No, this predates him.Turtledove did it.
No, this predates him.
The 'official' reason would be the Mormon War was the most recent Antebellum conflict the US had seen, only half a decade earlier, so tensions would presumably still be high.
The real reason was that pre-Turtledovian AH saw the ACW as the perfect chance to balkanize the US as much as possible. Turtledove likely felt the US would instead crack down hard on any 'rogue' elements instead.
That is substantiated by early '00s and pre-2000 online AH on places such as Stephen Abbott's website and various Angelfire and Tripod sites still in existence. Good grasp of AH meta-history.
So this has more to do with AH tropage rather than any historical basis? More literary flourish than counterfactual plausibility?
Why is it in Civil War Timelines, or even many AH staples like TL-191, especially ones where the CSA wins the Civil War, the Mormons get cracked down on, usually after failing to rebel themselves. Is there some sort of historical precident? Would the CSA winning really worsen US-Mormon relations the way it seems to in these TLs, or is it just a trope?
If one was writing a CSA victory TL, would it be plausible for the Mormons to rise up? what would the short term and long term effects be?
I don't really know. It depends on Union military strength and ability to enforce their authority on the west, but moreso it depends on if the Mormon Elders even feel like seceding just because the Baptists and Presbyterians were doing it.
I imagine if they rebelled it would get crushed, but question is why would the rebel, and what would the consequences be?
The LDS movement originally went West, beyond what was then the frontier of the United States to escape persecution from Easterners. Then the Mexican War immediately followed, Mexico lost control of its northern territories, and the Mormon colony ended up right back in the United States. I assume the LDS leadership in TL-191 looked back a generation and said, "we can do this again. The South made secession stick." And then bitterness and atrocity generated further atrocity and bitterness, and then flamethrowers and suicide bombs.
The LDS movement originally went West, beyond what was then the frontier of the United States to escape persecution from Easterners. Then the Mexican War immediately followed, Mexico lost control of its northern territories, and the Mormon colony ended up right back in the United States. I assume the LDS leadership in TL-191 looked back a generation and said, "we can do this again. The South made secession stick." And then bitterness and atrocity generated further atrocity and bitterness, and then flamethrowers and suicide bombs.
It had come to violence already, although in a limited way, in 1857. Essentially, the Union wasn't going to let Utah be a state until they abolished polygamy, no way was Brigham Young going to abolish polygamy (and most of the Utahns at that point actively wished to be not-Americans), and there were still a sizable number of people in the upper midwest who remember driving the Mormons out of their communities and patting themselves on the back for it. It's also worth noting that Mormon volunteers in the civil war (for either side) were basically nil, which some people resented.
It's a transplanted stab-in-the-back myth: what minority shall the Union implausibly blame for its recent military loss?
But while blaming the Mormons for losing the Civil War may be too ridiculous to be conceived of, you do have a people who don't want to be Americans stuck in America, they now have seen that succession can work, and the Confederacy may be happy to send their craziest, least representative members money (I bet they already have all the guns they need). Mormon assimilation is unlikely to be as easy as it was OTL.
It had come to violence already, although in a limited way, in 1857. Essentially, the Union wasn't going to let Utah be a state until they abolished polygamy, no way was Brigham Young going to abolish polygamy (and most of the Utahns at that point actively wished to be not-Americans), and there were still a sizable number of people in the upper midwest who remember driving the Mormons out of their communities and patting themselves on the back for it. It's also worth noting that Mormon volunteers in the civil war (for either side) were basically nil, which some people resented.
It's a transplanted stab-in-the-back myth: what minority shall the Union implausibly blame for its recent military loss? But while blaming the Mormons for losing the Civil War may be too ridiculous to be conceived of, you do have a people who don't want to be Americans stuck in America, they now have seen that succession can work, and the Confederacy may be happy to send their craziest, least representative members money (I bet they already have all the guns they need). Mormon assimilation is unlikely to be as easy as it was OTL.
Whereas in RL, the Mormon leadership was quite aware that the US could crush them if it felt like it, especially once the Civil War machine got rolling.
Writers have a steretype of crazed, mindless religious fanatics which doesn't square very well with the actual pragmatic Mormon leadership who kept a very close eye on events back east and who were dependent on the US for supplies/trade and transportation/transit for Mormon converts, and who *knew* they were dependent.
I suppose an especially ham-handed United States could provoke a real fight, but the most likely result would be the Mormons fleeing to Canada or Mexico, since they'd know they couldn't last in a real throwdown match.
Whereas in RL, the Mormon leadership was quite aware that the US could crush them if it felt like it, especially once the Civil War machine got rolling.
Writers have a steretype of crazed, mindless religious fanatics which doesn't square very well with the actual pragmatic Mormon leadership who kept a very close eye on events back east and who were dependent on the US for supplies/trade and transportation/transit for Mormon converts, and who *knew* they were dependent.
I suppose an especially ham-handed United States could provoke a real fight, but the most likely result would be the Mormons fleeing to Canada or Mexico, since they'd know they couldn't last in a real throwdown match.
Is there a word for when something always happens in TLs even though it makes little sense or is unnecessary?
Well, the blacks, obviously. That's who they blamed for the secession before the war. That's who they blamed for everything (but especially the draft) during the war. Why should they stop after they lose much of the country and a war?
That's the biggest problem with Turtledove-ism: He conflates all oppressed minorities. Blonds have been Jews twice and blacks once in his writings. It's all a bit goofy. The Confederates kept blacks as slaves and second-class citizens, and yes, that's bad. But it has nothing to do with the position of the European Jews. Having the Confederates kill of their black population is like having the Junkers decide to give the Jews a pass and just wipe out all their serfs instead. It just doesn't bear on reality.
If any country in North America was going to become fueled with revenge and try to eliminate the blacks, it would have been the US. If you want a country to deliberately wipe out a third of its population, you aren't talking about Nazis. You're paralleling Cambodia - and the country is going to be just as successful.
To my mind it does all boil down to parallelism.
I was considering putting something along these lines on tvtropes. Hence the question.Stupid? Cliché? Well, there should be one, anyway.