alternatehistory.com

This is my next attempt at a full-blown TL. This will go from 1860 (if possible) to the present day, so much of the focus will be on events after 1900.

The format will be like Kaiser K's great TL "Hammer's, Sickle's and Mushroom Clouds: A Story of the Reverse Cold War", to which I give full credit to Kaiser K.
Some events in my TL might be implausible or even outright ASB, but you should mind that this is not an attempt at "hard", ultra-plausible AH. I will try to stay somewhat realistic.

And now, let us start... The real interesting parts of the TL will come later, so the first update might seem short to you.


Wrong Type of Kentucky, Wrong Type of France

Chapter 1: May 16, 1860 (Chicago, Illinois, USA) - April 7, 1885 (Washington D.C, District of Columbia, USA)

Why not to elect a radical...

The American Civil War:

It all began with the Republican National Convention, held in May 1860 in Chicago, Illinois. On May 16, approx. 3 p.m., a man called William Kane Bichter II, a radical supporter of the peculiar institution from Alabama, shot Abraham Lincoln six times in his home(?) in Springfield, Illinois, four of those shots being fatal.



A statue of young Abraham Lincoln, put up in his memorial near the location of the RNC, where he was to be nominated for the 1860 Presidential Election

A candidate of the RNC was dead, and thus, a day of mourning was inserted into the RNC. After that, all Republicans, despite their earlier and multiple concerns about him, could only rally around one candidate: The rather radical, but not ultra-extremist Republican William H. Seward.

In order to be safe of winning important states like Pennsylvania and New Jersay, Seward chose the Pennsylvanian Simon Cameron as his running mate, which resulted in a Seward/Cameron Republican Ticket for 1860. The Southerners already threatened secession and "the full array of resistance" in case of a Republican victory in the election.

And thus, Douglas/Johnson decided not to run and throw their support behind Bell/Everett.

On Election Day, the people voted and it was a very, very divisive election. In the South (including Missouri and Kentucky), Breckinridge/Lane won all electoral votes except those in Tennesse, the most "divided" slave state where Bell/Everett hindered a total sweep.

This election result could, of course, not be accepted by the South who wanted to keep the "peculiar institution" and thus, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Missouri, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and, Most importantly, Kentucky seceded from the Union even before Seward could take office. By the win of the radical Seward, beriah Magoffin could rally even more of the Kentucky legislature to agree to a convention in which the people of Kentucky were to decide. The proposal got through Kentucky Congress, and so the people of Kentucky decided in an emergency election in January 1861. This resulted in the final decision to secede with the reelection of Beriah Magoffin.

Four more states seceded after the Union demanded troops to put down the "rebels" and "insurrectionists" and made their demand clear with an attempt to retake Fort Sumter. It led to secessions in Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri.

Soon after the start of the civil war, it seemed as if Union Troops were winning: They had come quite close to Richmond, the capital of the CSA, and they were holding territory in Missouri and Kentucky. The CSA, however, hoping from recognition by The UK, Spain and/or France, sent emissaries out in November 1861. And then, it happened... the US Navy put the two ships under arrest. Britain and France naturally sent ultimatums threatening war and recognition of the CSA if the diplomats were not let free immediately. Seward, a radical Republican and abolitionist, rebuffed the ultimatum as he wanted to stand by his harsh stance against the CSA and slavery. Soon enough, Britain and France recognised the CSA as an independent state.

While Britain (whose recognition came on February 22, 1862) was reluctant to truly support the CSA which would have meant total war and an invasion of Canada on the part of the USA, France, not having any possessions that were urgently threatened, sent support to the CSA via a newly installed Habsburg emperor in Mexico. In effect, Mexico, France and the CSA made an alliance with the condition that Mexico was to cede Baja California and the coastal part in Sonora to the CSA after they had won the civil war.

Now, with much more troops and supplies coming into the CSA, they were able to beat the Union Troops back out of Missouri and Kentucky. And when the rebels were truly threatening Washington DC (even if the chances of truly taking it are nowadays judged to be slim) in July 1862, Seward sued for peace.

In the peace agreement signed in Toronto on September 15, 1862 (Peace of Toronto), the USA, CSA, Britain, France and Mexico agreed on the following main points:

- No reparations payments for either side
- Recognition of the CSA by the USA as an independent state
- No border changes to the northern US Border

The first president of the CSA was Jefferson Davis. The CSA constitution enshrined slavery, the peculiar institution, but basically it is a US constitution with the term of the POTCON and VPOTCON modified to six years with one reelection possible and slavery (and more states' rights) enshrined in it.

Meanwhile in Europe...

In Europe meanwhile, the most important event was the death of Giuseppe Garibaldi. He died of cholera and/or typhoid (the cause of death is still disputed) while in Genoa in his attempt to rally supporters for a march against the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Thus, the rebellions that broke out in the Kingdom in 1861 were quickly and swiftly crushed and the people more or less appeased by giving them a few more democratic rights.

More to the north, several wars happened... most importantly, there was the war between Prussia and Austria. Prussia wanted the leadership of the German Confederation and its aim was to unify Germany. And Russia promised to help Germany in a war against Austria as long as Germany would then buy Alaska to "redress" Russia for the war costs. As Russia intervened on the German side of the war, France and Denmark intervened on the Austrian side and, after a relatively short 7-month war (October 1864 to June 1865), several territorial changes were made:

- Denmark regained recently-conquered Schleswig-Holstein
- Germany gained the Sudetenland from Austria and gained a lot of influence.

France was to keep Alsace-Lorraine, and Germany could be united with a Kleindeutsche Lösung still somewhat incorporating Austria as it was still a member of the German Confederation. However, Austria was forced to give the minorities a few rights in the peace treaty...

From 1862 (Leading the Workers to Progress), a certain Dries Clijsters, strongly influenced by the writings of Karl Marx (The Capital), Friedrich Engels, Richard Owen, and other such early communists and labour activists, started writing about the labour movement and its ideal form of organisation. For him, the ideal form of organisation were centralised trade unions overcoming the idea of separation by branch, which should ideally with the method of a general strike of as much of the population as possible, lame and then take over the government of all states. The means of production were to be controlled by this (single or multiple) trade union(s), but it was not to be undemocratic, but all posts were to be elected. Within the trade-union-based parliament, there could be conservative, radical, and other elements... In most European countries, Clijsters' writings were banned or heavily censored, but in the US and, to many's surprise, also in the UK, they could freely circulate.
However much censorship was applied, soon enough, most countries of Europe and North America had one or more trade unions claiming to be "the" overarching one which will organise the Clijstersist revolution. Some even had a Clijstersist party or other (pseudo-)legal organisation.

Africa was divvied up between the European Powers, with France propping up the Mali Empire and expanding it to a vast extent at the cost of its neighbouring kingdoms, sultanates, empires and tribes. However, the Mali Empire, while de jure independent, de facto is fully under French control. Notably, Germany and all three Italian States were able to gain significant colonial areas, as was Russia. Russia also managed to get its long-desired warm-water ports on the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden, it remains unclear, however, of how much use they will be in the future...

In Asia, the Taiping Rebellion was crushed as were the rebellions in British and Dutch East Indies, with a few colonial wars bringing a somewhat different (and more favourable to the Dutch and Spanish) settlement in the East Indies.

Reconstruction and how it can fail: Back to the Americas

After the civil war was, for all intents and purposes, lost, William Seward pushed through his radically abolitionist agenda in the north: He freed all slaves of Kansas and Nebraska, Maryland and Delaware, and passed an amendment banning slavery constitutionally and granting all people equal rights. This part of his agenda was not the worst part however.
For the US, the worse part of Radical Reconstruction was that, under Seward and from 1864 onwards in an enhanced form under one-termer Salmon P. Chase (1865-1869), two-term Republican Presidents Charles Sumner (1869-1877) and Thaddeus Stevens (1877-1883, died in office), everything and everyone supporting the CSA was either rejected, ostracised or had worse things done to them.

The breaking off of relations with Britain and France, as well as Austria-Hungary who recognised the CSA as independent in 1863, harmed the US economy significantly as nearly everything had to now be produced domestically, whereas Britain and France were not significantly affected as they had their colonies. A part of Radical Reconstruction, which started under Charles Sumner with the so-called Jasona-Kayle Act (officially: Supporters of Treacherous Undertakings (Interrogation) Act 1874), was also applying "superior methods of inquiry" (read: torture and forced disappearance) to anyone who was suspected of having supported the Confederacy. While such methods as life imprisonment, death penalties in rather quick trials and the methods legalised by the Jasona-Kayle Act were at first only applied to people who had really supported the CSA (treacherous military officers, people trading with the CSA in big quantities,...), these methods were, under the administration of Thaddeus Stevens, extended to... basically anyone who said anything too good or propagated, advocated, or supported in any other way the Confederate States of America.

In 1883, resistance was already growing within the populace, President Thaddeus Stevens died in office of old age. His replacement, VP Ebenezer Ornsbee, just did what Stevens would likely have done, too. Meanwhile, France had ended the alliance with the CSA after it was uncovered that the CSA, allegedly officially sanctioned (which could not be proven), ships arms to Yucatan rebels in Mexico. However, Thaddeus Stevens still was not prepared to reopen relations...

To make matters worse, the Confederate-US War of 1879-1880 was a costly matter and British and French intervention was again barely staved off. It broke out when the US government under Stevens was accused, quite probably rightly so, to not enforce the Fugitive Slave Act and to support black slave rebellions in the northern parts of Kentucky and Virginia, and to support the secessionists in Northern Missouri. The Confederacy tried to invade Indiana and Illinois, but rebellions in several parts of the CSA (Texas, southern Florida, Northern Missouri) broke out more hefty than ever (or for the first time at all), leading to all troops being pulled back quickly and used to brutally crush the revolts. Although all armed movements could be crushed, there remain constant protests , demonstrations and strikes in these areas that are, whether justifiably or not, all called "Clijstersist traitors" by the CSA government.

The US, upon invasion of their rightful territory, declared war on the Confederates and, under POTCON Braxton Bragg, managed to secure at least North Missouri and a part of Kentucky due to counter-secessions by Missourian and Kentuckian delegates from the CSA Congress. However, it was costly in money and lives, taking place with the economy already battered, and was an added point of discontent.

In this atmosphere of authoritarianism, costly wars, and popular discontent, several new parties rose to prominence in the USA in the 1880 and moreso in the 1884 election cycle: A Prohibition Party associated with the Temperance Movement with the position that "alcohol and other moral corruptions" lead to this downfall leading to campaign promises of "restoring moral values" and such, and the Equality Party. Its 1884 ticket is led by Jonathan A. Hunters from New Hampshire, who chose Aristeda P. Meshias from Seward (Oregon) as running mate.

Still, the Republican Party put up a strong, and now moderate, nominee up: Ralph A. Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln, with Adam Hopkin as VP candidate.
The 1884 election would be the most crucial in American history: The Equality Ticket won narrowly, thanks to the Prohibition and a "Restoration" ticket splitting the Republican vote enough to send the election to the house where quite a few discontented Republicans voted Equalist.

However, shortly after Jonathan A. Hunters was inaugurated, namely on March 22, the military, some conservative Republican factions, together with former president Ebenezer Ornsbee, staged a coup in the Oval Office, killing Hunters and calling themselves the "Government of Salvation of Freedom". As reason for this coup, they cited the Equalist's open and covert association with Trade Unions, especially with (Marxist-)Clijstersist elements of them, and their supposedly openly "Clijstersist Agenda which would destroy the basic rights and freedoms of the American People, forever bestowed upon them by the constitution".

Nevertheless, the people found this violation of their right to elect their president and not have it determined for them egregious and, by April 7, there were armed protestors on the streets of every major city, most importantly including Philadelphia, the new de facto capital...


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