Yet another great update, how are things in Texas?
We'll return to Texas pretty soon. It may seem meandering, but events in the US will have big effects on Texas down the road. I hope these are just as enjoyable as the Texas bits, though!
From a relative power projection standpoint, I understand why the US gets as much of the SW as they did. However, do they have real access to the territory? With Texas's greater NW holdings, the main passes over the Rockies seem like they might be further North. Getting troops, settlers, administrators to this area is probably going to require going through Texas or California (which means around the Horn). And this is the part of Mexico and the US that was most lawless OTL.
All very true! American eyes were a bit bigger than their stomachs. And if it was lawless OTL, imagine how it will be under a weak and distant 'foreign' occupation.
And now on with the show!
Part Thirteen
Election 1856
After two terms, President Cass was bound by tradition not to run again. Which was a convenient excuse, he thought, as he sat in his office.
Because what madman would want to take over this disaster? Well…
This guy. [1]
Vice President John Quitman was fully prepared to move into the Executive office. The fiery Mississippian knew exactly what had caused all the problems in Kansas: A soft hand with all those Negroes and Abolitionist bastards! Rebels and antichrists, the lot! Quitman had been denouncing Cass with increasing furor since the California annexation, with only a brief period of respite during the early days after the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It had reached a fever pitch lately, in the buildup to the August Democratic National Convention in Baltimore. The Convention was split along obvious lines - the fire-eaters, radicals on the issue of slavery and mostly Southerners, versus the moderates or Unionists, who were still pro-slavery and in favor of Popular Sovereignty, but were more inclined towards compromise. These were more often Northernern “doughfaces”, ie Northerners with Southern sympathies. Candidates included Quitman, Conservative Hunker [2] and former New York Senator Daniel S. Dickinson, Cass ally and Popular Sovereignty architect Stephen A. Douglas, Mexican War hero and former New Hampshire Senator and Governor Franklin Pierce, and a crowd of lesser knowns.
As one might expect, the convention was contentious. Despite their doughface tendencies, many Southerners were reluctant to nominate Northerners like Pierce or Dickinson. Their most recent non-Southern, supposedly Southern supporting candidate was Cass, and they all saw how that turned out. Douglas’s credentials had been harmed by supporting Popular Sovereignty even when the people voted
against slavery, and by his association with Cass and support for many of the President’s policies. Quitman was pretty out there. He kept talking about the need to defend the South’s “natural rights” “at any cost”, and had made some ominous remarks about how nice it might be to have Cuba as a state, whether Spain was selling or not.
The Southern delegates wanted a platform which was in favor of the expansion of slavery, called for the installation of a slave-state government in Kansas, and which affirmed the rights of slaveholders in all US Territories. Despite the vigor and volume of the pro-slavery side, the Democrats still had their share of moderates and Northerners. The platform was voted down. In response, Quitman, supported by the even more radical William Yancey and other fire-eaters, walked out. Unlike Yancey, who was genuinely furious, Quitman’s actions were a political move - he hoped to gather enough support to cow the moderate faction, and show the party could not operate, let alone win, without the Southerners. And that meant they needed John Quitman.
Stephen Douglas did
not need John Quitman. The Little Giant [3] had taken a lot of shit from the Vice President in general over the last few years, but during the convention it had risen to intolerable levels. He was used to being insulted in the rough-and-tumble world of 19th century politics, but being called a traitor to his face by his fellow Democratic hopeful was too much right now. Douglas’s faction put forward a motion to continue to the nominations. The motion passed.
The voting was confusing. Some candidates were still torn about leaving, whether because of Southern sympathies or concerns about excluding a large part of the party from voting. Franklin Pierce, who may have emerged as a compromise candidate, vacillated during the crucial early voting period, and began to slip on later ballots. Many of Pierce’s Northern supporters switched to the Dickinson camp. Over the next 25 ballots, there was no great movement. Pierce gradually slipped off the ballot entirely, although remarkably still held some votes even after wandering out of the convention. Douglas continued to hold the lead, with Dickinson in second. But over the next dozen ballots, Treasury Secretary James Guthrie climbed to a very close third. Soon he slipped into a very tenuous second. Many supported Guthrie because they didn’t like Douglas, and Dickinson appeared increasingly unable to seal the deal. Guthrie was from the South, but not too far South. He was a slave owner, but not a wild eyed fire-eater. He was tied to the Cass administration, but not too closely, and his actions at the Treasury were seen in a very favorable light. On the 53rd ballot there was quite a suprise: Dickinson’s voters almost unanimously bolted for Guthrie, barely pushing him over the required two-thirds majority line. Soon, Dickinson was selected without incident as the party’s Vice Presidential candidate. The Democratic Party had their ticket.
The jowls of a winner.
OR DID THEY?! The Southern and Doughface delegates had set up camp in a nearby hotel dining room, where they sipped milk punch and discussed straw hats, slave beating, and the latest in plantation architecture [4]. Quitman was the man of the hour, having led the charge away from the tyranny of the Yankees, who were bound to come crawling back any second. As the hours dragged on and the punch flowed, their spirits began to dampen. Eventually a Pierce delegate dropped in to inform the gathering that balloting had begun, but the convention was hopelessly deadlocked. A deadlock that could only be broken by JOHN QUITMAN! HURRAH! Resolving to let the bastards sweat it out a while longer before swooping in to seize the nomination (assuming he could count on the support of all present at the hotel, as well as former Pierce delegates and the Guthrie voters, and steal Dickinson’s position as the anti-Douglas), Quitman kicked back for a while longer, returning to the enjoyable activity of having William Yancey tell him how great he was.
Just as the delegation prepared to leave, the observer they had dispatched to monitor the proceedings burst in with the news: The convention had nominated Guthrie. It was over. Shock and disbelief rocked the gathering. Glasses were thrown. Hats were stomped upon. William Yancey nearly lost his damn mind, while Quitman stood white with rage. Finally, one delegate yelled out something other than profanity: The convention was illegitimate! A minority had seized control and hijacked the Democratic Party! This wasn’t exactly true, since the Southern delegation was the one that left, and was indeed the numerical minority, but this was no time for facts. Others called for their own convention, right here, right now. Some were less enthusiastic. The convention had actually nominated a Southern slave holder. Despite his Cass association, he seemed pretty legit. But peer pressure is a powerful force, and fists even more so, and with William Yancey physically barring the door they yielded to the former in order to avoid the latter. [5]
Although other candidates were present, it was a foregone conclusion that Quitman was the nominee. He had led the walkout, he was a hair-raising speaker supported by many of the most prominent fire-eaters, and he was after all the Vice President. His record, as far as this crowd was concerned, was unimpeachable. A voice vote confirmed what everyone already knew, and Romulus Saunders, a back-woodsy partisan who had held almost every position available in his native North Carolina, was selected as Vice President. With all hope for compromise dashed, the race was on.
[1] Separated at birth!?
http://i54.tinypic.com/24cb13r.jpg
[2] “Hunkers” being the faction of the New York Democratic Party who wanted to minimize the slavery issue, in favor of concentrating on other issues. Further, Dickinson was the leader of the “Hard” faction of the group, which was strongly against reconciling with the more radical “Barnburner” faction of New York Democrats, the anti-slavery, anti-corporate faction associated with the van Buren family and the now-defunct Free Soil Party. In conclusion, Daniel Dickinson was a Hard Hunk.
[3] Douglas’s nickname. Due to his height, not any role in the 1994 Rick Morranis / Ed O’Neill joint.
[4] Fall ‘56’s Hot New Pillar: Isn’t it Ionic?
[5] It might seem that William Yancey was an insane Quitman partisan. Perhaps so, but there is also significant evidence that he was part of a faction, along with William Porcher Miles and Robert Rhett, which hoped to spark Southern secession through splitting the Democratic party, casting some questions on the honesty of his Quitman support.