The Trent Affair, Manitoba, and the Metis...

MacCaulay · Jul 7, 2009

...okay. I've been saving this up for awhile, but I don't pitch much, and I hardly ever pitch on the pre-1900 board. So here goes:

A long time ago, I started this timeline called "The Northwest Campaign." It was a look at the Civil War after the British entered after the Trent Affair. But I took a look at operations that would pop up in the Great Lakes region and farther westward.

Later, I had a brainstorm:

A few months into the new, widened war, Louis Riel shows up at Minneapolis with a message for General Pope (the commander of the Army of the Great Lakes in my TL).

Basically, he'll give the Union military Upper and Lower Fort Garry if they arm the Metis the way that the Americans believe the British have been arming the Native Americans.

There's more to it, but that's the long and the short of it. Many people, when they consider a widened American Civil War, only think of the American ramifications.

What I'm proposing is that British intervention would have speeded up and heightened the Red River Resistance by around 7 years, and orders of magnitude as far as violence and power.
They probably wouldn't have been independent, since the British and Canadian military would've eventually come back after the war was over. But they would've made it difficult.

This was just a brainstorm I had.

TechRat · Jul 7, 2009

Sounds like a great idea.

MacCaulay · Jul 7, 2009

TechRat said:
Sounds like a great idea.

Thanks.

I suppose I should elaborate on the whole "Upper and Lower Fort Garry" thing.

Canada, like the United States, had a vast uncharted and unsettled West for much of it's history. Canada's West was largely unsettled almost into the 20th Century.

Upper and Lower Fort Garry were actually not military forts at all, though they housed military units. They were trading posts with stockades for housing trading companies such as Hudson's Bay, and the like.
The Red River was part of the trading route that ran up to Winnipeg, and from their to the Canadian Pacific coast.

The Forts Garry were the link to Winnipeg. And Winnipeg was the link communication travel into and out of British North America. Were the Americans to get control of the Forts Garry, they could more or less cut off Winnipeg and the rest of the Canadian West (then British North America) from British and Canadian control, effectively holding it for ransom.

In 1867 (or '69, I forget which) a group of Metis, French-Indian inhabitants of the Red River region, armed themselves and took control of the Forts. They blockaded the roads and fought running battles with the British and Canadian forces that came to subdue them. They were led by one of the most amazing and craziest men in Canadian and North American military history: Louis Riel.

Louis Riel would have a mental breakdown after the Resistance, and become a school teacher in the US. Over a decade later, he returned to Canada at the Metis' insistence to lead yet another resistance, this time in Saskatchewan.

MacCaulay · Jul 8, 2009

Really? Nothing?

It's got everything...the Civil War, the Trent Affair, attempted North American Balkanization...I thought those things were like gold on the pre-1900 board.

Scarecrow · Jul 8, 2009

It's not my area of experitse be this is a very interesting idea MacC! A much better look at the Trent Afair then the standard American focus.

wormyguy · Jul 8, 2009

Related to this - I'd be interested in knowing what percentage of the population was still Francophone at the time in Louisiana in general and New Orleans in particular.

dreadnought jenkins · Jul 8, 2009

MacCaulay said:
Thanks.

I suppose I should elaborate on the whole "Upper and Lower Fort Garry" thing.

Canada, like the United States, had a vast uncharted and unsettled West for much of it's history. Canada's West was largely unsettled almost into the 20th Century.

Upper and Lower Fort Garry were actually not military forts at all, though they housed military units. They were trading posts with stockades for housing trading companies such as Hudson's Bay, and the like.
The Red River was part of the trading route that ran up to Winnipeg, and from their to the Canadian Pacific coast.

The Forts Garry were the link to Winnipeg. And Winnipeg was the link communication travel into and out of British North America. Were the Americans to get control of the Forts Garry, they could more or less cut off Winnipeg and the rest of the Canadian West (then British North America) from British and Canadian control, effectively holding it for ransom.

In 1867 (or '69, I forget which) a group of Metis, French-Indian inhabitants of the Red River region, armed themselves and took control of the Forts. They blockaded the roads and fought running battles with the British and Canadian forces that came to subdue them. They were led by one of the most amazing and craziest men in Canadian and North American military history: Louis Riel.

Louis Riel would have a mental breakdown after the Resistance, and become a school teacher in the US. Over a decade later, he returned to Canada at the Metis' insistence to lead yet another resistance, this time in Saskatchewan.

I'm not sure this could happen seven years earlier.

The red river rebellion was caused by the transfer of Rupert's Land to Canada, and Metis attempts to negotiate their own province within Canada.

I doubt you'd see Riel actually offer to surrender the forts to Americans, who had a terrible reputation in the North West Territories due to the conflicts with American whiskey traders.

Could happen though... but you might need a different Metis in power, or move back the Canadian control of the North West.

MacCaulay · Jul 8, 2009

Scarecrow said:
It's not my area of experitse be this is a very interesting idea MacC! A much better look at the Trent Afair then the standard American focus.

Thanks! That's sort of why I pitched it. I think a lot of people seem to operate in a mindset that a British Entry would affect America and only America.
It's not finger pointing, it's just that the folks who would even know who Louis Riel is probably aren't really thinking about the Civil War, and vice versa. So the two don't really get plugged in.
There's actually probably a lot of ancillary cause-and-effect things like this between Canada and America.

wormyguy said:
Related to this - I'd be interested in knowing what percentage of the population was still Francophone at the time in Louisiana in general and New Orleans in particular.

Massive. Benjamin Butler, the Union General who was the commander at New Orleans, talks about dealing with the Acadians in his memoirs.

They were real dicks, apparently. They came in from the bayous and didn't really feel the need to learn much English.

foresterab · Jul 8, 2009

Interesting area...would definately put the pressure on to improve the railroad situation in order to reach the area.

Much to think about here....unfortunatly at work so much return to this later.

Faeelin · May 22, 2010

MacCaulay said:
Really? Nothing?

It's got everything...the Civil War, the Trent Affair, attempted North American Balkanization...I thought those things were like gold on the pre-1900 board.

Okay, I have to comment here. I'm not so sure that the Metis will lose. If faced with American annexation in a peace treaty, or submission to the British, which would they have chosen?