On the plus side a weak and enfeebled US is much better news for the rest of the Western hemisphere given the tendency for the US to support every corrupt dictator who makes a vaguely anti communist statement that constituted US foreign policy for most of the second half of the 20th Century. Not to mention the activities of US settlers in Hawaii or the United Fruit Company starting rather earlier So bad news for the US is not bad news for the world necessarily
Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond
- Thread starter EnglishCanuck
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So you know thats very far away and it could still very much happen. But there's one problem with that logic the csa is around and they are victorious and they have an expansion bent with the knights of the golden circle wanting to continue expansion of slavery in Central and Latin America so you're getting an even worse situations like william walkers filibuster wars that are gonna happen soon cause he is very much gonna be influencing what young filibustering confederates or veterans of the war for the expansion of slavery which is gonma lead to pretty much the same situation with the banana republics but earlier and more violent and worse. But that's speculation
And then we have the situation of Brazil what's going on there cause the csa is gonna be gunning for a slaver Republic forming against the abolitionist and reformist dom pedro and his family and cabinet so there gonna have very big plans in Brazil to help out the slavers there. And there's still there goal of conquest of cuba that near and dear to the higher ups in csa.
Well it's 1867 and I haven't killed a single president by assassination, so that needs to change...
It's more "sundering" of the US. Decline is a strong term for what's happening, though you can bet that circa 2020 of TTL the US will not be a hyperpower.
Less to do with one president's incompetence, more with some very specific regional issues that the West Coast also got very irritable about OTL if they decide to pull the trigger on seceding.
The higher you climb the harder you fall is a good way to look at the next half century in some cases. However, I don't intend to just have a series of squabbling, backbiting, and petty political rivalries tear the US apart. They had a lot of reason not to do that, and not everyone involved in US politics at the time is a small minded bigot looking for personal glory. The people who help drag the US out of this mess are on the horizon, but alas we have some petty things to monitor from here!
Keep the Republicans and Radical Democracy Party in mind! The Wild Election of 1868 is going to be an interesting exercise in personal grudges and regional rivalries, while there are definitely going to be some surprising winners in the Senate! I genuinely hope the surprises keep people wondering how it all goes wrong!
Though you're right, in the future there's going to be a lot of shade thrown at men like Buchanan, McClellan and his successor for choosing compromise rather than an unpopular and principled stand. Lincoln will at the very least be more fondly remembered by posterity because his children will help write his story and his actions, all honorable, will make it so that the post-war mess ups are very much seen as beyond his power to solve. While he won't quite have that martyr status, he's still going to be seen as a man who was right more often than wrong. A positive step for him, but one which will take a little while.
As @Nightstorm86 astutely points out, there's still a mean little expansionist republic with a very imperial mindset amongst its worst political class that has its eyes set on the Caribbean. Not to mention European powers still sniffing around for advantage in the Americas. Spain may have just gotten some embarassing defeats in the Southern hemisphere and Caribbean in 1866-67, but that doesn't mean more established powers will not seek to get some advantage over the nations of the Americas while the US squabbles. Be careful who you take a loan from!
That said, Hawaii has a much more cosmopolitan and less "bombed by Japan" future ahead of it with the US now very unlikely to annex it. There's some different politics coming in that direction!
Bullying their neighbours in the name of
Beating up the less than stable governments of Central America is well within their power. Outright annexation may be less than likely, but overt influence is a big possibility for the future.
There's a cabal that would like a bigger friend in Brazil too!
With Imperial Russian ambitions extending to the Pacific I could see the Great Game extend to Hawaii which could ironically save it from colonisation, neither side wants the other to have so the Natives are able to play both sides off each other and spare themselves from the worst of the 19th century.
As for CSA ambitions in Latin America well they're gonna run into competition with European Powers wanting to exploit the region, France at the very least is going to want to extend their influence to Central America.
Wouldn't that also apply to Britain in that while they got a victory over America cemented for now there status as the world power they also created a state where animosity towards them would be the great norm and the fact right now they are still in midst of political infighting and unrest that is gonna bring the union to its knees but will slowly bounce back and not be british friendly and would rather seek out rival powers for trade and go for a more self sufficient mindset so it could not have blockade situation again.
And the next generation is being raised with that mindset of anglophobia and being the shining city on the hill so it's less likely to fight alongside Britain and more likely to fight against her interests cause hate and fury can take nations to the next step as hate Is a great motivator to change and better one self/nation just look at the animosity of France and Britain stretches centuries of rivalry and stabbing at each other as a basis for relations coming ahead with Britain and the Union in the coming decades when the US bounces back Is gonna do everything in its power to block Britain's interests while also exonerating itself of blame.
And the fact that Britain Is gonna find having closer relations with csa is not going to be in there interests with there whole expansionist slavery mindset and there want of grand control of the Caribbean and there upcoming new wave of filibuster wars which Britain will be mad about not getting there Share of the cake.
So basically Britain gaining the csa as a ally is gonna be like a monkey paw scenario with immediate benefits in the short term while large unforseen consequences like I explained above with the future alienation of the US of an ally and trade partner and them being all too happy to block interest of the British and the confederates being more trouble than there worth.
And it's gonna be interesting to see the us develop it's naval prowess cause right now with early development of submarines could lead them to a very interesting route in naval domination cause they have a better shot in uboat domination than Germany with there geography. And where they are gonna dominate.
Also as I'm from the Philippines I'm interested to see how we handle our independence movement without being curtailed by the us in there war of annexation against us. Cause I think with what is going on there more likely to help us and secure usa the a friendly nation in the heartland of Oceania criss crossing Japan, Indonesia, and China with its important strategic location with trade cause they aren't getting Hawaii from what you're sayinf and to pull the finger at the imperial Spanish.
This more on my hopeful helpful America that I wish for we pretty much got our independence secure but America was in its empire phase and wanted to flex to the world and made a deal with Spain that pretty much nullified all of the first republics hard work and started there conquest of the Philippines which I hope it doesn't happen and they help us instead as keeping to there values but I wouldn't mind that we are pretty much an American protectorate as long as we advance our industry and have rights intact. But that's just speculation.
The alt-history idea of a victorious (well, independent) Confederacy as mighty empire builder in Latin America and the Caribbean goes back at least to Bring the Jubilee.
And given the history of of the two decades before the War - the Mexican War, the California and Texas Republics, the filibusters of the 1850's, and more official US interest in certain Caribbean polities (to say nothing of certain postwar official intrigues along these lines in the 1870's), I suppose this shouldn't be surprising.
But I do wonder just what kind of shape a Confederacy which has suffered four years of war, as it has here, will be in for doing much in the way of serious adventures abroad. Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan did not get the same opportunity to ransack vast swaths of the South as in OTL, but their losses in blood and treasure are still not inconsiderable; and just keeping up that new navy is going to absorb resources desperately needed to rebuild, pay down war debt, assist crippled veterans, etc...
Of course, the polities to its south are even weaker. But I have to wonder if its efforts to expand influence to the South won't be more indirect in nature...
While the Deep South was untouched also remember that the destruction of super important states like Virginia and Kentucky are of the stalingrad and dresden levels with the monstrous amount of fighting there which and the fact there was a massive de population of both black and white due to the fighting and the abolition freeing the slaves and the border states also de populating of unionist aligned people which is gonna further the manpower shortage of the south and add to that of the Grey terror causing more shortages its Not all sunny in the south right now.
Wait, so there were cases where the West Coast tried seceding from the US IOTL even after the civil war? What kind of issues caused such sentiment? I'm curious right now.
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I know my previous posts are pessimistic and I apologize but I have been feeling very down for a while and I don't know why. Honestly, TTL US has a better chance of digging itself out of the hole it's found itself in than I can get out of mine.
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No case where they tried OTL, but in the 1850s a very real sense of alienation or that Washington didn't do enough for them, and there's some very specific OTL circumstances that led to acrimonious debates about how much authority the states had over matters of who could come. Let's just say that racism is going to be a problem bedeviling political consensus for a while.
So what I'm getting is that Western Alienation is a thing in the US throughout the 19th century and maybe in the 20th century. They (likely) won't secede but can use the threat of secession as a political tool (among other issues) to get Washington's attention, especially when the US does not want more states dropping out after the south did, and to advance certain agendas. So future US domestic politics will involve a delicate approach to improve their relations with the West Coast. I take it that in the future, the western states will be equal to the eastern states in the future for a more equal union, and that is something the New Men and others will work towards in the Realignment Age.
IMO, while an independent West is interesting to some readers here, accounts of how the US navigate this and prevent western secession could be a more interesting direction. If there is one thing I noticed, is that in general, political drama is more interesting than military drama.
I expect the UK and France may say go away to the CSA if they push it too much and may decide Mexico would make a nice anti CSA proxy in the region as time goes on and secondly the CSA just is not that big a threat to a reasonable sized nations like Chile that the UK anf France could potentially align with to restrain both them and the US
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I suspect British public opinion will not support an actual alliance with the CSA unless both are attacked by the US for reasons similar to UK pub
lic opinion on the Ottamans
Which is another reason to hate President Useless and his successor. If someone competent had defeated the Rebs, Central America wouldn't've become a diaper fire.
Indeed - and these were also the most industrialized states, too, producing the most economic output (and treasury income!) in the CSA, too!
This, in a polity with only 5-6 million white citizens. That's about the same population as Sweden-Norway at that time.
IIRC the Russians did have a presence on Hawaii at some point, as did the HBC. I know @The Gunslinger has a better grasp on the myriad of shenanigans the trading companies were up to across the West and Pacific! But the monarchy playing off the two sides against each other, and Japan, would be interesting.
The crown prince of Hawaii is currently Queen Victoria's godson - and this was true OTL! - which may or may not play a part in how things shape up on the island!
Well they've already flexed their muscles in Mexico, and there was interest in a Panama Canal OTL to...
I see someone is using their thinking cap! However, there's one thing that I've stressed repeatedly within the commentary of the TL, there will be no Harry Turtledove like "eternal rivalry" between the US and the UK. There will be no special relationship of OTL, but we're very much not going to see a "Fourth Anglo-American War" come 1914 either.
The US is of course always going to be suspicious of British motives (with good reason) but they're also not going to go absolutely out of their way to antagonize the largest naval power on Earth again until they feel like they can stand on their own two feet.
Relations between the CSA and the UK aren't particularly close either. The CSA sees Britain as having hopped out of the conflict and leaving them to their own devices (true) but feels like they were owed more than what Britain provided (false). That means the CSA and Britain are very much at cross purposes in the Caribbean and Central America. That leaves room for another European power to extend a helping hand...
Like most powers in the late 19th century, naval development in the US will be uneven as everyone tries to figure out "the next big thing" pre-Dreadnought. Whether its fast armored cruisers (the way Farragut envisions) or huge armored battleships (Mahan) or submarines (DuPont). These competing ideas, and the realization that the Atlantic is less of a bar to British naval might in the age of steam than they supposed, is going to shape their methods going forward.
The biggest factor that cripples the US outside of home waters in WiF (and OTL) was that they had no coaling bases outside their coasts, which put their ships at a supreme disadvantage. They could certainly make a fight of home waters, but could not carry their power abroad. Even Roosevelt's famed Great White Fleet found itself having to rely on purchased British coal and coaling ships OTL. Not the look for a navy who might have to challenge Britain one day! So fixing that problem will be high on American priorities! Unfortunately for some...
There is a very different trajectory for the Philippines in WiF I will be exploring. Sadly, not too much interaction with the United States directly as Asia is going in a very different direction as China fails to become a complete basket case across the rest of the 19th century. Expect more competition between powers that are not the US in this theater!
The idea of a democratic republic has been a wee bit tarnished by the Great American War in WiF, with people looking at how that city on a hill fractured over as awful a question as slavery and reconsidering its ideals. With the United States also grappling with that impact the city on a hill has suffered, the US will enter a big of a different period under the tutelage of the New Men who see something of a different vision for the United States at home and abroad thanks to the trauma of the 1860s.
You can put that on the "snowball's chance in Hell" tally.
British public opinion was flattered by the CSA despite all the awful evidence in the early days because it fit in with the era liberal feelings of helping the underdog and aligned neatly with anti-Yankee feelings of convenience. Long term exposure (and Britain getting out of the war while the going was good) have soured Confederate opinion. The unrepentant slavery thing will sour British opinion sooner rather than later.
Buyers remorse for more than one reason in the future!