I am posting a revised version of this timeline, in preparation for a new update which I plan to have ready for posting by the end of this week.
WHAT HATH A WARM OVERCOAT WROUGHT?
An Alternate History Timeline
by Robert Perkins
March 4, 1841--William Henry Harrison heeds the advice of his wife, who urges him to wear a warm overcoat as he gives his inauguration address, because it is an extremely chilly and windy day. He does not catch cold, and does not die a month later.
1841--President Harrison signs the Clay Tariff Bill into law. The bill raises tariffs from their current levels of 20% up to a new level of almost 40%. The bill also includes provisions for the disbursement of public lands in the West. The bill is roundly condemned by the South.
1842--The U.S. Supreme Court, in the Prigg v. Pennsylvania decision, upholds the right of slave-owners to recover slaves which have escaped into States which have abolished slavery, and declares unconstitutional State laws intended to interfere with the recovery of said slaves. President Harrison, in an attempt to mollify the South after his support for the Clay Tariff Act of 1841, quickly announces his support for the decision and that the Federal Government stands ready to enforce it. Also in this year, President Harrison sends in federal troops to suppress the Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island, thus demonstrating, for all to see, his willingness to use military force to enforce the Constitution.
1843--The American Republican Party is founded in New York. It is founded as a result of fears that major cities, especially in the North, are being overwhelmed by Irish Catholic immigrants who are regarded as hostile to American values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. It pursues an anti-immigration, anti-Catholic agenda.
Also in this year, in Nauvoo, Illinois, Joseph Smith, Jr., leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (commonly known as the Mormon Church), has a special revelation which introduces polygamy, which is called the "Law of Abraham," "Patriarchal Order of Marriage," or "Celestial Plural Marriage." Along with the "Law of Abraham" went the "Law of Sarah," in which women were admonished to accept polygamy. Joseph Smith assigns some women to some men. When news of this leaks out, it inflames the passions of local non-Mormons, already concerned that Mormon block-voting could lead to a theocracy being imposed on them.
Early 1843--Several Northern States pass "Personal Liberty Laws" in defiance of the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Prigg v. Pennsylvania case. These laws seek to take advantage of a statement in Chief Justice Story’s opinion in the Prigg case that, although States are not able to over-ride Federal Laws, neither are they required to enforce them, and prohibit State officials from taking any action whatsoever with regard to escaped slaves. The escaped slaves will not be apprehended by State law enforcement officials, will not be allowed to be incarcerated in State jails, and claims for the return of escaped slaves will not be heard in State Courts. These laws are intended to effectively nullify both the Fugitive Slave Act and Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution.
July 1843--President Harrison declares that “The States must follow not only the letter, but the spirit, of the law. Passive Nullification is, and remains, Nullification,“ and proclaims that the Federal Government will enforce compliance with Federal Law and the Constitution, by military means if necessary.
August 1843--President Harrison begins massing regular army units in Maryland and Kentucky to back up his threat, as well as stationing naval squadrons outside New York and Boston harbors.
September 1843--In response to President Harrison's provocative actions, a Convention of the Northern States is called in Hartford, Connecticut. A resolution is passed calling for secession from the Union. The New York and Massachusetts State Legislature vote for secession a week later.
On September 21, President Harrison declares New York and Massachusetts to be in rebellion, and orders the closure of New York and Boston Harbors. In response, the rest of the New England States secede over the course of the following two weeks, along with Pennsylvania and Ohio.
October 1843--President Harrison calls for 75,000 troops to put down the rebellion. However, the Southern States refuse to support the effort to coerce their sister States, and impeachment proceedings are soon brought against Harrison.
November 1843--President Harrison is impeached and removed from office. Vice President John Tyler, who has strongly opposed President Harrison's actions, is sworn in as the tenth President of the United States.
January 1844--The seceded States petition to rejoin the Union. However, the Southern States, which now control the Federal Government, insist that if they are to rejoin the Union, they must agree to repeal their “Personal Liberty Laws” and abide by the Constitution and all of its provisions. The seceded Northern States balk.
FLAG OF THE FEDERATED STATES OF AMERICA, ADOPTED MARCH 1844
March 1844--A Convention of the seceded States decides to form the Federated States of America (F.S.A.). Daniel Webster of Massachusetts is selected as Provisional President, pending an election to be held in November. There are now two nations, where once there was but one.
March 1844 onward--The breakup of the Old Union has left the United States in possession of the vast majority of the former Union’s army and navy. The Federated States, therefore, must basically build a new military establishment from scratch. They are helped by the fact that most of the Northern-born officers resigned from their posts in the U.S. armed forces at the secession of their States from the Union, and the former U.S. Military Academy at West Point also is now the property of the F.S.A. The F.S.A. also inherits the federal arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts, as well as the naval yards at Boston and Philadelphia.
The Congress of the F.S.A. passes regulations for it’s army which are basically duplicates of those in use by the United States. They adopt gray, which was used by many U.S. forces during the War of 1812...due to shortages of blue cloth…and therefore has an honorable military tradition in America, as the color of the uniforms worn by the new Federated States Army.
As the F.S.A. is not sure of the future of relations with it’s neighbor to the South, it’s Congress authorizes a larger military than that maintained by the United States in OTL during this time period. However, the American tradition of distrusting large standing armies still remains, and the size of the Federated States Army is set, by law, at 20,000 (about twice the size of the OTL U.S. Army during this time period). The hard life and low wages offered to potential recruits, however, will make it hard to maintain even this small number in the field, and the actual size of the Army will hover at between 15,000 and 18,000...except for a brief surge of volunteers which will bring the strength of the Army to 60,000 during the War with Mexico…throughout the 1840s and 1850s.
Most of these troops will be posted to garrison duty in the West, or in various fortifications along the coast and along the borders with the United States. Later, as the size of the U.S. military establishment grows due to the stresses introduced by the conquest of Mexico, the F.S.A. will also raise it’s own authorized establishment to 100,000 by 1880.
The Federated States Navy, like the Army, will basically be built from scratch, and will pattern itself on that of the United States. A fleet of 50 vessels is initially authorized, to consist primarily of wooden frigates and sloops-of war, suitable for protecting the commerce of the F.S.A. on the high seas, but not intended for a major war with a European power. The F.S.A.’s Navy will reap one benefit over that of the U.S.A. by the fact that it has to be built, basically, from scratch…from the beginning, almost all of it’s ships will be equipped with steam power and the most modern naval artillery. The Federated States Navy, like the Army, will see some expansion during the 1860s and 1870s, and will stand at almost 100 vessels of various kinds…including 10 of the new ironclad warships…by 1880.
Meanwhile, the breakup of the Union has lead to some changes in the structure and strength of the United States military as well. The United States was fortunate in that it retained the bulk of the nation’s pre-secession military strength. However, the loss of the arsenals and naval yards of the North, as well as the military academy at West Point, is a serious problem. Fortunately, the fine arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and the Gosport Naval Yard at Norfolk, Virginia, both remained in the hands of the United States. There are also two good military academies, the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, Virginia, and the Citadel, at Charleston, South Carolina, which might lend themselves to adoption by the United States as a replacement for the academy at West Point.
In the end, after much debate, the U.S. Congress purchases The Citadel from the State of South Carolina in 1845 and establishes it’s new military academy there. In the same year, a Naval Academy is established at Baltimore, Maryland. New arsenals will established at Columbia, South Carolina, Augusta, Georgia, Nashville, Tennessee, and Selma, Alabama, to supplement the production of the Harpers Ferry Arsenal, and shipyards will be established at Mobile, Alabama, Charleston, South Carolina, and New Orleans, Louisiana by 1880.
The United States, too, is unsure of it’s new neighbor to the North, and authorizes an increase in the size of it’s military establishment in 1845. The 1845 Military Act establishes the strength of the U.S. Army at 25,000. During the Mexican War, the strength of the Army is swelled by volunteers to approximately 80,000. In 1848, in the aftermath of the Mexican War, Congress increases the authorized strength of the Army to 50,000. As the need for more troops to hold down the conquered Mexican Territories becomes clear, subsequent acts during the late 1850s, the 1860s, and the 1870s, will gradually increase the authorized strength of the Army to 150,000 blue-jackets (as U.S. troops are popularly known due to the color of their uniform coats) by 1880.
The United States was fortunate in that it retained almost all of the pre-secession Navy after the breakup of the Old Union, for this allowed the U.S. to focus it’s resources into the expansion of the Army during and after the War with Mexico. Nevertheless, the U.S. Navy will see a slow expansion, to 85 ships by 1880, and conversion from sail to steam power over the period from 1850 to 1880, but will lag far behind the more modern Federated States Navy in that department. Indeed, it is not until 1879...ten years after the last such ship was retired from the Federated States Navy…that the last sail-powered U.S. warships are decommissioned and replaced by steam-powered vessels. The U.S. Navy will also be far slower in introducing ironclads into it’s fleet, introducing it’s first ironclad in 1875, and having only commissioned 3 of them by 1880.
March through June 1844--The remaining "free" States, fearing the new power of the South and its control of Congress, secede from the U.S.A. and petition to join the F.S.A. Their applications are accepted.
May 1844--James Wilson Marshall leaves Illinois and moves to the Iowa Territory. He settles there, sets up a successful sawmill business, and remains in Iowa to the end of his life. (In OTL, Marshall settled in Missouri, caught Malaria, and was told to go west by his physician. He ended up in Northern California, working as a carpenter for John Sutter. Marshall had the idea to start a sawmill business, and Sutter agreed to partner with him, leaving Marshall to design and build the mill. During the process of construction, Marshall discovered gold, leading to the California gold rush. Since in the ATL Missouri is now in a different country, he goes elsewhere. As a result, he doesn't catch Malaria, and is not told to go West by his doctor, the sawmill is never built, and gold is not discovered in January 1848).
FLAG OF THE FEDERATED STATES OF AMERICA, JUNE 1844
June 1844--Mormon leader Joseph Smith, Jr., orders the presses of the Nauvoo, Illinois EXPOSITOR destroyed after the newspaper published criticisms of the secret practices of the L.D.S. Church, including polygamy. This action further inflames the non-Mormons in the area. To protect the Mormons of Nauvoo from potential attack, Smith declares martial law in Nauvoo and calls out the Nauvoo Legion, a 5,000-man Mormon militia. Smith is charged with inciting a riot, and, because of his declaration of martial law in Nauvoo, with treason against the State of Illinois. Smith initially refuses to surrender, but after a tense stand-off with Illinois authorities, is persuaded to surrender by the Governor of Illinois. He is later shot to death in his jail cell by a lynch mob in Carthage, Illinois.
June 1844-December 1845--Mormon War in Illinois. Following the murder of Joseph Smith, Jr., the conflict between Mormons and non-Mormons in Illinois escalates into what is sometimes called the "Mormon War in Illinois." Latter Day Saints in outlying areas are driven from their homes and gather to Nauvoo for protection. The Illinois state legislature votes to revoke Nauvoo's charter, forcing the city to operate extra-legally. By the end of 1845, it becomes clear that no peace is possible, and Brigham Young and the Quorum of Twelve negotiate a truce so that the Latter Day Saints can prepare to abandon the city.
July 1844--A treaty is signed dividing up the Western Territories between the U.S.A. and the F.S.A. along the Missouri Compromise Line. It is further agreed that the two nations will have "spheres of influence and expansion" in the Far West, and they agree to extend the Missouri Compromise Line to the Pacific Ocean.
FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AUGUST 1844
August 1844--The death of Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, at the hands of the lynch mob in Carthage, Illinois, has thrown the L.D.S. Church into a succession crisis. A general meeting of the L.D.S. Church in Nauvoo, Illinois, called to resolve the issue, decides that there should be no successor to Joseph Smith as Prophet of the Church. Instead, it is decided that the Quorum of Twelve, lead by Brigham Young, should be constituted as the governing body of the Church. Several schisms will occur as a result of this decision, and groups lead by Sidney Ridgon, William Smith, and James Strang will all leave the Church and form new congregations of their own shortly thereafter.
November 1844--James K. Polk of Kentucky defeats President Tyler in the national election and is elected President of the United States. Daniel Webster is elected the first non-provisional President of the Federated States of America.
December 1844--President Tyler persuades the U.S. Congress to pass a joint resolution for the annexation of Texas.
1845 onward--Political Trends in the F.S.A. The American Republican Party, also known as the “Native American Party” or the “Know Nothings” (because it’s members are enjoined, when asked about the activities of local party organizations, to reply “I know nothing”) steadily gains in power and influence in the F.S.A. Although they will not be in a position to make a serious run for the Presidency for some time, they begin to make inroads at the State level, capturing several State legislatures from 1846 onwards.
Another political trend in the F.S.A. will also arise during this period. With the separation of the North from the old Union, most of the steam has been taken out of the anti-slavery movement in the North. The mass of the people of the North have never been Abolitionists…that is, committed to the abolition of slavery in the South. Instead, they have been Free Soilers…that is, opposed to the extension of slavery into the Western Territories because it means competition by black, slave labor with free, white labor. Free Soilers are also, like Abolitionists, opposed to the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act on Northern soil, which seems to them as the first step of an attempt to impose slavery onto the North itself. Therefore, when the North remained unified to the South, and when the South retained a legal claim on the Western Territories, the Free Soilers had begun increasingly to form a united front with the Abolitionists, even though most in the North still consider them to be wild-eyed radicals. Now that the old Union has been broken, Free Soilers in the North find that their goals have been achieved, and consider the slavery issue resolved. They promptly distance themselves from the Abolitionists.
And, the Abolitionists themselves suffer large desertions from their ranks, because many of them hold the view that, although slavery remains deplorable, now that the North has separated itself from the South, it is no longer tainted by the “sin of slavery” and therefore, it is no longer their problem. Therefore, within a relatively short time after The Secession, only a small, hard-core group of abolitionists remains, and they will become increasingly marginalized as a group in the years to come.
Instead, new issues arises to attract the attention and increasingly replace the slavery issue as the focus of the puritanical and reformist elements in the Northern population. The most prominent of these is Mormon polygamy. Lurid stories of wild sex orgies begin to be propagated in Northern newspapers, and condemnations of the practice as a form of legalized slavery will flow from Northern pulpits. These voices will grow in volume during and after the Mormon War in Illinois during 1844-1845, when it appears to many that the Mormons are bent on establishing a theocracy in place of American democracy. Although the anti-Mormon hysteria subsides somewhat once it is announced that the Mormons are leaving Illinois for a new settlement in the Far West, that will be only a short respite. When, in the aftermath of the Mexican War, the F.S.A. lays claim to the land on which the Mormons have settled in the Great Basin, the hysteria will begin anew, and grow increasingly strident as time goes on.
The Anti-Polygamy Movement will, itself, help to feed the growth of another movement…the Women’s Rights Movement. The cries of the Anti-Polygamists that Polygamy is a form of legalized slavery of women will help to raise awareness of the unequal status held by women in society. Women like Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony will be active in both movements. Although males will prove highly reluctant to give up their control over society and allow women an equal place in the seats of power, the movement will, nevertheless, advance more rapidly than in OTL as a result of the boost it receives from the Anti-Polygamy Movement.
Another movement which will start to gain steam in the F.S.A. as the slavery issue recedes into the background is the Temperance Movement. This movement will receive support from both former Abolitionists and from the growing Know Nothing movement, which views Irish (and later, German) immigrants as drunkards who threaten the moral character of America, and the Temperance Movement will make great strides in the F.S.A. over the succeeding years.
1845 onward--The secession of the Northern States from the Union has created a major economic problem for the United States. The vast majority of the banking industry at the time of secession was located in the North, along with almost all of the nation’s reserves of specie. The U.S. is fortunate in that the Georgia Gold Belt is still producing gold in significant quantities…although the easy gold has, by now, been taken and more industrialized mining operations are now necessary to extract the precious metal…and that mints have been established at Dahlonega to coin the gold thus produced. But the relative scarcity of specie in the early years after the Secession, and lack of a banking industry, will prove significant issues.
In order to meet the demand, most States follow a free-banking policy, allowing banks to be chartered and operate with little regulation. As a result, a banking industry will evolve which will follow some highly questionable practices over the upcoming years. In particular, they will issue large amounts of paper money, in most cases backed by questionable securities such as mortgages and bonds rather than by specie. The lifespan of the majority of these banks will be, on average, about five years, and more than half of them will fail when they cannot redeem their notes.
Needless to say, this all causes a good deal of economic instability in the country. The reopening of the Mexican silver and gold mines (discussed elsewhere) will eventually bring some stability to the banking system by injecting more specie into the U.S. economy and allowing banks to rely less on mortgages and bonds as backing for their paper money, but this will take time. In the interim, several major Panics will result, leading to severe economic recessions.
This will lead the Whig Party in particular to argue for the creation of a nationally regulated banking system and the establishment of a single national currency, but this will be opposed by the powerful planter aristocracy, which is shielded, to a large extent, from the effect of these recessions by the stability of the cotton market, and many of whom dabble, as a sideline, in banking as an extra source of income. These planters and their allies form the dominant faction within the Democratic Party, and they will prevent effective action to correct the defects of the banking system for many years.
The resulting recessions affect the non-slaveholding majority much more than they do the upper classes, and over time, they will contribute to the erosion of the power of the planter aristocracy in the U.S.
Meanwhile, in the F.S.A., the dominant Whig Party will pass, in 1847, legislation creating a new central bank, called the Bank of the Federated States. This is based on the old Bank of the United States, but with some additional regulations to help curb the widespread corruption and fraud which plagued it’s ill-fated predecessor. The Bank of the Federated States will not be the sole source of the nation’s money supply…only issuing about 25 percent of the banknotes in circulation in the F.S.A….but the fact that it provides the largest single source of currency in the economy allows it to exercise some control over the money supply in the country, and thus provide a degree of stability to the economy of the F.S.A. which is not enjoyed by the U.S.A. during this period.
Nevertheless, like the U.S.A. (although to a lesser degree), the F.S.A. will suffer from an oversupply of bank notes issued by poorly regulated State Banks which are not backed by specie, and bank failures in the F.S.A. will be common, leading (as in the U.S.A.) to economic panics.
March 1845--James K. Polk is sworn into office as the twelfth President of the United States.
July 4, 1845--The Texas Convention passes an Ordinance of Annexation, agreeing to annexation by the United States.
September 1, 1845--The Republic of Texas is formally annexed by the United States, and ceases to exist. Mexico strongly protests and threatens war.
September 1845 to January 1846--President Polk attempts to negotiate the purchase of New Mexico and California from Mexico. Upon learning of Polk's action, President Webster of the F.S.A. sends a stern diplomatic warning to the U.S.A. reminding President Polk of the agreed-upon spheres of influence in the Far West, and demands that any such negotiations be conducted on a joint basis. Polk agrees, and a joint delegation is sent to Mexico with the aim of procuring all Mexican territory north of the Rio Grande River. Mexico refuses to negotiate.
FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, OCTOBER 1845
Winter 1845-1846--The L.D.S. Church in Nauvoo undertakes the enormous preparations for the “Mormon Exodus” across the Great Plains. It is decided to establish a new base for the Church in the Great Basin, at a place called the Salt Lake Valley.
1846-1847--The Liberian Crisis. Since 1821, the American Colonization Society, an organization based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has maintained a colony on the coast of West Africa called Liberia, where freed slaves from the United States have been re-settled, in small numbers, since that time. With the secession of the Northern States and the formation of the Federated States of America, de facto ownership of the colony has passed to the newly created Federated States of America. Like the United States, the government of the F.S.A. has, until now, preferred to leave the task of administering Liberia to the Society. However, the Society has not been doing a great job at this, and in 1846 a new problem crops up which threatens to bring British intervention in the colony.
The Liberian commonwealth receives most of its revenue from custom duties, primarily levied on indigenous traders and British merchants. The British government has, up until now, turned a blind eye to this and ignored the complaints of it’s merchants, who have long been angered by this taxation. But in early 1846, the British government advises the Liberian authorities that it does not recognize the right of the American Colonization Society, a private organization, to levy taxes on it‘s citizens. Britain's refusal to recognize the authority of the American Colonization Society has convinced many colonists that independence with full taxing authority is necessary for the survival of the colony and its immigrant population. In October 1846, therefore, the Americo-Liberian colonists vote in favor of independence.
In the meantime, pressures within the Federated States have been building which are forcing the government of the F.S.A. to take a more concerned stance toward its “bastard stepchild” in Africa. One of the unexpected consequences of the breakup of the Union has been a significant increase in the number of runaway slaves seeking asylum in the States of the F.S.A. With this influx of black people into the F.S.A., however, there has been increasing political pressure among the white majority to send them somewhere else…anywhere else, as long as it’s outside the F.S.A. The American Colonization Society’s venture in Liberia, therefore, now looks increasingly attractive as a place where all these escaped slaves can be sent, and thus removed from the F.S.A.
Therefore, when the Liberian colony declares it’s independence, the government of the F.S.A. refuses to recognize it. A military expedition is fitted out which sets sail in early 1847. When it arrives at Monrovia in March, it meets with some resistance from the colonists, but this is crushed within three months, with many casualties on both sides. A white governor and a strong garrison are stationed in Liberia, and a more efficient administration is put in place for the colony. A steady stream of new colonists…mostly escaped slaves from the United States…begins arriving soon thereafter, and the population begins to grow. With the support of the Federated States government, the colony begins to move beyond it’s shaky early beginnings and to establish itself as a more stable and economically prosperous place.
January 1846--President Polk sends troops, under General Zachary Taylor, to secure the southern border of Texas at the Rio Grande. Mexico holds that the southern border of Texas rests upon the Nueces River, and Mexican troops attack the U.S. forces, beginning the U.S./Mexican War.
February 1846--Mormons begin leaving Nauvoo, headed for the Salt Lake Valley.
January 1846-October 1847--The U.S./Mexican War. The war, as in OTL, ends in a victory for the United States. As U.S. forces battle Mexican troops in Mexico, as well as New Mexico and southern California, the F.S.A. sends troops westward, against little opposition, to secure the lands north of the Compromise Line, including the prize port of San Francisco Bay in California. Fighting ends by October 1847, with U.S. forces occupying most of Mexico’s major cities, including Mexico City, and Mexican military opposition is pretty much at an end. However, the Mexican government flees from Mexico City to the city of Santiago de Queretaro and refuses to surrender.
1846-1848--The Apache tribes of the southwest, bitter enemies of Mexico, cooperate with U.S. troops and give them safe passage through their country. Mangas Coloradas, chief of the Mimbreno Apaches, as well as other Apache leaders, will make treaties with the U.S. during this period, as well.
Winter 1846-1847--The Mormons establish a winter camp in the area of what would eventually become, in OTL, Omaha, Nebraska. By the arrival of winter, almost 16,000 Mormons have gathered there. The Mormon camp in the area, known as “Winter Quarters,” will remain active until late 1848.
1847 onwards, Liberia: The colony of the Federated States in Africa, called Liberia, continues to expand as a steady stream of new colonists are transported there. With military support from the Federated States, the colonists begin driving deeper into the African interior, as well as eastward along the coast into what, in OTL, would become the French colony of the Ivory Coast. In 1861, a second colony…called Freedonia…will be founded along the coast of what, in OTL, would become the French colony of Guinea. This, too, will expand into the interior during the coming years, and by 1881, the territory of the two colonies will have met in the interior region behind the British enclave at Sierra Leone.
The territorial expansion of Liberia, and especially the foundation of Freedonia, strains relations between the Federated States and the governments of Britain (which has a colony at Sierra Leone which it sees as increasingly threatened as it is gradually surrounded by F.S.A.-controlled territory) and France (which had, beginning in the early 1840s, staked claims to the Guinea Region and what would later become known as the Ivory Coast, although these areas would not be formally colonized by the French in OTL until the 1880s and 1890s). However, these tensions do not erupt into open conflict between the three powers.
In 1883, the two African colonies are officially joined, by Act of Congress, into one, called American West Africa.
April 1847--The Mormons begin departing from their Winter Quarters in Nebraska and heading west.
July 1847 onward--The first Mormons arrive in the Salt Lake Valley, and establish a settlement in July 1847. More companies of L.D.S. members follow, and by the end of the year, more than 2,000 have gathered in the Salt Lake Valley. Their numbers will continue to grow as more and more make the journey across the Plains, and additional settlements are soon founded.
1848--Cuban revolutionary Narcisco Lopez flees to the United States, where he tries to create interest in a filibustering expedition to Cuba for the purpose of overthrowing Spanish rule there. He is, unlike in OTL, allowed to freely operate and recruit in the U.S. without molestation by the United States government, which is upset with Spain for allowing the Mexican “Government in Exile” to take up residence in Havana.
1848 onward--The settlement of the Western Territories proceeds at a much slower pace than in OTL. The fact that gold was not discovered on schedule in California means also that the phenomenon of people loading up mules with picks and shovels, heading into the wilderness, and prospecting all over the West looking for gold and silver veins, which occurred in OTL largely because the California Gold Rush of 1849 put that idea into the public mind, does not happen. And so the other Western mineral strikes...the Comstock Lode, the Black Hills, the Arizona Strikes, etc., are significantly delayed...if indeed they occur at all in the ATL (historically, the discovery of the other mineral veins was critically dependent on the California Gold Rush happening).
The end result of all this is that the West will be peopled, at a much slower rate than in OTL, primarily by farmers who have gone west, seeking free land. Nevertheless, there will be a steady stream of immigrants, ranging from 2,000 to 10,000 people per year into California, and about the same into Oregon. These Territories will therefore qualify for Statehood before the end of the 19th Century. As the Great Plains is still considered as “The Great American Desert,“ settlers will not find these regions attractive, and Dakota and Nebraska Territories, on the other hand, will be settled much more slowly. On average, between 500 and 3,000 people per year will attempt to settle in these territories, and most of the these won’t stay permanently. These Territories will remain sparsely populated as a result, and will still not have been admitted into the F.S.A. as States well into the 20th Century.
1848 onward--Relations between the U.S. and the Apaches in the Southwest remain cordial, for the most part, for the next 20 years after the end of the Mexican War. Indeed, the U.S. often makes good use of Apache scouts as it fights Mexican rebels during these years. This situation is largely due to the fact that there have been no “gold rushes” into Apache territory during this time period. Although U.S. military exploration parties sent by Presidents Benton and Davis, as mentioned elsewhere, discovered gold and silver veins in several places in the New Mexico Territory during the 1850s, these discoveries were not made public, as the Federal Government…remembering the chaos and lawlessness caused by the Dahlonega and other Eastern gold rushes earlier in the century…intends that when the new veins are eventually exploited, it will be by government-licensed companies and not by mobs of independent prospectors. And so “gold fever” was not sown among the public during this period, and settlement of the region by whites has proceeded in a more regulated manner.
However, this situation cannot last forever, and by the late 1860s, relations between the two groups will be strained to the breaking point as increasing white settlement leads to clashes between settlers and Apaches over water sources and other resources.
1848 onward--The Decline of Slavery in the U.S.A. and it’s Impact on the F.S.A. The secession of the North will, over the succeeding decades, have a largely unforeseen impact on the institution of slavery in the United States. The fact that it is no longer possible to enforce the return of fugitive slaves from the North leads many slaves who, in OTL, never considered running away from their owners because they were likely to be returned if they did so, to now begin to reconsider their position and look at escape as a viable possibility. Slaveowners in the U.S.A. are forced to watch helplessly as the trickle of runaways, especially from the border States, slowly becomes a flood. Of course, all this seriously increases tensions between the U.S.A. and the F.S.A., but despite much acrimony, the two nations will remain at peace, and the F.S.A. will do little or nothing to stop the influx of runaways across it‘s borders. Over time, this process will begin to gradually impact the supply of slave labor in the United States, exerting upward pressure on slave prices.
Paradoxically, the problem faced by U.S. slaveholders is exacerbated by the U.S. conquest of Mexico, which has opened up new lands for the expansion of slave-based agriculture, as well as making available a means of funding internal improvements projects within both the States and the Territories of the United States, which also increases the land available for slave-based agriculture. This increases the demand for slaves even as the supply of slaves is getting gradually tighter. Indeed, the shortage of slaves will lead the U.S. Congress to consider re-legalizing the African slave trade. But in the end, strong diplomatic pressure…including not-so-thinly veiled threats of war…from the F.S.A. and, more importantly, Britain, will prevent this from happening. So the prices will keep rising, and, by 1870, these will become simply prohibitive for any except the wealthiest planters.
The rising prices of slaves, in turn, will begin to erode the grip of the slaveholding aristocracy on political power in the U.S.A. In OTL, a majority of non-slaveholders in the South supported slavery, even though they had no direct economic interest in it, because they envisioned a time when they might become slaveholders themselves. Therefore they allied themselves with the planters and their political agenda. As slave prices continue rising, small and medium planters find themselves gradually priced out of the market, and begin to use cheap, paid Mexican labor instead of purchasing exorbitantly priced slaves. Entry-level prospective slaveholders, meanwhile, find themselves effectively barred from gaining entry into the market. Gradually the realization sinks in to the average non-slaveowning Southerner that he has little to no chance of ever entering the slaveowning aristocracy.
In addition to the rising price of slaves, the increase in the number of successful runaways to the North also leads to pressure from slaveholders on the State and Federal Governments to invest much more toward police forces along the border between the U.S.A. and the F.S.A. to try to prevent the runaways from getting over the border. This, of course, requires more taxes, which, due to the political power of the slaveholding class in Congress, fall disproportionately on non-slaveholding whites. This too, reinforces growing anti-slavery sentiment among the lower classes of the U.S.A., and voices increasingly begin to be heard…beginning with Hinton Helper’s book, THE IMPENDING CRISIS, which will be published in 1857...arguing that slavery is harmful to the interests of the non-slaveholding majority, and urging non-slaveholders to oppose the political power of the slaveholding class over the U.S. government.
A final factor which comes into play is a result of the increasing influx of Mexicans moving northward to work in the growing industrial cities of the U.S.A. As Mexicans gradually become the largest and most threatening ethnic minority in many areas, some English speaking whites gradually begin to view the other large group of English speakers in the U.S.A....blacks...as less of a threat and, indeed, as a possible ally against the "Mexican menace." As a result, there is increasing sentiment in some quarters of public opinion…although definitely a minority opinion…that slavery ought to be abolished and that political rights ought to be extended to the former slaves.
Thus the groundwork is well prepared when the coup de grace for slavery in the U.S.A. comes in the last decades of the 19th century. The Mexican Boll Weevil will begin devastating cotton crops in the Mexican territories of the U.S.A. by the early 1870s. It will be introduced into the United States in 1883 (a decade ahead of it’s introduction in OTL), and by the end of the century will have devastated the cotton industry of the U.S.A.
The economic impact of the boll weevil is exacerbated by a major collapse of cotton prices from 1888 onward, and together, these will cause a major financial crisis for U.S. cotton growers. Planters, who had already been pushed to the brink of bankruptcy by the boll weevil, now find themselves in a completely untenable situation as land values plummet across the United States and most of the big planters are forced into bankruptcy. The large plantations are broken up and sold off to small farmers. Even though slave prices also fall somewhat due to the economic crisis, the small farmers still cannot afford to purchase and maintain slaves, and their former owners can’t afford to retain them, either.
In order to cut their losses, most of the owners manumit their slaves by 1905, and most State Legislatures respond by abolishing slavery shortly thereafter. The U.S. Congress will pass an amendment formally abolishing slavery throughout the United States in 1910, which will be ratified in early 1911.
Meanwhile, the influx of runaway slaves into the North has another important impact. Although the majority of the people of the F.S.A. do not really want the blacks to come North, neither do they want to return them to the U.S.A. As a result, the American Colonization Society, for the first time, gains strong support from the government in the F.S.A., and the F.S.A. does not relinquish it’s control over the colony in Liberia. Indeed, as the growing numbers of immigrants begins to strain the resources available in Liberia, the F.S.A. will seek to expand the colony…and gain new ones…as time goes on, leading it to become involved in the division of Africa between the Great Powers later in the century.
In the end, hundreds of thousands of free blacks and run-away slaves will be transported to Liberia by the end of the 19th Century. And so, even though the F.S.A. becomes a haven for run-away slaves, the actual population of blacks within the F.S.A. itself will actually decline over time. And the impact of the increased number of colonists on Africa itself will be immense. But that will be discussed elsewhere.
January 1848--President Polk, who has been trying to negotiate an end to the Mexican War since the end of effective hostilities in October 1847, is not having any success. He makes a last attempt in January 1848. When the Mexican government still refuses to negotiate, Polk decides enough is enough, and asks Congress to declare the total annexation of Mexico.
February 1848--The U.S. Congress passes legislation formally annexing Mexico south of the Missouri Compromise Line. U.S. troops, at the instruction of President Polk, move into Santiago de Queretaro. They capture many of the members of the Mexican government and force the rest to flee the country. Most of them end up in Cuba, where they set up a Mexican “Government in Exile.” Although they will not be able to retake Mexico, they stir up rebellions against U.S. occupation forces which cause the U.S. a lot of problems in the upcoming years. As noted elsewhere, U.S. policies will also play a large role in keeping these rebellions going.
February 1848 onwards--Major Trends in the U.S.A. Resulting from the Mexican War. In the aftermath of the annexation of Mexico, the United States Congress passes the Mexican Territorial Act, which divides the territory of Mexico into fourteen Territories, stating that these Territories can be admitted as States when the population of U.S. citizens in each territory reaches 60,000. This will lead to increasing discord in U.S. politics as the Territories which have been formed out of the Mexican States are considered for Statehood.
A lot of this discord arises because the passage of the Territorial Act placed the United States in a conundrum. Just what is a citizen, and just as importantly, just how does a virtually exclusively English-speaking, Protestant country incorporate over six million…equal to the entire white population of the United States at the time…predominantly Spanish-speaking Catholics into the political and economic structures of the United States?
One major problem…the Constitution at the time does not clearly specify just who is, and who is not, a citizen of the United States, and Congress has passed little legislation on the matter. The Naturalization Act of 1790, which stated that only “free white persons” could be naturalized as citizens of the United States, acts as their guide, and Congress passes, before the end of February 1848, the Citizenship Act, a law which declares natural-born citizenship, or citizenship by virtue of having been born within the territory or under the jurisdiction of the United States, to be applicable only to free white persons. Taken together, these two laws effectively exclude almost all of the population of Mexico from holding either natural-born or naturalized U.S. citizenship. This will, over the next few years, lead to a myriad of Supreme Court cases which challenge the 1848 Citizenship Act and force the courts to define just what constitutes a “free white person.”
However, the status of the majority of the population of Mexico is left in question by the Citizenship and Naturalization Acts. If they are not citizens of the United States, what are they? Several Supreme Court decisions will spur Congress to take action in 1852, when it passes the “Act to Clarify the Status of Persons Not Holding Citizenship.” In so doing, the United States creates a class of non-citizen “U.S. Nationals,” who are entitled to the protection of the law but who are not allowed to participate in the national political process. Nothing in the act prohibits them from participating at the State level (similar to the way in which some Northern States, in OTL, allowed free blacks to have State citizenship and vote in State elections at different times prior to the OTL Civil War, but were not able to extend national citizenship to them).
In practice, however, the majority of Mexicans will be excluded from the State and local political process as well. The Conventions which eventually draw up the Constitutions for the Mexican Territories, in preparation for their admission as States, are composed mostly of Anglo immigrants, supplemented by the relatively rare elite Mexican families who have maintained their European blood and not mixed themselves with the native people of Mexico, and thus, have been defined by U.S. Supreme Court decisions as “free white people.” In most places, these groups act to protect their own interests, and the Constitutions they adopt tend to exclude those of mixed race, as well as full-blooded Indians, from the political process.
The major results of all this is that much of Mexico will remain in a state of near-constant rebellion, and as a result, will still not have been admitted to the U.S. as States by the end of the 19th century. The United States will be forced to maintain a strong military presence in Mexico, which will force it to retain relatively high tariffs (not as exorbitantly high as the 1841 Clay Tariff, but still well over what they were prior to 1841) in order to finance this unplanned expansion of the military. This, in turn, along with the need to supply this enlarged military, will have the secondary, but not unimportant, impact of fostering the growth of industry and manufacturing in the U.S. Cities like Richmond and Charlottesville, Virginia; Nashville and Chattanooga, Tennessee; Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina; Selma and Birmingham, Alabama; Little Rock, Arkansas; Shreveport, and New Orleans, Louisiana; Augusta and Milledgeville, Georgia; Raleigh and Wilmington, North Carolina; and Houston and San Antonio, Texas, will all become, by the end of the 19th century, major centers of manufacturing.
Almost all of the labor for these growing industries will be composed of poor Mexicans who move north in search of better opportunities than they can find at home. Some factory owners will initially employ slave labor, but will soon find that it is more economic to hire poor Mexicans who will work for practically nothing, can be fired at will, and who they don’t have to support in their old age, than to employ exorbitantly priced slaves, further pushing the institution of slavery along the road to extinction.
March 1848--During the war, U.S. forces occupied some areas north of the Missouri Compromise line, and F.S.A. forces occupied some areas south of the line. In this month, a treaty is agreed upon exchanging these illegally occupied territories and recognizing each nation's claims to the territory they have seized from Mexico.
May 1848--President Webster of the F.S.A., whose attention has been diverted by the unfolding drama over Texas and the U.S./Mexican War, decides to resume negotiations with the British over the status of the Oregon Country, which is disputed between the British Empire and the F.S.A. These negotiations had been placed on hold by the Secession Crisis and never resumed since that time. Secretary of State James Buchanan is sent to negotiate with the British. The negotiations will drag on for some time.
July 1848--A convention of female reformers and their supporters held in Seneca Falls, New York, issues a manifesto calling for equal rights for women.
November 1848--Elections are held in the U.S.A. and the F.S.A. In the U.S.A., Democrat James K. Polk is re-elected to a second term, narrowly defeating Mexican War hero Winfield Scott, who ran as the Whig candidate. In the F.S.A., President Webster, citing ill health, decides not to run again. Democratic candidate (the major parties having, for the time being, retained their old names in both nations, despite the split) Lewis Cass of Michigan defeats Whig candidate Millard Fillmore in the F.S.A. voting. A factor in the defeat of Fillmore by Cass is the growing influence of the American Republican Party. The 1848 election is the first in which the said party fields a national Presidential candidate, in the person of Robert Conrad of Pennsylvania. Although Conrad comes out a distant third in the election, and although his candidacy also attracts many Democratic voters, it much more seriously splits the Whig Party. Thus, although the Whig Party is theoretically the dominant party in the F.S.A. (having greatly profited by the removal of Southern opposition to it‘s programs since the break-up of the Old Union), the Democrats prevail in the election.
1849--Narcisco Lopez, at the head of an army of 1,000 mercenaries (his second in command is a former U.S. Army officer, Major Robert E. Lee, and one of his junior officers is a newspaper editor from New Orleans named William Walker), lands in Cuba, where they take the town of Cardenas. However, the local support Lopez had counted on fails to materialize, and the local populace instead supports the Spanish. The Lopez expedition is forced to retreat to Key West.
1849 onward--Railroad development in the U.S.A. and the F.S.A. Railroad development in both the U.S.A. and the F.S.A. is proceeding at a faster rate than in OTL. However, because the Whig Party of the F.S.A., which is, despite the recent electoral victory of Democrat Lewis Cass in the Presidential race, the dominant party in the F.S.A. (partly because the economic program of the Whig Party has much in common with that of the American Republican Party, allowing the two parties to cooperate, to a certain degree, in Congress…of course, this also is a reason why the Whigs have been hurt so much more than the Democrats in the Presidential polling by said party), has been able to push through much of it’s economic program, calling for federal subsidies to railroad developers, development of railroads within the F.S.A. is significantly more advanced than in the U.S.A.
1849 onward--Following the unsuccessful 1848 Revolutions in Europe, there is a new wave of immigration into the F.S.A. Many thousands of Germans, French, Poles, Hungarians, and others, fleeing political repression in Europe, move into the F.S.A. While many of these are not Catholic, they nevertheless are seen as undesirables by the American Republican Party, which sees the beer-loving Germans especially as drunkards who threaten the morals of the nation, The power of the party grows as the tide of immigration increases and native citizens of the F.S.A. increasingly worry about the effect that foreign immigration is having on the traditionally Anglo-Saxon culture of the F.S.A. The American Republican Party also begins to take an anti-Mormon position, due to the success of Mormon missionary activity in Europe and the steadily increasing numbers of immigrants being brought to the F.S.A. by the Mormon Church.
1849-1857--The Administration of President Lewis Cass of the Federated States of America. President Cass’s administration will be marked by increasing strife within the Federated States over two issues…immigration, and polygamy. Cass will veto restrictive immigration laws passed by the Whig/Know Nothing alliance in Congress several times during his two terms in office, and so the issue does not come to a head during his term of office. But the issue of Mormon polygamy will erupt in violence during his term, leading to drastic and tragic consequences.
Cass’s administration will also be notable for the passage of legislation authorizing subsidies for the completion of a transcontinental telegraph line. Last but certainly not least, his term will be notable for the achievement of opening up Japan to contact with the outside world for the first time in over two centuries.
FLAG OF THE FEDERATED STATES OF AMERICA, JANUARY 1849
March 1849--In ceremonies held in Washington, D.C. and in New York City (which has been selected as the capital of the Federated States of America), James K. Polk is sworn in for a second term as President of the United States, and Lewis Cass is sworn in as the second President of the Federated States. Also at this time, a Mormon delegation sent by Brigham Young arrives in New York to petition the Congress of the F.S.A. for the creation of a new State of Deseret, to include all the territory between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas. Congress rejects this proposal.
June 1849--U.S. President James K. Polk dies in office. Vice President Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri (George Mifflin Dallas, Polk’s OTL Vice President, having been from Pennsylvania, and since Pennsylvania seceded to join the F.S.A., he was never nominated in the ATL. Benton, who shared President Polk‘s views regarding the development of the West, was nominated to run with Polk in 1848) succeeds to the Presidency.
June 1849-March 1853--The Administration of U.S. President Thomas Hart Benton. Benton will gradually steer the Democratic Party, and the nation, onto a course which it will continue to pursue for decades. Benton, a strong believer in currency backed by specie (of which the F.S.A. ended up with the majority of the United States’ old reserves in the ATL) will successfully champion the reopening of the old colonial Mexican gold and silver mining operations, which had been, essentially, shut down by the Mexican War of Independence and never reopened due to continued poor government and turmoil in Mexico. Benton will also successfully champion the expansion of mining operations into new regions of Mexico, tapping the rich veins of the northern Sierra Madres (which were virtually untapped at this time in OTL…that will not be the case in the ATL). He also sends out expeditions to do geological, mapping and resource surveys of the Western Territories, which greatly increases awareness of the economic potential to be found there. These surveys will lead to the location of additional silver and gold veins at several locations in Sonora, Chihuahua, and New Mexico Territories in the upcoming years, as well as the discovery of ancient canal systems which had once been used to irrigate large regions of the Southwest, indicating the region‘s potential as a farming area.
President Benton also will champion, with less success, the development of a transcontinental railroad and a transcontinental telegraph line, and programs designed to promote settlement and development of the West. Opposition to these programs is primarily due to a disagreement over the source of funding for it. The mainstream Democratic Party is controlled by the slave-owning plantation class, which opposes the use of federal subsidies to promote such internal improvements (primarily because the tariff is the major source of federal revenues at this time, and the planters object to being taxed to promote improvements projects which do not directly benefit them, believing that such projects would be better financed at the State level so as to prevent inequities in the distribution of funding).
However, Benton’s efforts to promote economic development of the West are not all in vain, and under his administration, the first Western Development Act is passed by the U.S. Congress, giving away public land in the West to anyone willing to develop it. As a result, a steady influx of Anglo settlers soon begins to make it’s way into the Territories, especially the northern former Mexican territories, where current landowners are few. In the more populated southern territories, Anglo settlement is somewhat hindered by the fact that most land is owned by Mexicans of European descent, who are defined as white and thus eligible for U.S. citizenship. However, there are also large holdings held by Mestizo families, whose political powerlessness will allow unscrupulous means to be used, in many cases, to deprive them of their titles to the land, making it available to white Anglo settlers. And so, Anglo settlement of southern Mexico will proceed as well, albeit at a slower rate.
Benton’s Administration will be remembered for another thing as well, this one not so good for the United States…the Spanish-American War of 1850-1851. This will be detailed in another entry in this timeline.
1850-1851--The Spanish-American War. After his ignominious retreat from Cuba the previous year, Narcisco Lopez recruits another army for the invasion of Cuba. This time he is given more support by the United States government, including a naval escort for his expedition’s ships. Lopez lands near Santiago, Cuba, in March 1850, with 12,500 men. Recognizing his own limitations as a military leader, he gives command of the military part of the expedition to Robert E. Lee.
As was the case with the previous expedition, little support is forthcoming from the local population, who see the expedition as a thinly veiled attempt by the United States to seize control of Cuba for it’s own purposes. Nevertheless, under Lee’s command, the filibusters defeat a superior Spanish force and take Santiago in May 1850. This emboldens U.S. President Thomas Hart Benton to increase the level of U.S. support for the expedition. Several more regiments of U.S. “volunteers” soon after land at Santiago, leading Spain to break relations with the United States in June 1850.
In July 1850, Spanish naval vessels open fire on a U.S. Navy vessel which is escorting a filibuster convoy into Santiago, and when news of the incident reaches the U.S., there is a public clamor for war. President Benton, knowing the United States is in no condition to pursue a foreign war while also trying to digest it’s recent conquests in Mexico, resists the war hawks as much as he can, but Congress nevertheless votes to declare war in August 1850.
Unfortunately for the United States, it’s aggressive actions have raised the ire of several other nations, including the Federated States of America and Britain. These two powers, although they never formally declare war, jointly impose what is essentially a naval blockade on the United States, stopping and searching unescorted U.S. merchant ships entering or leaving U.S. ports and even seizing those which are found to contain “contraband” headed for Cuba. They also offer loans and unlimited access to arms supplies to the Spanish, who gratefully accept this generosity.
The United States, which has it’s hands full in holding down Mexico, is not able to devote it’s full strength to the war in Cuba. Nor does it dare to take direct action against the warships of the F.S.A. and Britain which are conducting the de facto blockade of it’s ports, as it needs, at any cost, to keep those powers out of the war. Instead, the U.S. counters the de facto blockade by sending merchant ships out in convoys, escorted by warships, which the F.S.A. and British do not molest, as neither power wants to enter the war directly. While this does effectively break the “blockade,“ it also ties up most of the U.S. Navy and prevents it from being actively involved in the war itself. As a result, the Spanish are able to establish naval superiority in Cuban waters in relatively short order, and land a very large army which defeats the rebel and U.S. forces and captures Santiago in July 1851. The remnants of the U.S. and rebel forces are forced to surrender in August 1851.
Humiliated, the Benton Administration sues for peace in September 1851, and a treaty, mediated by Emperor Napoleon III of France, is signed at Paris in December 1851. In exchange for peace and the repatriation of the prisoners of war held by the Spanish, the United States is forced to pay a large indemnity to Spain, and to recognize Spanish sovereignty over Cuba. In the aftermath of the war, Spain formally recognizes the Mexican “Government in Exile” which has been residing in Havana since 1848, as does Britain. Needless to say, the United States is infuriated by that, but can do nothing.
The war does produce a few heroes for the U.S.A. who will go on to figure prominently in later years. Jefferson Davis once again serves with distinction, a fact that, along with his Mexican War service, will propel him to the White House in 1852. Robert E. Lee, by virtue of the command skills demonstrated during the war, is promoted to Brigadier General in the U.S. Army upon his return after the war. He will later (from 1863 onward) serve as Commanding General of the United States Army until his death in October 1870, ending his career with the rank of Lieutenant General (the first man in American history since George Washington to hold that rank). And William Walker, whose personal bravery and leadership skills figured prominently in newspaper coverage of the war in the United States and elsewhere, will also go onto an interesting later career as well. More on that later…
1850--The first national Women’s Rights Convention in the F.S.A. is held at Worcester, Massachusetts. The convention attracts more than 1,000 participants. This will be the first of what will become a series of annual conventions which will be held from this time onward.
1850 onwards--Increasing Power of the Mormons in the West. The rejection of their proposal for a State of Deseret, coupled with reports of increasing anti-Mormon sentiment in the newspapers of the F.S.A., has gradually lead to increased feelings of resentment and persecution among the Mormons, both those in the Great Basin and those who have remained in the East. As a result, a larger number of Mormons leave their homes in the East and make their way to the Great Basin than in OTL. This, along with successful Mormon missionary efforts in Europe, which bring in a significant number of immigrants who go immediately to the settlements in the Great Basin, causes the Mormon presence in the West to become significantly stronger than in OTL. Mormon settlements spread from the Salt Lake Valley to many other sites all over the southwest, but especially in what would, in OTL, become Utah and Nevada.
The increased size and strength of the Mormon settlements in the West, combined with the fact that the Territorial Government of the California Territory, in which the Mormons of the Great Basin find themselves included after August 1850, is in San Francisco…far enough away to give the Mormons a great deal of local independence…leads the Mormon leadership to become more radical. They are also encouraged in this by the fact that their numbers have given them a great deal of strength in the Territorial Legislature of the California Territory, which prevents any anti-Mormon legislation from being passed in the Territory.
Up until now, the Mormon leadership has actively discouraged rumors of Mormon polygamy, which has served, to some degree, to keep in check the tide of anti-Mormon sentiment in the F.S.A. Now, however, church leaders begin to publicly acknowledge their practice of plural marriage. A sermon on the subject given by Apostle Orson Pratt in October 1850 (in OTL, Pratt‘s sermon took place in August 1852) marks the official change of policy by the Church. Additional sermons by top Mormon leaders on the virtues of polygamy and the evils of monogamy soon follow.
1850 onwards--Mexico under U.S. Rule. The population of Mexico, which had largely adopted a “wait and see” attitude and been relatively quiescent in the immediate aftermath of the annexation of Mexico by the United States, is becoming more and more restless. This is because of several reasons. First, propaganda leaflets clandestinely distributed in Mexico by supporters of the Mexican “Government in Exile” in Havana have taken a while to be circulated among a majority of the population.
By 1850, however, that is beginning to happen, and many Mexican patriots are starting to resist the U.S. occupation. Second, it is becoming increasingly clear that the “Gringos” intend to disenfranchise the vast majority of Mexico’s population and consign them to second class status…or worse. The passage of the Citizenship Act, and later, the “Act to Clarify the Status of Persons Not Holding Citizenship,” has driven this point home dramatically for those who had any doubts.
Therefore, by 1850, the first armed rebellions have arisen in several regions of Mexico. These are minor affairs at first, but by 1860, there will be several major rebellions going on, notably those lead by Juan Cortina in Nuevo Leon and Coahuila Territories; by Juan Alvarez in Jalisco and western Puebla Territories; by Tomas Mejia in Zacatecas Territory; and by Benito Juarez , with Porfirio Diaz, in Oaxaca Territory. These rebellions, however, are not coordinated…being lead by people with often radically different political views…and they do not seriously threaten U.S. control over Mexico. Nevertheless, they do force the U.S. to devote increasing military resources to their suppression.
There are also many Mexicans who welcome the United States as a force which can, perhaps, bring stability and economic development to Mexico. This is especially true among those groups classified as “whites,” and thus eligible for U.S. citizenship. This group happens to include most of the large landowners in Mexico, so their power and influence far exceeds their actual numbers. Men such as Felix Zuloaga, Miguel Miramon, Ignacio Comonfort, Manuel Robles Pezuela, and Jose Ignacio Pavon will become prominent supporters of U.S. rule in Mexico, participating in the new Territorial Governments when they are formed.
April 1850--The Oregon Treaty is signed between the F.S.A. and Great Britain. The disputed Oregon Country is divided at the Columbia River, following it north to the 49th Parallel. The line then follows the 49th Parallel from the Columbia River east to the Continental Divide, with the territory north of said line going to Britain, and the territory south of it to the F.S.A.
This division occurred because of several factors. First, with the separation of the F.S.A. from the U.S.A., Britain feels in a stronger negotiating position vis-à-vis what it sees as a weaker opponent, and therefore presses it’s claim for the territory north of the Columbia River. Second, the changed dynamics, in the reduction in the number of settlers and the need to find new routes, of American settlement in the Oregon Country caused by the split between the U.S.A. and the F.S.A., has meant that American settlement in the region via the Oregon Trail has gone almost entirely into the Willamette Valley, south of the Columbia, and American settlements north of the river have not, by this date, been founded (in OTL, the first such settlement was founded in 1846). Therefore, the two sides agree upon the Columbia River as a border.
Also in this month, the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty is signed between the U.S. and Britain, in which it is agreed that both nations are not to colonize or control any Central American republic, and that neither nation would seek exclusive control of an Isthmian canal, if such a canal be built. Instead, any such canal would be protected by both nations for neutrality and security, and any canal built will be open to all nations on equal terms.
August 1850--In the time since the end of the Mexican War, there has been much debate in the F.S.A. over how to organize the western territories. The slow rate of settlement has also meant that Congress has not considered the organization of the western territories as a major issue up until now. As a result the territories have remained, for the most part, unorganized up to this date. However, increasing concern over the activities of the Mormons in the Great Basin, along with the need to provide effective government for the gradually increasing settlements in California and Oregon especially, finally lead the Congress to take action.
In August 1850, the Congress of the F.S.A. adopts legislation to divide the western lands into four large territories, to be named California, Oregon, Nebraska, and Dakota. The Mormons in the Great Basin region find themselves in the new California Territory, ruled by a governor located in far-away San Francisco and a Legislature of which their numbers give them effective control. This encourages the more radical elements of their leadership to take advantage of the situation and, as detailed elsewhere, publicly declare their beliefs in polygamy.
1851 onwards--When news of the public acknowledgments by the L.D.S. Church of it’s polygamous practices reaches the East, much controversy ensues. Newspapers and novelists begin to write articles, books and pamphlets condemning polygamy, portraying it as a legalized form of slavery, and condemnations of the practice thunder from pulpits across the F.S.A. It will become a major issue in the 1852 election.
March 1851--The landmark case of
Comonfort v. The United States is heard by the Supreme Court. In the case, Ignacio Comonfort, a Mexican born of French parents, argues that the lack of a definition of what the term “free white person” means in the Naturalization and Citizenship Acts has lead to the denial of citizenship rights, and equal protection of the law, to hundreds of thousands of Mexicans who have the right to U.S. citizenship. The Court agrees, and establishes a definition of “free white person” which will, henceforth, be used to guide legislators in making the laws which govern the new Mexican Territories. In so doing, it looks to the “Casta” system used by the Spanish during their colonial administration of Mexico. The said system had divided the population into a series of groups, by race. The groups, as used in colonial times, were as follows…
--Peninsulares: Persons of
Spanish or
Portuguese descent born in Spain or Portugal.
--Criollos: People of pure Spanish descent but born in Latin America.
--Castizos: Persons with one mestizo parent and one criollo parent (i.e. with ¼ Amerindian blood). The children of a castizo and a criollo (i.e. with l/8 Amerindian blood) were classified as criollo
.
--Mestizos: Persons with one parent of pure European ancestry and one parent of pure Amerindian ancestry (i.e. with ½ Amerindian blood). Children of a castizo and a mestizo are considered mestizo.
--Cholos: Persons with one
indio parent and one
mestizo parent, or ¾ Amerindian blood.
--Mulatos: Persons of mixed European and negro descent.
--Indios: Pure-blooded Mexican Amerindians.
--Zambos: Persons who were mixed
indio and
negro.
--Negros: Full-blooded Blacks.
The Court decides upon a simplified version of this system, as follows.
--Whites: Persons of non-Hispanic European descent, and Hispanic people of pure Spanish descent.
--Creoles: People born of one white parent and one castizo parent (i.e. with 1/8 or less Amerindian blood).
--Castizos: Persons with one mestizo parent and one white parent, or ¼ Amerindian blood.
--Mestizos: All persons of mixed white and Amerindian ancestry, having over ¼ of Amerindian blood.
--Indians: Pure blooded Amerindians.
--Negroes: Persons having any admixture of negro blood in their ancestry, including the old Mulato, Zambo, and Negro groups of the colonial Spanish casta system.
The Court holds that Whites and Creoles are entitled to classification as “free white persons,” and therefore citizens under the law. Castizos, Mestizos, and all other groups are classified as non-white, and therefore, non-citizens under the law. Their legal status is still left in doubt by the decision.
March 1851--The first Christian Anti-Polygamy Society is organized at Boston, Massachusetts. The societies, which will spring up in all the States of the F.S.A. over the next few years, are composed largely of former Abolitionists and other extremists who oppose the Mormon practice of polygamy. They will publish anti-Mormon tracts, as well as organize, finance, and support parties of anti-Mormon settlers for the Western Territories, particularly California Territory (the center of Mormon power in the West).
1852--The GOLD HUNTER, a merchant ship flying the flag of the Federated States of America, lands at Tehauntapec, Mexico, carrying Chinese coolie labor. The First Officer of the vessel, Frederick Townsend Ward, disembarks, spends a few nights drinking and whoring in the town, then returns to his ship when it leaves port, headed for Shanghai. He is killed in a bar fight in Shanghai, later that same year. (In OTL, Ward met and joined William Walker’s filibustering expedition to Sonora during this time. In the ATL, William Walker is in New Orleans at this time, and has not lead a filibustering expedition to Mexico, so the two men never meet. This will have important consequences later).
1852--The gradually increasing number of settlers traveling through the territories of Native American tribes in the Great Plains has lead to a number of clashes between the two groups, including some highly publicized massacres of settler parties by native war bands President Cass, mindful of the increasing tensions between the F.S.A. and the Mormons, desires to prevent the outbreak of a full-scale Indian War on the Plains. And so, he sends a team of negotiators to meet with native leaders. The result of their efforts is a treaty, signed in mid-1852 at Fort Laramie, Dakota Territory, between representatives of the Federated States of America and representatives of the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Shoshone, Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Indian tribes.
In the treaty, the F.S.A. promises to recognize the sovereignty of the native tribes over the Great Plains which was the bulk of Native American territory, for "as long as the river flows and the eagle flies", and promise to pay the tribes an annuity in the amount of fifty thousand dollars annually for fifty years. In return, the Native American nations guarantee safe passage for settlers on the Oregon and California Trails, and also agree to allow roads and forts to be built in their territories. This will lead to relative peace on the Great Plains, for a short time.
1852--The United States Congress passes the “Act to Clarify the Status of Persons Not Holding Citizenship.” In accordance with the
Comonfort decision, a “United States Citizen” is defined by the Act as any free person of pure European ancestry, or of mixed European and Indian ancestry, provided said person has no more than 1/8 Indian blood.
The Act creates a new class of United States Nationals, who are defined by the act as any free, non-citizen person who is a permanent resident of the United States or its Territories or possessions, and who is under the jurisdiction of the United States and owes no allegiance to any foreign government. The chief difference between a United States National and a United States Citizen is that United States Nationals have no voting rights in national elections, and cannot serve in any elected Federal office. United States Nationals, however, are deemed to be entitled to equal protection under Federal law, and can serve on federal juries.
However, the protection they enjoy under the laws of the individual States is up to the States themselves, so long as it does not conflict with any right given under Federal law (they may be denied the right to serve on juries in State Courts, for example). They can also vote and serve in elected offices at the State level, provided that the State in which they reside chooses to allow it.
The Castizos and Mestizos, as well as Indians and free blacks, will be granted status as United States Nationals under the Act. Slaves, including both black slaves and the Amerindian slaves held by many Hispanic landowners especially in New Mexico Territory, are excluded from status as United States Nationals and have, essentially, no protection under national law (although some States, as in OTL, will keep laws on the books to control abuse of slaves by their masters).
November 1852--National elections in the U.S.A. and the F.S.A. In the U.S.A., President Benton does not run for re-election. The two parties pick war heroes as their Presidential candidates, and in a close election, Democrat Jefferson Davis defeats Whig candidate Winfield Scott.
In the F.S.A., President Cass runs for re-election on the Democratic Ticket, while Edward Everett of Massachusetts is nominated by the Whig Party. The issue of Mormon polygamy in the Territories becomes a major issue in the election, and the growing political power of the American Republican Party in the F.S.A. is once again displayed, as the party carries the States of Illinois and New York. And elsewhere, the party once again splits the vote of the other two parties. As in 1848, they more seriously hurt the Whigs than the Democrats in most places, and President Cass narrowly wins re-election as a result.
1853--The first land-grant railroad in the F.S.A. is completed, the Illinois Central. Also in this year, the Nicaraguan Liberal Party candidate Francisco Castellón from León and the Conservative Party candidate Fruto Chamorro of Granada both run for the position of Supreme Director of Nicaragua. Chamorro wins, and there are claims of election fraud. Chamorro immediately transfers the government headquarters from Managua to Granada, the Conservative stronghold.
March 1853--In the U.S.A., Jefferson Davis is sworn in as the thirteenth President of the United States at Washington, D.C. At New York, Lewis Cass is sworn in for a second term as President of the Federated States.
1853-1861--The Administration of President Jefferson Davis of the United States. President Davis, like his predecessor, is vitally interested in the development of the Western Territories, and also sees the need for greater industry in the United States in order to support the enlarged military establishment necessitated by the occupation of Mexico. As a result, his two terms in office will, despite his Democratic affiliation, see many of the programs espoused by the Whig Party passed during his administration. He will especially give support to efforts to promote railroad development, and will champion the building of a transcontinental railroad.
Probably the single most significant piece of landmark legislation passed during his term of office, however, is the 1854 Mexican Bullion Act, which will provide solution to a major issue which has plagued the efforts of the Whig Party and like-minded Democrats (such as President Davis) to promote development, both of industry within the United States, and of development in general of the Western Territories. The reopening of the Mexican silver and gold mines, and the discovery of new veins of precious metal in the region, has provided a way around this.
The Mexican Bullion Act specifies that an excise tax of five percent shall be levied on all bullion extracted from the mines at the time of assaying. Furthermore, a processing fee of one dollar is charged for every twenty dollars in bullion coined by any of the mints recently established for the processing of the Mexican bullion The revenues generated by these excise taxes and processing fees, according to the Bullion Act, is to go into a fund created to finance internal improvements projects and economic development projects, both in the States and in the Territories. Thus, these projects are able to be financed without resorting to forms of taxation (such as tariffs) found objectionable by the powerful plantation class in the existing States of the United States.
It is thus that, by the end of President Davis’ term, opposition to the Transcontinental Railway Project, as well as federal subsidies for railroad development and other important improvements within the States themselves, will be significantly reduced. And, accordingly, several bills for such projects will be passed.
President Davis will also, in 1853, 1854 and 1855, go against the majority of his own party and veto bills which would have reversed the Clay Tariff of 1841 and rolled back tariff rates to a level of twenty percent...half of what they were under the Clay Tariff. Although in 1856...in order to help his chances of re-election…he does agree to a compromise measure reducing tariff rates from forty percent down to thirty-two percent, he argues, in the end successfully, that a moderately high tariff is necessary to pay for the expanded military, needed to hold down the simmering rebellions which are ongoing in many parts of Mexico. As a result, the development of industry in the United States does not lose the protection which a relatively high tariff will provide to it, which again, supports President Davis’ goal of expanding the industrial base of the United States.
However, his second term will be marred by the economic recession which begins in 1857, and, like his counterpart in the F.S.A., Davis will find this problem insurmountable. As a result, Davis will not run for re-election in 1860, and the Democrats will, for the first time since the Secession, lose the Presidency in that year.
April 1853--April 1853--The Federated States Congress passes an Anti-Polygamy Act aimed specifically at the Mormons in the Western Territories. Accordingly, President Cass decides he has to do something about the Mormons in the Great Basin. He appoints the anti-Mormon former Governor of Illinois, Thomas Ford, as Governor of California Territory (Ford, who in OTL died in 1850, has, because of butterflies released by the secession of the F.S.A. from the Union, not caught the illness which caused his death in OTL, and will live until 1868 in the ATL).
June 1853--The Congress of the F.S.A. passes a bill to subsidize a transcontinental telegraph connection. Construction of the system will take a little over a year.
1854--The first railroad bridge across the Mississippi is completed, at Rock Island, Illinois.
January 1854--Fruto Chamorro of Nicaragua convenes a Constitutional Assembly to promulgate a new Constitution during the absence of the majority of the Liberal Party representatives. The Constitution of 1854, as the new document will be called, will be considered to be badly flawed by the Liberals.
January 1854--After an eight-month voyage around Cape Horn, the new Governor of California Territory, Thomas Ford, arrives in San Francisco with a mandate from President Cass to “take care of the Mormon problem.” Shortly after his arrival, Ford begins dismissing all pro-Mormon Territorial officials appointed by the previous governor, who was trying to work with the Mormon majority in the Territorial Legislature to reach a compromise. Ford soon finds himself at loggerheads with the Legislature.
May 1854--After a dangerous cross-country journey from California, the officials appointed by Governor Ford arrive in Salt Lake City and other Mormon settlements in the Great Basin. They begin attempting to enforce the 1853 Anti-Polygamy Act, and run up against resistance from the Mormons. The resistance is, at first, mainly passive, as there are few F.S.A. troops in the region and the officials, therefore, have little actual power in the face of mass non-compliance by the Mormons. Nevertheless, tensions in the region begin to rise dramatically.
June1854-September 1855--The Nicaraguan Civil War. In reaction to what they see as a rigged election and Chamorro's subsequent actions including the promulgation of the Constitution of 1854, prominent Nicaraguan Liberals… including Francisco Castellón, Máximo Jerez, and José María Valle…establish a separate government in León. Castellón is proclaimed president on 11 June 1854. Although the Liberal forces are initially militarily successful against Chamorro, a long unsuccessful siege of Granada is followed by the loss of Managua, Masaya and Rivas to the Conservatives.
Looking for any way to save their failing cause, the Liberals make contact with William Walker, who has returned to his former position as editor of the NEW ORLEANS CRESCENT, but is chafing at the dullness of civilian life after the thrill of his filibustering adventures in Cuba. The rebels ask Walker to raise a band of mercenaries and bring them to Nicaragua to help the Liberals win the Civil War, and Walker jumps at the chance. The United States government…which is interested in “twisting the tail of the British Lion,“ in retaliation for that nation’s actions during the Spanish American War, by interfering with British interests in Nicaragua….does not molest Walker as he recruits men and raises material for the expedition, and in May 1855, Walker sets sail from New Orleans with 500 well-equipped men and 2 pieces of artillery.
In September 1855, Walker’s force defeats the Nicaraguan national army at the Battle of La Virgen, and Liberal Patricio Rivas is installed as President of Nicaragua. However, Walker…who controls the only effective military force in the country…is the real power in Nicaragua. And he knows it.
July 1854--The F.S.A. transcontinental telegraph line is completed.
August 1854-October 1857--The First Sioux War. In August 1854, a cow belonging to a Mormon settler traveling on the Oregon Trail escapes and is killed by Brule Sioux Indians after it wanders into their Camp. A party of 50 F.S. soldiers, lead by Captain John Lawrence Grattan, is shortly afterward sent to demand the surrender of the parties responsible for the killing of the cow.
The Sioux chief, Conquering Bear, wants to maintain peace between his tribe and the whites, but is put off by Grattan’s blustering manner and refuses to hand the men over. As he turns to walk away, one of the soldiers fires at him. The shot misses and instead hits a young woman, standing nearby, killing her instantly. Enraged, the Sioux warriors surrounding Grattan’s party open fire, and the soldiers are cut down to a man. Their bodies are afterward scalped and mutilated. In councils held over the succeeding weeks, most of the other Lakota Sioux tribes…the Oglala, Hunkpapa, and Miniconjou especially…upon hearing of this outrage, agree to fight along with Conquering Bear’s people. Emissaries sent to the Northern Cheyennes also gain the support of this tribe, but the Mandan, Arapaho, Crow, and other regional tribes remain neutral.
When news of the “massacre” reaches President Cass, he orders expeditions sent to punish the Sioux. The expeditions are plagued by supply problems (unlike the 1870s campaigns which finally saw the subjugation of the Sioux in OTL, the railroad is not there to keep the army supplied and in the field), and, despite “successes” where F.S. troops raid Sioux villages and kill over 100 men, women, and children at one village in 1855, and another 80 at a village attacked in 1856), fail to accomplish their purpose, Of course, the outbreak of the Mormon War in late 1855...which bleeds off much of the manpower which had been devoted to the pacification of the Sioux…doesn’t help matters, either.
On the Sioux side, Conquering Bear proves to be a cunning and ruthless enemy. Under his leadership, the highly mobile Sioux avoid open battle with strong bodies of Federated States troops, instead focusing on hit-and-run raids on weakly protected wagon trains and other parties traveling along the Oregon and California Trails. Oddly, the Sioux do not interfere much with the new transcontinental telegraph line, not realizing the significance of this curiosity. They do, however, make life very difficult for telegraph repair crews working in their territory, who have to be provided with military escorts which further drain the manpower available to hunt down the elusive Sioux.
The end result is that travel along the Trails becomes well-nigh impossible except by strongly escorted parties, and even General John Wool’s expedition against the Mormons in 1856 is greatly hampered by raiding Sioux war parties which kill stray pickets and burn wagons, yet avoid open battle with the increasingly frustrated gray-coats. The activities of the Sioux, indeed, play a contributory role in the final defeat of Wool’s expedition, as they slow the progress of the expedition down sufficiently to allow the Mormons to catch and destroy the secondary expedition launched in support of Wool from California, before it can link up, as planned, with Wool near Salt Lake City
The incoming President Abraham Lincoln, having ended the Mormon War in June 1857, also seeks to end the Sioux War, and he sends the troops which President Cass had been gathering to continue the war against the Mormons, against the Sioux instead. These troops, however, fare little better than the earlier expeditions sent by President Cass, and in September 1857, Lincoln decides to negotiate.
A new treaty is signed at Fort Laramie in October 1857, which basically reaffirms the 1852 Treaty, and increases the size of the F.S. government’s payments to the tribes. In addition, it is agreed that an annual council between the tribes and representatives of the F.S.A., at which all disputes between the tribes and the whites will be arbitrated, will be held at Fort Laramie in the summer of each year. However, like it’s predecessor, the 1857 Fort Laramie Treaty will provide only a short period of peace between the two increasingly hostile groups.
1855--Rail lines have been extended to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Also in this year, a Federated States Navy squadron under the command of Admiral Matthew C. Perry, sails into the harbor of Edo (modern Tokyo), Japan. Perry, who, being of Northern extraction, resigned his commission in the United States Navy during the secession crisis of 1843-44, has been instrumental to the establishment of the new Federated States Navy, and has been in command of the Far Eastern Squadron for the past two years. He is not only a skilled sailor, but also an able diplomat, and he is able, over the course of the next few months, to persuade the Japanese Government to conclude a treaty which opens the Japanese ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to Federated States trade, guarantees the safety of shipwrecked F.S. sailors and establishes a permanent F.S. consulate in Japan. This effectively ends Japan's 200 year policy of seclusion.
August 1855--Governor Ford of California, upset that his officials are basically being ignored by the Mormons in the Great Basin, sends a telegram to President Cass, asking for troops to be sent to “enforce the national law”…meaning, of course, the Anti-Polygamy Act…in the Territory. The message is intercepted by a Mormon telegraph operator in Salt Lake City, who passes it along to Brigham Young, who calls a meeting of the Quorum of Twelve to debate what response should be made.
September 1855--The word that Governor Ford has requested Federal troops to be sent to California has been debated by the Mormon leadership. It is decided that Mormon leader Brigham Young should, as a precaution, call out the Nauvoo Legion and other Mormon militia units and have them begin regularly drilling in preparation for possible invasion by the “Gentiles.” The Mormons also begin constructing fortifications around their major settlements. Meanwhile, messages protesting the loyalty of the Mormons to the F.S.A. are sent via telegraph to President Cass in New York.
October 1855--Word has reached San Francisco that the Mormons are drilling their militia and constructing fortifications around their settlements in the Great Basin. Governor Ford accuses the Mormons of planning a rebellion, and orders the formation of a non-Mormon militia to counter the Mormon militias. The California Guard, as this militia will be called, is raised primarily in the region west of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and soon numbers 2,000 men.
November 1855--President Cass is somewhat taken aback by the escalating situation in the California Territory. He sends telegrams to Brigham Young and to Governor Ford, urging them both to disband their militias and to cease the strident rhetoric which is heating up the situation on a daily basis. However, he makes it clear to Brigham Young that the national law must be enforced, and polygamy must cease. Young refuses to back down, and so does Governor Ford.
December 1855-June 1857--The Mormon War. In December 1855, faced with the refusal of the Mormons to accept enforcement of the Anti-Polygamy Law, President Cass declares the Mormons to be in rebellion and orders an expedition of 4,000 troops, under the command of Major General John E. Wool, to be fitted out and sent to Salt Lake City.
Wool’s expedition will proceed west from Council Bluffs, Iowa, via Fort Laramie, Dakota Territory, to Salt Lake City. Despite the ongoing conflict with the Sioux in the region around Fort Laramie, it is felt that the size of Wool’s force will overawe the “savages” and prevent them from interfering too much with it as it proceeds toward it’s objective (as told elsewhere, this turns out not to be the case, with drastic consequences). Governor Ford is ordered to send his California Guard, commanded by John C. Fremont, east across the Sierra Nevadas to support the main expedition (this is the last message to reach California before the Mormons sever the transcontinental telegraph line near Salt Lake City on December 21, 1855).
However, due to delays in gathering the necessary troops, supplies, and especially wagons, Wool’s expedition does not leave Council Bluffs until early April 1856. Wool’s expedition is further plagued by problems, including poor weather, faulty supply lines, disease, and attacks by hostile Indians, as it crosses the plains, and progress across the plains is slow. The end result is that Wool’s expedition doesn’t reach Salt Lake City until late August, 1856.
This allows the numerically superior and better trained Mormon forces commanded by General Lot Smith, with the assistance of friendly Ute Indians, to catch and destroy most of the California Guard (which left California in late March, 1856) in the mountains west of Salt Lake City in June 1856. General Fremont is captured and taken to Salt Lake City in triumph, along with about 800 prisoners which were taken by the Mormons. About 800 more of the Californians were left dead on the field, while the remainder escaped and fled, bringing news of the disaster back to California.
Upon arriving at Salt Lake City, General Wool attempts to convince the Mormons to surrender. After failing in this, Wool orders an assault on the Mormon earthworks at Salt Lake City on August 20, 1856. The assault is repulsed with heavy losses…about 300 Federal troops are killed in the assault, with a further 700 wounded. To make matters worse, Mormon cavalry and Ute warriors raid the expedition’s wagon train, burning about half the wagons, while the assault is in progress.
Wool now finds himself in a very precarious situation…hundreds of miles away from his supply bases, with much of his stockpile of supplies gone, and facing an entrenched and numerically strong enemy. He orders his army to retreat to a point where a message can be sent via the still unbroken telegraph lines east of the Mormon settlements. He orders fortifications to be thrown up, and sends a message to President Cass, advising him of the situation and calling for reinforcements, supplies, and more artillery to be sent. President Cass advises him to retire to Fort Laramie, in Dakota Territory, and there to await reinforcement. Wool orders the retirement, and the army arrives back at Fort Laramie in early October 1856. President Cass, meanwhile, orders a second expedition to be fitted out and ready to march in the Spring of 1857.
The defeat of the two “Gentile Invasions” leads to a stiffening of Mormon resolve in the Great Basin. Although Brigham Young himself initially opposes it, many voices are raised in the Quorum of Twelve calling for a Declaration of Independence from the F.S.A. Young himself is finally converted when, after a September 21, 1856 discussion with John Taylor and Orson Pratt which ended in a joint prayer for guidance, he has a “revelation from God” telling him that the time is right. The next day, the flag of the Federated States of America is lowered in Salt Lake City, and the Beehive Flag is raised in it’s stead. The Republic of Deseret is proclaimed shortly thereafter.
News of the defeat suffered by the Wool Expedition (and, when it becomes known later, that of the California Guard) hits the F.S.A. like a thunderbolt, whose effect is doubled when news of the Mormon declaration of independence is received. There is a huge public furor, as those who view it as the duty of the F.S.A. to stamp out the “barbarism” of Mormon polygamy in the Territories clash with those who argue that the Great Basin is a worthless desert and the Mormons are welcome to it.
The final straw comes when an intrepid reporter for the NEW YORK HERALD, having braved roving Indian war parties, arrives at Fort Laramie in mid-October of 1856 and telegraphs back to New York a scathing story detailing the incompetence, hunger, and suffering among the miserable troops he witnesses there. The story inflames the public against the Cass Administration…and by extension, the Democratic Party…on the very eve of the general election. The Whig/Know Nothing alliance in Congress quickly takes up the cry and passes a resolution demanding an end to the war. Public opinion decisively turns against the Democratic Party. The Whig candidate, Abraham Lincoln, wins the election on a “Peace with Honor” platform.
The winter of 1856-1857 proves to be hard on the troops encamped at Fort Laramie. Supply trains are stopped by heavy snows, and hundreds of soldiers die of cold, hunger, disease, and attacks by hostile Indians while out foraging in the largely barren countryside for food and firewood. Indeed, had General Wool not ordered several large buffalo hunting expeditions before the first snows fell...which helped to raise the ire of the local Indian tribes, who view these poachers on their hunting grounds with less than friendly eyes…the entire army might have perished. As it was, enough buffalo meat was brought in and smoked to provide at least a bare subsistence ration for the troops through the winter. By the time of the spring thaws, the army is a skeleton of it’s former self. The HERALD reporter, who has taken up residence at the fort, keeps the public abreast of the latest developments, all of which reinforce the public clamor for peace. But President Cass refuses to back down and agree to negotiate before the end of his term.
Upon taking office in March 1857, President Lincoln sends negotiators to treat with the Mormon leaders. A treaty is agreed upon in June 1857, in which the Mormons are ceded a territory bounded on the north by the Snake River, on the east by the Green and Colorado Rivers, on the south by the border with the United States, and on the west by a line running at 114 degrees longitude. It is further agreed that, in exchange for allowing the landlocked Republic of Deseret secure communications with the outside world, the said republic will allow the F.S.A. the option to run it’s transcontinental railroad through Deseret’s territory…provided that the F.S.A. guarantees that it will not become a conduit for non-Mormon settlement in Deseret…and Deseret agrees to allow rights of repair and non-interference with the F.S.A.’s telegraph line running through it’s territory. Deseret also guarantees safe conduct and right of resupply to wagon trains carrying settlers through it’s territory to the California Territory. The Mormon War is over.
1856--A U.S. Navy squadron under the command of Commodore John H. Aulick visits Japan, and a treaty, similar in content to that concluded between the F.S.A. and Japan the previous year, is signed.
1856 onward--The Republic of Deseret, declared independent on September 22, 1856, will shortly afterward adopt the 1849 Deseret State Constitution, which had been submitted along with the proposal for Statehood within the F.S.A., as the model for a new Constitution for the Republic. Of course, there are some modifications made. Instead of a Governor, there will be a President, and the bi-cameral General Assembly is replaced by a bi-cameral National Assembly. Other changes restrict the right to vote and to hold political office to members of the Mormon Church, and guarantee the right to practice polygamy and other practices held sacred by the Church. In the first election held under the new Constitution in 1858, Brigham Young is, unsurprisingly, elected as the first President of the Republic of Deseret. He will hold the post until his death in 1877.
The Republic faces many problems in it’s early years, being surrounded by hostile neighbors with no easy access to the outside world. But the Republic is mainly self-sufficient from the outset, and President Young strongly encourages the Republic to develop self-sufficiency in all areas…a project which will be largely completed. Although immigrants find it somewhat more difficult to reach the new Republic (at least until the Intercontinental Railroad is completed), the Mormon practice of polygamy, and the resulting large families, allows relatively rapid population growth.
But relations with the F.S.A., although they remained strained because of agitation by the Christian Anti-Polygamy Societies of the F.S.A., will remain peaceful, and some useful agreements will be concluded. The most important of these is the Intercontinental Railroad Treaty. The F.S.A., having reviewed possible routes for the proposed railway, decided that the best route for the first Intercontinental Railroad built by that nation would run through the territory of the Republic of Deseret, and an agreement is reached allowing this to proceed. This will allow imports and immigration to reach the Republic more easily.
One interesting development within the new Republic is the adoption, in 1859, of the Deseret Alphabet by the Republic as the standard of communication within the Republic. The Deseret Alphabet was a phonetic alphabet developed in 1854 at the direction of Brigham Young, by the board of regents of the University of Deseret (founded in 1850 at Salt Lake City).
Aimed to reform the representation of the English language, not the language itself, the new phonetic system offers a number of advantages. First, it reinforces the cultural exclusivism of the new Republic and heightens the difference between Mormon and Gentile, breeding national feelings within the population of the Republic. It also serves to keep secrets from curious non-Mormons, control what children are allowed (and indeed, able) to read, and in a largely unlettered society that includes many non-English speaking converts, eliminates the awkward problem of phonetic spelling.
The 1859 law which promotes this policy mandates that the Deseret Alphabet be the standard alphabet taught in schools throughout the Republic. All newspapers, court documents, and all other official publications are ordered to be printed initially in both the Latin and the Deseret Alphabets, with the Latin versions to be phased out within 20 years. Important texts currently in the Latin Alphabet are ordered to be translated into the new Alphabet and distributed.
As a result of these policies, the Deseret Alphabet will be one of the few “created” alphabets to succeed and survive (the Cherokee Alphabet being the other prime example of such an occurrence), and by the end of the 19th century, it will be in almost exclusive use within the Republic of Deseret.
January 1856--The United States government officially recognizes the new regime in Nicaragua, and concludes a mutual defense treaty with it.
June 1856--After a farcical election, William Walker installs himself as President of Nicaragua. Walker, however, because of his Cuban experience, recognizes the need to win popular support for his regime. He becomes “more Nicaraguan than the Nicaraguans,” marrying into a prominent local family. He also allows the adoption of a new liberal constitution, lowers taxes on the common land-owner, and places prominent Nicaraguans into high places in his administration.
One major difference from OTL is that he does not recast his campaign as a fight to extend slavery (as slavery is no longer under direct threat in the United States, and since the Mexican conquest has provided plentiful new horizons for slavery, there is not a lot of support there for acquiring new lands for the expansion of slavery anymore. Therefore, Walker does not find this a useful way to get recruits, money, and arms from the United States), and he does not rescind the Nicaraguan Emancipation Edict of 1824, which increases his popularity within Nicaragua itself. He also begins creating nationalistic feeling in Nicaragua as the basis for a plan for the conquest of the rest of Central America.
November 1856--National elections in the U.S.A. and the F.S.A. In the U.S.A., President Davis wins re-election over Whig candidate Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia.
In the F.S.A. voting, President Cass, who views it as his duty to see the Mormon War to the end, runs for a third term, but is defeated by Whig candidate Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, who is against continuing the war. The American Republican Party, having suffered a temporary division in their ranks between those who support the war and those who oppose it, does not field a candidate in the election, and most of their supporters vote Whig in the election, giving Lincoln a landslide victory.
1857-1861--The Administration of President Abraham Lincoln of the Federated States of America. President Lincoln will be chiefly remembered as the President who negotiated the treaty ending the Mormon War. He will also shepherd several significant bills through the Congress, including the landmark bill authorizing subsidies for the construction of a transcontinental railroad.
One bill that does not, surprisingly, make it through during his Administration is any anti-immigration bill. Lincoln opposes such restrictions, viewing continued immigration as necessary both to provide cheap labor for the growing factories of the F.S.A., and also as a source of people to help populate and develop the West. The loose alliance between the Whig Party and the American Republican Party is thus damaged. In the end, the economic recession which begins in late 1857 and Lincoln’s failure to effectively deal with it will doom his Presidency, and he will not be renominated by his party in 1860.
1857-1863--Economic Depression in the U.S.A. and the F.S.A. In August 1857, the New York City branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company…one of the largest banks in the F.S.A….fails due to large-scale embezzlement. Shortly afterward, a decision by British investors to withdraw their funds from banks in the F.S.A. is publicized in the nation’s newspapers, further eroding public confidence in the stability of the banking system. A bank panic results, resulting in the failure of numerous other banks.
This does not immediately affect the U.S.A., but, the next month, the steamship S.S. VERACRUZ, carrying a load of Mexican gold and silver from the recently reopened mines to the new Washington, D.C. Mint, founders in a huge hurricane off North Carolina. This shakes public confidence in the U.S.A. as to the soundness of their money, and a full scale panic results there as well.
The effects of the Panic…which will go down in history as The Great Panic…are devastating and long-lasting. Thousands of businesses fail, hundreds of thousands of industrial workers in the cities are unemployed, and many farmers lose their land (although the large planters of the U.S.A., shielded by the stability of the cotton market, are little affected). Widespread public anger over the continuing economic misery will contribute to upset victories in both countries in their 1860 elections, bringing the Whig Party to power in the U.S.A. and the American Republican Party to power in the F.S.A.
1857--Samuel Clemens, a 22-year old young man living in Hannibal, Missouri, takes a steamboat trip to New Orleans. During the trip, the pilot, a man named Bixby, persuades him to pursue a career as a river-boat pilot, which is a richly rewarding profession paying the princely sum of $250 a month (equal to about $155,000 a year today). Clemens loves his new profession, and is very good at it, and he will ply the waters of the Mississippi for the remainder of his life. He will be killed when the boiler of his steamboat accidentally explodes in 1889. Other than a few humorous letters published in the HANNIBAL JOURNAL (a newspaper owned by his brother, Orion…who, like Samuel, will never go west), he will never publish anything of note.
March 1857--In a ceremony at Washington, D.C., Jefferson Davis is sworn in for a second term as President of the United States. At New York, Abraham Lincoln is sworn in as the third President of the Federated States of America.
May 1857--A railroad bridge across the Mississippi River is completed at Vicksburg, Mississippi, connecting the cis-Mississippi and trans-Mississippi railroad networks in the U.S.A. for the first time.
July 1857--The Congress of the F.S.A. passes the Pacific Railway Act, which authorizes the construction of an intercontinental railway linking Council Bluffs, Iowa, with San Francisco, California. Supporters of the line argue that it will greatly facilitate the China Trade, allowing goods to be shipped east by rail from Pacific ports instead of being carried around Cape Horn to ports on the East Coast. It is also promoted as a means to help encourage settlement of the Western Territories by greater numbers of non-Mormons, viewed as a great necessity to counter the threat of the independent Mormon republic which now exists in the midst of the F.S.A.’s territories in the West.
March 1858--After much preparation, construction of the F.S.A.’s intercontinental railroad proceeds. Although it enjoys federal subsidies and full support from the F.S.A. government, it proceeds a bit slower than in OTL, because all construction is being carried on by one company, pushing the line west from Iowa. Since gold has not, by this date, been discovered in California, there is no equivalent of the Central Pacific Railroad to push the line east from California.
September 1859--The U.S. Transcontinental Communications Act is passed, authorizing federal subsidies for both a transcontinental telegraph line and a transcontinental railroad. Both of these will follow a route from Shreveport, Louisiana, through Texas, New Mexico, and Sonora, to the port of Guaymas, Sonora Territory, on the coast of the Gulf of Cortez. Construction on both projects will begin early in the following year.
January 1860--Construction of the U.S. transcontinental railway and telegraph line begins at Shreveport, Louisiana.
March 1860-July 1864--The Wars of Central American Unification. President Walker of Nicaragua has been very successful in creating loyalty to his regime, as well as nationalistic fervor, among the Nicaraguan people, and he is ready for step two in his grand plan…the conquest of the rest of Central America. In March 1860, he declares war on El Salvador and Costa Rica. His large, loyal, and professionally trained army easily defeats the ragtag forces of the El Salvadoran and Costa Rican armies in less than a year. His next target is Guatamala, which falls in 1862. Honduras falls in 1864. In July 1864, Walker calls a convention at Managua to form the United States of Central America, and a new constitution is drawn up which gives voting rights to the peoples of all the former Central American nations (now the “States” of the new U.S.C.A.).
August 1860 onward: The Partition of China--Taiping rebels in China take the city of Shanghai in an attack on August 17, 1860 (in OTL, a defense force made up of a mixture of Chinese, European, and American mercenaries, organized and commanded by Frederick Townsend Ward…who died in 1852 in the ATL…repulsed the rebels. As a result of Ward not being available in the ATL, this force…which became the nucleus of the “Ever Victorious Army“ which played such a large part in the final defeat of the Taiping Rebellion, is never formed). The city is sacked and hundreds of thousands…including a very large number of British, French, Russian and American citizens (from both the F.S.A. and the U.S.A.)…are slaughtered.
At the time, Britain and France are at war with the Qing Dynasty of China (the Second Opium War). With this outrage…which is blamed on the Qings, who are held to have not done enough to defend the city and to have “allowed“ it to be captured in the express hope that the Taipings would massacre the foreigners there…the Federated States of America and Russia both make alliances with Britain and France and enter the war (the U.S.A., which is fully embroiled in Mexico by this date, contributes some naval support, but does not directly enter the land war). The four powers decide that, in order to “restore order” to China, two things have to happen…the Qings have to be removed, and the Taiping rebels have to be suppressed. It will take a decade, but both of these objectives will be achieved.
The campaigns of this war will be fought with great brutality by all sides and with little regard for the conventions of civilized war, and by the end of fighting in early 1870, well over 30,000,000 Chinese, along with over half a million foreign troops, will have died. The cost of the conflict will be so high that, when it is all over, the Western Powers decide that only the partition of China will compensate them for their huge expenditures of specie and blood during the conflict.
At a convention held in Geneva in August 1870, China is carved up like a Thanksgiving Turkey into “spheres of influence” for the Five Powers (as the victorious allies are called…the U.S.A., despite having contributed only limited naval support, is counted among the victorious powers and given a chair at the negotiating table. It ends up with a Sphere of Influence of its own, albeit the smallest one allotted to any of the Five Powers).
In practice, China is too large for the victorious powers to govern directly, so the country is dismembered into a series of sixteen small statelets, whose native leaders are appointed by the Five Powers and can be removed by them, at their will. These puppet leaders basically serve as tax collectors and enforcers of the will of the Five Powers, taking their own cut of the profit from the rape of the Chinese economy which the system generates. It is the beginning of a long and very sad period for China.
November 1860--National elections in the U.S.A. and the F.S.A. In the U.S.A., President Davis declines to run for a third term. In a hard-fought election, largely as a result of the continuing economic depression which began in 1857, Whig candidate Robert Augustus Toombs of Georgia defeats Democratic candidate John Cabell Breckinridge of Kentucky.
In the F.S.A., the Whig Party leadership declines to renominate President Lincoln for a second term. Instead, they nominate William Seward of New York, while the Democrats nominate James Buchanan of Pennsylvania. The American Republican Party, having healed the rift in it’s ranks which caused them to bow out of the 1856 election, nominates Levi Boone of Illinois (a nephew of the famous frontiersman, Daniel Boone), who runs a variation of the successful Whig “Log Cabin Campaign” of 1840, trading on his uncle’s frontier reputation to claim that he is the true “Man of the People” in the campaign. The words and catchy tune of his campaign song…
Daniel Boone was a man,
Yes a Big Man.
He was brave, he was fearless,
And a man you could trust, t’was Dan.
Levi Boone is a man,
Yes a Big Man.
He’s a man of the people,
And a man you can trust, like Dan.
A man’s word is his bond, a thing you can trust
You know Levi Boone is true
Just like his uncle was the fightingest man
The frontier ever knew!
Levi Boone is a man,
Yes a Big Man!
Levi’s word is as strong,
Yes, as strong as a mighty oak tree!
And it goes beyond a doubt that
Daniel would be proud of Lee!
Levi Boone!
…will be long remembered, and will carry him to an upset victory in the election. Along with the Presidency, the party also makes significant gains in both the Senate and the House of Representatives of the F.S.A.
1861-1898--Indian Wars in the West. From 1861 to 1898, the U.S.A., the F.S.A., Deseret, or all three, will be at war almost constantly with some group of Native Americans in the West. In the end, the natives will be almost exterminated in most places, with the pitiful survivors confined to reservations.
March 1861--In Washington, D.C., Robert Augustus Toombs is sworn in as the fourteenth President of the United States of America. At New York, Levi Boone is sworn in as the fourth President of the Federated States of America.
May 1861--The U.S.A.’s transcontinental telegraph line is completed.
1861-1869--The administration of President Levi Boone of the Federated States of America. Boone’s administration starts off well, as several pieces of banking reform legislation are passed in his first year of office which go a long way toward correcting the conditions which lead to the Great Panic. Boone, like his counterpart in the U.S.A., Robert Toombs, will also sponsor public works projects as a way of absorbing much of the unemployed labor in the country and injecting cash into the industrial sector as a means of “jump-starting” the business sector. These policies will have an effect, and the Great Panic will end in the F.S.A. by 1863.
This will be enough to get Boone re-elected for a second term in 1864.
However, in the end, Boone’s administration will be remembered, not for ending the Great Panic, but for it’s anti-immigration laws and policies. Toward the end of Boone’s first administration, draconian new anti-immigration laws are finally passed by the Congress of the F.S.A. Small quotas are set up for each European country. The combined quota for all Catholic countries in Europe is set at a level less than that of England alone. All immigration from anyplace other than Europe is banned.
Immigrant entry stations are set up at all major ports (the one at New York on Ellis Island), these stations staffed by confirmed Republican Party members who have absolute authority to deny entry to any immigrant they deem “undesirable.” In some places, these officials commit atrocious abuses of their authority, demanding bribes or worse from immigrant applicants…some particularly unscrupulous officials will demand sexual services from female applicants…in exchange for being allowed into the country. Other immigrants are subjected to beatings during “entry interviews” by these officials. When news of these abuses finally becomes public in President Boone’s second term, it will create a huge scandal.
Domestically, Know Nothing gangs will terrorize immigrants many F.S.A. cities, rioting and looting immigrant-owned businesses, burning Catholic churches, and administering beatings to any immigrants they find alone on the streets at night. In response, immigrant communities will form their own vigilance committees which exact retribution against these gangs for their attacks on immigrants. This will, of course, be used by the Boone Administration to justify even more severe restrictions on immigration, as well as draconian laws…couched as “necessary law enforcement measures”… restricting the freedom of immigrants within the F.S.A. itself.
As a result of these policies, the level of immigration falls dramatically during Boone’s second term of office. This will quickly begin to impact business expansion in the F.S.A. Industrialists in the F.S.A. had depended on a steady supply of immigrant labor, willing to work long hours in horrible conditions for extremely low pay, to keep their factories running and competitive with British manufacturing (which abuses it’s labor force even more than do the industrialists in the F.S.A.). Now they no longer have access to this labor force, and native Americans are simply not willing to work in the horrible conditions of the factories for the ridiculously low wages being offered.
Industrialists are faced with a stark choice: either pay higher wages and hire native Americans…which will make their goods even more uncompetitive with British goods…or shut down. Allies of the industrialists in Congress try to provide a quick fix by raising tariffs again to the highest rates which will ever be seen in history, effectively shutting out British imports and severely impacting imports from other countries as well. But Britain and other countries respond by raising their own tariffs, sparking an international trade war. By the end of Boone’s term, the country is back in the throes of economic recession as a result.
1861-1865--The administration of President Robert Toombs of the United States of America. President Toombs will be significant in U.S. history as the first President to publicly advocate loosening restrictions on the Castizo/Mestizo population of Mexico as a means to take the steam out of the ongoing rebellions in many areas of Mexico. He is not successful in getting such legislation passed, but his advocacy of this course of action starts a public debate on the issue which will, eventually, bear fruit.
Concerned by the increasing toll being taken on American troops in Mexico by fighting with Mexican insurgents, Toombs will also be the first President to make serious attempts to negotiate with the leaders of the various Mexican rebel factions and the Mexican “government in exile” for which most of the rebels are, at least officially, fighting. These negotiations, although they will not be successful during his term, will eventually lead, within the next two decades, to an agreement which re-establishes an independent, although much abridged, Mexico.
Toombs will also be remembered for his strong espousal of internal improvements and public works projects as a means of combating the effects of the Great Panic. During the first two years of his administration especially, several major bills for public works projects in the States and Territories will be passed. Although these measures will be, in some measure, successful (most historians place the official end of the depression caused by the Great Panic in 1863...although, in many areas, the effects continued for some time after that…and credit the infusion of cash into the economy resulting from Toombs‘ public works projects with a major share of the credit for this), they will, along with Toombs’ advocacy of greater rights for Mexicans, doom his Presidency. Since Mexican migrants flocking north to work on these projects are often seen as the beneficiaries of these policies, the Democrats will seek to whip up white fears of Mexican migration as a campaign tactic in the 1864 election, leading them to victory.
July 1864 onward--In the United States of Central America, the administration of William Walker works on improving the economic conditions and stability of the new nation. Walker, in order to get badly needed foreign capital, grants a charter for a combined U.S., F.S., British and French consortium to build a canal through Nicaragua, for the purpose of linking the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. Work on the canal begins in 1866, and will take nearly three decades to complete. When it is complete, the United States of Central America demands, and receives, the right to levy small tolls on all shipping traffic passing through the canal in exchange for the pledge that the traffic of all nations will be allowed to use the canal without interference.
This proves a boon to the economy of the nation. With revenues gained from the canal, as well as the loans and grants given to the nation by the canal consortium, Walker (who will die, still in office, in 1890) and his successors will build much-needed infrastructure and industry in the Central American republic, which will enable it to compete for trade in world markets. By the end of the century, the U.S.C.A. will be a moderately strong regional power with a strong economy, a moderately sized but well trained and equipped army, and a small, but well-equipped and very professional, navy which operates primarily in the Caribbean.
November 1864--National Elections in the U.S.A. and the F.S.A. In the U.S.A., President Toombs is renominated by the Whig Party, while the Democrats nominate Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia. The nomination of Hunter marks a revolt within the Democratic Party by the powerful planter class against the pro-internal- improvements and pro-industrialization wing of the party (epitomized by former Democratic Presidents Benton and Davis). Democratic candidate Hunter, the candidate of this privileged elite, wants to lower the tariff to pre-1841 levels and use the revenue being derived from the Mexican Bullion Act to offset the reduction in tariffs.
However, the Democrats recognize that the tariff issue is not “sexy” enough to woo the majority of voters, and as the main focus of their campaign, they try a new strategy, playing on increasing fears of Mexican migration into the cities of the United States. The Whigs, seeking to promote industrialization and development, have generally supported the encouragement of migration by Mexicans northward and the use of cheap Mexican labor by the developing industries of the U.S. As a result of these policies, the number of Mexicans living in U.S. cities is rapidly increasing and they are becoming a significant minority in many areas, which is alarming many whites. The Democrats portray the Whigs as a party which “values dirty Greasers over good White Men.”
President Toombs and the Whig Party find it difficult to counter this Democratic strategy, and their arguments, unfortunately, do not successfully convey to the common voter the value of using the revenue created by the Mexican Bullion Act as specified in the Bullion Act…to fund internal improvements projects in the States and the Territories so as to spur economic development. Even though President Toombs is endorsed in the election by the popular former President Jefferson Davis…a Democrat who often found himself at odds with the planter aristocrats within his own party during his own term as President because of his support of the Mexican Bullion Act and of internal improvements in general…he loses the election by a significant margin.
In the F.S.A., the American Republican Party renominates President Boone. The Democratic Party nominates Horatio Seymour of New York, while the Whigs, in an attempt to co-opt the anti-immigration vote from President Boone, nominate Henry B. Anthony of Rhode Island. The key issue of the election is the immigration issue, with Democratic candidate Seymour arguing for relaxing restrictions on immigration, while both Boone and Anthony argue against it. In what will prove to be a historic decision, in order to avoid splitting their own vote and thus handing the election to the Democrats, the Whigs and the American Republicans hold a joint convention in September 1864, following their own party conventions which were held the previous month.
In a backroom deal, it is agreed to combine the two tickets, with Boone running for President and Anthony for Vice President (the Vice Presidential candidates selected by the respective parties at their own conventions are forced by their party leaderships to withdraw from the election). The ticket of Boone and Anthony proceeds to defeat Horatio Seymour in the general election. Thus begins the process which will lead, within two years, to the formal merging of the American Republican and Whig parties in the F.S.A.
December 1864--Thomas Nast, a moderately successful political cartoonist for the F.S.A.’s largest newspaper, LESLIE’S ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY (HARPER‘S WEEKLY, the paper where in OTL Nast did his most significant work, was never founded in the ATL), takes ship with his family and moves to Australia. Although Nast, in OTL, was both anti-Irish and anti-Catholic, and thus would seem a natural ally of the American Republican Party, he is a German immigrant and in the ATL, along with other German immigrants, has been harassed by Know Nothing toughs and generally made to feel like a second-class citizen by the Boone Administration. During the recent election, Nast campaigned against Boone through a series of vicious editorial cartoons. He received threats to his life from some of Boone’s cronies as a result, which played a major part in his decision to leave the country. He will never return to the F.S.A.
The departure of Nast will have impacts both cultural and political. Culturally, the departure of Nast will drastically affect how Christmas is celebrated in the Federated States and, indeed, the world. This is because, at the time of his departure, Nast has not completed his series of Christmas drawings featuring Santa Claus, and many aspects of the Santa Claus legend which we take for granted in OTL…Santa’s costume and appearance as we know it in OTL, the idea of Santa having a workshop staffed by elves who make toys, the idea of Santa living at the North Pole, the idea that Santa gives gifts only to “good” children and denies them to “naughty” ones, and the custom of writing letters to Santa…never come into being in the ATL. The custom of kissing under mistletoe also never catches on in America (although the custom was known in Europe prior to Nast's engravings, it was through his engravings in America that the custom caught on there in OTL). Santa Claus ends up looking very different, and customs for celebrating Christmas end up being very different.
Politically, the departure of Nast will be one of several factors which will enable a New York politician of Irish ancestry…one William Magear Tweed…to have a very different political career in the ATL. More on this elsewhere.
March 1865--In a ceremony held at Washington, D.C., Robert M. T. Hunter is sworn in as the fifteenth President of the United States. At New York, Levi Boone is sworn in for a second term as President of the Federated States.
May 1865--Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association. The primary goal of the organization is to achieve voting rights for women by means of a Congressional amendment to the Constitution of the F.S.A.
1865-1873--The administration of President Robert M. T. Hunter of the United States of America. Hunter will sponsor attempts in Congress to pass legislation restricting the ability of business owners in the U.S. to employ Mexican migrant workers. These attempts, however, will not be successful.
Hunter also fails to repeal the various internal improvements laws which had been passed by earlier administrations, but he and his allies in Congress do prevent any new ones from being passed. Hunter’s major legislative victory, however, is the passage of an amendment to the Mexican Bullion Act, which allows funds from Mexican Bullion taxes to be used for purposes other than internal improvements. This allows the planter party in Congress to successfully lobby for a reduction in the tariff to pre-1848 levels. Hunter’s policies will have deleterious effects on the economic development of the United States in the upcoming years, and by the end of his second term, the United States will, once again, be in the throes of a severe recession.
President Hunter also continues the negotiations with the Mexican rebels and their “government in exile” which had begun under President Toombs. Like Toombs, however, Hunter will not successfully complete these negotiations during his term of office. Last but not least, under Hunter’s term of office, serious fighting will break out between U.S. forces and the Apache in the Southwest.
May 1866--At a joint convention held in Chicago, Illinois, the American Republican and Whig Parties agree to formally merge. The new organization will call itself, simply, the Republican Party. As a condition of the merge, the leadership of the former Whig Party guarantees full support for the anti-immigrant agenda of the American Republicans. This will lead to a defection of many former Whigs from the ranks of the new party, strengthening the Democrats. Nevertheless, the new Republican Party will be the dominant party of the F.S.A. for most of the remainder of the 19th century.
November 1866--Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and others form the Woman’s Suffrage Association of the Federated States. This group focuses exclusively on gaining voting rights for women through amendments to individual state constitutions.
December 1866--Since in the ATL, French Emperor Napoleon III’s Mexican adventure has never taken place, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Josef von Habsburg, younger brother of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, has never been offered the throne of Mexico. Instead, after being removed as Viceroy of Lombardy and Venetia in 1859, Maximilian went into quiet seclusion at his personal estate, Miramar Castle, near Trieste, and took a trip to Brazil to study the flora of the Amazonian rain forests.
Maximilian returned from Brazil with his botanical specimens in early 1861, and remained in retirement thereafter at Miramar. To counter his boredom, he asked for, and was given, permission to re-enter the navy, being given command of the important naval base at Trieste. He served with Admiral Tegetthoff at the Battle of Lissa during the Italian sideshow to the 1866 Seven Weeks War with Prussia, distinguishing himself by his bravery under fire.
However, the Italian portion of that war was the only bright spot in what otherwise was a disaster for Austria. In the aftermath that conflict, therefore, the Habsburg monarchy in the Austrian Empire has been thrown into crisis. The reign of Emperor Franz Josef has been a long series of setbacks and disasters for the Empire, and various ethnic nationalities within the Empire…most notably the Hungarians…are pressing for greater political power within the Empire, or, if that cannot be had, independence from it. In the midst of this crisis, the powerful mother of Emperor Franz Josef, Empress Sophie, persuades (“brow-beats” might be a better word for it) Franz Josef, in the interests of the dynasty, to step down and abdicate his throne. After much resistance, Franz Josef complies, abdicating not only for himself but for his eight year old son, Crown Prince Rudolph, in favor of Archduke Maximilian, who is crowned as Emperor of Austria on Christmas Day, 1866.
December 1866-April 1901--The reign of Emperor Maximilian of Austria. The new Emperor Maximilian is still forced to conclude a compromise with the Hungarians, but he also includes other powerful ethnic nationalities, such as the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Croats, and Romanians, in the agreement, in essence replacing the empire with a federal state. The Hungarians protest over the inclusion of the other ethnic nationalities in the agreement, thus elevating these groups to a level of political equality with the Magyars…especially the Croats and the Romanians, who they have traditionally ruled and view as subordinate to Hungary. The Hungarians threaten to secede from the empire, but Maximilian is able to rally the remaining peoples of the empire behind him, and it becomes clear to the hotheaded Magyars that they will not win a war of secession against the remainder of the empire. So, in the end, the Magyars grudgingly accept the agreement forged by Maximilian in May 1867.
Maximilian also institutes a new liberal constitution, which guarantees the rights of the various ethnic minorities in the empire, and establishes a constitutional monarchy with limited powers for the sovereign as the form of government for the empire. A key provision of the document is that the constitution cannot be suspended or amended except by agreement between the Emperor and both houses of the Diet. Each of the important ethnic minorities is granted representation in the bi-cameral Diet, which has a lower house wherein the various groups are represented according to population, and an upper house where each of the various groups is represented equally. As a result of this and other political and social reforms instituted during his reign, popular support for the Hapsburg dynasty is greatly increased, and the empire makes a strong recovery from the woes it suffered during the reign of Franz Josef.
Last but not least, Maximilian also institutes various reforms in the Austrian military which greatly increase it’s combat potential. This will have important consequences in a few years.
May 1868--The F.S.A.’s first transcontinental railroad is completed. The line links Council Bluffs, Iowa with San Francisco, California, the line running through the Republic of Deseret (passing through the capital at Salt Lake City).
July 1868--U.S. troops corner and decisively defeat the rebel Juan Cortina in Nuevo Leon Territory, killing Cortina in the process.
August 1868--James Gibbons named by Pope Pius IX as Vicar Apostolic of North Carolina.
September 1868--Oregon is admitted into the Federated States of America as that nation’s 17th State.
November 1868--National Elections in the U.S.A. and the F.S.A.
In the U.S.A., the Democratic Party renominates President Hunter, while the Whigs nominate Zebulon Baird Vance of North Carolina. As Whig candidate Vance is on record as supporting the use of Mexican labor in industry, the Democrats once again run their “Greaser-loving Whigs” campaign.
Vance proves an able opponent, however. Noting the fact of the increasing gulf between the interests of the planters and the interests of just about everybody else in the U.S.A., Vance takes the bold step of actively campaigning against the “fat, greedy plantation aristocrats” and presenting himself and the Whig Party as the champions of the interests of the common man. However, in the end, the fear-mongering of the Democrats wins out, and President Hunter is re-elected by the narrowest of margins. This victory, however, will prove to be the last hurrah of the old planter aristocracy and it’s influence over politics in the U.S.A.
In the F.S.A., President Boone declines to run for a third term, throwing the field open to new candidates. The Republican Party nominates Vice President Henry B. Anthony of Rhode Island as it’s candidate for President. The Democrats nominate William Magear Tweed, a New York politician of Irish ancestry who has championed the cause of immigrants. Anti-immigrant feeling is still strong in the F.S.A., and despite the recession and the scandals relating to abuses committed as a result of the Boone Administration’s immigration policies, the election is a close one. But in the end, anger at the renewed recession and disgust at the anti-immigrant excesses of the Know Nothings combine to give the Democrats a victory, and William M. Tweed is elected President of the Federated States of America.
January 1869--The U.S.A.’s first transcontinental railroad is completed.
March 1869--At Washington, D.C., Robert M. T. Hunter is sworn in for a second term as President of the United States of America. At New York, William Magear Tweed is sworn in as the fifth President of the Federated States of America.
1869-1877--The administration of President William Magear Tweed of the Federated States of America. The Presidency of William Magear Tweed will leave a mixed legacy which historians will ponder to this day. Tweed’s administration will be marked by a rollback of the worst of the Know Nothing immigration laws passed during the Boone Administration. Important currency reform legislation will also be passed, which will greatly reduce the volatility of the F.S.A.‘s economy. Other important events during his administration will include the admission of California as a State, and a protracted series of Indian Wars in the West.
However, the legacy his administration will most be remembered for is rampant corruption. Tweed will sponsor lavish spending on internal improvements projects, most of which will be riddled with graft and corruption at a cost of millions of dollars to the taxpayers. As a result of shady dealings primarily by his political appointees, his second term will be marred by several major corruption scandals. In the biggest of these, two members of Tweed’s cabinet , his Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of War (who also happened to be the President and Vice President of a railroad company which was receiving government subsidies and were guilty of embezzling those funds), will be imprisoned.
The extent of Tweed‘s own involvement in this feeding frenzy of greed and corruption may never be known, but the lavish personal expenditures he will make during his term…palatial homes in New York City, Long Island, and Albany, New York; a large yacht; a private train car; and others…will be more than enough to convince a majority of the voters that “where there is smoke, there is fire.“ And indeed, there will be enough “smoke” from Tweed’s financial dealings that Tweed will be brought before impeachment proceedings in early 1876. However, he will narrowly avoid conviction in the Senate, and will serve out the remainder of his term, albeit in disgrace.
1870-1872--The War of the Three Powers. In 1868, the Spanish succession crisis breaks out on schedule, resulting in war between Prussia and France in July 1870. However, unlike in OTL, France will not fight alone in this conflict. Austrian Emperor Maximilian is something of a Francophile, and very concerned about the threat the power of Prussia poses to Austria. Shortly after taking the throne, he began cultivating improved relations with Emperor Napoleon III of France, and the two Emperors signed a secret treaty of alliance against Prussia in late 1868. When the war breaks out, therefore, Emperor Maximilian honors his treaty with Napoleon and declares war on Prussia. He is also able to persuade the south German states to refuse Prussian demands that they join the war on France, and instead, these declare war on Prussia as well. As in OTL, Italy, hoping to make territorial gains at Austria’s expense, declares war on Austria.
The Prussian war machine is very formidable, and despite the array of power lined up against it, still manages to more than hold it’s own in the struggle. However, the support of Austria, Bavaria, and the other south German states is enough to enable Napoleon III’s forces to escape total defeat at Prussian hands, and the war drags on well into 1872. Finally, the weight of the powers aligned against it begins to tell, and the Prussians are thrown back out of France and the allies invade Prussia itself. King Wilhelm of Prussia dismisses his Chancellor and architect of the war, Otto von Bismarck, and sues for peace in September 1872. The British government offers to mediate, and the Treaty of London, ending the war, is signed in January 1873. By terms of the Treaty, Prussia is allowed to formally annex the remaining states of the North German Confederation. The south German States form their own confederation, headed by Austria, known as the Sud-Deutsche Bund. Prussia is forced to pay heavy indemnities to France and Austria. France is allowed to annex Luxembourg, but takes no territory from Prussia itself. Italy gets to keep Rome…which it seized during the war…but Austria retains control of Venetia.
March 1870--California is admitted into the Federated States of America as that nation’s 18th State.
April 1870--The new transcontinental railroad is proving a boon to Anglo settlement in Mexico, especially Sonora Territory, whose citizen population has grown to the point by April 1870 that the U.S. Congress admits Sonora territory to the Union, the first of the Mexican Territories to achieve Statehood status.
July 1871--The 1870 Census reveals that California Territory has finally met the minimum population requirements for admission into the Federated States, and the F.S. Congress passes legislation creating the new State of California.
1872--James Gibbons becomes Bishop of Richmond, Virginia. Upon moving to this industrial center, Gibbons becomes aware of the plight of Mexican Catholic factory workers, who face many forms of discrimination. Over time, he will begin to work, quietly and behind the scenes, on their behalf.
March 1872--Susan B. Anthony submits to the Federated States Congress for consideration a draft Constitutional Amendment granting Women’s Suffrage. The Congress takes no immediate action.
November 1872--National Elections in the U.S.A. and the F.S.A. In the U.S.A., President Hunter decides not to run for re-election. The Democrats nominate Clement C. Claiborne of Alabama, while the Whigs nominate Henry Watkins Allen of Louisiana. The Democrats once again trot out the “Greaser-loving Whigs” mantra which served them well in the past two campaigns, and the common wisdom is that Claiborne will easily win election. The campaign of Whig candidate Allen, however, strikes a cord with an increasing segment among lower and middle-class whites who have suffered under Hunter’s economic policies and also increasingly found themselves frozen out of the slaveholding planter aristocracy by increasing slave prices, and who have thus begun to question why they should blindly support the political and economic agendas of the planters above their own interests. And so, in a landmark political upset, Henry Watkins Allen wins the election by a large majority.
In the F.S.A., the Democrats renominate President Tweed, while the Republicans nominate John Sherman of Ohio. The popular President Tweed will easily win re-election to a second term.
1873--Grasshopper plagues devastate western farms in both the F.S.A. and the U.S.A.
January 1873 onward--Rising Tensions in Europe. Prussia, it's ambitions toward German unification frustrated, reacts in three ways. First, they begin analyzing the reasons for their defeat in the recent war, and the efficient Prussian General Staff begins drafting solutions to the problems they find in their military system. They begin testing new tactics and military equipment which they hope will restore mobility to the battlefield (which, in the final two years of the war, had largely been fought from trench works).
Second, they begin looking for allies. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, and the unsatisfactory settlement forced upon the Russians at the Conference of Paris held the following year, they find one. Prussia and Russia will develop ever-closer relations over the upcoming decades, and will sign a formal treaty of Alliance at Berlin in 1884.
Third, when the scramble for overseas colonies heats up in the 1880s, Prussia will enter the fray, and will gain several colonies in Africa and the Far East. It will also build an ocean-going navy to protect those colonies. The Prussian fleet, built with Prussia's reduced resources since Germany was not united, will not be nearly as large and threatening as the OTL High Seas Fleet. Nevertheless, Britain will look with a certain nervousness at this emerging sea power which is allied with it's traditional rival, Russia.
Meanwhile, in response to the announcement of the Russo-Prussian Pact, France and Austria will sign a treaty of Alliance at Vienna in 1885. Italy will join the Russo-Prussian Pact in 1887. Britain remains formally outside of the emerging alliance system in Europe, but in fact (due both to the fear of Prussian and Russian intentions, and also because Emperor Napoleon IV of France is a confirmed Anglophile who cultivates good relations with Britain) will be a de facto, if not de jure, ally of France and Austria.
March 1873--In a ceremony at Washington, D.C., Henry Watkins Allen is sworn in as the sixteenth President of the United States of America. At New York, William Magear Tweed is sworn in for a second term as President of the Federated States of America.
1873-1881--The administration of President Henry Watkins Allen of the United States of America. Allen’s term will once again see the passage of internal improvements legislation by Congress, and, while the amendment to the Mexican Bullion Act which was passed under Hunter’s Administration will not be repealed, Allen will successfully lobby for in increase in the tariff for the purpose of fostering industrial growth in the U.S.
Allen’s policies will prove to be just the stimulus the U.S. economy needs, and he will be remembered as the President who ended the “Planter Recession,” as the economic downturn caused by the policies of President Robert M. T. Hunter and his plantation aristocrat supporters in Congress has come to be called in the United States. He will also go down in history as a peacemaker, after successfully negotiating a treaty which ends the ongoing insurrection in Mexico, in the process re-establishing an independent Mexican state.
May 1874--Bishop James Gibbons starts an educational program to teach English to Mexican workers and their families in the Richmond area.
1875--The National Women Suffrage Association and the Women Suffrage Association of the Federated States merge to form the National Woman Suffrage Association of the Federated States (NWSAFS). As the movement's mainstream organization, NWSAFS wages state-by-state campaigns to obtain voting rights for women.
June 1875--California del Norte and Nuevo Leon are admitted by the U.S. Congress into the Union as States.
November 1876--National Elections in the U.S.A. and the F.S.A. In the U.S.A., President Henry Watkins Allen is renominated by the Whig Party, while the Democrats nominate Robert Lowry of Mississippi. Lowry is a rich planter and another candidate of the powerful plantation aristocracy which controls the Democratic Party, and does not run an effective campaign. Allen easily wins election to a second term.
In the F.S.A., disgraced President William Magear Tweed declines to run for re-election. Instead, the Democrats nominate Grover Cleveland of New Jersey, while the Republicans nominate J. Neely Johnson of Indiana (in OTL, Johnson had gone west during the California Gold Rush, where he won election as Governor of California in 1856 on the American Party/Know Nothing ticket. In the ATL, he never left Indiana and became involved with the American Republican Party there, eventually rising to Governor of Indiana by 1860 and later serving in the Senate as a Republican. He also does not experience the decline in health which killed him in 1872 at the age of 47 in OTL, and so is still alive to run for President in 1876). Promising an “honest and trustworthy administration,” with a “kinder and gentler, but still firm” policy on immigration, Johnson takes advantage of general public disgust with the corruption of the Democrats to win a landslide victory.
January 1877--Death of Emperor Napoleon III of France (in OTL he died in 1873, largely as a result of ill health and a broken heart caused by his defeat in the Franco Prussian War. A Napoleon III rejuvenated by victory in the war with Prussia lives a few years longer). He is succeeded by his son, who reigns as Emperor Napoleon IV. Napoleon IV will continue the liberalizing trends began by his father in the latter years of his reign, and will prove to be a popular and successful ruler.
March 1877--In a ceremony at Washington, D.C., Henry Watkins Allen is sworn in for a second term as President of the United States. At New York, J. Neely Johnson is sworn in as the sixth President of the Federated States of America.
1877-1878--The Russo-Turkish War happens as per OTL. As in OTL, Russia wins and imposes harsh terms on the Ottoman Empire. The other great powers of Europe hold a conference at Paris in late 1878 where all the great powers...except Prussia, which did not attend the conference...insist that Russia give up most of its gains won in the war. This, of course, angers the Russians, and sets the stage for the later alliance between Russia and Prussia.
1877-1880--The administration of President J. Neely Johnson of the Federated States of America. Johnson proves to be somewhat of a genial non-entity, and although he promised somewhat tougher, but still “kinder and gentler” immigration laws, none are passed during his administration. He will die in office before the end of his first term.
August 1877--Death of President Brigham Young of the Republic of Deseret. Young is succeeded in office by Vice President John Taylor, who will serve out the remainder of Young’s current four year term, which ends in 1879 (the next Deseret general elections are to be held in November 1878).
October 1877--James Gibbons become Archbishop of Baltimore. He will use the authority given him by his new post to expand the education program for Mexican workers, which he founded in Richmond, Virginia while serving as Bishop there, to all the cities whose Catholic churches are under his leadership.
November 1878--In General Elections held in the Republic of Deseret, John Taylor is elected as President (the first time he has been elected on his own account as President). Taylor will continue to serve until his own death in 1887.
April 1879--The Treaty of Mexico City is signed, whereby the U.S. agrees to withdraw, over a five year period, from all the Mexican Territories except California del Norte, New Mexico, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Baja California. The United States agrees to the re-establishment of an independent Mexico, in exchange for economic concessions (specifically the right to continue to exploit Mexico’s gold and silver mines) by the new Mexican government. The Mexicans agree to grant legal protection to the lives and property of Anglos who have made their homes in Mexico, in exchange for an agreement to relax legal restrictions on Mexicans living in the United States (in practice, neither side will live up to that portion of the agreement with any great enthusiasm, and many Anglos who have made their homes in Mexico will return to the U.S. over the succeeding years. Since the Mexicans already living in the U.S. are pretty much used to living with restricted rights, however, few of them choose to return to Mexico).
1880--Emperor Maximilian of Austria, who has remained childless (apparently either he or the Empress Charlotte was infertile…given that Charlotte is reputed to have, in OTL after Maximilian’s death, had an affair which produced a son, it was probably Maximilian), and is under increasing pressure to name an heir. He has become very fond of his nephew, the former Crown Prince Rudolf (son of Franz Josef), and has been grooming him as his heir. Rudolf has been an ardent supporter of Maximilian’s liberalization of the Empire, and Maximilian sees him as someone who will carry on his legacy after his death. Therefore in December 1880, he formally anoints the 22-year old Rudolf as the new Crown Prince and heir apparent of the Austrian Empire.
1880-1881--The Nez Perce War. When the government of the F.S.A. demands that the Nez Perce Indians of the Wallowa Valley, in Oregon, remove to a reservation, a band led by Chief Joseph defies the order and flees to Canada. F.S. Army units are sent to pursue, and are defeated by Chief Joseph in several battles. In one of the rare Native American victories of the long, sad period of the Indian Wars, Joseph and his band elude their pursuers and escape to Canada.
May 1880--California is the first State of the F.S.A. to grant women the right to vote.
June 1880--President J. Neely Johnson of the F.S.A. dies in office (his health problems which killed him in OTL having been delayed, but not stopped, finally catch up to him). He is succeeded by his Vice President, John Sherman of Ohio, who becomes the seventh President of the Federated States of America.
June 1880-March 1881--The administration of President John Sherman of the Federated States of America. President Sherman will, like his predecessor, have an unremarkable, and short, administration.
July 1880, Paris, France: Emperor Napoleon IV is married to Princess Beatrice, youngest daughter of Queen Victoria of Great Britain. The union of these two royal houses will also cement an alliance between France and Britain which will have great impacts on future history.
November 1880--National Elections in the U.S.A. and the C.S.A. In the U.S.A., President Henry Watkins Allen declines to run for a third term. In his stead, the Whig Party nominates John Joseph Martin of North Carolina, while the Democrats nominate James Black Groome of Maryland. The nomination of Groome represents a revolt by the pro-internal-improvements and pro-industrialization wing of the Democratic Party, which has been suppressed by the power of the plantation aristocrats since the election of 1864.
There is not much to choose from between the two candidates, and in a narrow election, Groome wins. His victory will effectively seal the fate of the plantation aristocracy as the controlling political force in the U.S.A. With both political parties in the control of those opposed to the aristocrats and their agenda, the aristocrats find themselves out in the cold and helplessly watch as the full agenda of their opponents is enacted into law over the next few decades.
In the F.S.A., the Republicans nominate President Sherman, and the Democrats nominate Thomas Reed Cobb of Indiana. In a narrow election, Cobb defeats Sherman to win the Presidency.
MORE TO COME SHORTLY...