For the Republic: A History of the Second American Civil War
- Thread starter The Angry Observer
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Hey everybody-- making great progress right now. I expect to drop sometime tomorrow, or maybe Sunday if worst comes to worst.
“Rats, Thieves, Dogs, and Criminals” (Chapter 11)
“Rats, Thieves, Dogs, and Criminals”
“The major problem of our time is the decay of the belief in personal immortality, and it cannot be dealt with while the average human being is either drudging like an ox or shivering in fear of the secret police.” - George Orwell
A young J. Edgar Hoover
A young J. Edgar Hoover
When examining the actions of the MacArthur regime in the United States, there is perhaps one element that goes further than all others in explaining its behavior and contrasting it to the Republic: it was not a nation of laws. As in the case of other fascist (and more broadly totalitarian) regimes that came to power during this time, it was not governed by any kind of meaningful Constitution and had basically no formal legal structure. It was ruled by raw power, with General MacArthur himself at the center. A flamboyant and whimsical man, MacArthur had long been convinced that he was destined for greatness. After the March on Washington, he had proclaimed himself “America’s savior— the only man that can rise to these times.” Some of the March’s original backers, such as J. P. Morgan Jr., had believed that MacArthur was an ideal candidate for their aims precisely because his delusions made him easy to manipulate. They were correct that MacArthur’s ego made him susceptible to being used, but this is precisely what most historians have criticized MacArthur for in terms of wartime leadership. After seizing power, MacArthur rarely communicated with subordinates, tended to be unforgiving when he was presented with failure, and had very little time for anything that didn’t pertain to the war.
As a result, the policies of his regime were incongruous and sometimes a complete mystery even to the highest ranking Natcorps. The members of his supposed cabinet served completely at his pleasure, and he rarely bothered to even give them formal titles. In the Natcorp government, its senior officials often had no idea what they were actually in charge of and lower level Natcorps didn’t know who they answered to. Nobody in the regime was completely certain exactly what their ideology was, or why they were fighting the Republic beyond vague allusions to Wall Street elites, international Bolshevism, and the Pope in Rome. This was a benefit early on, as it allowed the Natcorps to impose intolerable burdens on their own subjects without their coalition shrinking in any significant capacity, but it was also a massive albatross in that it encouraged bitter infighting and often made it hard for the Natcorps to rally Americans to their cause. “We all support Morgan and gold,” writes diarist Mary Dothan, “And we all hate. I wish I could tell you more.” In constant competition for MacArthur’s favor, his so called “royal court” was constantly at one another’s throats and always sought to undermine each other and advance their own standing in his eyes. It’s long been debated whether or not MacArthur deliberately encouraged this as a means to secure his own power and fan the flames of his own narcissism, or whether this was simple the product of his often absent leadership and poor communication with subordinates. In any case, the consensus is thatthe Natcorp government was engulfed in eternal chaos.
The newly completed DOJ building, 1935
There was one common thread in the Natcorp government, beyond MacArthur’s dictatorship and the coup’s backers looting the treasury, and that was J. Edgar Hoover’s Department of Justice. The Department of Justice was formed in 1870 by President Ulysses S. Grant to prosecute white supremacist terror groups such as the Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstructed South. Its functions gradually expanded as time went on. After the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 by an anarchist, his successor Theodore Roosevelt wanted a completely autonomous investigative agency that would report directly to the Attorney General. In 1908, he was given his wish, with Congress authorizing a “Bureau of Investigation”. The Bureau was the nucleus of the police apparatus that would eventually become the backbone of the Natcorp state. Hoover found work with the Bureau at age 22 in 1917, thanks largely to the ongoing Great War. He quickly proved himself, and President Woodrow Wilson granted his Division’s Enemy Alien Bureau extensive powers to arrest real or perceived threats during the War. Hoover rose rapidly through the DOJ’s ranks, and after the War’s conclusion he was assigned to monitor domestic radicals once again. This period of U.S. history, the Great Red Scare, saw Attorney General Palmer and the Wilson Administration extensively target communists and anarchists in the U.S.’s borders due to the widespread paranoia that followed the October Revolution that installed communism in Russia. Hoover was a key player in the “Palmer raids”. While the Raids would quickly fall out of failure with the public due to their massive overreach and the general collapse of the Wilson Administration’s popularity, Hoover’s place in the government was secured. Republican Senator Warren G. Harding would sweep the 1920 election. After his untimely death in 1923 and a series of corruption scandals clearing out his Administration, the road was paved for Hoover to assume control of the Bureau itself.
During the Roaring Twenties, his main activity was targeting gangsters. Organized crime thrived due to the passage of the 18th Amendment, which politicians like Al Smith would bitterly resist. With each booze runner arrested and each mafia boss put behind bars, J. Edgar Hoover’s power only grew. By the end of Calvin Coolidge’s Presidency and the beginning of Herbert Hoover’s, the Director was as much of an institution as a single man. This is what made him so appealing to the March on Washington’s original instigators. It still is not known how far back Hoover’s involvement in the coup went, but there’s no question that he was wholeheartedly on the Natcorps’ side when morning broke. In the next few days, the Bureau of Investigation would practically absorb the Department of Justice. It shed its original purpose, enforcing the laws, and devoted itself entirely to targeting regime enemies across the country. Like the rest of the Natcorp government, the DOJ was constantly engulfed in chaos. Multiple times in the conflict’s opening months, it was consumed by purges of the potentially disloyal. Rather than leaving it paralyzed, this gave Hoover even more control over what remained of the organization. While its early attempts to become the American Schutzsaffel were clumsy and frequently backfired, they were lethal and terrifying as well. The massacre of the entire Hughes Court is perhaps the most infamous example, but the DOJ caught most of the country unawares in its campaign of terror. They found it remarkably easy to intimidate state legislators, and although it was dangerous and risky the rubicon had long been crossed. Hoover masterminded a complex, highly convoluted campaign to destroy the new regime’s enemies wherever they reared their heads. Some of these were simple tactics, such as how Charles Coughlin was dealt with, with DOJ Agents riding into his home and brutalizing him. But the DOJ also trafficked in “every kind of spycraft then known to man and quite a few new modes,” according to a defector.
Prohibition Agents pose with confiscated alcohol
Hoover, by default, was one of the highest ranking Natcorps from the very beginning. The execution of the Supreme Court was a turning point. At that juncture, there were still many in the Natcorp junta that remained “squeamish” about the potential ramifications of the coup. By doing what he did, Hoover established himself as MacArthur’s attack dog, a position he would hold for the duration of the war. As such, he was more or less the most powerful man in Natcorp America aside from MacArthur himself. Both then and today some dared to suggest that Hoover was the real power behind the throne and MacArthur was simply his puppet. “Whatever the case,” writes Alan Brinkley, “there is little doubt that during their rule, MacArthur seemed to be genuinely apprehensive of Hoover and was careful to keep his ambitions sated. No other member of the Natcorp regime truly seemed to command MacArthur’s respect and wariness like the Director.” The DOJ can accurately be described as a “regime within a regime”, as Stimson described it. Hoover rarely asked, and rarely needed, permission from MacArthur to do as he pleased. He tirelessly worked at installing the police state that defined the Natcorps, unencumbered by the old laws of due process and habeas corpus. As opposed to MacArthur, Hoover as a leader was intimately involved in the doings of his subordinates and came to understand the DOJ’s reorganized form like the back of his hand. He was an ideal candidate for this task, gifted with a mind that responded well to subterfuge and blackmail.
At MacArthur’s behest, Hoover and the DOJ embarked on another particularly important quest: keeping Republican movements from seizing power in the western states. Were the western states to join the war on the Republic’s side, the Natcorps would almost certainly be doomed. The status quo, in which western leaders tacitly accepted Natcorp rule while still being represented in the Republic’s governing structures and outright refusing to support a side through arms, favored MacArthur. Hoover set to work keeping the Natcorps in the west’s good graces and terrifying anyone that might speak up. Famously, the Salem Massacre in February of 1935 saw DOJ affiliated mercenaries kill ten state legislators in Oregon that were planning to introduce resolutions to support Al Smith and condemn Natcorp atrocities. DOJ Agents planted bombs in the automobiles of several, shot one in his apartment, and stabbed another in front of his wife and children as he made his way to the Capitol. This of course enraged most of their colleagues, but also terrified them into submission. What did it profit, after all, to try to join a war Oregon couldn’t make a difference in just to be put in Hoover’s sights? The DOJ also forged alliances with groups like the Ku Klux Klan, which were sprouting up across the west even before the war and which became a blunt tool to terrorize the Natcorps’ enemies and who temporarily seized control of Oregon's government during the war. Over the course of 1935, dozens of Republican sympathizers, some of whom were prominent members of government, would be killed by Klansmen. This included encouraging Klan activities in the south, as well as those of the fascist Silver Legion. Huey Long was much more cunning in staying on top of potential threats, but even he was unnerved by Hoover’s schemes. He famously brought on multiple food tasters to snuff out potential poison, and declared that “I can’t be of no help to nobody dead!”
Members of the Silver Legion during the Second American Civil War
But perhaps Hoover’s most infamous deed as the Natcorp regime’s enforcer was the construction of its network of prison camps.
The Natcorp camps were created under the simple principle that if there were “unproductive” members of society, they could be made productive again by serving the Natcorp war machine for no pay. It was a simple way to deal with agitators and gave the Natcorps much needed manpower, especially as the war became a long term fight. The camps were mostly designed to target organized labor, which Hoover correctly identified as the most serious domestic threat to Natcorp rule. Well before the end of 1934, the secret police organization that Hoover had long envisioned for the United States was put to work against them. “Everyone is an informant,” wrote Dothan, “in one way or another. There are the actual informants, of course, and if they fail Hoover they will vanish one night and cease to be mentioned. And aside from them, if the ear is unwilling the DOJ will pry something out of the mouth. Something. They will find someone that belongs in a camp.” A favorite tactic of the DOJ, mirroring strategies used in other totalitarian regimes, was to “unperson” whoever they targeted. Records were destroyed. The daytime authorities played coy. Anyone that dug into the matter too hard, or dug into it at all, was sent to a camp as well. Prior to the war, there had been many in the DOJ that had complained of their inability to clamp down on organized crime due to the presumption of innocence. With that out of the way, when suspects were located, they and anyone that was thought to be associated with them were arrested, put before Natcorp appointed military judges, and quickly sentenced to hard labor.
The DOJ as a result maintained significant support within territory controlled by the Natcorps because of how quickly they cracked down on organized crime. The mob bosses and their accomplices that had vexed Hoover as a mere federal law enforcement officer were simply shot, with DOJ agents armed with automatic weapons breaking into mob layers and firing at whoever they laid eyes on. The official pretext for crackdowns on the general public was always chasing after the mob when it was not organized crime. However, within the Natcorp bureaucracy, Hoover’s favorite targets were either communist spies or homosexuals. This so-called “pink scare” was another defining characteristic of the Natcorp regime, and was almost certainly fueled by Hoover’s personal neurosis as much as his political ambition. It became an ideal way to destroy political opponents. Gerald MacGuire, one of the original ringleaders of the March on Washington, met his end sometime before the summer of 1935 after a rumors about his sexuality were spread by Prescott Bush, a Hoover ally. This lead to the rise of an entirely new phenomenon in Natcorp America: the Natcorp death camps, which were a publicly denied state secret, and where “undesirables” were sent to be exterminated rather than enslaved. Their use— and the categories of persons sent to them— gradually expanded as the war ground on and the power of more bigoted agents like Henry Ford grew in the Natcorp government.
Prisoners in a Natcorp camp constructing barracks
There were Natcorp prisons wherever there was a Natcorp presence. But the most famous hub of Natcorp domestic repression was the state of Ohio and the Midwest more broadly. Under Hugh Johnson, the once prosperous industrial heart of America was stripped for resources to fuel the Natcorp war machine. It was effectively a single, great prison in its own right. The industrial Midwest’s inhabitants worked long hours for artificially low pay. Striking was of course completely forbidden, and as a “temporary war measure” Hugh Johnson and the DOJ singled out the industrial districts in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Illinois for centralization of most business under Natcorp allies followed by severely punishing the “indolent”. Barbed wire fences were erected in many neighborhoods, manned by recruits from other districts. Government issued identification numbers were mandatory in many districts in 1935, a practice that would steadily expand as the war progressed. The full horrors of the Natcorp prison camps would not emerge until after the war’s conclusion, but the ongoing information drip of Natcorp atrocities rarely failed to infuriate Republican partisans. They were also, perhaps understandably, doubted in many circles. “Are we really to believe,” said Oregon Representative Walter Pierce, typically regarded as a swing vote in the western bloc, “that MacArthur operates ovens for sallies?” This heinous repression was highly effective in the short term in mobilizing manpower and resources for MacArthur's cause.
The exact aims of the Natcorp purges and exterminations were malleable and often depended on who held MacArthur or Hoover’s attention at any given moment. There were consistent fears from basically anyone from a cause associated with the political left that they would face repression, however. These were generally justified, as the DOJ would terrorize prominent suffragettes and civil rights activists simply out of fear that they could show solidarity with the Republic— which many did. The NAACP’s W. E. B. DuBois called the Natcorp regime the “ultimate act of aggression of property against the rights of man.” More recent scholarship suggests the north’s black population was almost universally Republican with some notable exceptions, while women in Natcorp territory were considerably more balanced but still skewed towards Republican sympathy. A result of this blanket repression, of course, was a mass of refugees fleeing for the south and west. Those fleeing to the south were dealt with severely. Huey Long judged that his enclave barely had the resources to feed its own people. As a result, he and his minions were extremely harsh with refugees, on multiple occasions opening fire on crowds trying to escape through Alabama’s northern border. The Natcorps, too, dealt brutally with anyone caught trying to escape. MacArthur and Hoover wanted attempted escapees sent to camps, where they could be useful. It was not uncommon however for things to escalate even further than that, which lead to the Massacre on the Mississippi.
The party that sought to escape from West Virginia was able to forge Natcorp papers sometime in July of 1934. The absolute breakdown of order in the federal bureaucracy, probably accentuated thanks to Hoover’s purges of homosexuals, allowed them to avoid detection. Pretending to be a detachment on transfer, the party meandered through Kentucky over the course of several months, eventually entering southern Illinois. They were identified as they attempted to escape into Missouri and from there Nebraska, which was a fool’s errand as the Natcorp occupation in Missouri was considerably more brutal and severe than the one in Illinois (at the time). The party was apprehended by Natcorp regulars at a checkpoint in the Mississippi River. Someone attempted to fight back, and in the chaos the furious Natcorps killed over a hundred mostly unarmed men, women, and children on the banks of the Mississippi. The Massacre grabbed headlines, and although modern research has suggested that the perpetrators went so far because they were angry that they did not have the chance to escape to Nebraska themselves, it made for angry press in the Republican northeast— in the places where the story was believed, and where it wasn’t drowned out by news of an increasingly dire war situation.
John R. Brinkley, 26th Governor of Kansas
The attempted escape tilted the balance of Kansas politics and reopened a long sealed wound. In congruence with Al Smith’s Presidential victory in 1932, which mobilized the Catholic vote basically everywhere in America, the Kansas governor’s race was won by independent John R. Brinkley in an upset, defeating Republican Party nominee Alf M. Landon. Brinkley was a radio quack that was infamous for prescribing the bodily infusion of goat testicles as a cure for a variety of illnesses. He was also a Natcorp sympathizer, and when fighting broke out in 1934 he ran on neutrality as an overt way to help MacArthur smoothly win the war. As in many other states west of the Mississippi, Kansas’s domestic politics were totally upended by the war and saw members of both parties come together to form “Republican” and “Neutrality” tickets. Landon, a staunch opponent of MacArthur and fascism, was brought back to run against Brinkley. While the white Protestant makeup of Kansas had made it difficult for Smith’s Democrats to make any inroads, they were considerably stronger in the legislature than they had been before Herbert Hoover’s Presidency. This made Kansas’s government fairly evenly divided. The outrage generated by the Massacre scared the Natcorps, who saw Brinkley’s potential defeat as a disaster waiting to happen.
As a result, the DOJ stole the 1934 Kansas gubernatorial election and narrowly failed to kill Landon. An assassin severely wounded the Kansas Republican, permanently disabling his right arm, but he survived— Landon escaped to the northern part of the state, a Republican stronghold, and a Natcorp division crossed the Kansas border and installed Brinkley as Governor again in Lawrence. Swathes of Republican volunteers, such as the International Brigades, spilled in from nearly all sides to join the fray. MacArthur was somewhat wary of inciting a larger war in the west, but one broke out in Kansas all the same between Landon and Brinkley partisans, backed by Republican and Natcorp regulars when they could be spared. It sparked a general breakdown of the food chain in Kansas, inciting a conflict reminiscent of the one that had erupted between free soilers and border ruffians eighty years before. It was a stark reminder that, as President Smith said, there were no innocent bystanders in the Second American Civil War: there were only fascists and republicans.
Alf Landon, hero of the Kansas War
And so the bloodshed spreads, and Kansas bleeds again.
Liking the in-depth look at how much power Hoover has.
Liking the in-depth look at how much power Hoover has.
Deleted member 191087
Holy fucking shit. Society is collapsing so bad there are now going to be Death Camps in America!?! And the fact that is even ties to Holocaust with it being an inspiration to the Nazis is just……fuck.
Amazingly written chapter as always of course, but Jesus was this one particularly bleak. America is going to be forever traumatised by this war for sure. God help Smith in his struggle against these demons man.
Amazingly written chapter as always of course, but Jesus was this one particularly bleak. America is going to be forever traumatised by this war for sure. God help Smith in his struggle against these demons man.
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Good lord.
I knew based on the commentary that the war in the Midwest was going to be brutal, I was prepared for suffering and reasons why the Midwest would become radicalized after this war.
But what has just been described here of Death Camps in the middle of the Midwest, a region rife with Catholics and Leftists, put a deep chill in my bones that I can't quite describe as someone who is both of those and whose family was both of those.
I haven't even read the rest of the TL yet and there is a massive portion of me already thinking that Mussolini's fate would be too kind for Hoover and MacArthur in this timeline.
I knew based on the commentary that the war in the Midwest was going to be brutal, I was prepared for suffering and reasons why the Midwest would become radicalized after this war.
But what has just been described here of Death Camps in the middle of the Midwest, a region rife with Catholics and Leftists, put a deep chill in my bones that I can't quite describe as someone who is both of those and whose family was both of those.
I haven't even read the rest of the TL yet and there is a massive portion of me already thinking that Mussolini's fate would be too kind for Hoover and MacArthur in this timeline.
We kinda had to have something like this happen in Kansas
I'm really glad that you liked it. Future chapters should be less dark than this one. Smith indeed needs all the prayers in universe he can get.
Hoover and his goons deserve a public hanging.
Though I do hope that this war would end before the Invasion of France.
Yeah, it's supposed to be the ugliest chapter in U.S. history. And of course I'm sure you all can imagine that if the Republic gets the upper hand, the Natcorps will be shown absolutely no mercy. Too many bridges have been burned for the kind of peaceful reconciliation that some wanted in the aftermath of the first American Civil War. They're going to go down in history like the Nazis.
"We're on an express elevator to Hell, goin' down!"--The mood of the average American citizen ITTL.
Reminds me of the graffiti from The Walking Dead-- "Got bit. Fever hit. World gone to shit. Might as well quit."
The post-war period is sure going to be interesting. The resentment between the various portions of the US will be massive.
There's the North-East, where the Republicans are holed up, who had to look at how the legitimate president was couped, an armed insurrection broke out, and the rest of the country did nothing, having to initially fight the war almost entirely on their own against tremendous odds.
The Mid-West meanwhile is similar to the North-East, except they're more radicalized, and so feel alienated from their fellow Republicans as well.
The South's killing and mistreatment of refugees, as well as naked profiteering and acting in their self-interest, for people not that far removed from the ACW will cause old grudges to erupt again. With what has been implied about the South's future, this will backfire upon them, as I don't think the rest of the country will be willing to help them out.
As for the West, their inaction and blatant double-dealing in the face of Natcorps atrocities will be held against them for a long, long time.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Republicans use their estalished military to extract retribution upon the West and South after the end of the war.
One way or the other, the US as a political entity with a united identity is dead.
There's the North-East, where the Republicans are holed up, who had to look at how the legitimate president was couped, an armed insurrection broke out, and the rest of the country did nothing, having to initially fight the war almost entirely on their own against tremendous odds.
The Mid-West meanwhile is similar to the North-East, except they're more radicalized, and so feel alienated from their fellow Republicans as well.
The South's killing and mistreatment of refugees, as well as naked profiteering and acting in their self-interest, for people not that far removed from the ACW will cause old grudges to erupt again. With what has been implied about the South's future, this will backfire upon them, as I don't think the rest of the country will be willing to help them out.
As for the West, their inaction and blatant double-dealing in the face of Natcorps atrocities will be held against them for a long, long time.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Republicans use their estalished military to extract retribution upon the West and South after the end of the war.
One way or the other, the US as a political entity with a united identity is dead.
Deleted member 191087
One of the long term devastating side effects of this war would be for sure a whole lot of post-war separatist movements, particularly from the South after having been even more rejuvenated on Southern Nationalism by Long than under the first Civil War. Either that or the States could maybe just become full on Balkanised.
Edit: I also feel like there’s going to be a massive emigration out of the US from a lot of Catholic and Jewish Americans after the war seeing as it would confirm to a lot of them that their greatest fear of never ever going to be truly accepted by America and there’s no true hope for them was real.
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The war will be brutal with no quarter given. WHen the Republicans take back areas (if they do) then there will be purges of anyone that worked with the regime.
I'm not necessarily sure the Republicans can win at this point. The West is neutral, the northeast is barely holding on and long term it doesn't necessarily have enough resources - coal, oil, food.. To keep it's industry going. France and Britain might be giving some support but likely not remotely on the scale that Germany and Italy are. And the Soviet Union isn't having what they send accepted anymore/they're making the situation longer term worse.
The NatCorps have a lot more potential industrial capability and resources available to them for the war- and at least some semblance of a regular army left.
I'm not necessarily sure the Republicans can win at this point. The West is neutral, the northeast is barely holding on and long term it doesn't necessarily have enough resources - coal, oil, food.. To keep it's industry going. France and Britain might be giving some support but likely not remotely on the scale that Germany and Italy are. And the Soviet Union isn't having what they send accepted anymore/they're making the situation longer term worse.
The NatCorps have a lot more potential industrial capability and resources available to them for the war- and at least some semblance of a regular army left.
Good update. There's always some morbid fascination in portraying a society that's crumbling. Very realistic take on the issue within the Regime - I think such problems were almost an universal constant within fascist/authoritarian regimes, especially ones centered around a single figure as savior. Also, gotta say, I love the paralels to the First Civil War. May the new Jayhawkers triumph against Mac's Border Ruffians! Finally, a question: what's the manpower situation like for the factions? How many people does every faction have in the areas under their control?
OTOH, there is a small chance that Britain might enter the war in late phase, and in such case MacArthur is fucked.