Through the Endless Grey: An Alternate TL-191
- Thread starter Tsar of New Zealand
- Start date
TR definitely wouldn't have lifted the reparations on the CSA like Sinclair Lewis did. That may give the Freedom Party a much earlier boost.
I tend to agree - that being said a Third Roosevelt term would seriously curtail any covert attempt on the part of the Confederates to begin rebuilding their Military; it seems highly likely that the the Whig Party would suffer as they fail to offer any alleviation of the South's suffering, although I'd put the chances of Revanchism thriving in such an environment at about 50/50 (for while some of the South is going to be Even Angrier, it seems not impossible that others in the Confederacy would get Scared Away from Revanchism given its futility in the face of overwhelming Northern force - thereby boosting the more Pacific Radical Liberals).
One does suspect, however, that three terms of TR might be one too many; it is all too easy to imagine the mountainous expense of maintaining the Military Might that won the Great War into peacetime, coupled with raw weariness of the Democrat Military-Industrial complex and its continuing domination might well lend an ugly edge to the Democrat/Socialist rivalry at the next Election (with Democrat complacency clashing badly with Socialist impatience to be about the business of Liberalising the USA).
One does suspect, however, that three terms of TR might be one too many; it is all too easy to imagine the mountainous expense of maintaining the Military Might that won the Great War into peacetime, coupled with raw weariness of the Democrat Military-Industrial complex and its continuing domination might well lend an ugly edge to the Democrat/Socialist rivalry at the next Election (with Democrat complacency clashing badly with Socialist impatience to be about the business of Liberalising the USA).
Okay, I didn't realise I had to subscribe to my own thread to get updates - I honestly thought that one post had died in obscurity!
That said, I'll get back to writing!
That said, I'll get back to writing!
I. Movin' On Up
From Wood, L., Don’t Tread On Me: A History of the Radical Liberal Party (Richmond: Gadsden Press, 1985).
…aftermath of the Great War, the Party found itself struggling to regain its seemingly unstoppable pre-War momentum. Although the candidacy of Doroteo Arango had succeeded in its purpose of holding the electorate’s attention in 1915, the 1921 election proved that the Party remained vulnerable to attacks from both left and right, as Socialist and Rememberancist candidates proved able to out-Radical the Radicals…it was apparent that to seize the Gray House, the Radical Liberals would need to hold the centre…
…1925 midterms caught the Party at the end of this lull as the redoubled efforts of Reggie Bartlett, the war hero from Virginia who campaigned in his Richmond district with the support of his fellow veterans from the Seventh Virginia, a few of whom thwarted the assassination attempt made upon him by Freedom Party Stalwarts, saw him entering the Thirty-Second Congress for Virginia’s Twelfth Congressional District [1] on March 4th, 1926…he soon proved wildly popular in the backbenches, revitalising the Party faithful at a time when the Whigs appeared to have weathered their post-war turbulence...part of the movement convincing them - correctly, as it happened - that the seemingly-unassailable facade of the Confederacy's governing party was hiding more rot than first seemed the case…
…meetings at the Thirtieth Party Congress in mid-1926, Bartlett made an impassioned speech on behalf of the still-influential Veterans’ Bloc, in which he made an entreaty to the members present to counter the “fat and lazy Whigs to one side and Featherston’s murdering thugs on the other.” One of the more famous passages from this speech is reproduced below.
“This party, the Radical Liberal Party I joined before the War, the party which told my generation there was a way forward that was different to the same old exploitation by the same old plantation-holding, vote-rigging, Yankee-baiting Whigs, has lost its way.
We cannot go on like this, offering the same policies again and again and again. The Whigs call us Red revolutionaries. Featherston calls us a pile of nigger-lovers. The Tin Hats sniff at us as Yankee-cuddlers; the Reds think of us as puppets of the Whigs. The Redemption League had three of its members jailed for killing two Party members last fall; twenty more went free. In Tennessee, in ‘21, we had the chance to offer the people hope for their future in a state which had the guts torn out of it in 1916; instead we sat back, said “we can’t do anything,” and sold the future of the people of Tennessee to the Stalwarts who've gone and turned Nashville into a vipers’ nest. We came close to electing a madman in 1921, and we can’t underestimate the fact that they have been using the last four years to spread their gospel of hatred in Texas, in Georgia, even here in New Orleans.
I say this to you, my Confederates, my brothers-in-arms: This. Must. End. We must serve our fellow man; we cannot ignore him like the Whigs, we must not simply tell him what to think like the liars in the Freedom camp. No, we must do as it was written in the Bible, we must overcome if we are to inherit all things, if we are to wipe the tears away from the eyes of all who sorrow and are in pain, if we are to let the old things pass away.”
Ultimately, Bartlett’s speech was to start wheels turning in very high places in the caucus, as he soon discovered when he was invited to the office of a Louisianan member by the name of Huey Long…
[2] Anyone out there wants to do electoral redistricting for the CSA ITTL, be my guest.
From Wood, L., Don’t Tread On Me: A History of the Radical Liberal Party (Richmond: Gadsden Press, 1985).
…aftermath of the Great War, the Party found itself struggling to regain its seemingly unstoppable pre-War momentum. Although the candidacy of Doroteo Arango had succeeded in its purpose of holding the electorate’s attention in 1915, the 1921 election proved that the Party remained vulnerable to attacks from both left and right, as Socialist and Rememberancist candidates proved able to out-Radical the Radicals…it was apparent that to seize the Gray House, the Radical Liberals would need to hold the centre…
…1925 midterms caught the Party at the end of this lull as the redoubled efforts of Reggie Bartlett, the war hero from Virginia who campaigned in his Richmond district with the support of his fellow veterans from the Seventh Virginia, a few of whom thwarted the assassination attempt made upon him by Freedom Party Stalwarts, saw him entering the Thirty-Second Congress for Virginia’s Twelfth Congressional District [1] on March 4th, 1926…he soon proved wildly popular in the backbenches, revitalising the Party faithful at a time when the Whigs appeared to have weathered their post-war turbulence...part of the movement convincing them - correctly, as it happened - that the seemingly-unassailable facade of the Confederacy's governing party was hiding more rot than first seemed the case…
…meetings at the Thirtieth Party Congress in mid-1926, Bartlett made an impassioned speech on behalf of the still-influential Veterans’ Bloc, in which he made an entreaty to the members present to counter the “fat and lazy Whigs to one side and Featherston’s murdering thugs on the other.” One of the more famous passages from this speech is reproduced below.
“This party, the Radical Liberal Party I joined before the War, the party which told my generation there was a way forward that was different to the same old exploitation by the same old plantation-holding, vote-rigging, Yankee-baiting Whigs, has lost its way.
We cannot go on like this, offering the same policies again and again and again. The Whigs call us Red revolutionaries. Featherston calls us a pile of nigger-lovers. The Tin Hats sniff at us as Yankee-cuddlers; the Reds think of us as puppets of the Whigs. The Redemption League had three of its members jailed for killing two Party members last fall; twenty more went free. In Tennessee, in ‘21, we had the chance to offer the people hope for their future in a state which had the guts torn out of it in 1916; instead we sat back, said “we can’t do anything,” and sold the future of the people of Tennessee to the Stalwarts who've gone and turned Nashville into a vipers’ nest. We came close to electing a madman in 1921, and we can’t underestimate the fact that they have been using the last four years to spread their gospel of hatred in Texas, in Georgia, even here in New Orleans.
I say this to you, my Confederates, my brothers-in-arms: This. Must. End. We must serve our fellow man; we cannot ignore him like the Whigs, we must not simply tell him what to think like the liars in the Freedom camp. No, we must do as it was written in the Bible, we must overcome if we are to inherit all things, if we are to wipe the tears away from the eyes of all who sorrow and are in pain, if we are to let the old things pass away.”
Ultimately, Bartlett’s speech was to start wheels turning in very high places in the caucus, as he soon discovered when he was invited to the office of a Louisianan member by the name of Huey Long…
[2] Anyone out there wants to do electoral redistricting for the CSA ITTL, be my guest.
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Strong words from Mister Bartlett - I suspect that President Mitchel for one would be pugnacious in his rebuttal of this particular speech (although while at his most eloquent when shouting down the Opposition, he's too pig-headed to do so without rather making a spectacle of himself; he will keep on and keep on until audiences start to tune his rhetoric out): probably something to the effect that "These Radical Liberals never have formed a Government and yet will never cease from pretending they know the business of Government better than the Party that has worked hard to Govern this Splendid Confederacy from its Creation!" or something along that line (probably slamming his hand down for emphasis).
Jake Featherston is unlikely to be any more sweet-spoken when it comes to this particular Declaration of Intent - something like "Truth is that they can call us criminals but what they are is TRAITORS."
I am very, very glad to hear that and I suspect that many others can safely say the same!
Jake Featherston is unlikely to be any more sweet-spoken when it comes to this particular Declaration of Intent - something like "Truth is that they can call us criminals but what they are is TRAITORS."
I am very, very glad to hear that and I suspect that many others can safely say the same!
Holy Shit! A Reggie Bartlett survives TL.
Oh, you better strap in, mate. Reggie's only the tip of the iceberg.
Very possibly, although I suspect that even TR might have difficulty getting the funding for both more battleships and better "barrels" through Congress - assuming that, as in Timeline-191, the House of Representatives is rife with Socialists & Republicans after the mass slaughter of the Great War (likely to be considerable even in the somewhat shorter War depicted in this Thread). President Roosevelt might well have to chose between Peter or Paul, with roughly equal odds of his plumping for the Navy or the Army.
II. Payback Time
From Bloom, L., et al., The Lamps Gone Out: A History of the Great War (New York: Stepford House, 1992).
The Treaty of Trenton
After General Stuart’s request for a ceasefire was accepted by the Union, a delegation of a dozen diplomats was dispatched northwards by train, through the hellscape of Maryland and into Pennsylvania, reaching Trenton in eighteen hours – a feat, it must have been recalled by the twelve men as they crossed the Delaware, that the Confederate States Army had failed to accomplish in eighteen months. Upon arrival in New Jersey (Teddy Roosevelt having declared that “once in my lifetime is more than often enough for the Rebs to enter Philadelphia” and refused to countenance negotiations in the de facto capital of the United States), the delegation was given a little time to rest prepare to enter negotiations.
As things stood for the Confederates, a little time was all that was needed; the situation was, as of September 10th, grim. The Union occupied:
- most of Virginia north of the Rappahannock and a non-negligible salient in the Appalachians
- 85 percent of Kentucky
- most of northern Tennessee, and the salient Pershing’s final offensive had seized around and beyond Murfreesboro
- northeastern Arkansas across a line from Mammoth Spring-Jonesboro-Lepanto-and due east to the Mississippi River
- two further salients encompassing Fayetteville and Fort Smith
- practically all of the important parts of Sequoyah (the CS barely retaining most of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations and little else)
- a vast swathe of West Texas along the line Vernon-Abilene-Grandfalls-Toyahvale-Banderas
- and a salient or three in Sonora down the valleys, the largest of which extended as far as Caborca, Benjamin Hill, and Moctezuma.
The Confederates, on the other hand, no longer occupied a single square foot of US territory, with the last foothold of resistance in Maryland, a detachment of Marines at St. Mary’s City, surrendering on September 9th just after the armistice.
The military situation is similarly depressing when we look at it: while on paper the C.S. Army has two million men fighting on land across four field armies (Northern Virginia, Kentucky, the Mississippi, and Texas), the savaging of the Confederate Army at the hands of the Union and the breakdown of many units in Virginia and Tennessee has seen most reduced to between one-half and two-thirds effective fighting strength – that is, about one to one-and-a-half million effectives at the front. Many regiments are also being withdrawn by their home states to combat Negro insurgencies, further diminishing the manpower available and adding to organisational woes. One-and-a-half million have been killed (600,000), wounded (700,000), or captured (200,000): this is five percent of the Confederacy’s 1914 population.
In comparison, the US Army has six million soldiers across eleven field armies stretching from the Gulf of California to the Atlantic Ocean, and while there is some fatigue at the front most are at three-quarters combat efficiency. The overall numerical advantage enjoyed by the Union is about 4:1, and growing as the Canadian occupation enters its second winter and conscription maintains its pace. If the US really wants to destroy the Confederacy, both on the field of battle and as a nation-state altogether, it is more than capable of doing so. General Lejeune sums up the views of the Confederate General Staff rather neatly, even before negotiations commence: “The damnyankees have our asses over a barrel; all we get to decide is which end they get to screw us from first.”
The damnyankees, as it happens, decide to begin in Virginia: the Army of Northern Virginia is, as a precondition, to complete its retreat across the Rappahannock in the next fortnight, and are to leave all artillery pieces in place. They then move onto matters at sea: the Confederate States Navy is to halt all attacks on Central Powers shipping and sail for their home ports. Submarines are to be surrendered entirely. Further conditions include the surrender of twelve thousand machine guns (this is revised to ten thousand when the Confederates inform them, falsely, that they do not possess twelve thousand), all Confederate armoured cars and arks (in the case of arks, this amounts to three – two captured from the U.S. and one Confederate), and the immediate release of all Union prisoners of war.
The Confederates agree to these terms on September 11.
In addition, U.S. legations are to be established in Paso del Norte, Fort Smith, Memphis, New Orleans, Charleston, and Portsmouth once a peace treaty is signed and arrangements can be put into place. The garrisons are not to exceed one regiment per city, and are authorised to conduct searches of nearby military facilities to ensure compliance with the terms of the armistice.
The Confederates agree to these terms on September 15, as a large U.S. Navy task force anchors off the coast of South Carolina.
The treaty itself is negotiated over the fall and winter of 1916, with a final peace being signed on December 15. The final terms are as follows:
· U.S. possession and admission of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the newly-constituted Territories of Houston and Sequoyah, effective January 1, 1917.
· Confederate cession of Virginia north of a line from Woodstock due southeast to the source of the North Fork Rappahannock, and thence to the sea; of a slice of Arkansas roughly from Mammoth Springs to Lepanto; and of a slice of Sonora heading southwards from Douglas, Arizona along the San Antonio Mountains as far as Cumpas, before turning northwest to meet the US border at Sonoyta.
· Confederate recognition of above state and territorial borders, with boundaries to be fixed according to a bilateral Boundary Commission no later than June 1, 1917.
· A complete prohibition on Confederate development or importation of arks, submarines, or bomber aircraft. One squadron of fighters will be successfully argued for in revisions in 1917 in light of the Red Revolts, and observation aircraft are permitted both for said counterinsurgency and for use by the C.S. Meteorological Bureau (an ostensibly civilian organisation which tracks hurricanes over the Caribbean).
· Confederate States Army to be restricted to 100,000 men and officers.
· Armaments are to be restricted to 100,000 rifles and the equivalent of 400 rounds of ammunition per weapon, 1,500 machine guns (heavy and light) and 6,000 rounds per weapon, two hundred trench mortars, and three hundred pieces of field artillery (200x 75mm, 100x 105mm) with one thousand rounds apiece.
· Confederate States Navy to be restricted to 25,000 men and officers; surface fleet to be restricted to four cruisers, twelve destroyers, twenty-four sloops (modern escorts [1]) and torpedo boats. All other ships are to be placed in reserve, used for commercial purposes, or else surrendered or sold to other nations. Tonnage to be restricted to 100,000 tons.
· National Guard units of the Confederate States to be restricted to 250,000 men in total, with no more than 25,000 men in any individual State’s own National Guard.
· Reparations of US$25 billion, to be adjusted according to inflation since 1914 to prevent the Confederates devaluating their currency to get around it. The 1921 revision of the Schedule of Payments, coming after the election of the Sinclair Administration, divided these into A, B, and C bonds; in this manner two-thirds of remaining reparations payments were effectively erased to reduce the burden on the CSA. By 1923 the Confederacy was declared to have settled its debt with the U.S., having paid only about $6.9 billion. This was still enough to place a crushing indemnity on the C.S. economy; the total paid was equivalent to the entire 1913 GDP of the CSA.
While the Union terms seemed – and were – harsh, there was a widespread feeling in the Union that so much sacrifice had been made that the U.S. had best get something out of its war. One-and-a-half million dead, and twice as many wounded, make for an awfully compelling argument.
Revisionist historiography has looked unkindly upon these terms, and it must be admitted that they undeniably contributed to the rising political extremism and instability in the Confederacy throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s. However, the Remembrance ideology had been the guiding ideal of the Union for thirty-five years; now that the Confederates were at the Union’s mercy, a strong example was to be made of them. It was unfortunate short-sightedness in pursuing this goal which led the U.S. to do so, unwittingly instigating the rise of an ideology every bit as virulent and violent as Remembrance…
[1] TTLspeak for frigates, at least in the US.
From Bloom, L., et al., The Lamps Gone Out: A History of the Great War (New York: Stepford House, 1992).
The Treaty of Trenton
After General Stuart’s request for a ceasefire was accepted by the Union, a delegation of a dozen diplomats was dispatched northwards by train, through the hellscape of Maryland and into Pennsylvania, reaching Trenton in eighteen hours – a feat, it must have been recalled by the twelve men as they crossed the Delaware, that the Confederate States Army had failed to accomplish in eighteen months. Upon arrival in New Jersey (Teddy Roosevelt having declared that “once in my lifetime is more than often enough for the Rebs to enter Philadelphia” and refused to countenance negotiations in the de facto capital of the United States), the delegation was given a little time to rest prepare to enter negotiations.
As things stood for the Confederates, a little time was all that was needed; the situation was, as of September 10th, grim. The Union occupied:
- most of Virginia north of the Rappahannock and a non-negligible salient in the Appalachians
- 85 percent of Kentucky
- most of northern Tennessee, and the salient Pershing’s final offensive had seized around and beyond Murfreesboro
- northeastern Arkansas across a line from Mammoth Spring-Jonesboro-Lepanto-and due east to the Mississippi River
- two further salients encompassing Fayetteville and Fort Smith
- practically all of the important parts of Sequoyah (the CS barely retaining most of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations and little else)
- a vast swathe of West Texas along the line Vernon-Abilene-Grandfalls-Toyahvale-Banderas
- and a salient or three in Sonora down the valleys, the largest of which extended as far as Caborca, Benjamin Hill, and Moctezuma.
The Confederates, on the other hand, no longer occupied a single square foot of US territory, with the last foothold of resistance in Maryland, a detachment of Marines at St. Mary’s City, surrendering on September 9th just after the armistice.
The military situation is similarly depressing when we look at it: while on paper the C.S. Army has two million men fighting on land across four field armies (Northern Virginia, Kentucky, the Mississippi, and Texas), the savaging of the Confederate Army at the hands of the Union and the breakdown of many units in Virginia and Tennessee has seen most reduced to between one-half and two-thirds effective fighting strength – that is, about one to one-and-a-half million effectives at the front. Many regiments are also being withdrawn by their home states to combat Negro insurgencies, further diminishing the manpower available and adding to organisational woes. One-and-a-half million have been killed (600,000), wounded (700,000), or captured (200,000): this is five percent of the Confederacy’s 1914 population.
In comparison, the US Army has six million soldiers across eleven field armies stretching from the Gulf of California to the Atlantic Ocean, and while there is some fatigue at the front most are at three-quarters combat efficiency. The overall numerical advantage enjoyed by the Union is about 4:1, and growing as the Canadian occupation enters its second winter and conscription maintains its pace. If the US really wants to destroy the Confederacy, both on the field of battle and as a nation-state altogether, it is more than capable of doing so. General Lejeune sums up the views of the Confederate General Staff rather neatly, even before negotiations commence: “The damnyankees have our asses over a barrel; all we get to decide is which end they get to screw us from first.”
The damnyankees, as it happens, decide to begin in Virginia: the Army of Northern Virginia is, as a precondition, to complete its retreat across the Rappahannock in the next fortnight, and are to leave all artillery pieces in place. They then move onto matters at sea: the Confederate States Navy is to halt all attacks on Central Powers shipping and sail for their home ports. Submarines are to be surrendered entirely. Further conditions include the surrender of twelve thousand machine guns (this is revised to ten thousand when the Confederates inform them, falsely, that they do not possess twelve thousand), all Confederate armoured cars and arks (in the case of arks, this amounts to three – two captured from the U.S. and one Confederate), and the immediate release of all Union prisoners of war.
The Confederates agree to these terms on September 11.
In addition, U.S. legations are to be established in Paso del Norte, Fort Smith, Memphis, New Orleans, Charleston, and Portsmouth once a peace treaty is signed and arrangements can be put into place. The garrisons are not to exceed one regiment per city, and are authorised to conduct searches of nearby military facilities to ensure compliance with the terms of the armistice.
The Confederates agree to these terms on September 15, as a large U.S. Navy task force anchors off the coast of South Carolina.
The treaty itself is negotiated over the fall and winter of 1916, with a final peace being signed on December 15. The final terms are as follows:
· U.S. possession and admission of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the newly-constituted Territories of Houston and Sequoyah, effective January 1, 1917.
· Confederate cession of Virginia north of a line from Woodstock due southeast to the source of the North Fork Rappahannock, and thence to the sea; of a slice of Arkansas roughly from Mammoth Springs to Lepanto; and of a slice of Sonora heading southwards from Douglas, Arizona along the San Antonio Mountains as far as Cumpas, before turning northwest to meet the US border at Sonoyta.
· Confederate recognition of above state and territorial borders, with boundaries to be fixed according to a bilateral Boundary Commission no later than June 1, 1917.
· A complete prohibition on Confederate development or importation of arks, submarines, or bomber aircraft. One squadron of fighters will be successfully argued for in revisions in 1917 in light of the Red Revolts, and observation aircraft are permitted both for said counterinsurgency and for use by the C.S. Meteorological Bureau (an ostensibly civilian organisation which tracks hurricanes over the Caribbean).
· Confederate States Army to be restricted to 100,000 men and officers.
· Armaments are to be restricted to 100,000 rifles and the equivalent of 400 rounds of ammunition per weapon, 1,500 machine guns (heavy and light) and 6,000 rounds per weapon, two hundred trench mortars, and three hundred pieces of field artillery (200x 75mm, 100x 105mm) with one thousand rounds apiece.
· Confederate States Navy to be restricted to 25,000 men and officers; surface fleet to be restricted to four cruisers, twelve destroyers, twenty-four sloops (modern escorts [1]) and torpedo boats. All other ships are to be placed in reserve, used for commercial purposes, or else surrendered or sold to other nations. Tonnage to be restricted to 100,000 tons.
· National Guard units of the Confederate States to be restricted to 250,000 men in total, with no more than 25,000 men in any individual State’s own National Guard.
· Reparations of US$25 billion, to be adjusted according to inflation since 1914 to prevent the Confederates devaluating their currency to get around it. The 1921 revision of the Schedule of Payments, coming after the election of the Sinclair Administration, divided these into A, B, and C bonds; in this manner two-thirds of remaining reparations payments were effectively erased to reduce the burden on the CSA. By 1923 the Confederacy was declared to have settled its debt with the U.S., having paid only about $6.9 billion. This was still enough to place a crushing indemnity on the C.S. economy; the total paid was equivalent to the entire 1913 GDP of the CSA.
While the Union terms seemed – and were – harsh, there was a widespread feeling in the Union that so much sacrifice had been made that the U.S. had best get something out of its war. One-and-a-half million dead, and twice as many wounded, make for an awfully compelling argument.
Revisionist historiography has looked unkindly upon these terms, and it must be admitted that they undeniably contributed to the rising political extremism and instability in the Confederacy throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s. However, the Remembrance ideology had been the guiding ideal of the Union for thirty-five years; now that the Confederates were at the Union’s mercy, a strong example was to be made of them. It was unfortunate short-sightedness in pursuing this goal which led the U.S. to do so, unwittingly instigating the rise of an ideology every bit as virulent and violent as Remembrance…
[1] TTLspeak for frigates, at least in the US.
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How exactly did the US win so much so fast? Right now my headcannon is that the old "TL-191 Great War Reloaded" TL happened here.
Something like that; that TL was something of an inspiration for TTL. Reality ensued, more or less; the Confederacy is more or less at the level of OTL Italy or Austria-Hungary industrially, with the US not more than 10-15% behind OTL production levels (plenty of British investment that went to New York etc IOTL went to the CSA once its Industrial Revolution kicked in after the Second Mexican War, etc).
The Great War wasn't a curbstomp, but it was damn close to one: the US did something like the OTL German plan, focusing on knocking out Canada first before turning around in 1915 to bring its full weight to bear on the Confederates. Actually, it was a small miracle the CS held out as long as it did; it took the advent of combined-arms warfare by the US in the summer of 1916 to break the back of the CS Army properly, with a full-on rout happening after the Battle of Nashville shattered whatever was left of the Army of Kentucky's fighting spirit.
In short, like OTL's Western Front elan came up against the machine gun, poison gas, and the ark - and elan lost.
I'll flesh out more of TTL's Great War as I go on; this is more directly related to the postwar political situation in the CS, though, so I've focused on it as one of the proximate causes of the Bloody Twenty.
TR ain't speaking softly on this one; he's got an election to win and one hell of a big stick to club the Rebs over the head with - for instance, compare the $25 billion indemnity with the $2 billion mentioned in Filling the Gaps (to which I owe credit for inspiration for these terms). Precisely how wise or unwise this position is remains to be seen.
I was wondering about the 1916 U.S. election. With the war ending just about on the eve of the elections, I was wondering if there would be a change in the wind at first, like Debs getting elected so the Socialists could win the peace. I guess it looks like U.S. presidential elections are more or less going on schedule, though: TR reelected in '16, Sinclair in '20.
You mentioned that the U.S. took care of Canada early. So does this mean that Britain officially acknowledged this in whatever peace terms were drawn up to settle that front? To return to a question I asked earlier: has the war been altered in Europe as well?
You mentioned that the U.S. took care of Canada early. So does this mean that Britain officially acknowledged this in whatever peace terms were drawn up to settle that front? To return to a question I asked earlier: has the war been altered in Europe as well?
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