TL(16)Z1(7)Z, Western Hemisphere 1853-1904: The March of Folly

I.Go Tell the Californians...(1853-1856)

The (16)Z1 divergence point in 1832 has its first effects on the European continent, where a few subtle changes in Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels' biographies start a chain of differences that will be more fully discussed later in a companion piece to this one (titled 'Tonic of the Masses'). Apart from very subtle causal chains and QBE phenomenona, the divergent European, African, and East Asian history does not begin to substantially directly influence events in the Americas until the spread of the Century War to those shores in '04, so the two hemispheres are most clearly discussed separately up to that point.
The first macrodivergence in the Western Hemisphere occurs in May of 1853, in Mexico City where Santa Anna's government, even less popular and stable than the (17+) line's, is shaken by a major riot and fire in Mexico City. The military grudgingly restores order quickly, but not before the blaze claims a death toll nearing 100 and including much of the staff of the America embassy, James Gadsden included.
While the Pierce government accepts Mexico's blamelessness in the tragedy, many citizens do not, and as a direct result of this, William Walker finds many more supporters and joiners for his Baja California/Sonora fillibuster, and with those added resources finds more success. In some ways he finds himself a victim of his own success: with enough troops to credibly hold the cities of Lower California, his officers and supporters expect him to do that rather than make a stronger push into Sonora. Apart from minor skirmishes, he fights and wins two major battle with the Mexican Army, first disrupting a landing of troops near La Paz, and second and more celebrated, defeating a nominally superior Mexican force near Puerto Azufre. This second battle attracts comparisons in the contemporary media to Thermophlae like dung attracts flies, although the comparing parties are always quick to point out the happier outcome for the 'New Spartans' defending the Sulfurous Gates.
Santa Anna's government sues for peaces and, bringing the US into the negotiations, achieves in a tripartate agreement that includes a fast track to statehood for Lower California and a direct sale land sale to the US that includes the territory under discussion in the Gadsden purchase as well as the additional land required to make Arizona's southern border a straight horizontal to the Gulf of California. Pierce, privately displeased with the highly popular Walker, delays action on the statehood petition with the help of the Northern faction in Congress, and attempts to install a territorial governor, but Walker refuses to resign his title as President of the Republic of Lower California at any point prior to statehood, a position that is a colorable reading of the Treaty. By 1856, immigration has swelled the population of the peninsula to a point where further delay is impossible, and Lower California and Minnesota become the 32nd and 33rd states of the union.
 
Thanks. This one is going slowly right now because of an out-of-control research spiral. (I had meant to get right on to the timeline's secession crisis point, but then I realized that there are going to be some significant divergences in Mexican history during the next three years as well, which are in turn going to be influenced by changes in the history of the Catholic Church that I'd hoped to put off pinning completely down until I did the old world half of this timeline, but no such luck...)
 
II.The Cuba Crisis (1856-1858)

James Buchanan is nominated and elected President of the United States in an election whose results broadly track with those in 17Z+ timelines. William Walker becomes the first Governor of Lower California without serious opposition, and the balance of power in Congress remains more or less as it was, with free Minnesota balancing out the nominally slave Lower California. (The new state's climate does not support a plantation economy very well at all, so only a very small number of domestic slaves owned by the richest immigrants are actually present in the state, and even among that upper class many find it more economical to hire that kind of labor from the state's formerly Mexican population.) The growth of the Republican party continues, taking a more anti-imperialist stance than it had in reaction to the Baja adventure.
In early 1857, a failed South Carolina businessman named Sam Clayton, a man of no particular consequence in 17Z+ timelines, inspired by the example of Walker, wields his silver tongue to gather support for a similar military adventure, this time eyeing Cuba as a target. In this history, Buchanan does not make serious efforts to buy that island from Spain, fearing that such a move might provoke an embarrassment or even a crisis should a deal be concluded that Congress refuses to fund. The Spanish diplomatic presence in the US was generally inattentive during this time, and if they were even aware of the Clayton effort, which was not often discussed in the larger, northern cities where they ambassadors dwelled, they did not consider it a threat significant enough to send word home about.
Clayton was not a particularly skilled or talented military man, but he attracted several Army and Navy veterans to his cause fairly quickly, along with five hundred men able to hold a gun. He also attracted young men from families in the highest reaches of society to form his officer class, including Johnathan Allston the young son of South Carolina Governor Robert Francis Withers Allston (born just after the TL's 1832 earliest point of departure, and thus having no direct analog in other lines thanks to the QBE.)
Clayton's men loaded themselves onto a half dozen ships purchased for the purpose and set sail for Cuba in March of 1858. Before making landfall they were intercepted by the Spanish Navy and captured. Captain General Jose Gutierez de la Concha ordered them brought to the island in Irons to be tried as pirates.
Although the parents of the 'officers', lead by Governor Allston, repeatedly begged President Buchanan to intercede and ask the Captain General, or even Queen Isabella II herself to clemancy on the behalf of the foolish fillibusterers, the President refused to lift the smallest diplomatic finger on behalf of a 'gang of thugs and freebooters'.
Talk of secession began to spread through the Southern states. After all, they argued, while Buchanan did not see secession as legal, he did not believe the government had the authority to go to war to prevent it. His successor might well not be so sanguine. The growing strength of the Republican Party, soon to be bolstered by the nearly inevitable statehood of Oregon, might well produce an Abolitionist President in the next election. Better to break from the union now, even apart from the pressing need to protect Clayon's good ol' boys and punish the vile Spaniards.
These arguments held the say in South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The architects of the new Confederacy were surprised to see that they did not hold in Lower California, where support for slavery was only nominal and Governor Walker noted that Clayton's group had broken the First Rule of the Fillibuster (“Win.”). Nor did they hold in Virginia, a state Clayon had not done much recruiting in general or of officers in particular as he was avoiding setting foot there due to old, unpaid debts. Notable citizen Robert E. Lee went so far as to remark that had any of his own offspring shown the remarkably poor judgment and character to have associated with such scalywags, he would have disowned him on the spot rather than seeking any special consideration for the criminal.
Even without that additional support, in the summer of 1858 the seven-state Confederacy declared its independence from the United States of America and sent an ultimatum to the governments in Cuba and Spain, threatening war.


Mexico Sidebar: due to a series of events to be covered in the old world side of this timeline, the Catholic Church is considerably more politically and economically liberal than in 17Z+ lines, and its Pope Pius IX, (who was not the same individual who took that papal name in 17Z+ lines) at the forefront of that reform. As a result of this, rather than being concentrated in the Conservative side of Mexican politics, that nation's Catholics were divided between the two camps, and influenced the Liberals to moderate their anti-Church stance in drafting the Constitution of 1857. This in turn meant that the Pope did not condemn the new constitution, and the Conservative position was further weakened. Ignacio Comonfort remains strongly in power through the time of this chapter.
 
(I'd love more feedback on this one, by the way.)


III.The Bay of Pigs and the Unmaking of a President (Summer 1858-Spring 1859)

The Spanish government was taken diplomatically by surprise by this rapid turn of events, and very nearly accidentally delivered its responses to Washington rather than Richmond. As such, it's responses were mixed and confusing to outside observers. The Southron Ultimatum required the immediate release of the prisoners and an opening of negotiations toward the purchase of Cuba by the new Confederacy, but only offered credit on vague terms rather than any hard specie or internationally valued currency. Spain found the offer and the threat risible and, having no intention to comply, regarded it as the equivalent of a declaration of war. This was good news for the Clayton expedition, who were immediately converted into Prisoners of War and shipped to Madrid for the duration of the conflict rather than facing execution. To further confuse matters, the crisis caused the increasingly liberalizing Spanish government to do something it had been considering for more than a year and immediately abolished the practice of slavery in all Spanish-held lands, most notably Cuba and Puerto Rico.
The Spanish may have assumed that nationalist pride in the face of a war with the upstart confederacy would override any resentment on the part of the Cuban plantation owners, but they were incorrect in this assessment. Many of them rejected the authority of their motherland in the matter of abolition, especially in the center of the island. Rising in rebellion, they invited Confederate support and offered an unopposed landing for them at the Bay of Pigs.
The Confederate government, still in it's infancy, was torn between the hot-bloods, who considered the Spanish abolition act a deliberate insult and demanded an immediate invasion of Cuba, and the realists, who knew that although they had sufficient naval power to support such an invasion against the Spanish fleets now present, once the whole of that nation's Armada was mobilized to this war, Spain would be able to cut off supplies and reinforce their own positions at will, before even considering the potential threat from their former co-nationalists. The hot-bloods won the day, although the realists did limit the size of the expeditionary force considerably, and at the end of the year a Confederate/Plantation-owner force controlled central Cuba, cutting Havana off from the east (by land, at least. The Confederate navy was never strong enough to truly blockade any Spanish-controlled ports)
In the north, with the congressmen from the Southern states no longer in attendance, the Republicans found themselves with an immediate majority in the House. The election of 1858 would turn that into a supermajority in both houses of Congress with as strong mandate to put an end to the Confederates' rebellion before 'their fool war results in Spanish occupation of territory that is was by God's grant American'. A declaration of war quickly passed over President Buchanan's veto. Rather than conduct that war that he felt was legally and morally illegitimate, Buchanan tendered his resignation the day of the override. Vice President Breckinridge followed suit, and so Speaker of the House John Sherman was inaugurated President on January 18th of 1859, his first act being to mobilize armies against the Confederacy. By the late spring, large armies swelling with volunteers lined the Confederacy's northern border, while in Cuba Spanish troops were being deployed in Havana and Guantanamo while the Armada harried the massively outclassed Confederate navy back to Charleston and Savannah.
 
(I really, really would like to see some feedback here. Have I pushed beyond the plausible limits of national folly here? Or, considering, say, the Falklands War, are there any such limits?)

IV The Accidental War (1859)

During the summer of 1859, the Confederate expeditionary force is harried by the Spanish, facing assaults by land in two directions and barrages by Naval artillery whenever they venture too close to water. Out of contact and supply from their home nation, their ability to resist this force was minimal, and in July the last remnants of the expeditionary force surrendered to Spanish armies. The plantation owners and their men, facing charges of treason upon surrender, chose to fight on as guerrillas and bandits.
Confederate President Robert Toombs had other matters to attend to, namely the defense against the imminent Yankee invasion. The mustering troops were generalled by Robert E. Lee, who, in what was known as the 'gentlemen's agreement', agreed the lead the Federal army in informal exchange for a minimal troop levy on Virginia. After Lee's generalship became known, as many from that state volunteered as might have been drafted at any rate. Lee, in possession of an overwhelming advantage in men and arms, began a cautious campaign, making slow progress into the Confederate heartland. The Confederate generals were, at this point, unwilling to force any large battles. Accordingly, the deficiencies of the Stars and Bars as a battle flag had not yet been demonstrated.
On November 8, 1859, Spain, having spent blood and treasure in this unasked-for war, decided that it would need to take the war to the Confederates in order to force a peace with sufficient reparations in land or gold to avenge the initial insult. To that end, they began a naval assault on Key West, not knowing that the naval base there remained in Union hands. The closeness of the Union and Confederate flags allowed the error to continue until it was too late, and shots had been fired. When Union ships arrived on scene to defend the fort, the Spanish briefly believed their attack unprovoked. The admirals eventually realized what had happened, but only after ships had been sunk on both sides. Possessing the superior force, they decided to win the battle first, and leave restoring peace to the diplomats.
There was much diplomatic traffic in December of 1859, most of it fruitless. In fact, some historians refuse to believe that the attack on Key West could have been accidental, and that the Spanish must have known that the Confederacy was doomed to a quick defeat at the hands of a Union which would feel no obligation whatsoever to pay reparations for their rebel opposites' crimes. At the beginning of 1860, the three nations of Spain, The United States of America, and the Confederated States of America were each at war with the two others, with no peace or temporary alliance on any side in sight. The only success in diplomacy during this time was that Comonfort's Mexico was kept neutral to all sides of the three-way conflict.
 
Anyone?

(Still working on Part V., working title 'South Carolina Smackdown'. Still wanting plausibility/interestingness feedback.)
 
One small error I see. You mention Richmond as the Confederate capital, and yet say that Virginia hasn't seceded. I think you need to change the capital to Montgomery or somewhere like that.

Also, it would make it more readable if you had spaces between the paragraphs, instead of just an indent
 
Interesting, hope to see it continue. I can't give much in the way of plausibility, but it's entertaining anyways.
 
Mappa Mundorum

Interesting but I don't know enough of the details to know how likely it might be. imperialaquila picked up on the point about Spain sending diplomats to Richmond, suggesting it was the rebel capital and I agree with him about a bit more spacing.

Could you give a list of what the rebel states are please as it would make it clearer to tell who's involved. Presuming southern California is on the rebel side?

I won't be committing much as I'm on holiday the next fortnight or so but interested to see where it goes. A three way war is going to be damned confusing but the north, facing a distant Spain and a weaker south should come out on top. However from the OP it sounds like a lot more chaos is coming.

Steve
 
Right; the confederate capital should be elsewhere; probably Atlanta, although Charleston is a contender, need to decide one way or the other and fix those references. The Confederacy is just the original seven seceeders.(South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) Lower California didn't have any favorite sons in the Cuba fiasco and, while technically a slave state, doesn't have a slave-dependent economy. And it would have been immediately cut off from the rest of the confederacy, had no locally-controlled naval forces to speak of, and would be probably been too tempting for Mexico without the heavier weight of the US behind it.
 
I'm probably going to do a major revision on this TL soonish. First off, I'm going to replace my fictional Sam Clayton with Fredrick Townsend Ward (which will in turn help me justify a more successful Taipeng Rebellion when I get evens in the rest of the world...) And I'll be fixing the Confederate Capital issue as well. I might try and integrate the entire TL this time, but I'm afraid that it'll seem less coherent; European history is diverging with a much more Christian (and specifically, Catholic) form of Socialism/Communism in ways that don't particularly effect what's going on in and around the US, so it would be one "meanwhile" after another doing it that way...

Any advice?
 
This is an utterly brilliant idea! First off, Walker's expedition in Baja succeeding- I love that, always thought that Lower CA should happen more often in AH. Next, a very different nucleus for the ACW, not to mention ironic consequences for Spain and Spanish-American relations, love that as well! It is a crime this is not receiving more responses. I beseech you to not abandon it, and for all to come and read and comment upon this!

That said, Spain accidentally causing irreversible war with the Union smacks too much of Stars and Stripes Forever.
 
Brilliant idea, I've never seen anything quite like this timeline. However, the Speaker of the House wouldn't be President. The Secretary of State would. That would be Lewis Cass if it's the same guy in this timeline.
 

Art

Monthly Donor
This was the (American) Know-Nothing platform

Severe limits on immigration, especially from Catholic countries.
Restricting political office to native-born Americans of English and/or Scottish lineage and Protestant persuasion.
Mandating a wait of 21 years before an immigrant could gain citizenship.
Restricting public school teacher positions to Protestants.
Mandating daily Bible readings in public schools.
Restricting the sale of liquor.
Restricting the use of languages other than English.
 
Art, what's your point?

The political situation is so different in this scenario, the Know Nothings wouldn't get any traction at all in this situation.
 
What does anyone else think of the Spanish attack the Unionists by accident? I mean, in Stars and Stripes Forever not only was it implausible, but almost offensively so- they had the attacking British continue with the battle even after they realized their mistake, and then start raping and pillaging. I know that's definitely not what's being suggested here- but still, I'm not sure how plausible it is to accidentally attack a co-belligerent. Also, it would be more amusing for the U.S. to team up with an Old World imperialist power to stomp on the slavers.
 
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