TL-191: Filling the Gaps
- Thread starter Craigo
- Start date
True, but the Mormons have better justification for voting Socialist.
I was going through the thread did you ever make maps for the 1908 and 1912 elections?
1912 (which I would dispute. It's too much a landslide for TR and I don't think WV would go Socialist before the 20s).
I am willing to change that. I wanted to show TR was a uniquely popular Democrat. Setting up that had the Democrats aligned to TR's Progressive Conservatism the Democrats would have held power for longer. Also his popularity in the west. In OTL he won a huge victory everywhere but the south. I was trying to show how TR swept up a lot of normally socialists and Western Republicans. I could see TR losing Wisconsin and Minnesota. We have been writing about the strength of the Socialists among Coal miners. If there were a bad run of strikes in 1912, a socialist candidate could have won.
Which states do you think TR would lose.
Which states do you think TR would lose.
I am sold. If anyone wants to do an election series article...
Zoidberg perhaps?
I'm up for that. The last US election I did was the 1904 election. Now I need to write articles for 1908, 1912 and 1916. Hope to get started on that ASAP.
They didn't vote at all. They were maintained as United States territory and never admitted, as at the time I assume the US government was still concerned about the overwhelming number of Pro-Richmond Natives that lived throughout the former state, even as they were flooding it with new settlers, iirc Seqoyah's plebiscite vote was actually fairly close because of how many settlers had been flooded into the state.
bguy
Donor
The 1940 map looks pretty reasonable except it was mentioned in the novels that if Taft won both Oregon and Washington he would have won the election. Your map has Smith with 207 electoral votes and Taft with 176 votes. Winning Oregon and Washington would thus get Taft to 191 EVs while Smith would have 192. (With the Republicans winning Indiana, no one would have an EV majority in that situation and the election would go to the House, but the novel specifically says Taft would overtake Smith if he won Oregon and Washington.)
Frankly, I don't think there is any way to make the numbers work where Taft is close enough to beat Smith if Taft wins both Oregon and Washington if we also have the Republicans winning a state. As such I think we might need to consider retconning have the Republicans winning Indiana. If Indiana going Republican is retconned, I would recommend the following changes:
Indiana goes Socialist. (This has always seemed kind of silly to me since historically Indiana was the most conservative of the Mid-West states, but the novels have it as a Socialist stronghold, so I guess we are stuck with that.)
Wyoming goes Socialist. The mountain west states tended to be isolationistic OTL. There's no reason to think they would be that different in TL-191, plus Wyoming voted for Debs in 1916 in the canon, so the Socialists seem to be pretty strong there.
Michigan goes Democrat. OTL the Republicans did slightly better in Michigan than they did in Illinois in the 1940 and 1944 elections, so here if we have the Democrats winning Illinois, it's reasonable to think they would win Michigan as well.
Montana goes Democrat. The Indiana situation in reverse. Its rather silly for Montana to be a Democrat stronghold since OTL it had a very strong isolationist-pacifist streak. (Burton Wheeler, Jeannette Rankin, etc.) Still, its part of the canon that its a Democrat stronghold, so we probably should have it voting Democrat.
With those changes the election results would be Smith 201 EVs, Taft 182. That's close enough for Taft to win the election if he wins both Oregon and Washington, which satisfies what was established in the novels.
I assumed it was a state that the Democrats' previous weakness still hurt them (Indiana was strongly GOP) and the left-Republicans that joined the Socialists ensured they had a chance. As more GOP voters defected, it became more red. Plus, I can't see it going Socialist in this particular election because Al Smith's plan would make it a border state and open to an CSA invasion. It makes sense for it to go to Willkie.
Seems reasonable.
There's a difference between Illinois and Michigan. Taft won Illinois because the state did not want to be a border state again.
That isolationist-pacifist streak? The state was a northern border state (with Canada) so I assume more military people settled there and wiped that out.
And anyway, if that streak stayed, it would go for Smith, who was the "peace" candidate here.
bguy
Donor
That makes sense, but again the problem is if you have Indiana vote Republican, it is pretty much impossible to have the electoral math match up with what is said in the books. Taft can plausibly squeak by Smith in a two man race based on winning Oregon and Washington, but if Wilkie wins electoral votes also there is no way for Taft to end up with an electoral majority based off of winning Oregon and Washington. (Especially since Taft was far enough behind that he had to win both Oregon and Washington to pass Smith.) The best Taft can mathematically hope for if he wins Oregon and Washington and Wilkie wins Indiana would be an electoral plurality and then to be elected by the House. Such a scenario doesn't strictly contradict what was said in the books, but it seems unlikely. (Presumably a viewpoint character would have mentioned it if Taft sweeping the West Coast would have sent the election to the House rather than give Taft an outright victory.)
That seems to be the explanation in the novels. I'm not certain it really makes sense though. I can see why TR himself would be popular in Montana due to his prior military exploits there and his love of the west, but I'm not really clear on why that popularity would translate to the rest of the Democrat Party. (It's hard to believe that even at the height of the Remembrance movement, there would be many US soldiers stationed in Montana. Border state or not, it just wasn't that strategically important.)
That's the thing though. In the novels Montana apparently doesn't have the pacifist-isolationist streak it had OTL. It's specifically described in the books as a long time Democrat stronghold as late as 1928 (where it voted for Coolidge over fellow westerner Hosea Blackford). If it's a Remembrance Democrat stronghold than it presumably favors a strong military and hardline foreign policy, so it's unlikely it would vote for Smith in 1940.
I think we can be a bit generous regarding the books. Maybe they thought the plurality wins or something. People can be ignorant.
And point taken regarding Montana. I'll flip it and Wyoming.
And point taken regarding Montana. I'll flip it and Wyoming.
Pleased to Write You, Delighted to Read Your Work!
Having grown quite addicted to Alternate History in general and to the various threads weaving the thread of Timeline-191 into a rich tapestry in particular I have finally been tempted to emerge from the faceless, nameless ranks of the browsers into the limelight all who comment must brave - it's rather hard to compliment the fine work of you creative fellows from mute obscurity.
Also I have ideas and this seems to be the very best possible place to share them; I hope that they will prove more fascinating than irritating! (I would also like to apologise for not singling out more of you by name, but if I were to praise each and every deserving one exactly as they deserve I would be unable to post anything BUT compliments - and I'd like to join in the fun and share some of my own ideas too!).
I will, however, close my first post here by expressing my most particular admiration for you, the creators whose articles have caught my attention and inspired my admiration most of all - for Craigo who started this very splendid series of speculations, for Zoidberg and for Mr President Mahan in your noble and superbly successful efforts to continue where Craigo left off.
I have only the highest praise to offer you all … so please remember my admiration as you endure the speculation that is to follow!
Having grown quite addicted to Alternate History in general and to the various threads weaving the thread of Timeline-191 into a rich tapestry in particular I have finally been tempted to emerge from the faceless, nameless ranks of the browsers into the limelight all who comment must brave - it's rather hard to compliment the fine work of you creative fellows from mute obscurity.
Also I have ideas and this seems to be the very best possible place to share them; I hope that they will prove more fascinating than irritating! (I would also like to apologise for not singling out more of you by name, but if I were to praise each and every deserving one exactly as they deserve I would be unable to post anything BUT compliments - and I'd like to join in the fun and share some of my own ideas too!).
I will, however, close my first post here by expressing my most particular admiration for you, the creators whose articles have caught my attention and inspired my admiration most of all - for Craigo who started this very splendid series of speculations, for Zoidberg and for Mr President Mahan in your noble and superbly successful efforts to continue where Craigo left off.
I have only the highest praise to offer you all … so please remember my admiration as you endure the speculation that is to follow!
Suggestions Concerning The Freedom Party
Where better to start with a series of speculations concerning Timeline-191 than with some of its most notorious by-products?
Really, it's quite interesting just how Mr Turtledove manages to tell us so much and so little in the course of his SOUTHERN VICTORY series - not least about his characters background - but then I suppose that's part of the charm of this series.
There would be far less room for speculation and far fewer gaps to fill if Mr Turtledove were as meticulously obsessive as we'd sometimes like him to be!
Jake Featherston
b. April 30th VA (precise year of birth obscure).
d. July 7th 1944.
- For the record my solution to the vexing issue of inconsistencies in Jake the Snake's exact age would be to suggest that his parents failed to fill out a birth certificate until rather later in life than is usual and that his mother actually lied about his age on the form to make him younger than he was.
Why? Well that would be because Mrs Featherston wanted a few more years to work on her son and try to dissuade him from joining the CS Army just as soon as he possibly could; I imagine that The Snake was an only child and that she therefore tended to put the 'mothering' in 'smothering' as a result.
Hence Jake the Snake's dislike of being 'coddled' and dislike of his mother; I imagine his father cut the Gordian Knot this particular set of apron strings had become tangled up in by granting his son permission to join up earlier than would have previously been the case.
With this in mind it seems possible that Featherston was born in time to recall his Daddy's sulphurous disdain for Manumission expressed as his first memory in childhood (probably sometime in the mid 1880s, so I'd place his conception as occurring sometime during the Second Mexican War, although it seems likely his Father was spared service owing to the pressing need to keep an eye on the Negroes who might very well take this opportunity to rise up against their taskmasters).
-One of the gaps I'd like to fill or to see filled would be the odd silence that hangs around the early lives of the Point of View characters; we have no idea where the likes of Irving Morrell or Sam Carsten or sundry other characters were born and raised.
Heck, we can't even confirm if some of them have FAMILIES up until they get hitched!
With that in mind I've been considering the early lives and families of various PoV characters, so here's what I have on Jake the Snake so far - Father Abraham 'Abe' Featherston (born December 2nd 1854, before Abraham Lincoln was anything more than a Prairie Lawyer), Mother Susannah Featherston nee Cross (born March 21 1861).
This means that while there's an age gap between Featherstone's parents it isn't quite so wide as that between Hitler's Vati and Mutti - more to the point it also makes John Brown the chief boogeyman of Abe Featherston's youth and Miss Susannah roughly as old as the Confederate States itself.
-For the record I see Abe Featherston as having come from nothing much, risen to be a little something as an overseer (at least in his own imagination) and having gone back to being nothing much; he's a man with too much pride to work as a sharecropper or in a factory, but sharp enough and ruthless enough to make very useful overseer.
His charges are likely to remember the lash of his tongue more than the lash of his whip, but be assured that he plied both with a will; manumission, however, reduced him to unemployment and his own fool pride reduced him to penury.
Still as he put it "If I had to lose me a job to win us a War, well that's a fair trade in my book" (although it took him quite some time to conceive this philosophical attitude).
I suspect that he spent much of his sons early life looking for work in some interesting places and failing to keep it by virtue of the aforesaid fool pride and sharp tongue - still I imagine him as the sort of man The Snake remembered with some liking, as a man with stories to tell and a light touch when it comes to white folk, especially his own boy.
Especially when compared to Jake the Snake's perpetually-worried mother.
- Susannah Featherston is a lady with plenty of reasons to worry; her family had security, even if they didn't have money, but after Manumission the Featherston Family have lost both courtesy of her Husband's touchy pride and fine sense of his own dignity as a White Man to boot.
'Too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash' sums up her position in life and as a result she's pretty desperate to pull her family away off the trash-heap; since Jake represents the best chance for them to do that she's obsessively keen to make sure he's in a position to do just that (by, for instance, pursuing some other profession than that of soldiering - which would raise their social status to a degree but hardly increase their material wealth).
To say that Susannah and her son conceived a dislike of one another as a result of this philosophical disagreement (The Passive-Aggressive Vs the Pig-Headed) is putting things rather mildly; given The Snake inherited those cold eyes of his from Ma rather than Pa, anyone fool enough to get between them during one of those silent staring contests of theirs is likely to risk frostbite.
Still Mrs Featherston has her reasons; amongst them the fact that her own family lost almost every male of military age in the course of the War of Secession then lost the last male in her own generation (amongst others) during the Second Mexican War - Proud profession or no, Susannah doesn't want her son blown to pieces in pursuit of Martial Glory.
Neither does Abe Featherston, it must be said, but he at least figures the risk is worth the return.
Its a relatively silent argument that took up most of Jake the Snake's young life and (coupled with the overly of his upbringing) it has left him with a low opinion of domestic bliss and 'womanish' sentiment.
- Upon finally joining the Army, Jake Featherston found his Home and a stronger sense of family than he did in the house he was born into, not to mention a discipline he found quite satisfying; if he experienced resentment or frustrations he put them away somewhere they didn't get in the way.
As far as indication of what was yet to come only his acute single-mindedness when tackling the task at hand and bulling through all obstacles holding up progress towards that goal, not to mention the eloquence of a man with a sharp tongue and the whip hand over his subordinates were as yet visible.
Small wonder he rose to be an NCO; he had the drive, he had the force of personality and he lacked the connections to go any further without the opportunity to fill dead men' shoes.
- Then the Great War came, the Army betrayed him and the Confederacy seemed to throw his every sacrifice back in his face; We all know what followed.
-For the record if I were casting The Snake I'd probably pick Mr Robert Carlyle; not only has he actually played Adolf Hitler in THE RISE OF EVIL, but he actually resembles the written description of Jake Featherston even more than he resembles Adolf Hitler (something about the roughness he is well able to project); oddly enough though I tend to hear The Snake as Mr Ron Perlman putting on a Southern accent.
Rather curious that.
Where better to start with a series of speculations concerning Timeline-191 than with some of its most notorious by-products?
Really, it's quite interesting just how Mr Turtledove manages to tell us so much and so little in the course of his SOUTHERN VICTORY series - not least about his characters background - but then I suppose that's part of the charm of this series.
There would be far less room for speculation and far fewer gaps to fill if Mr Turtledove were as meticulously obsessive as we'd sometimes like him to be!
Jake Featherston
b. April 30th VA (precise year of birth obscure).
d. July 7th 1944.
- For the record my solution to the vexing issue of inconsistencies in Jake the Snake's exact age would be to suggest that his parents failed to fill out a birth certificate until rather later in life than is usual and that his mother actually lied about his age on the form to make him younger than he was.
Why? Well that would be because Mrs Featherston wanted a few more years to work on her son and try to dissuade him from joining the CS Army just as soon as he possibly could; I imagine that The Snake was an only child and that she therefore tended to put the 'mothering' in 'smothering' as a result.
Hence Jake the Snake's dislike of being 'coddled' and dislike of his mother; I imagine his father cut the Gordian Knot this particular set of apron strings had become tangled up in by granting his son permission to join up earlier than would have previously been the case.
With this in mind it seems possible that Featherston was born in time to recall his Daddy's sulphurous disdain for Manumission expressed as his first memory in childhood (probably sometime in the mid 1880s, so I'd place his conception as occurring sometime during the Second Mexican War, although it seems likely his Father was spared service owing to the pressing need to keep an eye on the Negroes who might very well take this opportunity to rise up against their taskmasters).
-One of the gaps I'd like to fill or to see filled would be the odd silence that hangs around the early lives of the Point of View characters; we have no idea where the likes of Irving Morrell or Sam Carsten or sundry other characters were born and raised.
Heck, we can't even confirm if some of them have FAMILIES up until they get hitched!
With that in mind I've been considering the early lives and families of various PoV characters, so here's what I have on Jake the Snake so far - Father Abraham 'Abe' Featherston (born December 2nd 1854, before Abraham Lincoln was anything more than a Prairie Lawyer), Mother Susannah Featherston nee Cross (born March 21 1861).
This means that while there's an age gap between Featherstone's parents it isn't quite so wide as that between Hitler's Vati and Mutti - more to the point it also makes John Brown the chief boogeyman of Abe Featherston's youth and Miss Susannah roughly as old as the Confederate States itself.
-For the record I see Abe Featherston as having come from nothing much, risen to be a little something as an overseer (at least in his own imagination) and having gone back to being nothing much; he's a man with too much pride to work as a sharecropper or in a factory, but sharp enough and ruthless enough to make very useful overseer.
His charges are likely to remember the lash of his tongue more than the lash of his whip, but be assured that he plied both with a will; manumission, however, reduced him to unemployment and his own fool pride reduced him to penury.
Still as he put it "If I had to lose me a job to win us a War, well that's a fair trade in my book" (although it took him quite some time to conceive this philosophical attitude).
I suspect that he spent much of his sons early life looking for work in some interesting places and failing to keep it by virtue of the aforesaid fool pride and sharp tongue - still I imagine him as the sort of man The Snake remembered with some liking, as a man with stories to tell and a light touch when it comes to white folk, especially his own boy.
Especially when compared to Jake the Snake's perpetually-worried mother.
- Susannah Featherston is a lady with plenty of reasons to worry; her family had security, even if they didn't have money, but after Manumission the Featherston Family have lost both courtesy of her Husband's touchy pride and fine sense of his own dignity as a White Man to boot.
'Too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash' sums up her position in life and as a result she's pretty desperate to pull her family away off the trash-heap; since Jake represents the best chance for them to do that she's obsessively keen to make sure he's in a position to do just that (by, for instance, pursuing some other profession than that of soldiering - which would raise their social status to a degree but hardly increase their material wealth).
To say that Susannah and her son conceived a dislike of one another as a result of this philosophical disagreement (The Passive-Aggressive Vs the Pig-Headed) is putting things rather mildly; given The Snake inherited those cold eyes of his from Ma rather than Pa, anyone fool enough to get between them during one of those silent staring contests of theirs is likely to risk frostbite.
Still Mrs Featherston has her reasons; amongst them the fact that her own family lost almost every male of military age in the course of the War of Secession then lost the last male in her own generation (amongst others) during the Second Mexican War - Proud profession or no, Susannah doesn't want her son blown to pieces in pursuit of Martial Glory.
Neither does Abe Featherston, it must be said, but he at least figures the risk is worth the return.
Its a relatively silent argument that took up most of Jake the Snake's young life and (coupled with the overly of his upbringing) it has left him with a low opinion of domestic bliss and 'womanish' sentiment.
- Upon finally joining the Army, Jake Featherston found his Home and a stronger sense of family than he did in the house he was born into, not to mention a discipline he found quite satisfying; if he experienced resentment or frustrations he put them away somewhere they didn't get in the way.
As far as indication of what was yet to come only his acute single-mindedness when tackling the task at hand and bulling through all obstacles holding up progress towards that goal, not to mention the eloquence of a man with a sharp tongue and the whip hand over his subordinates were as yet visible.
Small wonder he rose to be an NCO; he had the drive, he had the force of personality and he lacked the connections to go any further without the opportunity to fill dead men' shoes.
- Then the Great War came, the Army betrayed him and the Confederacy seemed to throw his every sacrifice back in his face; We all know what followed.
-For the record if I were casting The Snake I'd probably pick Mr Robert Carlyle; not only has he actually played Adolf Hitler in THE RISE OF EVIL, but he actually resembles the written description of Jake Featherston even more than he resembles Adolf Hitler (something about the roughness he is well able to project); oddly enough though I tend to hear The Snake as Mr Ron Perlman putting on a Southern accent.
Rather curious that.
Willy Knight
b. July 20th 1889 TX
d.1941 TX
- I imagine Willy Knight was born into a social-climbing sort of family which had rather reached the end of their rope by the end of the Great War; absent any other serious possibility of advancing himself, Knight set about blasting footsteps out of the slippery slope he had set himself to climb (and kicking any other climbers who got a little too close downhill, of course), with what results we know.
- I further imagine that Knight was a cavalryman during the Great War, serving with the Army of Texas (I imagine that the idea of reaching out to the Hispanic community was his own, although he may have preferred to franchise it out to Freedom Party men in order to keep up appearances around his Texan constituents - it's not impossible that he was the one to set up the routes that funnelled Confederate veterans south of the border down Mexico way to boot).
Why cavalry? Well it's in the name - also as a cavalryman Trooper Knight is likely to conceive a certain scepticism where myths are concerned, yet also be keenly aware that shock tactics, a fancy uniform and the mythic qualities of an elite have a quality all of their own.
- Why THE REDEMPTION LEAGUE? Well I tend to imagine Young Knight as preacher's son, if that doesn't contradict the idea of him as the son of social climbers; more to the point I imagine him as the fountainhead of the sort of crazy myth-making any self-respecting Nazi party needs to hold it's head up when invoking comparisons with Stupid Jetpack Hitler.
It's fine brew of Southern Chivalry, Weird Christianity, Confederate Revanchism and the odd tidbit of Arthurian Myth Willy Knight has cooked up - all topped off with a cowboy hat and fit to delight Robert E. Howard you may be sure - and on his better days Knight doesn't believe half of it.
On his bad days he doesn't believe in anything much, which is where Jake the Snake has an advantage over him.
- Willy Knight, you see, has Charm but lacks conviction; his enthusiasm ebbs and flows, but he can always be relied upon to run his mouth and that hurts his electoral performance - it doesn't help that he has more than a little of the old EVERYTHING IS BETTER IN TEXAS! mindset (although he downplays this and isn't consumed by this way of thinking).
He's also keen to prove how clever he is and has been known to lose his audience in a haze of purple prose in consequence - a stark contrast with Jake Featherston, a past master of breaking down the complex until every single member of his audience can grasp it and a man who possesses a sense of conviction stronger than that which has fired certain crusades to glory and infamy.
- In the end Willy Knight wants revenge on the Yankees as much as any other Confederate Veteran and more than some, but to his mind the best revenge is living well; he believes that in order to do this he needs to throw out the Old Guard and turn the old order of things on its ear, but beyond that he has no hard and fast goal.
More to the point he regards War against the Yankees as suicide, at least for the foreseeable future; What he promises he will not perform unless he sees some profit or advantage in it.
Jake the Snake considers the best Revenge to be crushing his enemies, burning their Homes to the ground and salting the landscape thereabouts to ensure that never again will anything flower in the immediate vicinity; what he promises he will perform and hang the cost.
To say the least this leads to some differences of opinion between the two of them.
- Finally it should be noted that Knight's Racism is tactical rather than pathological (in truth he's as cynical as he is affable - if hating you wins some advantage then brother he LOATHES you - otherwise he's a people person); having fought alongside Whites, Hispanics and 'Injuns' through south Sequoya and West Texas he has some idea of the advantages a 'mongrel' unit can produce.
More to the point in the Far West theatre the 'Lost Army' was losing badly long before The Red Rebellions and more because The Confederacy could not or would not send them much more than the scrapings of the barrel, while the Yankees seemed to hurl everything at them but the kitchen sink.
So you should understand if Knight holds grudges then it's against The Confederate Establishment, rather than Blacks (and finds nothing wrong with the idea of putting the Negroes to use on the front-line, especially if it puts a few more meat-shields between him and eternity); given the Presidency he might well have created a Black Praetorian Guard on the understanding that there'd be no body of men more enthusiastic in the persecution of the Freedom Party.
Not that he's foolish enough to share this opinion in the aftermath of the Great War, given that in the company he's keeping that sort of thinking can get you killed; As you may have noted Willy Knight is a political opportunist of few fixed principles beyond the conviction that the Confederate States is the greatest nation on Earth and that he's JUST the man to set it to rights again.
Now if only he could get rid of the 'Vice-' in Vice-President. . .
- For some reason I tend to imagine Knight as rather resembling Mr Matthew McConaughey, probably because the latter has the right mixture of boyish good looks and snake-oil charm that I associate with Willy Knight (or at least is able to reliably project the latter!).
b. July 20th 1889 TX
d.1941 TX
- I imagine Willy Knight was born into a social-climbing sort of family which had rather reached the end of their rope by the end of the Great War; absent any other serious possibility of advancing himself, Knight set about blasting footsteps out of the slippery slope he had set himself to climb (and kicking any other climbers who got a little too close downhill, of course), with what results we know.
- I further imagine that Knight was a cavalryman during the Great War, serving with the Army of Texas (I imagine that the idea of reaching out to the Hispanic community was his own, although he may have preferred to franchise it out to Freedom Party men in order to keep up appearances around his Texan constituents - it's not impossible that he was the one to set up the routes that funnelled Confederate veterans south of the border down Mexico way to boot).
Why cavalry? Well it's in the name - also as a cavalryman Trooper Knight is likely to conceive a certain scepticism where myths are concerned, yet also be keenly aware that shock tactics, a fancy uniform and the mythic qualities of an elite have a quality all of their own.
- Why THE REDEMPTION LEAGUE? Well I tend to imagine Young Knight as preacher's son, if that doesn't contradict the idea of him as the son of social climbers; more to the point I imagine him as the fountainhead of the sort of crazy myth-making any self-respecting Nazi party needs to hold it's head up when invoking comparisons with Stupid Jetpack Hitler.
It's fine brew of Southern Chivalry, Weird Christianity, Confederate Revanchism and the odd tidbit of Arthurian Myth Willy Knight has cooked up - all topped off with a cowboy hat and fit to delight Robert E. Howard you may be sure - and on his better days Knight doesn't believe half of it.
On his bad days he doesn't believe in anything much, which is where Jake the Snake has an advantage over him.
- Willy Knight, you see, has Charm but lacks conviction; his enthusiasm ebbs and flows, but he can always be relied upon to run his mouth and that hurts his electoral performance - it doesn't help that he has more than a little of the old EVERYTHING IS BETTER IN TEXAS! mindset (although he downplays this and isn't consumed by this way of thinking).
He's also keen to prove how clever he is and has been known to lose his audience in a haze of purple prose in consequence - a stark contrast with Jake Featherston, a past master of breaking down the complex until every single member of his audience can grasp it and a man who possesses a sense of conviction stronger than that which has fired certain crusades to glory and infamy.
- In the end Willy Knight wants revenge on the Yankees as much as any other Confederate Veteran and more than some, but to his mind the best revenge is living well; he believes that in order to do this he needs to throw out the Old Guard and turn the old order of things on its ear, but beyond that he has no hard and fast goal.
More to the point he regards War against the Yankees as suicide, at least for the foreseeable future; What he promises he will not perform unless he sees some profit or advantage in it.
Jake the Snake considers the best Revenge to be crushing his enemies, burning their Homes to the ground and salting the landscape thereabouts to ensure that never again will anything flower in the immediate vicinity; what he promises he will perform and hang the cost.
To say the least this leads to some differences of opinion between the two of them.
- Finally it should be noted that Knight's Racism is tactical rather than pathological (in truth he's as cynical as he is affable - if hating you wins some advantage then brother he LOATHES you - otherwise he's a people person); having fought alongside Whites, Hispanics and 'Injuns' through south Sequoya and West Texas he has some idea of the advantages a 'mongrel' unit can produce.
More to the point in the Far West theatre the 'Lost Army' was losing badly long before The Red Rebellions and more because The Confederacy could not or would not send them much more than the scrapings of the barrel, while the Yankees seemed to hurl everything at them but the kitchen sink.
So you should understand if Knight holds grudges then it's against The Confederate Establishment, rather than Blacks (and finds nothing wrong with the idea of putting the Negroes to use on the front-line, especially if it puts a few more meat-shields between him and eternity); given the Presidency he might well have created a Black Praetorian Guard on the understanding that there'd be no body of men more enthusiastic in the persecution of the Freedom Party.
Not that he's foolish enough to share this opinion in the aftermath of the Great War, given that in the company he's keeping that sort of thinking can get you killed; As you may have noted Willy Knight is a political opportunist of few fixed principles beyond the conviction that the Confederate States is the greatest nation on Earth and that he's JUST the man to set it to rights again.
Now if only he could get rid of the 'Vice-' in Vice-President. . .
- For some reason I tend to imagine Knight as rather resembling Mr Matthew McConaughey, probably because the latter has the right mixture of boyish good looks and snake-oil charm that I associate with Willy Knight (or at least is able to reliably project the latter!).