TL-191: Filling the Gaps
- Thread starter Craigo
- Start date
While I lack the expertise to put together a convincing article on Quebecois Politics, one imagines that beyond the horizons of dear old Lucien Galtier the Republic of Quebec was experiencing an interesting transitional period after being ripped whole from the fabric of Canada and given existence as a separate Nation in its own right - on the understanding that they would toe the line wheresoever the United States cared to draw it in the sand (or more accurately the snow).
Given that a significant proportion of Quebecois males would have seen active service with the Army of the British Empire in Canada during the Great War, it is difficult to imagine that there was not a great deal of tension in the Republic as politicians did its best to work out how to conciliate the Veterans (and those loyal to the Dominion of Canada) without testing the toleration of the United States to destruction.
I'd imagine that La Belle Republique was particularly sensitive to the operations of 'Tories' (not a name used for the Canadian Resistance on this thread before, not to the best of my knowledge, but a useful shorthand nonetheless) who might well have set Quebec aflame during The Great Canadian Uprising without skilful and ruthless suppression of their activities.
At least before the first Generation of Independent Quebecois Nationals grew to adulthood and the Great War Veterans got too old to go looking for trouble.
That would be the point at which agitation for greater autonomy from The United States takes over from calls for reunification with (and renewal of the Independence of) Canada as the great source of friction in The Republic of Quebec.
Having been considering how the struggle between the three political extremes of Reconstruction, Reform and Revanchism effectively defines the core arc of the Confederacy's History between the Great Wars, it has occurred to me that it is interesting to ponder just what the equivalent 'Core Theme' would be for the United States during that timeframe - some Great Question hanging over the Era like the Sword of Damocles that could help function an an engine that can drive articles associated with the Time & Place.
I really would like to hear your thoughts on the subject fellows, as you have so consistently proven yourselves to have a command of the original text far great than my own; that being said I will now share my thoughts on the subject and hope that you do not find them unwelcome:-
- Pared down to a nutshell, it seems to me that the Great Political Issue of the time for the United States would almost certainly be REMEMBRANCE Vs THE GREAT REPUBLIC; having spent decades, blood and treasure in the cause of Remembrance the United States is now victorious … but at what cost to its nature as a Democracy?
Given that this triumph was brought about through the emulation of a fundamentally undemocratic regime such as the Second Reich and the exceptionally cautious exercise of the constraints against such Militarism inherent in the Constitution (I doubt any legal objections to troops being billeted on the populace were given particularly fair hearing, for instance), one has to imagine that there have to be some fear on the part of more far-sighted Congressmen and other Political Observers that the United States might well end up an Army with a State Attached (in the Bismark-approved, Bonaparte-tested fashion).
Couple that with an increasingly strong Socialist movement, an ideology with Pacifism and anti-Militarism built into its very bones, this produces at least some potential for a possibly-catastrophic Internal Division between Constitutionalists and Militarists; given the added complication of Canada (how does a nation founded on the rejection of Empire come to terms with Imperialism as a fact of everyday life?) I can see some interesting potential for articles following the long, complex and CAREFUL process of reconciling the security of the United States with its fundamentally Democratic nature.
Just how WAS that ticking time-bomb called Remembrance dismantled so that a more enduringly-stable engine could be built up in its place?
I really would like to hear your thoughts on the subject fellows, as you have so consistently proven yourselves to have a command of the original text far great than my own; that being said I will now share my thoughts on the subject and hope that you do not find them unwelcome:-
- Pared down to a nutshell, it seems to me that the Great Political Issue of the time for the United States would almost certainly be REMEMBRANCE Vs THE GREAT REPUBLIC; having spent decades, blood and treasure in the cause of Remembrance the United States is now victorious … but at what cost to its nature as a Democracy?
Given that this triumph was brought about through the emulation of a fundamentally undemocratic regime such as the Second Reich and the exceptionally cautious exercise of the constraints against such Militarism inherent in the Constitution (I doubt any legal objections to troops being billeted on the populace were given particularly fair hearing, for instance), one has to imagine that there have to be some fear on the part of more far-sighted Congressmen and other Political Observers that the United States might well end up an Army with a State Attached (in the Bismark-approved, Bonaparte-tested fashion).
Couple that with an increasingly strong Socialist movement, an ideology with Pacifism and anti-Militarism built into its very bones, this produces at least some potential for a possibly-catastrophic Internal Division between Constitutionalists and Militarists; given the added complication of Canada (how does a nation founded on the rejection of Empire come to terms with Imperialism as a fact of everyday life?) I can see some interesting potential for articles following the long, complex and CAREFUL process of reconciling the security of the United States with its fundamentally Democratic nature.
Just how WAS that ticking time-bomb called Remembrance dismantled so that a more enduringly-stable engine could be built up in its place?
Does all this rumination make sense? Do you think this idea has any potential at all?
Given that the Mule is just TOO perfectly Socialist a totem, does anyone would think the Bull Moose would take its place instead or would a Wild Boar be a better replacement as symbol of the Democratic Party?(given that a Wild Boar is the sort of capitalist pig you don't want to mess with!).
One of these questions is less germane than the others …
I am loving the character sketches. Can we use them to write Bios on the characters ? Of course using the sketches interwoven with historical facts or have you called dibs on them.
I am working on a series of article starting on the Fall 1916 Confederate Roanoke Offensive. (Thriteenth Battle of Roanoke). Then rolling into the a bio on Nathan Bedford Forrest III.
I am working on a series of article starting on the Fall 1916 Confederate Roanoke Offensive. (Thriteenth Battle of Roanoke). Then rolling into the a bio on Nathan Bedford Forrest III.
Mr President, I would be quite enormously flattered and even more delighted were you or any other of our posting fellows to take my sketches then turn them into finished Biographies!
I must say that the opportunity to collaborate with you fine crafts-women and craftsmen is a major part of the reason I signed up with AH.com in the first place! (also because I am currently a writer, but have ambitions to be an Author so I need all the practice that I can get).
So please, by all means go ahead - I look forward to reading your own articles and those of our other contributors!
I must say that the opportunity to collaborate with you fine crafts-women and craftsmen is a major part of the reason I signed up with AH.com in the first place! (also because I am currently a writer, but have ambitions to be an Author so I need all the practice that I can get).
So please, by all means go ahead - I look forward to reading your own articles and those of our other contributors!
I just wanted to take a sounding to establish if the following suggested additions to the Life History of Wade Hampton V make sense for the character without making him TOO tiresome a fellow (aka "An intolerable Gary Stu"):-
- Firstly, I have established his birthday to my satisfaction: I intend hereinafter to depict him as having been born January 19th 1864 (making him a rough contemporary of Gabriel Semmes and JEB Stuart Junior, which seems appropriate), which means he was shares a birthday with Robert E. Lee and was in fact born in the year when at least one timeline indicates that he was made General of the Armies in the CSA (if I remember correctly), which also happens to be the year that The Treaty of Arlington was signed (effectively recognising the Confederacy as a Free and Independent Nation).
It seems a suitably momentous year to be born! (It should be further noted that I imagine Mr Hampton's parents met as a result of Lees occupation of Philadelphia; I have not decided if this is because the fifth Wade Hampton's mother is a copperhead or if she was simply a Southern Socialite come North to witness the Victory Parade).
- I further imagine that given their proximity in age (I like the idea that J.E.B Junior is just slightly younger - born on the 12th May 1864, just for the highlight it throws on how much luckier his father is in this timeline) Wade Hampton V and J.E.B Stuart are effectively lifelong rivals - PROFESSIONAL Rivals, in both senses of the word, which is to say that they compete for much the same positions, but are careful to keep their competition on a level that does not compromise the effectiveness of the Confederate Army.
Which is not to say that it ever became a Friendly Rivalry.
Why the rivalry? Well they're both the sons of great cavalry commanders, both the heirs to the Army of Northern Virginia, both Whigs and both of an age they are in essence competing for many of the same vacancies … at least until Wade Hampton V starts looking to fill the Grey House!
- Given that Hampton V is an almost exact contemporary of JEB Stuart Junior, it seems very likely that he too served as a green ensign during the Second Mexican War and most probably as a cavalryman in the Army of Northern Virginia; I imagine that during the period after the Battle of Winchester there was a good deal of back-and-forth fencing between cavalry & skirmishers from both sides of the Mason-Dixon, as the Army of Northern Virginia held its ground near Washington and the Army of the Potomac covered the withdrawal of Government to Philadelphia (very possibly showed a caution that would have made Little Mac proud and which probably gave Old Mr Lincoln a renewal of old conniptions).
Nothing big or famous enough to make a Career, but enough for a youngster to show Promise (although I'd guess that J.E.B Stuart Junior was ahead of Wade Hampton on points at the end of the Second Mexican War, in terms of their rivalry).
I also rather like the idea that he met and began the long process of courting his future bride during his time in Virginia (whom I will continue to regard as a daughter of the Lee lineage - possibly a cadet branch - until someone suggests a better candidate).
- I remain fond of the idea that Wade Hampton V attended West Point Military Academy, against the odds and as a way of being seen to walk in the footsteps (as well as hint at a Statesmanlike gesture of reconciliation between North and South), but now I believe that I have the perfect explanation for just why on Earth a Confederate Famous Family would send its son North; Wade Hampton the Fourth is making absolutely certain that whether Grandpa Hampton's coup fails or succeeds (given that Wade Hampton IV becomes a prominent politician, according to the aforesaid timeline, I am quite convinced that this coup fails because Wade Hampton IV takes pains to ensure that it does - in the interest of preserving his son's career and his father's head) his grandson will be far out of harms way.
Admittedly he'll also be in the middle of a US Military Academy, but if campaigning throughout The Second Mexican War didn't toughen him up enough to endure local prejudices and a certain amount of social unpleasantness, nothing will! (the fact that having to survive as a Confederate amongst Yankees would teach him lessons in practical diplomacy and survival which could be nothing but useful in the future … assuming he survived).
- Having survived West Point somehow (it amuses me to assume that he did so by becoming a man with a hide thick enough to cheat a chainsaw and slick enough to wear as a raincoat), he returns Home to the South to find his family perched somewhat precariously in the ranks of the Southern Elite (Dad did Yeoman Service to his country, Granddad came within an inch of making its transition into the cotton-picking equivalent of a Banana Republic Inevitable rather than possible); at this point it looks as though Wade Hampton V will have to WORK for his advancement and not merely trust in Dad to deliver it to him on a platter (not that he ever intended to be remembered merely as his Father's son).
I imagine that his path to High Rank and Respect took him into the Confederate West, into the Apache Wars of this Timeline - and right back into direct competition with J.E.B Stuart, in many ways his closest peer. Given the unfortunate condition in which the alliance between this particular First Nation and The Confederacy was left by the Second Mexican War (not to mention the death of JEB Stuart) I imagine that the suppression of Geronimo and his band and their equally-formidable cousins was high on the list of priorities.
Given that this is Geronimo of whom we speak, one imagines that they had their work cut out for them.
- I am inclined to imagine that both Stuart and Hampton did no harm to their reputations in the course of the hunt for Geronimo, but that the former proved that his particular genius lay in Staff Work rather than in field command (also that he held grudges until he choked them or at least until they broke his thumb): I'd imagine that his very personal grudge against Geronimo made it difficult for the latter to negotiate with the Confederate Cavalry and vice versa, which could very well prolong an already protracted campaign.
Assuming of course, as I am very much inclined to, that Geronimo was finally brought in more through his own absolute exhaustion and after a parley (as he was in our own timeline); if it is not too intolerable an imposition I would like to suggest that Wade Hampton V played some part in the process of negotiating the surrender of Geronimo, if only as second Lieutenant to First Lieutenant Charles Gatewood (who as a Virginia man would probably be serving with the CS Cavalry in the course of this Timeline).
As might be expected of Wade Hampton V, he invested any credit he might have acquired from this incident very wisely.
- I was recently reading a list of inconsistencies in the course of Timeline-191 on the Turtledove Wikia, trying to work out which ones can be safely chalked up to minor bugs (and therefore NEED fixing), as well as which ones could be more interesting if they were explained as peculiarities of In-Universe History (in other words as a feature rather than a bug).
I number amongst the latter the mention of Comanche fighting alongside Kiowa Warriors and the Confederate States Army during the US Push through Sequoya; now given that the Comanche are very explicitly described as Border Reivers (privateers of the plains, plausibly-deniable cossacks in the service of the United States) in HOW FEW REMAIN it seems to me that there must be an interesting (and probably tragic) story in how they came to be fighting FOR the South (or at least against the United States).
My idea is that when the time came to reign in the Kiowa and the Comanche so that they might put them out to pasture for the sake of a rapprochement between the CSA and the USA the latter made a clumsier job of it; perhaps because their overwhelming material advantage and increased militancy allows them to take a higher hand with the 'Red Man' than The South (which has to do business with the Five Civilised Tribes, not least because those gentleman are organised and blessed with a reservoir of increasingly-precious Black Gold) but equally-probably because they've been taking lessons from General Custer.
Whatever the case I imagine a Glencoe Massacre-type scenario developing; the CS and US governments put out a joint declaration to the effect that either you quit raiding and come in before a certain date or you will suffer the consequences - the Southern commander on the spot whom I intend to depict as Wade Hampton V (who after becoming noted for his association with Native Americans and for his ambitions has been dubbed 'Big Chief Wade' in much the same way 'Black Jack' Pershing's association with Negro Troops led to his nickname) is cunning enough to employ a velvet glove which makes his Iron Grip palatable enough to the Kiowa to conciliate them to their forthcoming retirement (possibly by helping them come to an agreement with the other residents of the Indian Territory, soon to become the State of Sequoya).
As one observer put it (and this could have been uttered at any time of Mr Hampton's career): "Big Chief Wade somehow manages to both get his own way and make you like him for it!" (hence his other nickname 'Slick').
- The incident plays out something like this: The United States man on the spot is competent enough but fails to win the hearts and minds of the Comanche to say the least; some gang of adolescent hotheads decide to cock a snook at the White Man by launching one last raid and getting in under the Wire just in time to take advantage of the Amnesty offered to all parties by the CS-US Agreement (which I'd imagine goes into effect on New Years Day).
Unfortunately things do NOT go to plan; the Comanche don't get caught, but they do get cut up and the survivors are obliged to go into hiding - worse still their families are about to be confronted by the US Government and as tempers fray to breaking point, an ugly incident ensues.
I'd guess that the Comanche band in question are turned out of their homes , quite possibly after fleeing out into the wilderness of winter so that they might head for the border in the desperate hope of finding their menfolk. They suffer for some little while before being found … by their menfolk, by some extraordinary stroke of good fortune or incredible accomplishment in the art of tracking.
- Then the Confederate Cavalry show up; luckily for them Mr Wade Hampton V is a generally-merciful man and inclined to the Statesmanlike gesture (not to mention well able to spot an opportunity to heap coals of fire on Yankee heads and make them like it).
He proceeds to offer the women and children and the elderly asylum in the Confederacy provided that the ringleaders turn themselves in for Trial - I'd imagine he handles the whole business in such a way that the Confederacy gets a bit of a public relations boost (along with Wade Hampton V, of course!) and the United States will be left looking like the Heavy of the Piece.
The Comanche are settled in the Indian Territory (probably on the understanding that the House of Hampton will speak out in favour of the State of Sequoya) and conceive a grudge against their former employers to say the least - I'd guess that the Comanche Bravos who will fight against the United States are the young boys who had to run for their lives when Uncle Sam decided he wanted to have words with their elder brothers and didn't care to take 'No' for an answer.
- At this point Wade Hampton's stock is pretty high; veteran of the Second Mexican War, married to a Lee, son of a senior statesman in Confederate politics, a soldier with a touch of the statesman about him, a man seen as fit to be trusted with a senior command and an 'Educated Soldier' (to borrow a phrase); best of all he's a nice compromise between the Louisville School and the Fire-Eaters (having carefully set himself up as just that), in that his instinct is for aggression but his temper is keen rather than explosive and he's also eager to exploit the latest developments where they are available.
With JEB Stuart aiming to focus on his career in the General Staff and Hampton discretely pressing his supporters to politick on his behalf, Big Chief Wade sets himself at the head of the Army of Northern Virginia and begins to plot out the Big Wheel with which he intends to roll over Washington DC and Philadelphia (probably with the assistance of JEB Stuart).
The Big Wheel didn't quite manage to persuade the Yankees to roll over, but it certainly crushed enough of them under its weight and impetus.
- One last point concerning background and I think I shall have done a reasonable enough job of filling in the gaps of Wade Hampton's career prior to his election as President of the Confederate States; if I had to guess Pompey wriggled out of capture courtesy of the joint effort by Sgt. Jake Featherston and Major Clarence Potter by virtue of a personal appeal on behalf of his son by JEB Stuart Junior to Wade Hampton V - alternatively it is just possible that Wade Hampton V was relieved of command (Army of Northern Virginia) in part because REFUSED that appeal.
I imagine Wade Hampton V as a man who places a good deal of faith in his Intelligence Service (hence his unusual success against the Yankees) and he might well heed them in the hopes of ensuring his Army's Support Staff don't raise bloody Revolution - only to find that this loses him Stuart's backing at a crucial moment where such support might preserve his position in the teeth of his rather controversial suggestions that the Confederate States make its own separate Peace before its situation goes from Bad to Worse.
Given that this allows us to show Hampton making a political mis-step, as well as raising an interesting parallel between The Snake and his old commander, I'm inclined to like it as a character detail. One has to admit that I keep worrying that I've made Wade Hampton V a bit TOO clever - I want to make his rise to prominence look assured and I want to make him look like a distinctly clever man, but I also want to make sure that he's far from perfect and isn't always Lucky or Right.
The fact that - according to the article on President Semmes - Wade Hampton V was disinclined to honour the pledge of citizenship for the Black Regiments on the understanding that since they had failed to help win the War for the South, they had also failed to win their citizenship does rather help keep him from being TOO implausibly enlightened or selfless.
- In fact it suggests to me that Mr Hampton's presidency would have been one more focussed on expediency over principal; had he put the Freedom Party on Trial for the assassination of a Public Official by a Party Member, they would have been thoroughly extirpated and not merely crushed.
I suspect he would have been not much more enlightened concerning Race Relations than President Mitchel, but I imagine he would have restored confidence in the Confederate States to the same degree (although probably by Force of Personality, By Hook and By Crook rather than popular appreciation for his integrity and sheer hard work); one expedient he might well employ would be to separate the Redemption League from the Freedom Party and put them to work in the West on behalf of the Whigs (thereby strengthening the Whigs and weakening The Snake).
He would also have been out of office and happily retired when The Crash came, doubtless a popular figure in his own lifetime but likely to be remembered by Historians as something less than the incarnation of Political Rectitude.
I have actually picked out a face for Wade Hampton V that I rather like; it's not a perfect Casting Call in that he doesn't really look like Wade Hampton V (and I imagine he quite strong resembles his grandfather, something he sought to downplay, preferring instead to evoke comparisons w. Robert E. Lee until after The Great War), but it does convey something of the man's character as I see it.
^He really needs a nice trimmed beard, but the only bearded image of the actor that I could find was a bit TOO on-the-nose.^
http://s285.photobucket.com/user/alexsolaris_photos/media/solaris%20200000/416087PathsGlory01_opt_zpsb1303206.jpg.html
^Well I didn't realise that the fellow who'd played The General in PATHS OF GLORY had also played Robert E. Lee, but the face and the coincidence seemed just too good to turn down … but the implications behind the choice made me a touch uncomfortable; I didn't want Wade Hampton V to be a military monster, as opposed to an extremely smooth operator with an instinct for aggression.^
- Firstly, I have established his birthday to my satisfaction: I intend hereinafter to depict him as having been born January 19th 1864 (making him a rough contemporary of Gabriel Semmes and JEB Stuart Junior, which seems appropriate), which means he was shares a birthday with Robert E. Lee and was in fact born in the year when at least one timeline indicates that he was made General of the Armies in the CSA (if I remember correctly), which also happens to be the year that The Treaty of Arlington was signed (effectively recognising the Confederacy as a Free and Independent Nation).
It seems a suitably momentous year to be born! (It should be further noted that I imagine Mr Hampton's parents met as a result of Lees occupation of Philadelphia; I have not decided if this is because the fifth Wade Hampton's mother is a copperhead or if she was simply a Southern Socialite come North to witness the Victory Parade).
- I further imagine that given their proximity in age (I like the idea that J.E.B Junior is just slightly younger - born on the 12th May 1864, just for the highlight it throws on how much luckier his father is in this timeline) Wade Hampton V and J.E.B Stuart are effectively lifelong rivals - PROFESSIONAL Rivals, in both senses of the word, which is to say that they compete for much the same positions, but are careful to keep their competition on a level that does not compromise the effectiveness of the Confederate Army.
Which is not to say that it ever became a Friendly Rivalry.
Why the rivalry? Well they're both the sons of great cavalry commanders, both the heirs to the Army of Northern Virginia, both Whigs and both of an age they are in essence competing for many of the same vacancies … at least until Wade Hampton V starts looking to fill the Grey House!
- Given that Hampton V is an almost exact contemporary of JEB Stuart Junior, it seems very likely that he too served as a green ensign during the Second Mexican War and most probably as a cavalryman in the Army of Northern Virginia; I imagine that during the period after the Battle of Winchester there was a good deal of back-and-forth fencing between cavalry & skirmishers from both sides of the Mason-Dixon, as the Army of Northern Virginia held its ground near Washington and the Army of the Potomac covered the withdrawal of Government to Philadelphia (very possibly showed a caution that would have made Little Mac proud and which probably gave Old Mr Lincoln a renewal of old conniptions).
Nothing big or famous enough to make a Career, but enough for a youngster to show Promise (although I'd guess that J.E.B Stuart Junior was ahead of Wade Hampton on points at the end of the Second Mexican War, in terms of their rivalry).
I also rather like the idea that he met and began the long process of courting his future bride during his time in Virginia (whom I will continue to regard as a daughter of the Lee lineage - possibly a cadet branch - until someone suggests a better candidate).
- I remain fond of the idea that Wade Hampton V attended West Point Military Academy, against the odds and as a way of being seen to walk in the footsteps (as well as hint at a Statesmanlike gesture of reconciliation between North and South), but now I believe that I have the perfect explanation for just why on Earth a Confederate Famous Family would send its son North; Wade Hampton the Fourth is making absolutely certain that whether Grandpa Hampton's coup fails or succeeds (given that Wade Hampton IV becomes a prominent politician, according to the aforesaid timeline, I am quite convinced that this coup fails because Wade Hampton IV takes pains to ensure that it does - in the interest of preserving his son's career and his father's head) his grandson will be far out of harms way.
Admittedly he'll also be in the middle of a US Military Academy, but if campaigning throughout The Second Mexican War didn't toughen him up enough to endure local prejudices and a certain amount of social unpleasantness, nothing will! (the fact that having to survive as a Confederate amongst Yankees would teach him lessons in practical diplomacy and survival which could be nothing but useful in the future … assuming he survived).
- Having survived West Point somehow (it amuses me to assume that he did so by becoming a man with a hide thick enough to cheat a chainsaw and slick enough to wear as a raincoat), he returns Home to the South to find his family perched somewhat precariously in the ranks of the Southern Elite (Dad did Yeoman Service to his country, Granddad came within an inch of making its transition into the cotton-picking equivalent of a Banana Republic Inevitable rather than possible); at this point it looks as though Wade Hampton V will have to WORK for his advancement and not merely trust in Dad to deliver it to him on a platter (not that he ever intended to be remembered merely as his Father's son).
I imagine that his path to High Rank and Respect took him into the Confederate West, into the Apache Wars of this Timeline - and right back into direct competition with J.E.B Stuart, in many ways his closest peer. Given the unfortunate condition in which the alliance between this particular First Nation and The Confederacy was left by the Second Mexican War (not to mention the death of JEB Stuart) I imagine that the suppression of Geronimo and his band and their equally-formidable cousins was high on the list of priorities.
Given that this is Geronimo of whom we speak, one imagines that they had their work cut out for them.
- I am inclined to imagine that both Stuart and Hampton did no harm to their reputations in the course of the hunt for Geronimo, but that the former proved that his particular genius lay in Staff Work rather than in field command (also that he held grudges until he choked them or at least until they broke his thumb): I'd imagine that his very personal grudge against Geronimo made it difficult for the latter to negotiate with the Confederate Cavalry and vice versa, which could very well prolong an already protracted campaign.
Assuming of course, as I am very much inclined to, that Geronimo was finally brought in more through his own absolute exhaustion and after a parley (as he was in our own timeline); if it is not too intolerable an imposition I would like to suggest that Wade Hampton V played some part in the process of negotiating the surrender of Geronimo, if only as second Lieutenant to First Lieutenant Charles Gatewood (who as a Virginia man would probably be serving with the CS Cavalry in the course of this Timeline).
As might be expected of Wade Hampton V, he invested any credit he might have acquired from this incident very wisely.
- I was recently reading a list of inconsistencies in the course of Timeline-191 on the Turtledove Wikia, trying to work out which ones can be safely chalked up to minor bugs (and therefore NEED fixing), as well as which ones could be more interesting if they were explained as peculiarities of In-Universe History (in other words as a feature rather than a bug).
I number amongst the latter the mention of Comanche fighting alongside Kiowa Warriors and the Confederate States Army during the US Push through Sequoya; now given that the Comanche are very explicitly described as Border Reivers (privateers of the plains, plausibly-deniable cossacks in the service of the United States) in HOW FEW REMAIN it seems to me that there must be an interesting (and probably tragic) story in how they came to be fighting FOR the South (or at least against the United States).
My idea is that when the time came to reign in the Kiowa and the Comanche so that they might put them out to pasture for the sake of a rapprochement between the CSA and the USA the latter made a clumsier job of it; perhaps because their overwhelming material advantage and increased militancy allows them to take a higher hand with the 'Red Man' than The South (which has to do business with the Five Civilised Tribes, not least because those gentleman are organised and blessed with a reservoir of increasingly-precious Black Gold) but equally-probably because they've been taking lessons from General Custer.
Whatever the case I imagine a Glencoe Massacre-type scenario developing; the CS and US governments put out a joint declaration to the effect that either you quit raiding and come in before a certain date or you will suffer the consequences - the Southern commander on the spot whom I intend to depict as Wade Hampton V (who after becoming noted for his association with Native Americans and for his ambitions has been dubbed 'Big Chief Wade' in much the same way 'Black Jack' Pershing's association with Negro Troops led to his nickname) is cunning enough to employ a velvet glove which makes his Iron Grip palatable enough to the Kiowa to conciliate them to their forthcoming retirement (possibly by helping them come to an agreement with the other residents of the Indian Territory, soon to become the State of Sequoya).
As one observer put it (and this could have been uttered at any time of Mr Hampton's career): "Big Chief Wade somehow manages to both get his own way and make you like him for it!" (hence his other nickname 'Slick').
- The incident plays out something like this: The United States man on the spot is competent enough but fails to win the hearts and minds of the Comanche to say the least; some gang of adolescent hotheads decide to cock a snook at the White Man by launching one last raid and getting in under the Wire just in time to take advantage of the Amnesty offered to all parties by the CS-US Agreement (which I'd imagine goes into effect on New Years Day).
Unfortunately things do NOT go to plan; the Comanche don't get caught, but they do get cut up and the survivors are obliged to go into hiding - worse still their families are about to be confronted by the US Government and as tempers fray to breaking point, an ugly incident ensues.
I'd guess that the Comanche band in question are turned out of their homes , quite possibly after fleeing out into the wilderness of winter so that they might head for the border in the desperate hope of finding their menfolk. They suffer for some little while before being found … by their menfolk, by some extraordinary stroke of good fortune or incredible accomplishment in the art of tracking.
- Then the Confederate Cavalry show up; luckily for them Mr Wade Hampton V is a generally-merciful man and inclined to the Statesmanlike gesture (not to mention well able to spot an opportunity to heap coals of fire on Yankee heads and make them like it).
He proceeds to offer the women and children and the elderly asylum in the Confederacy provided that the ringleaders turn themselves in for Trial - I'd imagine he handles the whole business in such a way that the Confederacy gets a bit of a public relations boost (along with Wade Hampton V, of course!) and the United States will be left looking like the Heavy of the Piece.
The Comanche are settled in the Indian Territory (probably on the understanding that the House of Hampton will speak out in favour of the State of Sequoya) and conceive a grudge against their former employers to say the least - I'd guess that the Comanche Bravos who will fight against the United States are the young boys who had to run for their lives when Uncle Sam decided he wanted to have words with their elder brothers and didn't care to take 'No' for an answer.
- At this point Wade Hampton's stock is pretty high; veteran of the Second Mexican War, married to a Lee, son of a senior statesman in Confederate politics, a soldier with a touch of the statesman about him, a man seen as fit to be trusted with a senior command and an 'Educated Soldier' (to borrow a phrase); best of all he's a nice compromise between the Louisville School and the Fire-Eaters (having carefully set himself up as just that), in that his instinct is for aggression but his temper is keen rather than explosive and he's also eager to exploit the latest developments where they are available.
With JEB Stuart aiming to focus on his career in the General Staff and Hampton discretely pressing his supporters to politick on his behalf, Big Chief Wade sets himself at the head of the Army of Northern Virginia and begins to plot out the Big Wheel with which he intends to roll over Washington DC and Philadelphia (probably with the assistance of JEB Stuart).
The Big Wheel didn't quite manage to persuade the Yankees to roll over, but it certainly crushed enough of them under its weight and impetus.
- One last point concerning background and I think I shall have done a reasonable enough job of filling in the gaps of Wade Hampton's career prior to his election as President of the Confederate States; if I had to guess Pompey wriggled out of capture courtesy of the joint effort by Sgt. Jake Featherston and Major Clarence Potter by virtue of a personal appeal on behalf of his son by JEB Stuart Junior to Wade Hampton V - alternatively it is just possible that Wade Hampton V was relieved of command (Army of Northern Virginia) in part because REFUSED that appeal.
I imagine Wade Hampton V as a man who places a good deal of faith in his Intelligence Service (hence his unusual success against the Yankees) and he might well heed them in the hopes of ensuring his Army's Support Staff don't raise bloody Revolution - only to find that this loses him Stuart's backing at a crucial moment where such support might preserve his position in the teeth of his rather controversial suggestions that the Confederate States make its own separate Peace before its situation goes from Bad to Worse.
Given that this allows us to show Hampton making a political mis-step, as well as raising an interesting parallel between The Snake and his old commander, I'm inclined to like it as a character detail. One has to admit that I keep worrying that I've made Wade Hampton V a bit TOO clever - I want to make his rise to prominence look assured and I want to make him look like a distinctly clever man, but I also want to make sure that he's far from perfect and isn't always Lucky or Right.
The fact that - according to the article on President Semmes - Wade Hampton V was disinclined to honour the pledge of citizenship for the Black Regiments on the understanding that since they had failed to help win the War for the South, they had also failed to win their citizenship does rather help keep him from being TOO implausibly enlightened or selfless.
- In fact it suggests to me that Mr Hampton's presidency would have been one more focussed on expediency over principal; had he put the Freedom Party on Trial for the assassination of a Public Official by a Party Member, they would have been thoroughly extirpated and not merely crushed.
I suspect he would have been not much more enlightened concerning Race Relations than President Mitchel, but I imagine he would have restored confidence in the Confederate States to the same degree (although probably by Force of Personality, By Hook and By Crook rather than popular appreciation for his integrity and sheer hard work); one expedient he might well employ would be to separate the Redemption League from the Freedom Party and put them to work in the West on behalf of the Whigs (thereby strengthening the Whigs and weakening The Snake).
He would also have been out of office and happily retired when The Crash came, doubtless a popular figure in his own lifetime but likely to be remembered by Historians as something less than the incarnation of Political Rectitude.
I have actually picked out a face for Wade Hampton V that I rather like; it's not a perfect Casting Call in that he doesn't really look like Wade Hampton V (and I imagine he quite strong resembles his grandfather, something he sought to downplay, preferring instead to evoke comparisons w. Robert E. Lee until after The Great War), but it does convey something of the man's character as I see it.
^He really needs a nice trimmed beard, but the only bearded image of the actor that I could find was a bit TOO on-the-nose.^
http://s285.photobucket.com/user/alexsolaris_photos/media/solaris%20200000/416087PathsGlory01_opt_zpsb1303206.jpg.html
^Well I didn't realise that the fellow who'd played The General in PATHS OF GLORY had also played Robert E. Lee, but the face and the coincidence seemed just too good to turn down … but the implications behind the choice made me a touch uncomfortable; I didn't want Wade Hampton V to be a military monster, as opposed to an extremely smooth operator with an instinct for aggression.^
bguy
Donor
The Hampton history looks good. (I wouldn't worry about making him too impressive. The kind of people who get elected president probably should have extraordinary careers.) The only thing that seems off to me is his attending West Point. If Hampton was born in 1864, then he would be of age to attend West Point in 1882 (i.e. right in the middle of the Blaine Administration.) I can't see President Blaine letting any Confederates into West Point during his presidency.
I agree, but I'm still quite fond of the concept - if nothing else I cannot imagine a better way of thoroughly removing young Wade Hampton from any connection with his Grandfather's coup, which I suspect is important for his future prospects.
I'm not sure we can save this particular concept; one possible excuse might be to make Wade Hampton Vs mother a Yankee, which might give her people just enough influence to make it inconvenient for President Blaine to refuse (or perhaps President Blaine simply didn't wish to court more Bad Press by being made to look petty for taking out his revenge on a single Confederate when he couldn't beat the Confederate States).
Or perhaps Wade Hampton V just spent the year of his grandfather's abortive coup with relations North of the Mason-Dixon?
I'm not sure we can save this particular concept; one possible excuse might be to make Wade Hampton Vs mother a Yankee, which might give her people just enough influence to make it inconvenient for President Blaine to refuse (or perhaps President Blaine simply didn't wish to court more Bad Press by being made to look petty for taking out his revenge on a single Confederate when he couldn't beat the Confederate States).
Or perhaps Wade Hampton V just spent the year of his grandfather's abortive coup with relations North of the Mason-Dixon?
bguy
Donor
Did the British and French service academies allow foreigners to train there in the 19th century? (I know Sandhurst currently allows foreign cadets, but I don't know when it was first opened to foreign nations.) If they did allow foreigners then Hampton could have attended Sandhurst or Saint Cyr. That would still serve the purpose of having him out of country during his Grandfather's coup while also highlighting the CSA's alliance with those nations.
If Hampton had Yankee relatives I think Featherston would have been constantly bringing that up in the 1921 campaign.
James G. Blaine (1830–1893)
James G. Blaine Served as President of the United States from 1881 to 1885. He was the first Republican President since Abraham Lincoln and was president during the Second Mexican War. Where he led the United States in its attempt to prevent the Confederate States from purchasing the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua. He is largely considered on the short list of the five most controversial Presidents in United States history, including Abraham Lincoln, James Buchanan, Thomas Jefferson and Alfred E. Smith.
Early Years
James Gillespie Blaine was born January 31, 1830 in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania, the third child of Ephraim Lyon Blaine and his wife Maria Gillespie. Blaine's father was a western Pennsylvania businessman and landowner, and the family lived in relative comfort. Blaine's mother and her forebears were Irish Catholics who emigrated to Pennsylvania in the 1780s. Blaine's parents were married in 1820 in a Roman Catholic ceremony, although Blaine's father remained a Presbyterian. Following a common compromise of the era, the Blaines agreed that their daughters would be raised in their mother's Catholic faith while their sons would be brought up in their father's religion.
At the age of thirteen, Blaine enrolled in his father's alma mater, Washington College, which later became the Washington & Gouvenir Morris College, in nearby Washington, Pennsylvania. After graduation, Blaine considered attending law school at Yale Law School, but ultimately decided against it. Instead he moved west to find a job. In 1848, Blaine was hired as a professor of mathematics and ancient languages at the Western Military Institute in Georgetown, Kentucky. Although he was only eighteen years old and younger than many of his students, Blaine adapted well to his new profession.
In Kentucky he also made the acquaintance of Harriet Stanwood, a teacher at the nearby Millersburg Female College and native of Maine. On June 30, 1850, the two were married. The Blaine’s moved back and forth between Maine and Pennsylvania. Blaine briefly studied the law in Philadelphia before taking a job as the editor and co-owner of the Kennebec Journal in Maine. Blaine’s decision to become a newspaperman started Blaine on the road to a lifelong career in politics. In 1856, he was selected as a delegate to the first Republican National Convention. From the party's early days, Blaine identified with the conservative wing, supporting Supreme Court Justice John McLean for the presidential nomination over the more radical John C. Frémont, the eventual nominee. In 1858, Blaine ran for a seat in the Maine House of Representatives, and was elected. He ran for reelection in 1859, 1860, and 1861, and was successful each time by large majorities.
Blaine was not a delegate to the Republican convention in 1860, but attended anyway as an enthusiastic supporter of Abraham Lincoln. Returning to Maine, he was elected Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives in 1861 and reelected in 1862. With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, he supported Lincoln's war effort and saw that the Maine Legislature voted to organize and equip units to join the Union Army.
Post War of Secession
Blaine was elected by Maine as a Republican to Congress in 1862. He was the only newly elected Republican Congressman that year in the wake of the defeat at Camp Hill and the occupation of Philadelphia. He served for the next seven terms, earning a reputation as a fiery orator and debater in the party.
Blaine quickly became not only the parties point man on the fight against the doughface Democratic administrations, but also a defender of North Eastern commercial interests. He continually fought for strong tariffs against Britain to protect US industries. He led the fight in Congress for a strong dollar. After the issuance of 150 million dollars in greenbacks—non-gold-backed currency the value of the dollar stood at a low ebb. He quickly became political allies with Nelson Aldrich and other fiscally conservative republicans. A bipartisan group of inflationists, led by Republican Benjamin F. Butler and Democrat George H. Pendleton, wished to preserve the status quo and allow the Treasury to continue to issue greenbacks and even to use them to pay the interest due on pre-war bonds. Blaine called this idea a repudiation of the nation's promise to investors, which was made when the only currency was gold. Speaking several times on the matter, Blaine said that the greenbacks had only ever been an emergency measure to avoid bankruptcy during the post war financial crises. Blaine and his hard money allies were successful, but the issue remained alive until 1879, when all remaining greenbacks were made redeemable in gold by the Specie Payment Resumption Act of 1875.
His attack on the especially dough face Hendricks Administration, where he called down damnation on the Confederates and Democrats both, made him the acknowledged leader of the Republicans in Congress. He became Speaker of the House by 1874. Yet he was repeatedly passed over for its highest honor. As a New Englander he was thought to add nothing of the ticket, so the nomination went instead to men from the Midwest, Pennsylvania, and New York. Blaine's star rose dramatically, and was ran as a candidate for the republican nomination in 1876. Unfortunately for the party Roscoe Conkling won and led the party to defeat after his participation in several corrupt congressional railroad speculation deals became public.
Meanwhile Samuel Tilden, a man of iron integrity and no connection to the scandal as governor of New York beat out Conkling in a landslide. Yet the cold honest minded Tilden failed utterly to see the passion that was swelling in the North. The sale of Spanish Cuba to the Confederacy had occurred in 1876, and Roscoe Conkling had promised retribution if it went through in 1877 on schedule. Tilden, however, said and did nothing, not even a protest. When President Longstreet hiked the Confederate tariff to 15%, Tilden vetoed a retaliatory bill sent to him by Speaker James Blaine of the new Republican majority. He repeatedly refused to provide federal funding for the transcontinental railroad, which remained popular despite the Panic of 1873 and the following scandal. Tilden sealed his own fate by finally ordering 12 stars removed from the American flag - perfectly logical according to his legalistic mind, but an enormous affront to most of his countrymen.
Election of 1880
In 1880 Blaine sought and won his parties nomination to the Presidency. Hopes through out the party were high that the Republicans could finally succeed to the presidency. He got one final boost in 1880 when James Longstreet, the industrial-minded leader of what the Southern newspapers were calling the "Whig" faction, saw an opportunity to build his country up further and humiliate the North simultaneously. He came to an agreement with Emperor Maximilian II of bankrupt Mexico to purchase the western provinces of Chihuahua and Sonora, with the avowed intention of extending the Trans-Mississippi Railroad to the Pacific.
President Tilden, true to form, saw no problem with this proposal, and remarked in a letter to the financier August Belmont that it would provide an investment opportunity for American banks, what with the Confederacy being relatively cash-poor. The letter became public in early September (likely by Belmont's son, who would be killed at the head of a regiment within the year), and Tilden was finished.
The Democrats were shattered everywhere. They took the West Coast states, far from the Confederacy, as well as the borderlands of Delaware, Maryland, and Missouri. They took a third of the tally in New England, and were crushed by hundreds of thousands of votes in New York and Pennsylvania. The GOP would have a two-thirds majority in the next Congress, and a Senate majority for the first time since 1865.
After the dust settled and Blaine and the Republicans were the clear winners, the nation was suddenly gripped by panic. After the 1860 election of Lincoln eight southern states passed ordinances of secession. There were fears through out the north that the south would declare war rather that wait for Blaine to prepare the nation for a war of revenge or reconquest. Fortunately for the South’s alliance with France and Britain, President Longstreet did not take the bait. Instead he offered token of friendship to the new president, who he personally liked and admired. Still an air of financial panic and insecurity lingered in the northern states throughout 1880 and early 1881.
Blaine Inauguration
In this period the federal government was still divided between Philadelphia and Washington DC. Though back up offices were constructed in Philadelphia for most major Federal Offices, Federal Officials were still required to act as if Washington DC was still the capitol. Blaine was inaugurated on March 4, 1881 on the eastern side of the capitol building. Blaine was known as a vigorous campaigner but also a rousing orator. Blaine’s 1881 has gone down in history as a framework for what would later become the post war remembrance ideology. In his speech he laid out a worldview adopted by many future remembrance democrats. These included a rejection of European and Confederate stile imperialism, instead he offered up a new vision of the world united through trade and collective security. He called for strengthening the army and navy, investing in the national infrastructure to respond quickly to foreign threats, a repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act and a end to Confederate expansion.
Presidency
Blaine was the first president in nearly a century who took the office not just concerned for domestic issues but the world at large. As such he chose his fellow Mainer Hannibal Hamlin as Secretary of State. Hamlin helped him throughout his career and was one of the few Republicans with executive / foreign affairs experience. For Secretary of War he chose former wartime Brigadier General Benjamin Harrison and Ohio Govenor. Harrison was an able administrator, but unaware of the revolution of military affairs going on. For his Attorney General he chose another Democrats who was opposed to the Fugitive Slave Act and a tough on violent labor protest. For Secretary of the treasury he chose William Windorn a strong gold currency advocate. The rest of the administration were generally staffed with a strong anti-confederate outlook.
Secretary of State Hannibal Hamlin, Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen
Attorney General John Sherman
Secretary of War Benjamin Harrison, John Logan
Secretary of the Treasury William Windom
Secretary of the Navy Nathan Goff, Jr., William E. Chandler
Secretary of the Interior Samuel J. Kirkwood
In the early days of his presidency Blaine’s greatest victory was his passing of Reciprocal Tariff Act. At heart of its plan was a tariff that matched British and French Confederate duties on foreign imports. This was welcome news to industrialist and American workers. To the revanchists like; Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, George Armstrong Custer, Thomas Brackett Reed, Alfred Thayer Mahan and Charles Evans Hughes this was a a move in the right direction against powers that seem to be intentionally targeting and trying to weaken the US’s industrial power. Unfortunately Blaine did not move with as much in his promised military expansion.
Chihuahua-Sonora Crises
In the realm of foreign affairs the Blaine administration was immediately put to the test. The Confederacy recoiled at the return of a "Black" Republican to the presidency. President Longstreet had plans to further expand the Confederacy. President James Longstreet had been counting on the Democrats' indifference to successfully purchase the states of Sonora and Chihuahua from Mexico in 1881. Now, Blaine, backed by the popular will and anger of the American people, moved to block the purchase by threat of war. Longstreet, confident in his country's alliances with Britain and France, defied Blaine, and the Second Mexican War began.
Second Mexican War
It soon became clear that Blaine and the United States were out of their depth. The United States Army was woefully unprepared, suffering setbacks on multiple fronts. Unfortunately for the nation the Blaine administration combined a lack of military expertise on the part of the President and the choice of incompetent commanders. After just over a year of bloody fighting, the United States sought an armistice. Confederate terms were relatively light. A return to the status quo ante bellum and a recognition of the Confederate annexation of Sonora and Chihuahua. Britain however was using it as an excuse to readjust borders between the US and Canada.
Blaine dithered for more than four months in agreeing to the treaty. US negotiators led by John Hay, tried to delay the signing of the treaty. They hoped by some miracle to force the Brits to agree to drop the territorial concessions out exhaustion. Unfortunately the miracle never came. In April the U.S. recognized the C.S. possession of the Mexican states. For the second time in a generation, the United States had lost a war while under Republican leadership. Further humiliating Blaine at a personal level, the only territorial concession the U.S. made was northern Maine, his home state, which was annexed by Britain into Canada.
The Republican Party had split in 1882, with one third joining Democrats and another joining the nascent Socialist Party. Ironically, Blaine, in his military defeat, had laid the foundation the United States' eventual victory in the Great War through two acts. First, on April 22, 1882, Blaine declared a holiday to commemorate the US defeat called "Remembrance Day". This day birthed a political ideology, which the reinvigorated Democrats adopted as their own.
Post Second Mexican War
The end of the war was not the end of the nations troubles. As the war drove to a close the Blaine administration was overwhelmed by one crises after another. Immediately after the war and the signing of the treaty there was a financial panic. Several large banks failed and thousands lost their jobs. This helped fuel the rise of the newly formed Socialist Party. Many feared there would be a Communard type revolution in the major cities. Meanwhile more radical forces on the right were calling for a different type of revolution. The failure of a second Republican Administration to win a war made many question the civilian leadership of the country. Radical right wing nationalist called for an end of “civilian leadership” pushing for a Napoleonic style overthrow of the government. Blaine felt his first task was to prevent a break down in democracy and prevent any possible coups, federal investigators put close tabs on many Military officers with anti-democratic tendencies, including men like Brigadier General Custer, Brigadier General Upton now Major General Pope. Knowing Upton to be the shrewdest of these figures Blaine quickly chose him to travel abroad. Fortunately for the United States there was no military candidate with a reputation to overthrow the government. General Hancock as one of the few successful commanders was looking like attractive candidate, to more authoritarian extremists, but Hancock was too honorable to forsake his oath. It did however plant the seeds of political ambition in the General.
In regards to the Republicans Blaine worked hard to keep what was left of the party alive, after Lincoln walked away with more than a third of its delegates. He hoped his work to reform the army and increase the nations defense would draw national support, but it did little to stop the defection of many to the new Remembrance Faction in the Democratic Party. In 1882 Republicans lost both houses of Congress. In 1883 Democrats led by the new Speaker of the House Thomas Reed, continuously blocked all Republican sponsored legislation not involving military reform. Blaine gave acquiesce to a shift in the party leadership to more Midwestern figures. He supported measures like regulating the railroad rates and even repudiating the parties previous single gold currency policies.
Blaine’s one realm of success was in the foreign policy field. After the U.S. attempt to defy Confederate, British and French Imperialism the U.S. gained new found popularity through out the western hemisphere. Blaine and his new Secretary of State Frederick Frelinghuysen used this to negotiate several new treaties of friendship and trade throughout the hemisphere. Under the Blaine administration the U.S. became a popular lender to Latin American powers who were afraid of C.S., British and French intentions. As the worse of the financial panic abated in 1884. Blaine revived his old idea of an international conference of western hemisphere nations. The result was the First International Conference of American States, which met in Philadelphia in 1890. Blaine and Frelinghuysen had high hopes for the conference, including proposals for a customs union, a pan-American railroad line, and an arbitration process to settle disputes among member nations. Their overall goal was to extend trade and political influence over the entire hemisphere; some of the other nations understood this and were wary of deepening ties with the United States to the exclusion of European powers. Blaine said publicly that his only interest was in "annexation of trade", not annexation of territory. The only powers to not attend were the Confederate States and Mexico.
Blaine and Frelinghuysen wished to see American power and trade expanded across the Pacific and were especially interested in securing rights to harbors in Pearl Harbor, Sandwich Islands. In the Sandwich Islands, Blaine worked to bind the kingdom more closely to the United States and to avoid its becoming a British protectorate. Unfortunately he was ultimately unsuccessful as the British repeatedly intervened on behalf of pro-british elements of the Royal Hawaiian family. Blaine however was able to expand U.S. trade with both the Japanese and Chinese. Japan was looking to modernize its military and economy the country to avoid it being subject to imperial aggression like China. Though Japanese were uninterested in buying equipment from a nation that had just lost its second war in two decades. U.S. industrial firms were able to underbid French and British firms for the sale of industrial equipment.
Blaine’s biggest success was in the improvement in relations between United States and the German Empire. Blaine quickly negotiated a treaty of friendship between the two nations. He further successfully negotiated a new treaty where by U.S. officers could come to Germany and learn from German officers and purchase the newest German Artillery. Under Blaine’s leadership the U.S. sent dozens of American officers to learn at German Military academies and staff schools. This was popular with the U.S.’s larger German population. German America friendship societies popped up in cities across both nations. In 1885 the Germans American friendship society built and raised the funds to construct the Statue of Remembrance on Bedloe Island in the New York Harbor.
Election of 1884
Knowing that he had no hope of victory Blaine was not enthusiastic about the idea of running again for President. Blaine had made it clear that if any other candidate wanted the position he would step aside. However it was becoming clear no one else in the party had any interest of running either At the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Senator and future-President Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island, tried to convince, Senator William Allison of Iowa, then newly appointed Chief Justice James Garfield of Ohio and House Minority Leader Elihu Washburne of Maine to challenge Blaine at the convention. None were interested, as they all knew it would be a fools errand to run for the Republican ticket, as the Democrats would most certainly win and win big. As a result, Blaine reluctantly accepted his nomination for Presidential Candidate. Blaine knew that after he had led the nation to a disaster, running for president so no other member of his party had to would be the chivalrous thing to do. The incumbent Vice President J. Donald Cameron also decided against stepping out of the race, once again serving as Blaine's running mate. Blaine, knowing how unpopular he was, never personally campaigned, and sent personal supporters and other underlings to do it for him. The Republican campaign centered on generally rebuilding the nation after its defeat in the Second Mexican War, economically, militarily and defensively. Most voters didn't buy it, and simply saw it as the Republican Party's way of cheaply covering their tracks.
The presidential election of 1884 would go down as one of the most significant in American history. It saw the first risings of the Remembrance movement in said faction of the Democratic Party, the second and final general decline of the Republican Party (it would take a century for the party to recover and regain the White House), the cementing of more-or-less Democratic hegemony in American politics until the 1920 election and the first participation of the new-born Socialist Party, which would grow to became a major force in American politics, eventually replacing the Republicans as the second party to the Democrats, in a presidential election.
Retirement
He retired to his home in Augusta Maine, now along the new US- Canadian border. He was a guest at Thomas Reeds election to the Presidency in 1888, and he took some satisfaction at the ascendency of the Remembrance faction of the Democratic Party. He was never asked to support Remembrance reforms or campaign on behalf of Republican candidates. President Blaine's defeat marked the beginning of 36 consecutive years of Democratic control of the Powel House, which only came to an end with the election of the first Socialist president Upton Sinclair in 1920. He died in 1893, largely considered the worse President in the nations history.
James G. Blaine Served as President of the United States from 1881 to 1885. He was the first Republican President since Abraham Lincoln and was president during the Second Mexican War. Where he led the United States in its attempt to prevent the Confederate States from purchasing the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua. He is largely considered on the short list of the five most controversial Presidents in United States history, including Abraham Lincoln, James Buchanan, Thomas Jefferson and Alfred E. Smith.
Early Years
James Gillespie Blaine was born January 31, 1830 in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania, the third child of Ephraim Lyon Blaine and his wife Maria Gillespie. Blaine's father was a western Pennsylvania businessman and landowner, and the family lived in relative comfort. Blaine's mother and her forebears were Irish Catholics who emigrated to Pennsylvania in the 1780s. Blaine's parents were married in 1820 in a Roman Catholic ceremony, although Blaine's father remained a Presbyterian. Following a common compromise of the era, the Blaines agreed that their daughters would be raised in their mother's Catholic faith while their sons would be brought up in their father's religion.
At the age of thirteen, Blaine enrolled in his father's alma mater, Washington College, which later became the Washington & Gouvenir Morris College, in nearby Washington, Pennsylvania. After graduation, Blaine considered attending law school at Yale Law School, but ultimately decided against it. Instead he moved west to find a job. In 1848, Blaine was hired as a professor of mathematics and ancient languages at the Western Military Institute in Georgetown, Kentucky. Although he was only eighteen years old and younger than many of his students, Blaine adapted well to his new profession.
In Kentucky he also made the acquaintance of Harriet Stanwood, a teacher at the nearby Millersburg Female College and native of Maine. On June 30, 1850, the two were married. The Blaine’s moved back and forth between Maine and Pennsylvania. Blaine briefly studied the law in Philadelphia before taking a job as the editor and co-owner of the Kennebec Journal in Maine. Blaine’s decision to become a newspaperman started Blaine on the road to a lifelong career in politics. In 1856, he was selected as a delegate to the first Republican National Convention. From the party's early days, Blaine identified with the conservative wing, supporting Supreme Court Justice John McLean for the presidential nomination over the more radical John C. Frémont, the eventual nominee. In 1858, Blaine ran for a seat in the Maine House of Representatives, and was elected. He ran for reelection in 1859, 1860, and 1861, and was successful each time by large majorities.
Blaine was not a delegate to the Republican convention in 1860, but attended anyway as an enthusiastic supporter of Abraham Lincoln. Returning to Maine, he was elected Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives in 1861 and reelected in 1862. With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, he supported Lincoln's war effort and saw that the Maine Legislature voted to organize and equip units to join the Union Army.
Post War of Secession
Blaine was elected by Maine as a Republican to Congress in 1862. He was the only newly elected Republican Congressman that year in the wake of the defeat at Camp Hill and the occupation of Philadelphia. He served for the next seven terms, earning a reputation as a fiery orator and debater in the party.
Blaine quickly became not only the parties point man on the fight against the doughface Democratic administrations, but also a defender of North Eastern commercial interests. He continually fought for strong tariffs against Britain to protect US industries. He led the fight in Congress for a strong dollar. After the issuance of 150 million dollars in greenbacks—non-gold-backed currency the value of the dollar stood at a low ebb. He quickly became political allies with Nelson Aldrich and other fiscally conservative republicans. A bipartisan group of inflationists, led by Republican Benjamin F. Butler and Democrat George H. Pendleton, wished to preserve the status quo and allow the Treasury to continue to issue greenbacks and even to use them to pay the interest due on pre-war bonds. Blaine called this idea a repudiation of the nation's promise to investors, which was made when the only currency was gold. Speaking several times on the matter, Blaine said that the greenbacks had only ever been an emergency measure to avoid bankruptcy during the post war financial crises. Blaine and his hard money allies were successful, but the issue remained alive until 1879, when all remaining greenbacks were made redeemable in gold by the Specie Payment Resumption Act of 1875.
His attack on the especially dough face Hendricks Administration, where he called down damnation on the Confederates and Democrats both, made him the acknowledged leader of the Republicans in Congress. He became Speaker of the House by 1874. Yet he was repeatedly passed over for its highest honor. As a New Englander he was thought to add nothing of the ticket, so the nomination went instead to men from the Midwest, Pennsylvania, and New York. Blaine's star rose dramatically, and was ran as a candidate for the republican nomination in 1876. Unfortunately for the party Roscoe Conkling won and led the party to defeat after his participation in several corrupt congressional railroad speculation deals became public.
Meanwhile Samuel Tilden, a man of iron integrity and no connection to the scandal as governor of New York beat out Conkling in a landslide. Yet the cold honest minded Tilden failed utterly to see the passion that was swelling in the North. The sale of Spanish Cuba to the Confederacy had occurred in 1876, and Roscoe Conkling had promised retribution if it went through in 1877 on schedule. Tilden, however, said and did nothing, not even a protest. When President Longstreet hiked the Confederate tariff to 15%, Tilden vetoed a retaliatory bill sent to him by Speaker James Blaine of the new Republican majority. He repeatedly refused to provide federal funding for the transcontinental railroad, which remained popular despite the Panic of 1873 and the following scandal. Tilden sealed his own fate by finally ordering 12 stars removed from the American flag - perfectly logical according to his legalistic mind, but an enormous affront to most of his countrymen.
Election of 1880
In 1880 Blaine sought and won his parties nomination to the Presidency. Hopes through out the party were high that the Republicans could finally succeed to the presidency. He got one final boost in 1880 when James Longstreet, the industrial-minded leader of what the Southern newspapers were calling the "Whig" faction, saw an opportunity to build his country up further and humiliate the North simultaneously. He came to an agreement with Emperor Maximilian II of bankrupt Mexico to purchase the western provinces of Chihuahua and Sonora, with the avowed intention of extending the Trans-Mississippi Railroad to the Pacific.
President Tilden, true to form, saw no problem with this proposal, and remarked in a letter to the financier August Belmont that it would provide an investment opportunity for American banks, what with the Confederacy being relatively cash-poor. The letter became public in early September (likely by Belmont's son, who would be killed at the head of a regiment within the year), and Tilden was finished.
The Democrats were shattered everywhere. They took the West Coast states, far from the Confederacy, as well as the borderlands of Delaware, Maryland, and Missouri. They took a third of the tally in New England, and were crushed by hundreds of thousands of votes in New York and Pennsylvania. The GOP would have a two-thirds majority in the next Congress, and a Senate majority for the first time since 1865.
After the dust settled and Blaine and the Republicans were the clear winners, the nation was suddenly gripped by panic. After the 1860 election of Lincoln eight southern states passed ordinances of secession. There were fears through out the north that the south would declare war rather that wait for Blaine to prepare the nation for a war of revenge or reconquest. Fortunately for the South’s alliance with France and Britain, President Longstreet did not take the bait. Instead he offered token of friendship to the new president, who he personally liked and admired. Still an air of financial panic and insecurity lingered in the northern states throughout 1880 and early 1881.
Blaine Inauguration
In this period the federal government was still divided between Philadelphia and Washington DC. Though back up offices were constructed in Philadelphia for most major Federal Offices, Federal Officials were still required to act as if Washington DC was still the capitol. Blaine was inaugurated on March 4, 1881 on the eastern side of the capitol building. Blaine was known as a vigorous campaigner but also a rousing orator. Blaine’s 1881 has gone down in history as a framework for what would later become the post war remembrance ideology. In his speech he laid out a worldview adopted by many future remembrance democrats. These included a rejection of European and Confederate stile imperialism, instead he offered up a new vision of the world united through trade and collective security. He called for strengthening the army and navy, investing in the national infrastructure to respond quickly to foreign threats, a repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act and a end to Confederate expansion.
Presidency
Blaine was the first president in nearly a century who took the office not just concerned for domestic issues but the world at large. As such he chose his fellow Mainer Hannibal Hamlin as Secretary of State. Hamlin helped him throughout his career and was one of the few Republicans with executive / foreign affairs experience. For Secretary of War he chose former wartime Brigadier General Benjamin Harrison and Ohio Govenor. Harrison was an able administrator, but unaware of the revolution of military affairs going on. For his Attorney General he chose another Democrats who was opposed to the Fugitive Slave Act and a tough on violent labor protest. For Secretary of the treasury he chose William Windorn a strong gold currency advocate. The rest of the administration were generally staffed with a strong anti-confederate outlook.
Secretary of State Hannibal Hamlin, Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen
Attorney General John Sherman
Secretary of War Benjamin Harrison, John Logan
Secretary of the Treasury William Windom
Secretary of the Navy Nathan Goff, Jr., William E. Chandler
Secretary of the Interior Samuel J. Kirkwood
In the early days of his presidency Blaine’s greatest victory was his passing of Reciprocal Tariff Act. At heart of its plan was a tariff that matched British and French Confederate duties on foreign imports. This was welcome news to industrialist and American workers. To the revanchists like; Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, George Armstrong Custer, Thomas Brackett Reed, Alfred Thayer Mahan and Charles Evans Hughes this was a a move in the right direction against powers that seem to be intentionally targeting and trying to weaken the US’s industrial power. Unfortunately Blaine did not move with as much in his promised military expansion.
Chihuahua-Sonora Crises
In the realm of foreign affairs the Blaine administration was immediately put to the test. The Confederacy recoiled at the return of a "Black" Republican to the presidency. President Longstreet had plans to further expand the Confederacy. President James Longstreet had been counting on the Democrats' indifference to successfully purchase the states of Sonora and Chihuahua from Mexico in 1881. Now, Blaine, backed by the popular will and anger of the American people, moved to block the purchase by threat of war. Longstreet, confident in his country's alliances with Britain and France, defied Blaine, and the Second Mexican War began.
Second Mexican War
It soon became clear that Blaine and the United States were out of their depth. The United States Army was woefully unprepared, suffering setbacks on multiple fronts. Unfortunately for the nation the Blaine administration combined a lack of military expertise on the part of the President and the choice of incompetent commanders. After just over a year of bloody fighting, the United States sought an armistice. Confederate terms were relatively light. A return to the status quo ante bellum and a recognition of the Confederate annexation of Sonora and Chihuahua. Britain however was using it as an excuse to readjust borders between the US and Canada.
Blaine dithered for more than four months in agreeing to the treaty. US negotiators led by John Hay, tried to delay the signing of the treaty. They hoped by some miracle to force the Brits to agree to drop the territorial concessions out exhaustion. Unfortunately the miracle never came. In April the U.S. recognized the C.S. possession of the Mexican states. For the second time in a generation, the United States had lost a war while under Republican leadership. Further humiliating Blaine at a personal level, the only territorial concession the U.S. made was northern Maine, his home state, which was annexed by Britain into Canada.
The Republican Party had split in 1882, with one third joining Democrats and another joining the nascent Socialist Party. Ironically, Blaine, in his military defeat, had laid the foundation the United States' eventual victory in the Great War through two acts. First, on April 22, 1882, Blaine declared a holiday to commemorate the US defeat called "Remembrance Day". This day birthed a political ideology, which the reinvigorated Democrats adopted as their own.
Post Second Mexican War
The end of the war was not the end of the nations troubles. As the war drove to a close the Blaine administration was overwhelmed by one crises after another. Immediately after the war and the signing of the treaty there was a financial panic. Several large banks failed and thousands lost their jobs. This helped fuel the rise of the newly formed Socialist Party. Many feared there would be a Communard type revolution in the major cities. Meanwhile more radical forces on the right were calling for a different type of revolution. The failure of a second Republican Administration to win a war made many question the civilian leadership of the country. Radical right wing nationalist called for an end of “civilian leadership” pushing for a Napoleonic style overthrow of the government. Blaine felt his first task was to prevent a break down in democracy and prevent any possible coups, federal investigators put close tabs on many Military officers with anti-democratic tendencies, including men like Brigadier General Custer, Brigadier General Upton now Major General Pope. Knowing Upton to be the shrewdest of these figures Blaine quickly chose him to travel abroad. Fortunately for the United States there was no military candidate with a reputation to overthrow the government. General Hancock as one of the few successful commanders was looking like attractive candidate, to more authoritarian extremists, but Hancock was too honorable to forsake his oath. It did however plant the seeds of political ambition in the General.
In regards to the Republicans Blaine worked hard to keep what was left of the party alive, after Lincoln walked away with more than a third of its delegates. He hoped his work to reform the army and increase the nations defense would draw national support, but it did little to stop the defection of many to the new Remembrance Faction in the Democratic Party. In 1882 Republicans lost both houses of Congress. In 1883 Democrats led by the new Speaker of the House Thomas Reed, continuously blocked all Republican sponsored legislation not involving military reform. Blaine gave acquiesce to a shift in the party leadership to more Midwestern figures. He supported measures like regulating the railroad rates and even repudiating the parties previous single gold currency policies.
Blaine’s one realm of success was in the foreign policy field. After the U.S. attempt to defy Confederate, British and French Imperialism the U.S. gained new found popularity through out the western hemisphere. Blaine and his new Secretary of State Frederick Frelinghuysen used this to negotiate several new treaties of friendship and trade throughout the hemisphere. Under the Blaine administration the U.S. became a popular lender to Latin American powers who were afraid of C.S., British and French intentions. As the worse of the financial panic abated in 1884. Blaine revived his old idea of an international conference of western hemisphere nations. The result was the First International Conference of American States, which met in Philadelphia in 1890. Blaine and Frelinghuysen had high hopes for the conference, including proposals for a customs union, a pan-American railroad line, and an arbitration process to settle disputes among member nations. Their overall goal was to extend trade and political influence over the entire hemisphere; some of the other nations understood this and were wary of deepening ties with the United States to the exclusion of European powers. Blaine said publicly that his only interest was in "annexation of trade", not annexation of territory. The only powers to not attend were the Confederate States and Mexico.
Blaine and Frelinghuysen wished to see American power and trade expanded across the Pacific and were especially interested in securing rights to harbors in Pearl Harbor, Sandwich Islands. In the Sandwich Islands, Blaine worked to bind the kingdom more closely to the United States and to avoid its becoming a British protectorate. Unfortunately he was ultimately unsuccessful as the British repeatedly intervened on behalf of pro-british elements of the Royal Hawaiian family. Blaine however was able to expand U.S. trade with both the Japanese and Chinese. Japan was looking to modernize its military and economy the country to avoid it being subject to imperial aggression like China. Though Japanese were uninterested in buying equipment from a nation that had just lost its second war in two decades. U.S. industrial firms were able to underbid French and British firms for the sale of industrial equipment.
Blaine’s biggest success was in the improvement in relations between United States and the German Empire. Blaine quickly negotiated a treaty of friendship between the two nations. He further successfully negotiated a new treaty where by U.S. officers could come to Germany and learn from German officers and purchase the newest German Artillery. Under Blaine’s leadership the U.S. sent dozens of American officers to learn at German Military academies and staff schools. This was popular with the U.S.’s larger German population. German America friendship societies popped up in cities across both nations. In 1885 the Germans American friendship society built and raised the funds to construct the Statue of Remembrance on Bedloe Island in the New York Harbor.
Election of 1884
Knowing that he had no hope of victory Blaine was not enthusiastic about the idea of running again for President. Blaine had made it clear that if any other candidate wanted the position he would step aside. However it was becoming clear no one else in the party had any interest of running either At the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Senator and future-President Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island, tried to convince, Senator William Allison of Iowa, then newly appointed Chief Justice James Garfield of Ohio and House Minority Leader Elihu Washburne of Maine to challenge Blaine at the convention. None were interested, as they all knew it would be a fools errand to run for the Republican ticket, as the Democrats would most certainly win and win big. As a result, Blaine reluctantly accepted his nomination for Presidential Candidate. Blaine knew that after he had led the nation to a disaster, running for president so no other member of his party had to would be the chivalrous thing to do. The incumbent Vice President J. Donald Cameron also decided against stepping out of the race, once again serving as Blaine's running mate. Blaine, knowing how unpopular he was, never personally campaigned, and sent personal supporters and other underlings to do it for him. The Republican campaign centered on generally rebuilding the nation after its defeat in the Second Mexican War, economically, militarily and defensively. Most voters didn't buy it, and simply saw it as the Republican Party's way of cheaply covering their tracks.
The presidential election of 1884 would go down as one of the most significant in American history. It saw the first risings of the Remembrance movement in said faction of the Democratic Party, the second and final general decline of the Republican Party (it would take a century for the party to recover and regain the White House), the cementing of more-or-less Democratic hegemony in American politics until the 1920 election and the first participation of the new-born Socialist Party, which would grow to became a major force in American politics, eventually replacing the Republicans as the second party to the Democrats, in a presidential election.
Retirement
He retired to his home in Augusta Maine, now along the new US- Canadian border. He was a guest at Thomas Reeds election to the Presidency in 1888, and he took some satisfaction at the ascendency of the Remembrance faction of the Democratic Party. He was never asked to support Remembrance reforms or campaign on behalf of Republican candidates. President Blaine's defeat marked the beginning of 36 consecutive years of Democratic control of the Powel House, which only came to an end with the election of the first Socialist president Upton Sinclair in 1920. He died in 1893, largely considered the worse President in the nations history.
Poor Mr Blaine - it's not that he had the wrong ideas, more that he chose to implement them at the Worst Possible Time; I suppose that's what happens when your party hasn't formed an administration in twenty years, one has so many ideas to put into effect but cannot rely on having the time to do so unless one HURRIES.
Although having to deal with Canny Jim Longstreet and his immense testicular fortitude cannot have helped at all - who would have believed a Confederate President would the audacity to agree to manumission and actually prove able to put that promise into effect? (although doubtless only after political dealing and double-dealing that would leave Mephistopheles applauding).
Speaking of Manumission, I wonder how the Manumission Amendment impacted on the Confederate Electorate; given that the Confederate Constitution grants special consideration to Slave Owners, what happens when there are no Slaves?
It also seems likely that the Radical got its start in opposition to the prejudice against Poor Whites in the Confederate Constitution; I'm only sorry I lack the political expertise to back up and confirm these theories!
- Very true - I should have taken that into account; so Wade Hampton V is the son of a Southern socialite who came North to get a look at the Conquering Heroes and picked up a conquest of her very own!
I'm not sure about having Mr Hampton educated as far away as Europe, but if I had to pick I'd probably send him to Sandhurst - The CSA have troubles enough without a General trained into the next Joffre or worse yet a Nivelle!
So far as West Point goes, if he does not attend then it might be interesting to depict him as a guest lecturer there at some point; I'm quite willing to compromise on Young Hampton being educated Up North but I'd like to show him as having an unusual degree of acquaintance with the US Officer Corps - by way of helping to explain his unusual success in the course of the initial Big Wheel.
So I think I'll depict Wade Hampton V as making an application to West Point (as a character note; he ardently wishes to prove himself the next Robert E. Lee and he wants to set himself apart from the common run of Confederate Cadet) but for now I shall leave the question of whether he was accepted open for the nonce.
- One new question that has occurred to me as potentially-interesting would be the issue of just how Mr Jefferson Davis has been perceived by the Confederacy in this world; I imagine that the Founding Fathers of the Confederacy have tended to wrestle with Commanders in the War of Secession for prominence in Confederate Mythology for one thing.
After all, how many people know who Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson are compared to how many can name even one member of Jeff Davis' cabinet?
- For one thing I'd bet that Mr Jefferson Davis tends to get roughly the same amount of love Mr John Adams got before the recent re-appreciation of that gentleman; on the other hand, given that the likes of General Bragg and General Lee were his own picks (in this world brilliantly successful ones at that) it is far from impossible that he is regarded with greater respect in the course of Timeline-191.
Although one suspects that he's still not quite so well regarded as Mr Washington or possibly even Mr Lincoln in our own Timeline.
- If I might, I would like to ask if any of you have seen these threads depicting THE GREAT WAR REALOADED;
Have any of you looked through these threads? What did you think of them?
^Now I myself have taken a look through these threads and while not all of what I found there was in agreement with this Thread it is interesting to note just how easily quite a lot of the ideas in them could be assimilated into the version of events given here (especially where the War of Secession and the Great War are concerned).
It should also be noted that I was very favourably impressed with the work put into this thread; if nothing else I think it adds even more to the already-splendid version of events given by President Mahan!
I find it particularly interesting to imagine that the somewhat different version of events given in THE GREAT WAR RELOADED Mk.2 may be due to an In-Universe bias on the part of the author (intended to be Joshua Blackford, so he's unlikely to feel much warmth towards the Southern Confederacy), as well as the fact that the Ramscoop Raider is telling an Alternate History of Timeline-191 whereas FILLING THE GAPS is merely looking to expand on what already exists.
Actually I believe that the creator has posted here in the past, so it might be interesting to look them up and if they've ever posted on this thread!^
- Has anyone else ever thought of the SOUTHERN VICTORY timeline as being Historical Fiction (rather than Alternate History) from the perspective of a resident of Timeline-191?
I admit that it amuses me to imagine a copy of (say) AMERICAN FRONT annotated by a Timeline-191 Academic who finds Mr Turtledove's depiction of Custer contains inaccuracies sufficient to cause him or her to froth at the mouth (no, not the vainglory or the excessive casualties or even the peroxide-blonde hair worn by a septuagenarian but the idea that Autie played the field when away from his dear Wife!).
…
Makes you wonder how that Historian would explain Sam Carsten's legendary mission to Ireland during the Great War!
Although having to deal with Canny Jim Longstreet and his immense testicular fortitude cannot have helped at all - who would have believed a Confederate President would the audacity to agree to manumission and actually prove able to put that promise into effect? (although doubtless only after political dealing and double-dealing that would leave Mephistopheles applauding).
Speaking of Manumission, I wonder how the Manumission Amendment impacted on the Confederate Electorate; given that the Confederate Constitution grants special consideration to Slave Owners, what happens when there are no Slaves?
It also seems likely that the Radical got its start in opposition to the prejudice against Poor Whites in the Confederate Constitution; I'm only sorry I lack the political expertise to back up and confirm these theories!
- Very true - I should have taken that into account; so Wade Hampton V is the son of a Southern socialite who came North to get a look at the Conquering Heroes and picked up a conquest of her very own!
I'm not sure about having Mr Hampton educated as far away as Europe, but if I had to pick I'd probably send him to Sandhurst - The CSA have troubles enough without a General trained into the next Joffre or worse yet a Nivelle!
So far as West Point goes, if he does not attend then it might be interesting to depict him as a guest lecturer there at some point; I'm quite willing to compromise on Young Hampton being educated Up North but I'd like to show him as having an unusual degree of acquaintance with the US Officer Corps - by way of helping to explain his unusual success in the course of the initial Big Wheel.
So I think I'll depict Wade Hampton V as making an application to West Point (as a character note; he ardently wishes to prove himself the next Robert E. Lee and he wants to set himself apart from the common run of Confederate Cadet) but for now I shall leave the question of whether he was accepted open for the nonce.
- One new question that has occurred to me as potentially-interesting would be the issue of just how Mr Jefferson Davis has been perceived by the Confederacy in this world; I imagine that the Founding Fathers of the Confederacy have tended to wrestle with Commanders in the War of Secession for prominence in Confederate Mythology for one thing.
After all, how many people know who Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson are compared to how many can name even one member of Jeff Davis' cabinet?
- For one thing I'd bet that Mr Jefferson Davis tends to get roughly the same amount of love Mr John Adams got before the recent re-appreciation of that gentleman; on the other hand, given that the likes of General Bragg and General Lee were his own picks (in this world brilliantly successful ones at that) it is far from impossible that he is regarded with greater respect in the course of Timeline-191.
Although one suspects that he's still not quite so well regarded as Mr Washington or possibly even Mr Lincoln in our own Timeline.
- If I might, I would like to ask if any of you have seen these threads depicting THE GREAT WAR REALOADED;
Have any of you looked through these threads? What did you think of them?
^Now I myself have taken a look through these threads and while not all of what I found there was in agreement with this Thread it is interesting to note just how easily quite a lot of the ideas in them could be assimilated into the version of events given here (especially where the War of Secession and the Great War are concerned).
It should also be noted that I was very favourably impressed with the work put into this thread; if nothing else I think it adds even more to the already-splendid version of events given by President Mahan!
I find it particularly interesting to imagine that the somewhat different version of events given in THE GREAT WAR RELOADED Mk.2 may be due to an In-Universe bias on the part of the author (intended to be Joshua Blackford, so he's unlikely to feel much warmth towards the Southern Confederacy), as well as the fact that the Ramscoop Raider is telling an Alternate History of Timeline-191 whereas FILLING THE GAPS is merely looking to expand on what already exists.
Actually I believe that the creator has posted here in the past, so it might be interesting to look them up and if they've ever posted on this thread!^
- Has anyone else ever thought of the SOUTHERN VICTORY timeline as being Historical Fiction (rather than Alternate History) from the perspective of a resident of Timeline-191?
I admit that it amuses me to imagine a copy of (say) AMERICAN FRONT annotated by a Timeline-191 Academic who finds Mr Turtledove's depiction of Custer contains inaccuracies sufficient to cause him or her to froth at the mouth (no, not the vainglory or the excessive casualties or even the peroxide-blonde hair worn by a septuagenarian but the idea that Autie played the field when away from his dear Wife!).
…
Makes you wonder how that Historian would explain Sam Carsten's legendary mission to Ireland during the Great War!
By the way, I hope you readers will forgive me for the rambling Bullet-Point framed digressions that seem to have become typical of my style; I fear that ideas are my strong suit, but that putting them into some cohesive form is not my strongest suit (given that I tend to hate getting up from an article until I've done it, most of my work tends to be 'Done in One' which should help explain any infelicities or inadequacies on my part).
I think it is more likely that WHV would have attended a french academy over a British. The British Army in that period was relatively small by the standards of the time. It was also not known for any real innovation. The french on the other hand were the leaders in artillery development and despite the defeat by the Prussians considered the second best army in the world.Wade Hampton V had long been one of the defenders of the french design 75mm gun and showed how well it could be used in open country in the wheel around Baltimore. It would also explain his belonging to the "cult of the offensive" that would inevitably get him sacked as army commander in 1916.
It would also go along way to explaining why he liked tour trenches dressed in a Kepi.
It would also go along way to explaining why he liked tour trenches dressed in a Kepi.
In all fairness, given that the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War are the Glory Days of the Confederate Army it seems almost impossible to imagine that the uniform of the Confederate Soldier would fail to hark back to those of his victorious father and grandfather even as late as 1916 - hence all the Kepis to be seen wherever shellfire and sunburn aren't serious risks (I'd imagine that wide-brimmed campaign hats are particularly common in West Texas - although more likely of the Stetson than the Montana type!).
^The US Army, on the other hand, are more likely to be doing their best to forget the Wars of 1861 and 1881, as well as likely seeking to forgo any visible French influence - I tend to imagine them wearing visor caps as general issue headwear in the field (at least in the East), which gives them a silhouette very distinct from that of the Confederate, but a lot closer to the Canadian (which seems appropriate, given that Timeline-191 can in some ways be described as one long Civil War between the English-speaking nations).^
As for Wade Hampton V consider himself condemned to a sojourn in St-Cyr, polishing his French and conceiving his passion for the 75! (although I'd like to think that while he's a passionate exponent of the Cult of the Offensive - to the point where loss of faith in it would fuel his 'resignation' in '16).
Hopefully General Hampton might still be shrewd enough to at least recognise that in 1914 the purpose of the offensive is to ensure that the War is fought on the Enemy's territory and not your own; I suspect that the unexpected degree of success enjoyed by the Big Wheel would fuel the short-lived but intense conviction that not only will the Confederacy take Washington, they'll bite off Philadelphia too!
Hopefully even Fire-eaters can be convinced that it is better to give, as well as to receive incoming fire … (at this point in history musketry WILL beat the bayonet).
^The US Army, on the other hand, are more likely to be doing their best to forget the Wars of 1861 and 1881, as well as likely seeking to forgo any visible French influence - I tend to imagine them wearing visor caps as general issue headwear in the field (at least in the East), which gives them a silhouette very distinct from that of the Confederate, but a lot closer to the Canadian (which seems appropriate, given that Timeline-191 can in some ways be described as one long Civil War between the English-speaking nations).^
As for Wade Hampton V consider himself condemned to a sojourn in St-Cyr, polishing his French and conceiving his passion for the 75! (although I'd like to think that while he's a passionate exponent of the Cult of the Offensive - to the point where loss of faith in it would fuel his 'resignation' in '16).
Hopefully General Hampton might still be shrewd enough to at least recognise that in 1914 the purpose of the offensive is to ensure that the War is fought on the Enemy's territory and not your own; I suspect that the unexpected degree of success enjoyed by the Big Wheel would fuel the short-lived but intense conviction that not only will the Confederacy take Washington, they'll bite off Philadelphia too!
Hopefully even Fire-eaters can be convinced that it is better to give, as well as to receive incoming fire … (at this point in history musketry WILL beat the bayonet).
Amos Mizell
b. March 11th 1876. TN
d. 1936. TN
- Son of Eli and Jenny Mizell, Amos Mizell was born into a family so far from the Golden Circle of Plantation Patricians and those other worthies that made up the Confederate Establishment that he might as well have been born into another species; in brief, the Mizell family was so unrelentingly impoverished that its patriarch was desperate enough to work as a strike-breaker in a time and place where the word 'Scab' might well be pronounced as a sentence of death.
Amos Mizell would grow up no admirer of the Whiggish Dominion, but nor would he show much partiality for the Left; had his call-up to the colours not drafted him when it did, he too might have have been mobbed by those with no time for men moved more by desperation than solidarity.
- Having served his time with the Confederate Army, the young Mizell immediately re-enlisted; quite frankly the Army had not only allowed him to rise a few notches in Confederate Society, it would also allow him to improve the living of his family (through the money he sent Home and the removal of a mouth to feed from an all-too-empty table) and permit him to continue to enjoy living conditions far better than any he might otherwise have aspired to for years to come.
From private soldier he rose to be a Sergeant and - in reward for an incident of exceptional soldiering - was transformed into that Rare Beast; a Mustang, one who had been raised from out of the barrack room and into the Officer's Mess, an exceptional achievement in almost any army.
It was an impressive leap in social status, but an almighty chore to maintain that status on the bare pay of a Lieutenant!
- The Great War found Lieutenant Amos Mizell enduring a lengthy wait between promotions and swiftly sent him soaring through the ranks; as he climbed the ranks in the Army of Kentucky (filling one pair of dead man's shoes after another), that force was slowly transformed into the Army of Tennessee in the course of a long and grinding fighting retreat, its fortunes forever diminishing in the face of increasingly overwhelming Yankee superiority and Confederate insistence on investing in the East.
The Louisville School had been well-founded, but now it was increasingly undermined by sheer lack of replacements and reserves; at least in the Central States it was also crumbling in the face of overwhelming enemy firepower in increasingly-insuperable concentrations.
Even so as Captain and Major and Colonel (even, briefly, as commander of his own brigade during the last, desperate days before the Armistice) Amos Mizell fought to keep his men alive; he fought the Yankees, he fought the Elements, he fought the Despair that lurks in wait for the beaten man and at times he was obliged to struggle with the inadequacies of the Confederacy for the sake of his men.
All too often he lost and that left its mark seared into his soul.
"Gentlemen, the War is over; at last I can make you this promise - I will keep you alive and we will make a difference."
- The Great War having been fought and lost, the Confederate Army having been reduced to a mere rump and memories of Past Glory, Amos Mizell was now reduced to his substantive rank of captain and confronted by a Confederacy changed beyond recognition; he remained loyal to the Confederacy but was still very eager to see it overhauled by some practical alternative to the Whig Party (and continued to see the Radical Liberals as Optimistic at best).
Recruited into the Black Staff by General Stuart, he was integral in the formation of the 'Rifle Clubs' which aided and abetted the shrunken Confederate Armed Forces, as well as a key field operative in a number of domestic struggles which flared up in the aftermath of the Great War - amongst them that brief, terrible episode which followed the foundation of the last Red Republic in what was now a target for every ex-serviceman looking to extract the first instalment of payback (it was he, in fact, who helped cover up the fact that this Red Republic had in fact raised alongside its own banners a flag of the United States … with additional stars added for every Confederate State, a flag of reunification which had played its part in inspiring the towering fury with which the 'Free Corps' had eliminated this outpost from the face of the Confederacy).
Captain Mizell was also an integral part of the counter-Coup that rallied to President Semmes during that perilous season when the Confederacy came closer to a military coup than it had even in the days of Wade Hampton the Third - but his attitude towards the Whig Administration was further soured when it became apparent that Gabriel Semmes threat to bring in the Rad-Libs or even the so-called 'Black Panthers' (veterans of the Negro Regiments) was in fact no more than a sober promise.
Something was rotten in the Confederacy and Amos Mizell was determined to do something about it.
- Having followed the orders of his superiors and assembled a veterans organisation (very explicitly modelled on the Soldier's Circle of the United States, an organisation which was itself at the beginning of a long decline into irrelevancy but had in its day the power to exert serious political and social influence … not to mention break bones and crack skulls when called upon to do so), technically the Order of Confederate Veterans but uniformly known as the Tin Hats, Amos Mizell was in an excellent position to bring about political change.
Assembled as an emergency - and deniable - strategic reserve, the Tin Hats were numerous and passionate and accustomed to looking for direction from its superior officers; unfortunately the direction in which Captain Mizell took the organisation was Hard Right.
A born leader but lacking in the skills required of any Politician looking to bring about legitimate political change and too set in his ways to acquire them, Mizell went combing through the grass roots of Confederate politics for a Party that could bring about the Confederate States he so ardently wished to live in - a party that would create a Home Fit for Heroes (Heroes nonetheless for all that they had suffered a losing war), a party that would stand up for the Common Man without becoming The Party of Red Revolution, a Party that would bring the Confederate States back up to a peak from which it could look the United States in the Eye and require that it be treated as an equal, all the while working to create an orderly and disciplined society of solid citizens.
Unfortunately he believed that he could stop looking after discovering the Freedom Party.
- Admittedly he was equally-impressed by the Redemption League and was in fact crucial to the process of bringing the East and West together into one Party which would achieve all that he desired for the Confederacy; Discipline, Regeneration and Reparations for the losses suffered by the Confederate People.
In Jake Featherston he had found a man very much like himself; a man who had been used by the Confederate Establishment but seldom received the respect that was his due, a man who wished to break the death-grip of the Plantation Patricians on the levers of Confederate Politics, a man who would give Respectable Confederates (no matter how Poor) a fair shake but would not degenerate into a soft touch over time - a man who would look the Yankees in the eye without flinching.
Featherston was a man whom Amos Mizell admired for his Conviction, for his eloquence and for the apparent ease with which he transitioned from soldiering to pure Politics - yet in many ways the two were very different; at heart Amos Mizell was a man with very Human doubts, a man willing to compromise for the sake of expediency and a man who no more wanted to see his fellow-citizens subjected to a SECOND Great War than he wanted to wake up one morning without his arms and legs.
It would take far too long for Amos Mizell to notice these differences, would observe that the very qualities raising Featherston almost-inexorably to Greatness made him so cold and inhuman as to merit his being called The Snake, would understand that President Featherston would not be a breath of fresh air but a whirlwind wrecking havoc wherever it touched down and fatally unbalancing the delicate equilibrium that allowed the Ship of State to keep sailing on … if he did not reduce it to splinters or sink it entirely.
This was a failing far from unique to Amos Mizell.
- What drove The Snake and Amos Mizell apart? In brief the realisation that Featherston would quite willingly wage war in the streets of the Confederacy in order to get his own way; it would be grossly inaccurate to say that Misell was shocked to see the Freedom Party turn to political violence in quest for the Grey House, but it is true that he was disturbed to see them employ those tactics against the Whigs (and to some degree even the less radical of the Rad-Libs).
The assassination of President Hampton WAS a shock; if this was where the logic of the Freedom Party led then Amos Mizell did not care to follow - a soldier to the core, he knew that when a unit starts shooting down its commanding officer then there is something terribly wrong with that formation (especially when the CO in question was Wade Hamilton V, a man who retained Mizell's respect).
More to the point Mizell began to realise that Featherston's Conviction stemmed more from obsession than from sensible devotion; he began to understand that Featherston could not be relied upon to restrain himself once in Power nor would he accept being restrained even in the interests of the Confederate States.
Civil War, Race War, World War - it sickened Amos Mizell to the depths of his soul contemplating the sheer magnitude of tumult and turmoil President Featherston would work so eagerly to bring about; The Snake was a man in whom Anger lived as a volcanic force and was never to be cooled, only constrained until the time came for another eruption.
Amos Mizell was an unenlightened man, but he was sick to his soul of bloodshed and utterly determined to thwart any madman who was more sanguine when confronted with the prospect of it, especially if that madman was aimed at the Grey House like an artillery piece.
- But Amos Mizell was grown old and he was increasingly weary; Late in life he had started a family and it was as much the passionate desire that his own son (and any grandsons who might follow him in the fulness of time) should never suffer in the trenches as his father had that pushed Mizell away from the Freedom Party and a passionate desire to work so that his Family Life never slip below the Poverty Line that so often distracted him from the business of marshalling his Tin Hats.
His grip on his now following was slipping as he put his family first (as any decent man would); more to the point his own integral role in the formation of the Freedom Party bloc had ensured that his Tin Hats would be riddled with Stalwarts and those Stalwarts were always busily at work proselytising - and those who might have balanced out their influence were now too busy living their lives to show the same keen spirit in the cause of the Confederacy that once they had.
Which left only the extremists to devote their time to the Tin Hats and they had long been the most amenable to the message of the Freedom Party; those eccentrics who proved less willing to toe the Party Line were increasingly marginalised and on occasion outright ejected by main force from the Organisation.
As for Old Mizell himself, no such indignity awaited him; instead he simply slid slowly into irrelevance.
- Yet he also had the guts to admit that he had been wrong, especially in one important respect; having long taken Confederate Coloureds for granted The Red Rebellions had soured him with mistrust of such individuals - having taken it for granted that veterans of African Descent would not care to apply to join the Tin Hats, Amos Mizell had never troubled himself with their doings - he had simply done his best to avoid having any particular dealings with himself.
Yet he had also been the fiercest and most staunch advocate for the rights of Veterans, to the point where even the former Negro Regiments had benefitted from his advocacy (if only incidentally); He was a fair man and what he had heard of the Black Regiments impressed him - further, having decided that the Colour Line was the noose strangling the Confederacy and that the only power left to him was to act as an example to his men (as well as the Confederate Public), desperate to enhance the solidarity of Confederate Society so that it might act as a bulwark even against a victorious Freedom Party, Amos Mizell reached out to the Coloured Veterans.
He was invited to an event commemorating the sacrifices of the soldiers - Black, Brown and White - that had fought together under the Stars and Bars; he was welcomed with wary courtesy and had been asked to speak at the event. He comported himself as a perfect gentleman and delivered one of the more touching requests that all citizens of the Confederacy stand shoulder-to-shoulder so that they might do their duty to their state and to their fellow citizens, colour notwithstanding.
It was the speech of a man who had quietly put aside the anger that had once driven him, then cultivated moderation and maturity in its place in the interests of his people; in some ways it was the swan song of Confederate Tolerance - that prickly, reluctant and frequently-slighted yet precious quality.
The speech was welcomed by the assembly and castigated in the newspapers, on the Radio, by the Freedom Party, as well as by many another Confederate Citizen; Amoz Mizell was carried to his grave shortly thereafter and no-one can be certain what finally set him there.
Few can bring themselves to believe that he died of natural causes.
b. March 11th 1876. TN
d. 1936. TN
- Son of Eli and Jenny Mizell, Amos Mizell was born into a family so far from the Golden Circle of Plantation Patricians and those other worthies that made up the Confederate Establishment that he might as well have been born into another species; in brief, the Mizell family was so unrelentingly impoverished that its patriarch was desperate enough to work as a strike-breaker in a time and place where the word 'Scab' might well be pronounced as a sentence of death.
Amos Mizell would grow up no admirer of the Whiggish Dominion, but nor would he show much partiality for the Left; had his call-up to the colours not drafted him when it did, he too might have have been mobbed by those with no time for men moved more by desperation than solidarity.
- Having served his time with the Confederate Army, the young Mizell immediately re-enlisted; quite frankly the Army had not only allowed him to rise a few notches in Confederate Society, it would also allow him to improve the living of his family (through the money he sent Home and the removal of a mouth to feed from an all-too-empty table) and permit him to continue to enjoy living conditions far better than any he might otherwise have aspired to for years to come.
From private soldier he rose to be a Sergeant and - in reward for an incident of exceptional soldiering - was transformed into that Rare Beast; a Mustang, one who had been raised from out of the barrack room and into the Officer's Mess, an exceptional achievement in almost any army.
It was an impressive leap in social status, but an almighty chore to maintain that status on the bare pay of a Lieutenant!
- The Great War found Lieutenant Amos Mizell enduring a lengthy wait between promotions and swiftly sent him soaring through the ranks; as he climbed the ranks in the Army of Kentucky (filling one pair of dead man's shoes after another), that force was slowly transformed into the Army of Tennessee in the course of a long and grinding fighting retreat, its fortunes forever diminishing in the face of increasingly overwhelming Yankee superiority and Confederate insistence on investing in the East.
The Louisville School had been well-founded, but now it was increasingly undermined by sheer lack of replacements and reserves; at least in the Central States it was also crumbling in the face of overwhelming enemy firepower in increasingly-insuperable concentrations.
Even so as Captain and Major and Colonel (even, briefly, as commander of his own brigade during the last, desperate days before the Armistice) Amos Mizell fought to keep his men alive; he fought the Yankees, he fought the Elements, he fought the Despair that lurks in wait for the beaten man and at times he was obliged to struggle with the inadequacies of the Confederacy for the sake of his men.
All too often he lost and that left its mark seared into his soul.
"Gentlemen, the War is over; at last I can make you this promise - I will keep you alive and we will make a difference."
- The Great War having been fought and lost, the Confederate Army having been reduced to a mere rump and memories of Past Glory, Amos Mizell was now reduced to his substantive rank of captain and confronted by a Confederacy changed beyond recognition; he remained loyal to the Confederacy but was still very eager to see it overhauled by some practical alternative to the Whig Party (and continued to see the Radical Liberals as Optimistic at best).
Recruited into the Black Staff by General Stuart, he was integral in the formation of the 'Rifle Clubs' which aided and abetted the shrunken Confederate Armed Forces, as well as a key field operative in a number of domestic struggles which flared up in the aftermath of the Great War - amongst them that brief, terrible episode which followed the foundation of the last Red Republic in what was now a target for every ex-serviceman looking to extract the first instalment of payback (it was he, in fact, who helped cover up the fact that this Red Republic had in fact raised alongside its own banners a flag of the United States … with additional stars added for every Confederate State, a flag of reunification which had played its part in inspiring the towering fury with which the 'Free Corps' had eliminated this outpost from the face of the Confederacy).
Captain Mizell was also an integral part of the counter-Coup that rallied to President Semmes during that perilous season when the Confederacy came closer to a military coup than it had even in the days of Wade Hampton the Third - but his attitude towards the Whig Administration was further soured when it became apparent that Gabriel Semmes threat to bring in the Rad-Libs or even the so-called 'Black Panthers' (veterans of the Negro Regiments) was in fact no more than a sober promise.
Something was rotten in the Confederacy and Amos Mizell was determined to do something about it.
- Having followed the orders of his superiors and assembled a veterans organisation (very explicitly modelled on the Soldier's Circle of the United States, an organisation which was itself at the beginning of a long decline into irrelevancy but had in its day the power to exert serious political and social influence … not to mention break bones and crack skulls when called upon to do so), technically the Order of Confederate Veterans but uniformly known as the Tin Hats, Amos Mizell was in an excellent position to bring about political change.
Assembled as an emergency - and deniable - strategic reserve, the Tin Hats were numerous and passionate and accustomed to looking for direction from its superior officers; unfortunately the direction in which Captain Mizell took the organisation was Hard Right.
A born leader but lacking in the skills required of any Politician looking to bring about legitimate political change and too set in his ways to acquire them, Mizell went combing through the grass roots of Confederate politics for a Party that could bring about the Confederate States he so ardently wished to live in - a party that would create a Home Fit for Heroes (Heroes nonetheless for all that they had suffered a losing war), a party that would stand up for the Common Man without becoming The Party of Red Revolution, a Party that would bring the Confederate States back up to a peak from which it could look the United States in the Eye and require that it be treated as an equal, all the while working to create an orderly and disciplined society of solid citizens.
Unfortunately he believed that he could stop looking after discovering the Freedom Party.
- Admittedly he was equally-impressed by the Redemption League and was in fact crucial to the process of bringing the East and West together into one Party which would achieve all that he desired for the Confederacy; Discipline, Regeneration and Reparations for the losses suffered by the Confederate People.
In Jake Featherston he had found a man very much like himself; a man who had been used by the Confederate Establishment but seldom received the respect that was his due, a man who wished to break the death-grip of the Plantation Patricians on the levers of Confederate Politics, a man who would give Respectable Confederates (no matter how Poor) a fair shake but would not degenerate into a soft touch over time - a man who would look the Yankees in the eye without flinching.
Featherston was a man whom Amos Mizell admired for his Conviction, for his eloquence and for the apparent ease with which he transitioned from soldiering to pure Politics - yet in many ways the two were very different; at heart Amos Mizell was a man with very Human doubts, a man willing to compromise for the sake of expediency and a man who no more wanted to see his fellow-citizens subjected to a SECOND Great War than he wanted to wake up one morning without his arms and legs.
It would take far too long for Amos Mizell to notice these differences, would observe that the very qualities raising Featherston almost-inexorably to Greatness made him so cold and inhuman as to merit his being called The Snake, would understand that President Featherston would not be a breath of fresh air but a whirlwind wrecking havoc wherever it touched down and fatally unbalancing the delicate equilibrium that allowed the Ship of State to keep sailing on … if he did not reduce it to splinters or sink it entirely.
This was a failing far from unique to Amos Mizell.
- What drove The Snake and Amos Mizell apart? In brief the realisation that Featherston would quite willingly wage war in the streets of the Confederacy in order to get his own way; it would be grossly inaccurate to say that Misell was shocked to see the Freedom Party turn to political violence in quest for the Grey House, but it is true that he was disturbed to see them employ those tactics against the Whigs (and to some degree even the less radical of the Rad-Libs).
The assassination of President Hampton WAS a shock; if this was where the logic of the Freedom Party led then Amos Mizell did not care to follow - a soldier to the core, he knew that when a unit starts shooting down its commanding officer then there is something terribly wrong with that formation (especially when the CO in question was Wade Hamilton V, a man who retained Mizell's respect).
More to the point Mizell began to realise that Featherston's Conviction stemmed more from obsession than from sensible devotion; he began to understand that Featherston could not be relied upon to restrain himself once in Power nor would he accept being restrained even in the interests of the Confederate States.
Civil War, Race War, World War - it sickened Amos Mizell to the depths of his soul contemplating the sheer magnitude of tumult and turmoil President Featherston would work so eagerly to bring about; The Snake was a man in whom Anger lived as a volcanic force and was never to be cooled, only constrained until the time came for another eruption.
Amos Mizell was an unenlightened man, but he was sick to his soul of bloodshed and utterly determined to thwart any madman who was more sanguine when confronted with the prospect of it, especially if that madman was aimed at the Grey House like an artillery piece.
- But Amos Mizell was grown old and he was increasingly weary; Late in life he had started a family and it was as much the passionate desire that his own son (and any grandsons who might follow him in the fulness of time) should never suffer in the trenches as his father had that pushed Mizell away from the Freedom Party and a passionate desire to work so that his Family Life never slip below the Poverty Line that so often distracted him from the business of marshalling his Tin Hats.
His grip on his now following was slipping as he put his family first (as any decent man would); more to the point his own integral role in the formation of the Freedom Party bloc had ensured that his Tin Hats would be riddled with Stalwarts and those Stalwarts were always busily at work proselytising - and those who might have balanced out their influence were now too busy living their lives to show the same keen spirit in the cause of the Confederacy that once they had.
Which left only the extremists to devote their time to the Tin Hats and they had long been the most amenable to the message of the Freedom Party; those eccentrics who proved less willing to toe the Party Line were increasingly marginalised and on occasion outright ejected by main force from the Organisation.
As for Old Mizell himself, no such indignity awaited him; instead he simply slid slowly into irrelevance.
- Yet he also had the guts to admit that he had been wrong, especially in one important respect; having long taken Confederate Coloureds for granted The Red Rebellions had soured him with mistrust of such individuals - having taken it for granted that veterans of African Descent would not care to apply to join the Tin Hats, Amos Mizell had never troubled himself with their doings - he had simply done his best to avoid having any particular dealings with himself.
Yet he had also been the fiercest and most staunch advocate for the rights of Veterans, to the point where even the former Negro Regiments had benefitted from his advocacy (if only incidentally); He was a fair man and what he had heard of the Black Regiments impressed him - further, having decided that the Colour Line was the noose strangling the Confederacy and that the only power left to him was to act as an example to his men (as well as the Confederate Public), desperate to enhance the solidarity of Confederate Society so that it might act as a bulwark even against a victorious Freedom Party, Amos Mizell reached out to the Coloured Veterans.
He was invited to an event commemorating the sacrifices of the soldiers - Black, Brown and White - that had fought together under the Stars and Bars; he was welcomed with wary courtesy and had been asked to speak at the event. He comported himself as a perfect gentleman and delivered one of the more touching requests that all citizens of the Confederacy stand shoulder-to-shoulder so that they might do their duty to their state and to their fellow citizens, colour notwithstanding.
It was the speech of a man who had quietly put aside the anger that had once driven him, then cultivated moderation and maturity in its place in the interests of his people; in some ways it was the swan song of Confederate Tolerance - that prickly, reluctant and frequently-slighted yet precious quality.
The speech was welcomed by the assembly and castigated in the newspapers, on the Radio, by the Freedom Party, as well as by many another Confederate Citizen; Amoz Mizell was carried to his grave shortly thereafter and no-one can be certain what finally set him there.
Few can bring themselves to believe that he died of natural causes.
bguy
Donor
Good character piece on Mizell. The only part I found questionable was the idea that Mizell soured on Featherston in part over the assassination of Wade Hampton. In the novels we see Mizell continue to support Featherston long after that assassination and even through the years when the Freedom Party was at its weakest. (Mizell does express some doubts about Featherston prior to the '27 election, but those doubts are about the Freedom Party's strength rather than its tactics, and even with those doubts he still supports Featherston that year.) If Mizell had truly been upset with Featherston over the assassination of Hampton or over Freedomite goons attacking the other parties, I would have expected him to bail on Featherston the moment the Freedom Party was down, rather than to continue to support the party throughout the '20s, seeing how there was no obvious political advantage to supporting the party in the '20s.
I also wonder if Mizell held any position in Featherston's Cabinet. It was mentioned in the novels that despite Featherston's hatred of the officer class, the Freedom Party moved pretty slow in purging the Confederate Army after taking power. (Which is certainly supported by Jeb Stuart still serving as a General several years into Featherston's presidency.) Mizell as Secretary of War could help explain the relative lack of purging of the officer class since Mizell was sympathetic to the Great War generals. (Of course Featherston might not have been willing to risk putting someone that was not under his complete control in a position as important as Secretary of War.)
I also wonder if Mizell held any position in Featherston's Cabinet. It was mentioned in the novels that despite Featherston's hatred of the officer class, the Freedom Party moved pretty slow in purging the Confederate Army after taking power. (Which is certainly supported by Jeb Stuart still serving as a General several years into Featherston's presidency.) Mizell as Secretary of War could help explain the relative lack of purging of the officer class since Mizell was sympathetic to the Great War generals. (Of course Featherston might not have been willing to risk putting someone that was not under his complete control in a position as important as Secretary of War.)
You make some very cogent points Bguy; I am inclined to agree that it makes more sense for Amos Mizell to make his final split with Featherston only AFTER he sees the man assume power and start racing towards the next Great War.
I would, however, like to depict the assassination of Wade Hampton V as the thin end of the wedge that began to drive Amos Mizell away from the Freedom Party; given that Featherston and the Freedom Party as a whole didn't actually have anything to do with this particular assassination and that the Party in fact appear to have attempted to project a greater degree of respectability in the wake of the whole business it seems easy enough to imagine that he was willing to be persuaded that the Party itself was not inherently flawed to a fatal degree - that it was in fact willing to reform itself into an organisation a man could take pride in being associated with.
No man wants to believe that he has created a monster, after all and in many ways Mizell was the Godfather of the Freedom Party; I can easily imagine him being persuaded to accept that it was rotten at the core and always had been only reluctantly, as part of a slow step-by-step realisation.
I'd like to imagine that the whole business of the Hampton Assassination left some small chink in the armour of his Faith in the party which began to widen over the years (as Mizell got older, wearier and perhaps wiser) and which I imagine began to assume the portions of a chasm once The Snake actually got into the Grey House.
Quite frankly he finally looked beyond the similarities between the two of them which had persuaded him to overlook the philosophical differences between them - on the understanding that 'The Sarge' was exactly the man to do all that Mizell wanted done but would never be able to do himself - and finally understood that in the end what they wanted was very different.
Both of them wanted an end to the "Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight" incarnation of The Confederacy, but at last Mizell understood that while what he wanted was a CSA strong and disciplined enough to keep the Peace with Honour, what Featherston wanted was to make his own War and make War HIS way sooner rather than later.
Realising that he had backed a warmonger rather than a strongman able to keep the Peace and make the population like it was very probably the straw that broke the camel's back so far as Mizell was concerned.
Having based so much of his support for the Freedom Party on an assumption, it seems reasonable to believe that having seen that assumption disproven he would be willing to question some of his other assumptions.
^The foundation of my rough mental image of Amos Mizell; admittedly I was influenced in my conception of the character by Mr Kirk Douglas' character in PATHS OF GLORY, but Colonel Dax doesn't quite have the right Southern aspect to him (I'm actually not sure how to further quantify my objection to using his appearance, as opposed to his personality, as an influence on Amos Mizzel).
I would, however, like to depict the assassination of Wade Hampton V as the thin end of the wedge that began to drive Amos Mizell away from the Freedom Party; given that Featherston and the Freedom Party as a whole didn't actually have anything to do with this particular assassination and that the Party in fact appear to have attempted to project a greater degree of respectability in the wake of the whole business it seems easy enough to imagine that he was willing to be persuaded that the Party itself was not inherently flawed to a fatal degree - that it was in fact willing to reform itself into an organisation a man could take pride in being associated with.
No man wants to believe that he has created a monster, after all and in many ways Mizell was the Godfather of the Freedom Party; I can easily imagine him being persuaded to accept that it was rotten at the core and always had been only reluctantly, as part of a slow step-by-step realisation.
I'd like to imagine that the whole business of the Hampton Assassination left some small chink in the armour of his Faith in the party which began to widen over the years (as Mizell got older, wearier and perhaps wiser) and which I imagine began to assume the portions of a chasm once The Snake actually got into the Grey House.
Quite frankly he finally looked beyond the similarities between the two of them which had persuaded him to overlook the philosophical differences between them - on the understanding that 'The Sarge' was exactly the man to do all that Mizell wanted done but would never be able to do himself - and finally understood that in the end what they wanted was very different.
Both of them wanted an end to the "Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight" incarnation of The Confederacy, but at last Mizell understood that while what he wanted was a CSA strong and disciplined enough to keep the Peace with Honour, what Featherston wanted was to make his own War and make War HIS way sooner rather than later.
Realising that he had backed a warmonger rather than a strongman able to keep the Peace and make the population like it was very probably the straw that broke the camel's back so far as Mizell was concerned.
Having based so much of his support for the Freedom Party on an assumption, it seems reasonable to believe that having seen that assumption disproven he would be willing to question some of his other assumptions.
^The foundation of my rough mental image of Amos Mizell; admittedly I was influenced in my conception of the character by Mr Kirk Douglas' character in PATHS OF GLORY, but Colonel Dax doesn't quite have the right Southern aspect to him (I'm actually not sure how to further quantify my objection to using his appearance, as opposed to his personality, as an influence on Amos Mizzel).