Prologue - 1860
Three terms ? Nobody had had three consecutive terms since the great Aaron Burr. Stephen Watts Kearny did not think of himself as great, but he was intelligent enough to realise that history might, perhaps, make that judgment. If only he could stop things from going wrong.
Well, true Henry Clay had had three terms, but there had been eight years in between his first and second, a testament many would say to the failure of that first administration. Kearny had been well-served in his own first term, William Worth, God rest his soul, an accomplished and intelligent Vice President and President of the Senate. His second term had been harder, Franklin Pierce stepping up from Secretary of State to Vice President, but one could hardly blame Pierce for the situation of the country. No, they had to blame him, he alone stood at the top of the pile
But, sure he could take the blame, but could he really be held responsible ? Revolt in Monterrey, a brief war with Mexico, continuing problems with the Apache, the growing threat of settler-indigineous conflict in the South-West, and on top of it all the sudden Gold Fever sweeping California ! Not only that, but Fredonia was on the war path, the apparently sane President Clark augmented by George Bickley as his Secretary of State. Bickley ! Knights of the Golden Circle, an alliance with the Millerites (for God's sake, and that was funny in itself...God's sake !) and fillibustering reigned supreme
Except that it didn't. What the USA could get away with against the Cheyenne and Arapaho in the Great Plains Confederacy, was much less certain with Fredonia's scheming in the ViceRoyalty of California. Spain had responded with soldiers, with convoys of settlers, with a naval squadron sent across to the Pacific coast. And Spain had regained a modicum of control, but only in Alta California, not so across the mountains in the dangerous no-man's land approaching the Fredonian outpost of the Great Salt Lake
Kearny, at sixty-six, was too calm an operator to worry overmuch about events. Yes, Fredonia and Spain were locked in a proxy war, but there had been many proxy wars since 1800 and few of them had resulted in an overt declaration. Oh yes, SOME had, and with devastating results. But most started off as proxies because the two powers did not wish to get directly involved, and keeping that in mind was as important as anything else
1861 saw the start of President Kearny's third term, surely his last at his age. He was determined that the difficulties and problems which had raised their heads during the second would be sorted out in this last term of office. Sure, he had been able to put before the electorate - DEFEAT of the rising in Monterrey, DEFEAT of Mexico, DEFEAT of the Apache, but it had been a true charge of Charles Francis Adams, for all that he had been roundly defeated, that these defeats of the enemy could only have come about because they had been emboldened to act against the United States in the first place
His third term had been won because the accumulation of negatives had never risen to a critical level. The remnants of the Whigs had turned Abolitionist, the remnants of the Democrats has gone fully down the states-rights pro-slavery route. And briefly, dangerously, had arisen a fourth party, an amalgam of all who had been disenfranchised by this split, and who could not believe in the American Party. Disillusioned as yet, this group was now forging a new party, a new reality, after losing the election
Kearny was enough of a political operator to know when a new enemy was arising...
Best Regards
Grey Wolf