. And only yesterday he’d heard that the Navy squadron guarding the mouth of the Chesapeake in USS Representation’s absence—Constitution, Chippewa, and the rest—had been seen retreating to Baltimore or up the Potomac to the Navy Yard, much the worse for wear, and that Enterprise had been scuttled to prevent capture. Worse, the demologos Election had been burned to the waterline down near Gwynn’s Island, and could not protect the approaches to Washington, DC.

Doris had already brought the uniform by the time he’d found his musket. He needed another embarrassing minute to get the mantle on the right way, and then he was off to save Virginia. There was no mistaking which way he was meant to run—he could already hear the cannons firing.

Then he got to Water Street. Port Royal was no great city—little more than an offloading point for bales of tobacco, since the wine and medicine trade had bypassed it in favor of larger ports. The harbor took up the ends of King and Market Street. Fitzhugh knew this for a fact, having seen the ends of those streets often enough… but he could not see them now. Everything within a block of the river was engulfed in dust and smoke, both pale gunsmoke and the darker smoke of burning buildings.

Someone emerged from the haze. As soon as he was done coughing, he spoke.

“They’re not landing here,” he said. “They’re landing across the river at Port Conway. Reckon that’s the shortest way to the capital.”


On the same day that the larger northern wing of the British army was landing at Galesville, the southern wing marching up the north bank of the Rappahannock encountered its first serious resistance. Three regiments of the Virginia militia under Col. (and former governor) John Buchanan Floyd rallied 13 kilometers southeast of Fredericksburg.

Floyd deployed these regiments on the crests of hills above the Rappahannock and a tributary, Muddy Creek. The middle regiment, which Floyd himself commanded, held a ridge that directly overlooked the confluence of Muddy Creek and the river. That was where he placed his artillery. On his right—or, more accurately, behind him—was a cavalry regiment holding the western part of that same ridge, overlooking the Rappahannock. On his left, atop a lower hill on the other side of the creek, was an infantry regiment armed with Henry-Hunt rockets.

The battle began shortly after dawn, when the sun would still be in the eyes of anyone looking east. Major General Galbraith Lowry Cole ordered his army to cross the creek (this portion of which was technically part of the river) and take the central hill at its western end.

For the British, this was the bloodiest part of the battle—crossing a ten-meter-wide stream completely exposed while being fired at from the front and the right. The majority of the losses were borne by the 85th Regiment of Foot, which had the misfortune of crossing the part of the creek that was within range of the 500-meter rockets. (The one-kilometer rockets were useless here, as the British were already too close.) Some of these rockets contained canister, while others contained incendiaries—specifically the Stablers’ less notorious “No. 19,” a lightweight mixture of sunflower oil and acetone which gave a particularly wide spray and a fine, penetrating mist in the fraction of a second before it ignited, with grains of anthracite to continue smoldering wherever they landed after the rest of the incendiary had burned itself out. The one mercy was that the army was crossing a creek, which allowed those whose clothing or hair had caught fire to roll in the water and extinguish the flames.

The day was almost windless. This allowed the rockets to be aimed more precisely, but meant that the smoke they left behind lingered in the air until the artillery and riflemen at the point of the ridge were shooting blind. The gunsmoke from the hill also lingered in the air, making it harder for the militiamen to defend their position when the surviving British infantry converged on the western end of the hill, where Floyd was in command and had positioned many—but not enough—of the cannons. Cole’s own 27th Enniskillen Regiment of Foot[4], known as “the Skins,” was the first to take the hill.

At this point, Col. Floyd was killed and the regiment surrendered or retreated. The cavalry attacked, but were faced not only by British guns, but their own cannons, which the militia had not spiked before retreating. This attack failed, and the cavalry was forced to retreat. The regiment on the left simply withdrew, having exhausted their limited supply of rockets. Those who escaped death or capture rallied at Ferry Farm.

Muddy Creek was a British victory, and one that further weakened American morale after the disastrous first Florida campaign, the costly victory of Fort-Wellington and the stalemate at Fort-Nord-Est.[5] It also further illustrated the advantage of regular armies over militia—the British had won because of greater willingness to take casualties and each unit’s greater ability to hold formation and carry out its part of the battle plan in chaotic conditions such as poor visibility. The greatest American failure had been one of professionalism, allowing artillery to fall unsabotaged into enemy hands.

But the militia had done all that could be expected of it. Outnumbered two to one, it had inflicted 372 casualties on the British at a cost of 259 casualties of its own. It had delayed, bloodied, and weakend General Cole’s army, which still had to face the regular American army under General Garland.

Eric Wayne Ellison, Anglo-American Wars of the 19th Century


[1] I.e., bullied.
[2] From Volume 3, Part 5, Chapter 1 of Carlyle’s The French Revolution: A History.
[3] ITTL The French Revolution: A History is published a year earlier. Among other things, John Stuart Mill’s maid didn’t burn the original manuscript of Volume 1 by mistake.
[4] The spelling was later changed to Iniskilling
[5] Once again I find myself with more major battles than I have the energy to describe in detail. Sorry.
 
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Things really are going quite badly for the Americans at this point. Seems like the war is going to carry on for some time at this point and somethings aren't going to go well at all. Is the fate of the Election going to lead to some serious rethinking of the role and design of the demologos class ships?
 
It's interesting to see Fitzhugh and Feuerbach talked about as the two great enemies of liberal democracy, wonder if we're going to see Communism and Fascism break out a little earlier ttl. The fact that Fitzhugh is getting this treatment also probably doesn't bode well for where America is going after this war.
 
So the British are going for Washington again.

Huzzah for the Colonial marines. They are certainly earning their laurels in this war.

The potential after effects of the US government having the flee while colonial marines burn down the capital would be... interesting.
 
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