The end of the war
The fire in New York was a blow to the Union psyche, and anti-Catholic sentiments soon arose. The fact that New York was bombed indiscriminately, brutally and effectively, without taking into account the civilian population or following the just war theory (in Latin: bellum iustum) with its series of criteria: jus ad bellum (" right to go to war") and jus in bello ("good conduct in war"), it was a devastating blow to New York soldiers that war crimes became so commonplace that Union commanders stopped trying to to control them. . In the midst of these tumultuous events, the War entered a new and uncertain era. The situation became even more confused when it seemed that the New York units coming from Ireland upon learning of the situation in New York and the news about the abuses ended up breaking all their oaths and fleeing towards the Spanish ranks with white flags. makeshift. The most prominent would be the Irish Brigade made up of the 63rd New York Infantry, the 69th New York Infantry and the 88th New York Infantry and the 28th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, all of them Irish in majority. confined in the outskirts of New Orleans in a field but with better conditions than other prisoners since they were Catholic deserters from the Union. The winter of 63-64 saw many towns left devastated and almost lifeless as both sides began sending groups of mobile cavalry or light infantry on independent search and destroy missions for specific targets across the front. However, Lincoln saw how his resources were depleted, despite the fact that he ordered the massive migration of vital industry to the North. It is estimated that more than 1,000 industrial complexes in goods moved to Canada by the end of 1864.
Canada offered security to its people due to its isolated locations out of reach of damaging naval attacks by the Spanish Navy, and they offered Yankee Industries a great deal of resources to deploy the factories and plants associated with the war effort. Canada had the space to house an impressive variety of heavy iron and steel factories, as well as agricultural and chemical plants. Industries, however, depended on the coal mines and copper deposits in the Canadian Shield to continue supporting the Union war machine. Because the word evacuation was a rather terrible and unaccustomed new word while to others, it simply wasn't used "Refugee" was all too familiar given the country's war history. Scientists, skilled workers, artists, writers, and politicians from Boston and Quebec came to the conclusion that the word "refugee" was replaced by "evacuee." The evacuation process, despite the best efforts of the United States Army Transport Service (ATS), was far from organized. The High Command had problems to evacuate the material with qualified personnel, so in the end most of them evacuated by themselves, without knowing the place assigned for the displacement, because it was feared that the orderly displacement would make the Spanish spies know the location of the industry. However, due to the large number of skilled workers mobilized, the train stations were crowded and the distribution of train tickets could take days. In the midst of this climate of mobilization or evacuation, many of the evacuees would be survivors of New York, which had become a city of death and ruins. The Irish of New York, instead, were expelled to the Canadian tundra where they are forced to work in iron, copper and other mines, while their transport was in trains that had previously been used to transport flour and other agricultural products, Unlike the passengers. They were rarely given water, and when they did, they were only allowed a few swallows, which were described as "putrid". Those on board slept in crowded apartments in inhumane conditions.
On the front line. Sherman and McClellan had been forced back, with the enemy dropping their forces in pieces to stop the offensive where they could while the Tercios pushed ever forward. The Union's resistance became especially notable in the case of the fighting freed Africans, armed only with shoddy surplus and sometimes even using sabers and machetes, but willing to sacrifice rather than be rechained. However, they were killed percent by Legionnaires and Confederates shot over and over again until nothing of their human forms remained. The offensive was at a standstill as a result of the subsequent massive use of Chlorine Gas. To break the stalemate, the Legates organizing the battle authorized the use of chemical weapons, adding their ration of chemical projectiles to the poisoned landscape and blanketing the landscape in clouds of gas in the process. The need for the troops to reorganize and re-equip completely delayed the offensive, but it was finally possible to equip them with primitive respirators, so it was decided to proceed with the advance with a brave charge of several cavalry companies. Hoping to trap the enemy with a quick cavalry charge, the cavalry squadrons rallied before advancing towards their starting lines. With the efficiency of a parade, men and mounts set off at a gallop, striking directly along the service road. There was no preliminary shelling to soften up the enemy, as it was thought that the artillery would do little to finish off the enemy and would only alert them to an impending attack. The charge relied primarily on surprise from the powerful veteran heavy spearmen, the first engagements were first against marauding forces, with very few casualties. Following these first successful engagements, they quickly earned a reputation as ruthless hunters, with no remorse or sense of self-preservation, as they destroyed infantry and even cavalry formations.
However, while the commanders made them work hard, throwing them into one battle after another with hardly any time to rest and resupply. Men and mounts began to tire and suffer more casualties due to fatigue and miscommunication on the battlefield. The disaster would be in Charlotte, when for the first time, the Gatling Gun would be deployed.
In 1861, an American inventor named Richard Jordan Gatling began thinking about designing a weapon that would fire at high velocity. This rapid-firing weapon is powered by a crank mechanism, with six barrels rotating around a central axis. Turning the crank rotated the shaft that would consecutively fire the projectiles. That he would be designed, a year later in 1862, patenting the machine gun capable of firing at a speed of 350 rounds per minute. The revolutionary design of the weapon would cause Richard Gatling to end up signing a contract with Samuel Colt, the industrialist and businessman who owns Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company. Colt's factories in Hartford would soon put out dozens of "Gatling Guns" that would go to the forefront. In Charlotte, they would arrive just in time to counter the Spanish cavalry attack. In Charlotte, the Michigan Cavalry Brigade (Wolverines) was stationed under the command of the young Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer, who quickly made available around 50 Gatling Guns that were waiting to be distributed among the different units of the Army at the Sherman's command. Despite the fact that the Spanish cavalry, made up of Heavy Lancers, was better armored and intended for frontal assaults on infantry positions, neither force was anywhere close to being equipped for a frontal assault on a fully entrenched and alerted position, let alone one with an excellent line of sight and supported by batteries of rapid-firing multiple-barrel guns that provide leading fire from prepared ground. The Spanish cavalry advanced gradually from a trot to a gallop, while the dust and gravel kicked up by the leading cavalry was almost blinding and irritated those behind. But as they got closer they could clearly see their target.
Preceded by a flare, he gave the order to attack, the explosion of the cannons began firing, throwing cannonballs that detonated in clouds of gray smoke that flooded the path of the cavalry, the first riders would be knocked down from their mounts being crushed by the same or losing limbs from the explosions that would keep them in agony for several hours. While the Spanish cavalry of a thousand horsemen mounted on large and heavy chargers, equipped with metal helmets and breastplates and armed with cavalry sabers for hand-to-hand combat, pistols and carbines, advanced. A few seconds after the start of the bombardment, the rattling that would show the future of the war began. The sound at first slow but then thunderous of 50 cannons firing rapidly and immediately caused terror. But the Spanish cavalry did not stop. The crack of guns, once a distant rumble of thunder, had turned into a relentless, gut-wrenching cacophony of explosions and gunshots that echoed across the countryside. The dust and smoke were as thick as autumn mist, forming thick gray clouds that billowed and billowed as more warheads struck. Down on the plain, amidst the fire, the shrapnel, and the choking clouds of smoke, the carnage continued and increased, without ceasing. Despite the heavy smoke and explosions, the horses drew rivers of bullets. "Gaspar" the Andalusian steed born in Cuba, who was ridden by Colonel Jose Primo de Rivera and Sobremonte received a direct blow that went through his body, knocking him down. Colonel Primo de Rivera, an excellent horseman, managed to avoid being trapped and holding his saber would give the speech that would immortalize the Deed of the 14th Cavalry Tercio "Cazadores de Alcántara".
"Soldiers! The time for sacrifice has arrived. Let each one do their duty. If you don't, your mothers, your girlfriends, all Spanish women will say that we are cowards. We are going to show that we are not"
The fire capabilities of the Gatling were quickly propagated initially by the newspapers and eventually by survivors of assaults on positions defended by this weapon. Despite Union use of the Gatling Gun (still rare and with usual mechanical problems), poison gas by both sides, and the use of significant numbers of equipment and men, the offensives came to a halt after heavy casualties on both sides combined a effective and flexible defense of positions. The situation became so stagnant that by the end of 1864, the military commanders of both sides came to the conclusion that they had to end the conflict, since Spanish support meant what was currently a deployment of a constant river of men. For those dates, there was a total of five million soldiers deployed between the two sides. Each Spanish Tercio - US Regiment was subjected to the same punishment: When the assault ramps fell, all the other platoons experienced the same treatment. Fire from Gatlings and muskets swept the ground, as well as defensive artillery fire that was being launched at pre-arranged coordinates with terrifying precision. The Companies that marched forward proudly were annihilated in a fire of explosions and murderous bullets. In the best of cases, the attacking infantry managed to advance with fixed bayonets, shouting in turn and marking feats of glory and blood all to gain tens of meters in a hasty fight, but when artillery and mortar fire devastated their positions and it turned the attack into a mob losing its cohesion in the tumult of battle and bombardment. Such a situation made progress slow and difficult. And I end up choosing to reach the end of the conflict with the Treaty of London. With the start of the Spanish-American peace talks, trade began to flourish. Merchants, benefiting from the cessation of hostilities and the availability of relatively cheap shipping, soon dominated markets that had previously been dominated by English wartime merchants.
Despite not having been formally recognized as an independent state, the Confederation was participating in peace talks; even Spain did not object to this. In January 1865, eight Confederate representatives arrived in London to begin negotiations. On January 30, 1865, both parties reached an agreement and a text was sent to Quebec (temporary capital of the USA) and Madrid to be signed. On May 15 of the same year, peace was made. The USA would hand over the territories of Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee to the Spanish Empire while the Spanish Empire would hand over the sum equivalent to $20,800,000 in the form of war reparations.
The end of the Second Spanish-American War, American Civil War or War of Aggression of the North, depending on who you ask the name if it was European, Yankee or Dixie, came with the establishment of the so-called Iberian Border Line. On this border line, reminiscent of the Roman Limes, automatic sentinels were posted, while cavalry patrols patrolled periodically, making sure the line was not jumped by smugglers, runaway slaves, even criminals. In the midst of these events, Spain would invest a lot of money in the reconstruction of what would be the Viceroyalty of Appalachia. This reconstruction of the Viceroyalty, which was successful, although at a tremendous cost in human lives. Due to the Unionist advance that saw entire cities razed, burned, even leveled to just rubble, the New Emperor Juan Carlos María Isidro de Borbón "Juan Carlos I" opted to provide financing for the reconstruction of each city. These new cities would stand out for their planned urbanism with wide and orderly avenues for the intense exploitation of the land, also granting an equitable value to the space. The greatest promoter and director of this project would be the pioneer in urbanization, Spanish economist and politician of Catalan origin: Ildefonso Cerdá. Cerdá's fame, however, was initially marred by his family problems, but his meticulous work earned him the respect of the "Dixie aristocracy" as planter families were called. Atlanta, Savannah, Charleston, Raleigh and other towns were rebuilt with a detail that some called the Viceroyalty of Appalachia as the Italy of North America, since the architecture and urbanism reminded the eye in the paintings of Ancient Rome and her writings. . The first Viceroy of Appalachia would be Jorge Meade, grandson of George Meade, a wealthy businessman from Philadelphia, who had a son who supported Spain during the Peninsular War and Jorge was born in Cadiz and was baptized in Catholicism.
The situation in the USA, on the other hand, saw an increase in anti-Catholic attitudes. The situation saw how Catholic schools started in the United States as a matter of ethnic and religious pride and as a way to isolate Catholic youth from the influence of Protestant teachers and from contact with non-Catholic students and funded by the organization. New York City politics known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order began to be persecuted to the point that a mob led by prominent Protestant leaders from Boston, Philadelphia, and New York to the burning of Catholic property and the murder of reputable Catholics. This violence was fueled by claims that Catholics were destroying the culture of the United States and striking an ax in the back at the very Union that had welcomed them. Such thoughts were motivated by the Know Nothing nativist political party and movement, led by Millard Fillmore. Perhaps the most key moment was on June 25, 1865, when Abraham Lincoln would be assassinated in Montreal at the hands of John Wilkes Booth, who ironically assassinated Lincoln, Booth being disguised as Marcus Junius Brutus. John Wilkes Booth was born in Maryland in 1838 into a family dedicated to the world of Show business. Booth would eventually take the stage himself, appearing in 1855 in Shakespeare's Richard III in Baltimore. Despite his Confederate sympathies, Booth remained in the North during the Civil War, pursuing a successful acting career. But as the war entered its final stages, he and various associates hatched a plot to kidnap the president and bring him to Montgomery, Alabama. The end of the War would cause the kidnapping order to change to Murder in revenge for the burning of the South.
He and his accomplices believed that the simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward—the president and two of his immediate successors—would wreak havoc within the United States government. The Lincolns were late to the comedy, but the president was in good spirits and laughed heartily throughout the production. Lincoln took a private box onstage with his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, a young army officer named Henry Rathbone, and Rathbone's fiancée, Clara Harris, daughter of the late New York Senator Ira Harris. As Guests watched the play of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Booth slipped into the box and fired his .44 caliber single-shot Derringer pistol into the back of Lincoln's head as he yelled “Sic semper tyrannis!” (“Always like this to tyrants!”). After stabbing a Rathbone surprised by the shot in the shoulder, Booth quickly seeing his retreat cut off by the United States Marshals Service, opted to jump on stage. At first, the crowd interpreted the unfolding drama as part of the production, but the cries of the first lady told them otherwise. However, Booth broke his leg in the fall and was caught by the onlookers, many of whom were army officers. In the midst of the events, an officer using a prop knife ended up stabbing Booth in the neck, stabbing rather than cutting. Booth would bleed to death even as Edward Curtis, an Army surgeon present rushed to treat the wound but Booth would bleed to death. Meanwhile, another 23-year-old doctor named Charles Leale who was in the audience, rushed to the presidential box immediately after hearing the shot and the scream of Mary Lincoln. He found the president slumped in his chair, paralyzed and gasping for breath. Charles would try to keep Lincoln alive until the Surgeon General arrived at the house, concluding that Lincoln could not be saved and would die overnight.
Finally, Lincoln was pronounced dead at 7:22 am on June 26, 1865, at the age of 56. The first lady who lay on a bed in an adjoining room with her eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, by her side, overwhelmed with shock and grief, was unable to hold a proper wake for the President when she began to cry hysterically and she was thrown out by a furious Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who threw her out of the room. After that the wake would take over, Vice President Andrew Johnson, members of Lincoln's cabinet and several of his closest friends lay vigil at the president's bedside in the boarding house. The president's body was placed in a temporary coffin, draped with a flag, and escorted by armed cavalry to the White House, where surgeons performed a thorough autopsy. During the autopsy, Mary Lincoln requested that a lock of Lincoln's hair be cut off by the surgeons. An Army surgeon present reported that a bullet rang out in a waiting basin during the removal of Lincoln's brain by doctors. He wrote that the team stopped to look at the offending bullet, "that small object that would cause as big an effect as a continent." News of the president's death traveled quickly, and by the end of the day, flags across the country were flying at half mast, businesses were closed, and people who had recently rejoiced at the end of the Civil War were now reeling for the shocking assassination of Lincoln. On June 29, Lincoln's body was taken to the Capitol rotunda to be buried in a bier. Three days later, his remains were put on a train that took him to Springfield, Illinois, where he had lived before becoming president. Tens of thousands of Americans lined the railroad track and paid their respects to their fallen President as the train marched north.
However, in the midst of these events. Mary Todd Lincoln after witnessing murder, fought to survive and became a laughingstock despite her precarious mental health that forced her to stay in bed for weeks and miss her funeral. Mary Todd Lincoln had always had a hard time living up to the severe expectations of the women of her day. Women, even famous wives, were expected to focus on the home and not seek attention or appear in public, but she, Mary, loved the spotlight and she had a knack for publicity. This created friction during her husband's lifetime, and after her death it would prove disastrous. The first breath of trouble came in the form of Mary's own reaction to the death of her husband. Although at that time she was commonly known for her lavish displays of mourning, social custom also dictated that upper-class women suppress her emotions in public. But Mary, who had also lost two of her children in infancy and is believed to be bipolar, showed no control over her grief. Shortly after Lincoln's death, Washington was abuzz with rumors about the scenes Mrs. Lincoln was doing inside the White House. She terrified the viewers with her pained expressions. In the days after the murder, Mary's servant, dressmaker, and confidante Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley would remember her lifelong "heartbroken wails, unearthly screams, terrible Banshee convulsions." However, to the people of the time that attitude was indicative of an unladylike craving for attention, still appropriate reactions for a woman who witnessed the traumatic murder of her husband at close range. The worst thing would be that the new president, Andrew Johnson, did not visit her or write a note of condolences after her assassination.
Eventually, she left the White House and settled in a Chicago hotel. Mary had never been well liked in Washington. As First Lady, she had caught her eye with her scathing opinions and her spending habits. Mary came from wealth and bought for herself, her family and her new home with abandon. She was given a generous budget to redecorate the White House, but she overspent it and came under scrutiny for her extravagant wardrobe and purchases, much mocked, especially as the nation endured the privations of the War. Now that Mary was a widow, merchants who had been anxious to extend her credit knocked on the door. Congress hadn't given him much money: just the balance of Lincoln's $25,000-a-year salary. And Mary knew that exposing the truth about her debt, which she thought she could amount to $38,000 (equivalent to $500,000), would spell the ruin of her already precarious reputation. Desperate, Ella Mary moved to a cheaper hotel as her expenses increased. She began petitioning Congress for a widow's pension. But he refused as Mary's spending habits were notorious and well known, while Mary's friend Charles Sumner championed her cause in Washington, she turned her gaze to Boston. Mary saw that as a widow, she could no longer wear her extravagant ball gowns or other clothing, so she decided to sell them. Mary and the dressmaker Keckley headed into town under assumed names with trunks full of clothing and jewelry. But the trip was a disaster from the beginning. Keckley, who was black, could not dine or stay with Mary at the segregated hotel where they were staying, and jewelers and others soon cracked Mary's identity and recognized her name on her trunks and the markings on her jewelry and clothing. her. Before long, WH Brady, a merchant, took advantage of her and convinced Mary that Bostonians would donate money to her cause if she agreed to sell her clothes at public auction.
He convinced her to give him private letters, some of which suggested wealthy Bostonians had engaged in government impropriety, to "validate" her clothing. It was a ploy. The letters appear to have been fabricated to create publicity for the sale, and when news of Mrs. Lincoln's liquidation reached the newspapers, she became the subject of ridicule. The very media spectacle that would erupt from Mary's complaints would be a terrible violation of the conduct of the time, even letters written in her own hand that appeared in print would be a criminal breach of etiquette, and the attacks by the press would be even more brutal. than his darkest days in the White House. Humiliated, Mary would retire to Chicago, poorer than she had been before heading to Boston. And while Congress grudgingly awarded him a pension of $3,000 a year, it wasn't enough to allow him to pay off her debts or live in her own home. Later, she was raised to $5,000 a year, but she Mary suffered financial problems for the rest of her life. that her health would deteriorate and she began to suffer from paranoid delusions when her son, Tad, died in 1871. Appalled by her displays, her son Robert sent her to The Danvers State Insane Asylum in 1875 where she died when she was mistakenly locked up with John Stuart. "Penelope", a necrophiliac serial killer who claimed to be a woman in a man's body. Because the walls were so thick that they were soundproof, the guards did not hear Mary's cries for help and pain as she was being raped or tortured. It would be found on July 16, 1875, with marks of sexual abuse while "Penelope" still abused the lifeless body of the former First Lady, Penelope would soon be sentenced to the electric chair, being the first person to die to be executed. in the newly created electric chair.
The death of Mary Todd Lincoln will go largely unnoticed except for a slight mention in the Boston newspaper. Meanwhile, the Reconstruction of Virginia and Kentucky went into effect under the watchful eye of the US military, allowing a Republican coalition of freedmen, Scalawags (sympathetic local whites), and Carpetbaggers (newcomers from the North) to take over. control of southern state governments, at the same time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, granting enormous new powers to federal courts to deal with justice at the state level. These state governments took large loans to build railroads and public schools, raising tax rates. Backlash from increasingly fierce opposition to these policies drove most of the Scalawags out of the Republican Party and into the Democratic Party. Andrew Johnson's successor: Ulysses S. Grant enforced civil rights protections for African-Americans that were being challenged in Virginia and Kentucky. The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870 giving African Americans the right to vote in US elections. Reconstruction caused enduring resentment, mistrust, and cynicism among white Southerners toward the federal government and helped create the "New Deep South," which typically voted socially conservative Democrats for all local, state, and national offices. White supremacists would form a segregated society through "Jim Crow Laws" which made blacks second class citizens with very little political power or public voice. This status was maintained by violent insurgent paramilitary groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, Knights of the White Camellia, and the White League: ironically made up of many of the Virginian Confederate veterans who got their equipment from the maritime trade with Spain.
Canada offered security to its people due to its isolated locations out of reach of damaging naval attacks by the Spanish Navy, and they offered Yankee Industries a great deal of resources to deploy the factories and plants associated with the war effort. Canada had the space to house an impressive variety of heavy iron and steel factories, as well as agricultural and chemical plants. Industries, however, depended on the coal mines and copper deposits in the Canadian Shield to continue supporting the Union war machine. Because the word evacuation was a rather terrible and unaccustomed new word while to others, it simply wasn't used "Refugee" was all too familiar given the country's war history. Scientists, skilled workers, artists, writers, and politicians from Boston and Quebec came to the conclusion that the word "refugee" was replaced by "evacuee." The evacuation process, despite the best efforts of the United States Army Transport Service (ATS), was far from organized. The High Command had problems to evacuate the material with qualified personnel, so in the end most of them evacuated by themselves, without knowing the place assigned for the displacement, because it was feared that the orderly displacement would make the Spanish spies know the location of the industry. However, due to the large number of skilled workers mobilized, the train stations were crowded and the distribution of train tickets could take days. In the midst of this climate of mobilization or evacuation, many of the evacuees would be survivors of New York, which had become a city of death and ruins. The Irish of New York, instead, were expelled to the Canadian tundra where they are forced to work in iron, copper and other mines, while their transport was in trains that had previously been used to transport flour and other agricultural products, Unlike the passengers. They were rarely given water, and when they did, they were only allowed a few swallows, which were described as "putrid". Those on board slept in crowded apartments in inhumane conditions.
On the front line. Sherman and McClellan had been forced back, with the enemy dropping their forces in pieces to stop the offensive where they could while the Tercios pushed ever forward. The Union's resistance became especially notable in the case of the fighting freed Africans, armed only with shoddy surplus and sometimes even using sabers and machetes, but willing to sacrifice rather than be rechained. However, they were killed percent by Legionnaires and Confederates shot over and over again until nothing of their human forms remained. The offensive was at a standstill as a result of the subsequent massive use of Chlorine Gas. To break the stalemate, the Legates organizing the battle authorized the use of chemical weapons, adding their ration of chemical projectiles to the poisoned landscape and blanketing the landscape in clouds of gas in the process. The need for the troops to reorganize and re-equip completely delayed the offensive, but it was finally possible to equip them with primitive respirators, so it was decided to proceed with the advance with a brave charge of several cavalry companies. Hoping to trap the enemy with a quick cavalry charge, the cavalry squadrons rallied before advancing towards their starting lines. With the efficiency of a parade, men and mounts set off at a gallop, striking directly along the service road. There was no preliminary shelling to soften up the enemy, as it was thought that the artillery would do little to finish off the enemy and would only alert them to an impending attack. The charge relied primarily on surprise from the powerful veteran heavy spearmen, the first engagements were first against marauding forces, with very few casualties. Following these first successful engagements, they quickly earned a reputation as ruthless hunters, with no remorse or sense of self-preservation, as they destroyed infantry and even cavalry formations.
However, while the commanders made them work hard, throwing them into one battle after another with hardly any time to rest and resupply. Men and mounts began to tire and suffer more casualties due to fatigue and miscommunication on the battlefield. The disaster would be in Charlotte, when for the first time, the Gatling Gun would be deployed.
In 1861, an American inventor named Richard Jordan Gatling began thinking about designing a weapon that would fire at high velocity. This rapid-firing weapon is powered by a crank mechanism, with six barrels rotating around a central axis. Turning the crank rotated the shaft that would consecutively fire the projectiles. That he would be designed, a year later in 1862, patenting the machine gun capable of firing at a speed of 350 rounds per minute. The revolutionary design of the weapon would cause Richard Gatling to end up signing a contract with Samuel Colt, the industrialist and businessman who owns Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company. Colt's factories in Hartford would soon put out dozens of "Gatling Guns" that would go to the forefront. In Charlotte, they would arrive just in time to counter the Spanish cavalry attack. In Charlotte, the Michigan Cavalry Brigade (Wolverines) was stationed under the command of the young Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer, who quickly made available around 50 Gatling Guns that were waiting to be distributed among the different units of the Army at the Sherman's command. Despite the fact that the Spanish cavalry, made up of Heavy Lancers, was better armored and intended for frontal assaults on infantry positions, neither force was anywhere close to being equipped for a frontal assault on a fully entrenched and alerted position, let alone one with an excellent line of sight and supported by batteries of rapid-firing multiple-barrel guns that provide leading fire from prepared ground. The Spanish cavalry advanced gradually from a trot to a gallop, while the dust and gravel kicked up by the leading cavalry was almost blinding and irritated those behind. But as they got closer they could clearly see their target.
Preceded by a flare, he gave the order to attack, the explosion of the cannons began firing, throwing cannonballs that detonated in clouds of gray smoke that flooded the path of the cavalry, the first riders would be knocked down from their mounts being crushed by the same or losing limbs from the explosions that would keep them in agony for several hours. While the Spanish cavalry of a thousand horsemen mounted on large and heavy chargers, equipped with metal helmets and breastplates and armed with cavalry sabers for hand-to-hand combat, pistols and carbines, advanced. A few seconds after the start of the bombardment, the rattling that would show the future of the war began. The sound at first slow but then thunderous of 50 cannons firing rapidly and immediately caused terror. But the Spanish cavalry did not stop. The crack of guns, once a distant rumble of thunder, had turned into a relentless, gut-wrenching cacophony of explosions and gunshots that echoed across the countryside. The dust and smoke were as thick as autumn mist, forming thick gray clouds that billowed and billowed as more warheads struck. Down on the plain, amidst the fire, the shrapnel, and the choking clouds of smoke, the carnage continued and increased, without ceasing. Despite the heavy smoke and explosions, the horses drew rivers of bullets. "Gaspar" the Andalusian steed born in Cuba, who was ridden by Colonel Jose Primo de Rivera and Sobremonte received a direct blow that went through his body, knocking him down. Colonel Primo de Rivera, an excellent horseman, managed to avoid being trapped and holding his saber would give the speech that would immortalize the Deed of the 14th Cavalry Tercio "Cazadores de Alcántara".
"Soldiers! The time for sacrifice has arrived. Let each one do their duty. If you don't, your mothers, your girlfriends, all Spanish women will say that we are cowards. We are going to show that we are not"
The fire capabilities of the Gatling were quickly propagated initially by the newspapers and eventually by survivors of assaults on positions defended by this weapon. Despite Union use of the Gatling Gun (still rare and with usual mechanical problems), poison gas by both sides, and the use of significant numbers of equipment and men, the offensives came to a halt after heavy casualties on both sides combined a effective and flexible defense of positions. The situation became so stagnant that by the end of 1864, the military commanders of both sides came to the conclusion that they had to end the conflict, since Spanish support meant what was currently a deployment of a constant river of men. For those dates, there was a total of five million soldiers deployed between the two sides. Each Spanish Tercio - US Regiment was subjected to the same punishment: When the assault ramps fell, all the other platoons experienced the same treatment. Fire from Gatlings and muskets swept the ground, as well as defensive artillery fire that was being launched at pre-arranged coordinates with terrifying precision. The Companies that marched forward proudly were annihilated in a fire of explosions and murderous bullets. In the best of cases, the attacking infantry managed to advance with fixed bayonets, shouting in turn and marking feats of glory and blood all to gain tens of meters in a hasty fight, but when artillery and mortar fire devastated their positions and it turned the attack into a mob losing its cohesion in the tumult of battle and bombardment. Such a situation made progress slow and difficult. And I end up choosing to reach the end of the conflict with the Treaty of London. With the start of the Spanish-American peace talks, trade began to flourish. Merchants, benefiting from the cessation of hostilities and the availability of relatively cheap shipping, soon dominated markets that had previously been dominated by English wartime merchants.
Despite not having been formally recognized as an independent state, the Confederation was participating in peace talks; even Spain did not object to this. In January 1865, eight Confederate representatives arrived in London to begin negotiations. On January 30, 1865, both parties reached an agreement and a text was sent to Quebec (temporary capital of the USA) and Madrid to be signed. On May 15 of the same year, peace was made. The USA would hand over the territories of Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee to the Spanish Empire while the Spanish Empire would hand over the sum equivalent to $20,800,000 in the form of war reparations.
The end of the Second Spanish-American War, American Civil War or War of Aggression of the North, depending on who you ask the name if it was European, Yankee or Dixie, came with the establishment of the so-called Iberian Border Line. On this border line, reminiscent of the Roman Limes, automatic sentinels were posted, while cavalry patrols patrolled periodically, making sure the line was not jumped by smugglers, runaway slaves, even criminals. In the midst of these events, Spain would invest a lot of money in the reconstruction of what would be the Viceroyalty of Appalachia. This reconstruction of the Viceroyalty, which was successful, although at a tremendous cost in human lives. Due to the Unionist advance that saw entire cities razed, burned, even leveled to just rubble, the New Emperor Juan Carlos María Isidro de Borbón "Juan Carlos I" opted to provide financing for the reconstruction of each city. These new cities would stand out for their planned urbanism with wide and orderly avenues for the intense exploitation of the land, also granting an equitable value to the space. The greatest promoter and director of this project would be the pioneer in urbanization, Spanish economist and politician of Catalan origin: Ildefonso Cerdá. Cerdá's fame, however, was initially marred by his family problems, but his meticulous work earned him the respect of the "Dixie aristocracy" as planter families were called. Atlanta, Savannah, Charleston, Raleigh and other towns were rebuilt with a detail that some called the Viceroyalty of Appalachia as the Italy of North America, since the architecture and urbanism reminded the eye in the paintings of Ancient Rome and her writings. . The first Viceroy of Appalachia would be Jorge Meade, grandson of George Meade, a wealthy businessman from Philadelphia, who had a son who supported Spain during the Peninsular War and Jorge was born in Cadiz and was baptized in Catholicism.
The situation in the USA, on the other hand, saw an increase in anti-Catholic attitudes. The situation saw how Catholic schools started in the United States as a matter of ethnic and religious pride and as a way to isolate Catholic youth from the influence of Protestant teachers and from contact with non-Catholic students and funded by the organization. New York City politics known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order began to be persecuted to the point that a mob led by prominent Protestant leaders from Boston, Philadelphia, and New York to the burning of Catholic property and the murder of reputable Catholics. This violence was fueled by claims that Catholics were destroying the culture of the United States and striking an ax in the back at the very Union that had welcomed them. Such thoughts were motivated by the Know Nothing nativist political party and movement, led by Millard Fillmore. Perhaps the most key moment was on June 25, 1865, when Abraham Lincoln would be assassinated in Montreal at the hands of John Wilkes Booth, who ironically assassinated Lincoln, Booth being disguised as Marcus Junius Brutus. John Wilkes Booth was born in Maryland in 1838 into a family dedicated to the world of Show business. Booth would eventually take the stage himself, appearing in 1855 in Shakespeare's Richard III in Baltimore. Despite his Confederate sympathies, Booth remained in the North during the Civil War, pursuing a successful acting career. But as the war entered its final stages, he and various associates hatched a plot to kidnap the president and bring him to Montgomery, Alabama. The end of the War would cause the kidnapping order to change to Murder in revenge for the burning of the South.
He and his accomplices believed that the simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward—the president and two of his immediate successors—would wreak havoc within the United States government. The Lincolns were late to the comedy, but the president was in good spirits and laughed heartily throughout the production. Lincoln took a private box onstage with his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, a young army officer named Henry Rathbone, and Rathbone's fiancée, Clara Harris, daughter of the late New York Senator Ira Harris. As Guests watched the play of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Booth slipped into the box and fired his .44 caliber single-shot Derringer pistol into the back of Lincoln's head as he yelled “Sic semper tyrannis!” (“Always like this to tyrants!”). After stabbing a Rathbone surprised by the shot in the shoulder, Booth quickly seeing his retreat cut off by the United States Marshals Service, opted to jump on stage. At first, the crowd interpreted the unfolding drama as part of the production, but the cries of the first lady told them otherwise. However, Booth broke his leg in the fall and was caught by the onlookers, many of whom were army officers. In the midst of the events, an officer using a prop knife ended up stabbing Booth in the neck, stabbing rather than cutting. Booth would bleed to death even as Edward Curtis, an Army surgeon present rushed to treat the wound but Booth would bleed to death. Meanwhile, another 23-year-old doctor named Charles Leale who was in the audience, rushed to the presidential box immediately after hearing the shot and the scream of Mary Lincoln. He found the president slumped in his chair, paralyzed and gasping for breath. Charles would try to keep Lincoln alive until the Surgeon General arrived at the house, concluding that Lincoln could not be saved and would die overnight.
Finally, Lincoln was pronounced dead at 7:22 am on June 26, 1865, at the age of 56. The first lady who lay on a bed in an adjoining room with her eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, by her side, overwhelmed with shock and grief, was unable to hold a proper wake for the President when she began to cry hysterically and she was thrown out by a furious Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who threw her out of the room. After that the wake would take over, Vice President Andrew Johnson, members of Lincoln's cabinet and several of his closest friends lay vigil at the president's bedside in the boarding house. The president's body was placed in a temporary coffin, draped with a flag, and escorted by armed cavalry to the White House, where surgeons performed a thorough autopsy. During the autopsy, Mary Lincoln requested that a lock of Lincoln's hair be cut off by the surgeons. An Army surgeon present reported that a bullet rang out in a waiting basin during the removal of Lincoln's brain by doctors. He wrote that the team stopped to look at the offending bullet, "that small object that would cause as big an effect as a continent." News of the president's death traveled quickly, and by the end of the day, flags across the country were flying at half mast, businesses were closed, and people who had recently rejoiced at the end of the Civil War were now reeling for the shocking assassination of Lincoln. On June 29, Lincoln's body was taken to the Capitol rotunda to be buried in a bier. Three days later, his remains were put on a train that took him to Springfield, Illinois, where he had lived before becoming president. Tens of thousands of Americans lined the railroad track and paid their respects to their fallen President as the train marched north.
However, in the midst of these events. Mary Todd Lincoln after witnessing murder, fought to survive and became a laughingstock despite her precarious mental health that forced her to stay in bed for weeks and miss her funeral. Mary Todd Lincoln had always had a hard time living up to the severe expectations of the women of her day. Women, even famous wives, were expected to focus on the home and not seek attention or appear in public, but she, Mary, loved the spotlight and she had a knack for publicity. This created friction during her husband's lifetime, and after her death it would prove disastrous. The first breath of trouble came in the form of Mary's own reaction to the death of her husband. Although at that time she was commonly known for her lavish displays of mourning, social custom also dictated that upper-class women suppress her emotions in public. But Mary, who had also lost two of her children in infancy and is believed to be bipolar, showed no control over her grief. Shortly after Lincoln's death, Washington was abuzz with rumors about the scenes Mrs. Lincoln was doing inside the White House. She terrified the viewers with her pained expressions. In the days after the murder, Mary's servant, dressmaker, and confidante Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley would remember her lifelong "heartbroken wails, unearthly screams, terrible Banshee convulsions." However, to the people of the time that attitude was indicative of an unladylike craving for attention, still appropriate reactions for a woman who witnessed the traumatic murder of her husband at close range. The worst thing would be that the new president, Andrew Johnson, did not visit her or write a note of condolences after her assassination.
Eventually, she left the White House and settled in a Chicago hotel. Mary had never been well liked in Washington. As First Lady, she had caught her eye with her scathing opinions and her spending habits. Mary came from wealth and bought for herself, her family and her new home with abandon. She was given a generous budget to redecorate the White House, but she overspent it and came under scrutiny for her extravagant wardrobe and purchases, much mocked, especially as the nation endured the privations of the War. Now that Mary was a widow, merchants who had been anxious to extend her credit knocked on the door. Congress hadn't given him much money: just the balance of Lincoln's $25,000-a-year salary. And Mary knew that exposing the truth about her debt, which she thought she could amount to $38,000 (equivalent to $500,000), would spell the ruin of her already precarious reputation. Desperate, Ella Mary moved to a cheaper hotel as her expenses increased. She began petitioning Congress for a widow's pension. But he refused as Mary's spending habits were notorious and well known, while Mary's friend Charles Sumner championed her cause in Washington, she turned her gaze to Boston. Mary saw that as a widow, she could no longer wear her extravagant ball gowns or other clothing, so she decided to sell them. Mary and the dressmaker Keckley headed into town under assumed names with trunks full of clothing and jewelry. But the trip was a disaster from the beginning. Keckley, who was black, could not dine or stay with Mary at the segregated hotel where they were staying, and jewelers and others soon cracked Mary's identity and recognized her name on her trunks and the markings on her jewelry and clothing. her. Before long, WH Brady, a merchant, took advantage of her and convinced Mary that Bostonians would donate money to her cause if she agreed to sell her clothes at public auction.
He convinced her to give him private letters, some of which suggested wealthy Bostonians had engaged in government impropriety, to "validate" her clothing. It was a ploy. The letters appear to have been fabricated to create publicity for the sale, and when news of Mrs. Lincoln's liquidation reached the newspapers, she became the subject of ridicule. The very media spectacle that would erupt from Mary's complaints would be a terrible violation of the conduct of the time, even letters written in her own hand that appeared in print would be a criminal breach of etiquette, and the attacks by the press would be even more brutal. than his darkest days in the White House. Humiliated, Mary would retire to Chicago, poorer than she had been before heading to Boston. And while Congress grudgingly awarded him a pension of $3,000 a year, it wasn't enough to allow him to pay off her debts or live in her own home. Later, she was raised to $5,000 a year, but she Mary suffered financial problems for the rest of her life. that her health would deteriorate and she began to suffer from paranoid delusions when her son, Tad, died in 1871. Appalled by her displays, her son Robert sent her to The Danvers State Insane Asylum in 1875 where she died when she was mistakenly locked up with John Stuart. "Penelope", a necrophiliac serial killer who claimed to be a woman in a man's body. Because the walls were so thick that they were soundproof, the guards did not hear Mary's cries for help and pain as she was being raped or tortured. It would be found on July 16, 1875, with marks of sexual abuse while "Penelope" still abused the lifeless body of the former First Lady, Penelope would soon be sentenced to the electric chair, being the first person to die to be executed. in the newly created electric chair.
The death of Mary Todd Lincoln will go largely unnoticed except for a slight mention in the Boston newspaper. Meanwhile, the Reconstruction of Virginia and Kentucky went into effect under the watchful eye of the US military, allowing a Republican coalition of freedmen, Scalawags (sympathetic local whites), and Carpetbaggers (newcomers from the North) to take over. control of southern state governments, at the same time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, granting enormous new powers to federal courts to deal with justice at the state level. These state governments took large loans to build railroads and public schools, raising tax rates. Backlash from increasingly fierce opposition to these policies drove most of the Scalawags out of the Republican Party and into the Democratic Party. Andrew Johnson's successor: Ulysses S. Grant enforced civil rights protections for African-Americans that were being challenged in Virginia and Kentucky. The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870 giving African Americans the right to vote in US elections. Reconstruction caused enduring resentment, mistrust, and cynicism among white Southerners toward the federal government and helped create the "New Deep South," which typically voted socially conservative Democrats for all local, state, and national offices. White supremacists would form a segregated society through "Jim Crow Laws" which made blacks second class citizens with very little political power or public voice. This status was maintained by violent insurgent paramilitary groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, Knights of the White Camellia, and the White League: ironically made up of many of the Virginian Confederate veterans who got their equipment from the maritime trade with Spain.
