He did not IOTL because it was not the priority. But if Stanton is given a strong role, he could have minimized corruption, given how he tackled corruption in the War Department and improved its efficiency. He was essentially among the most competent administrators and central planners in the Lincoln government.
Civil Service Reform would be a strong priority once the war ends.
I agree that Lincoln probably did not tackle the issue because he was worried with the war, and the idea of Stanton as Lincoln's successor's tutor is interesting. Limiting corruption is essential for the survival of Reconstruction both North and South in increasing support for Southern governments and limiting the power of the more moderate Republicans.
There were, but then, it's clear such people did not know Sam Grant.
Now, the fears had more substance with Hooker and McClellan.
I once asked here whether a McClellan coup was realistic. Most seemed to agree that it was not within Mac's character. I did not consider making an actual coup, but McClellan engaging in more insubordination after the Emancipation Proclamation. I ultimately settled for the Peninsula Disaster.
I wonder, is it possible that with Emancipation in effect in Louisiana, a substantial amount of the now-free blacks will join the Union army, strengthening it and giving the union a greater ability to punch northwards out of Lousiana than OTL? Their knowledge of local terrain would also help. (I don't know much about this theater, but it strikes me as odd how in OTL the Union army in New Orleans seemed to mostly sit on its heels after the initial capture, until Vicksburg was taken from the north by Grant. I wonder what more could be done with an army sitting in the CSA's underbelly.)
That's a great possibility. Another thing is that New Orleans has a big population of free people of color who are educated and involved in politics even before the antebellum. Greater rebel resistance is bound to make the Union turn to them for support - which most likely means earlier Black suffrage.
With Chamberlain being from Maine, Colfax will not be his running mate, I would consider New York to also be Northeast. Perhaps Stanton would be a good vice president. Well the vice presidents in this century had about as much clout normally as a 4th grade class vice-president
, he could be in charge of some sort of task force to work on ending corruption and pushing for civil service reform. I wasn't sure where he was from but I see and his Wikipedia article he was born in Ohio, so he would be in an excellent position to both balance the ticket with what at that time was a very important state and also lend more credibility to Chamberlain's campaign because he would have been in the federal government longer and be a direct connection to the Lincoln Administration.
Chamberlain's cameo in the Battle of Bull Run is a way of maintaining my options open. The question of who will succeed Lincoln is an important one, and right now the candidates are Grant, Chamberlain, Garfield and the next commander of the Army of the Susquehanna. Of course that depends on future events as well.
While Mexico might succeed in taking some Texas borderlands, pretty much *any* stable government controlling Texas that isn't *just* Texas will be capable of kicking Mexico back across the border or worse (and that includes a Confederacy that actually has a working cease-fire with the Union).
For the record, I don't think Mexico getting involved in the war is realistic, and if I considered not doing the French invasion is because I feel for poor Mexico and would like to spare it some of its bad luck. You know, so far from God, so close to the United States.
@Red_Galiray since this war will be much more bloodier and since otl it was mentioned in thread majoirty of white men died in south and since it will be much higher than otl, will we se confredate in later part of war forced to have slave regiments, conrspcirintg women, or an influx of forgien volunters or somehting
also in regrad to butterflies it your story so do what you want, I am fine with large butterflies as long as they are logical and aren't just justifted through chaos theroy
edit: i was wrong it was 1-4 still pretty bad though
Breckenridge was actually in favor of slave conscription OTL, and he's definitely no friend of the planter aristocracy. As things get more desperate, I could see him backing the conscription of slaves in exchange for freedom, which would be a breaking point with other Confederates. Basically, Breckenridge thinks slavery is worthless without independence; his opponents think that independence is worthless without slavery. This is one of the salient points of opposition that will have consequences later.
I can't see the South ever conscripting women, and there are not many foreigners who would come to the Confederacy at the time, nor money to pay mercenaries.
Out topic, but I love Adam's cooking videos.
Think there are real limits to how much the war can change demographics, where a bloodier war will have a real impact is killing off more slaver officers. Ex-CSA officers played a huge role in post-War politics and at this point in history officers still had very high casualty rates. Doesn't take too much to bleed the officer corps enough to leave more of a vacuum in post-War southern politics.
I agree that probably the better way of harming the CSA cause is by killing the Southern leadership. These guys were the ones who engineered the downfall of Reconstruction and then the birth of Jim Crow.
But there is another danger here that I am not sure many commenters here are taking cognizance of (but which I hope @Red_Galiray will carefully consider): a harder war will likely not only wreak havoc with the planter class population, but also with a lot of the slave population, too. Slaves were already facing a more marginal existence when it came to access to necessities, and Union Army officers were very often not inclined to remedy it, and not just because they naturally had a higher priority for the supply of their own men. (Note that the mortality rate for black
soldiers was about
40% higher than that for white troops as it was.)
It's truly a balancing act, which is another of the reasons why I don't want to go full on extermination war.
My question is for all *this* TL things are up a notch or too in a less "friendly" civil war, the question is can we get the Union and Confederate Armies to the level of inhumanity of the WWII Eastern Front?
can we get brutally hot summers that equivalent to the Russians winters?
Besides the points already exposed about how White Union and Confederate soldiers don't see each other as inhumans to extermine, Grant's quote of "who is to furnish the snow for this winter retreat?" comes to mind.
There's also the simple fact that neither Lincoln nor Breckenridge are bloodthirsty monsters. Lincoln was a man of great compassion, and though Breckenridge is already condemned by his support for White Supremacy and slavery, he was not the worst Confederate out there. He dabbed on anti-slavery in his early days and refused to prosecute a free Black man for a crime he knew he was innocent of (Breckenridge refused to actually defend him too). After the war, Breckenridge apparently befriended a Black man and supported him when he decided to marry a White woman. And during the war itself, he expressed horror at the massacre of Black soldiers and tried to have one perpetrator prosecuted to no avail. Both can be pushed to more radical measures (burn cities, hang partisans without trial, imprison civilians, etc), but I just can't see either engaging in WWII kind of horrors. And, of course, I think Generals like Grant would rather mutiny than go South and massacre civilians.
That said, I am only talking about the main armies, not guerillas. The guerillas were increasingly independent, ungovernable and violent, very nearly waging their own war, as the ACW progresed. For example, Bloody Bill Anderson engaged in ambush, rape, espionage, arson, infighting, scalping, beheading, torture, theft, ethnic vendetta, and even outright massacre.
Most of the violence is going to come from the guerrillas indeed. It's just that the scope and size of the guerrillas, and the measures to be taken against them, are different from OTL. All contributing to greater bloodshed without ever reaching the horrors of WWII, which are in a whole other level.
I mean, you did have did have draft-dodger Grover Cleveland get elected President in the aftermath of Civil War, in the midst of Civil War generals and soldiers being in high positions politically. So its still possible that Chamberlain could have some military success' without Gettysburg-level events or charges and still end up being politically important. .
It's entirely possible, and that's why I want to leave the possibility open. Side note, but I thought about including a cameo of Grover Cleveland somewhere, but couldn't think of a good reason. I also was going to include Booth as a Maryland Confederate fallen in the Battle of Baltimore but decided against it to use him in the future (don't worry, Lincoln will live).
The problem with this: activating Crusade Mode. “The only good Confederate is a dead one! Just kill all the bastards and let God sort them out!” A more idealist take on the Reconstruction will be difficult if this somehow becomes Warhammer 1861.
I'm not going to make this into a war of extermination if that's your concern. Most violence will be contained within the guerrilla war rather than between both professional armies. Lincoln surely would not allow any commander in the field to simply massacre captured officers. The Union will not yield the moral high ground. But, as
@Drunkrobot pointed out, it's necessary to show the North that this isn't innocent but brave Dixie boys fighting for a tragic but still good cause, but an entire population willingly conspiring to commit inhuman acts.
Such atrocities also makes it hard to go "those were just soldiers doing their duty" - there might be more confederate officers hanged after this war for not preventing such crimes.
Exactly.
I wonder what Mark Twain is up to. IOTL he spent two weeks in a Confederate unit in 1861, then left it and went West. It'd be difficult for the war to not affect him should he have chosen to stay East.
Let's just assume he flees West too. It would be a bleak timeline without his wit.
On the other hand, Confederate partisans being so brutal towards civilians nominal on their side might start stoking popular discontent in the Confederacy. Make people start doubting this is a war for the good of all southern whites.
Much popular support has already been drained due to conscription and martial law, which is ruthlessly enforced. Many Confederates are as committed to White Supremacy and Slavery, but they put their families first. Believing that defeat means destruction, and "us vs them" mentality has formed whereby if you don't 100% support the Confederacy then you're an Unionist dog who wants to massacre White people, and are attacked accordingly. This is obviously bad for the Confederates.
So the south are going to get away with enslaving free blacks and mass murdering unionists? From those new details about purging added. Surely that will push the north to be more stern with them.
Lincoln OTL threatened to shot one Confederate prisoner for every soldier murdered, and sent one Confederate to forced labor for every Black person enslaved. He ultimately decided against it because it would be a bloody tick for tack, but maybe he actually goes through it.
Depending on how successful slaves are at staging mass breakouts and leaving Southern-held plantations empty, the Confederacy might move to try using PoWs as forced labour. I'm sure the system of prisoner exchanges has broken down already with blacks being used as soldiers more quickly and the South and North thus coming to an impasse on whether they be counted as PoWs, and with the South hitting its high watermark its prison population has to be swelling. It goes without saying that the infrastructure and workforce needed to implement forced labour is already there, from labourer lodging to crews of overseers. That is sure to lead to the North becoming even more horrified with the South: Even if orders from the top come with stipulations that white PoWs are not slaves and should not be treated exactly as such, overseers across the South are used to resorting to the whip when they get the slightest bit of dissent - they're a crowd where excessive brutality can get normalised extremely quickly. It certainly would be an experience that could turn Union troops who were before hand on-the-fence about the whole abolishing slavery issue into men who would gladly pay taxes just to make sure Uncle Sam can keep his boot firmly on the neck of white Dixie.
If OTL the issue of how Northern prisoners were treated was already contentious, something like this would raise a hell of a storm.
@Red_Galiray did you already do the rewrite?
Or did you just add some details?
I rewrote it in part. Most it's the same. Aside from those two paragraphs showing the brutality of the guerrillas, the battle of Iuka has been changed and Thomas has now captured both Knoxville and Chattanooga. It's nothing to radical, but the bigger victory at East Tennessee should keep the Union going, while Iuka is now possible, whilst before it was geographically impossible.
