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  1. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    The Confederates actually had a good relationship with Spain in OTL; and with both the colonial government and the aristocracy in Cuba. Richmond might end up deciding it is of greater value to prop up Spanish rule there.
  2. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    This is a good point: the prewar southern rail network was almost wholly built to transport cotton (or other cash crops) to market. They still need that; but they also now need rail lines for military transport purposes, too, against the day when war might break out again with the USA. Or, for...
  3. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    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.
  4. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    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...
  5. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    True enough
  6. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    The one problem with using Hooker here is that he was in pretty poor health by war's end in OTL - hard campaigning and hard drinking had caught up with him. He had a stroke and was mustered out in 1866. A pity, since he could make for a colorful contribution to the political disaster area...
  7. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    "railroads and industry." Yes. He was a war manager. He could organize! He understood how an industrial enterprise works! But not a leader. And we can see that in the one political job he held: Governor of New Jersey. He alienated the legislature in jig time, because his political instincts...
  8. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    Just a minor mistake here: It should be "Secretary of War" here, which is of course how you properly titled the job up earlier in the installment. "McClellan is to me one of the mysteries of the war. As a young man he was always a mystery. He had the way of inspiring you with the idea of...
  9. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

  10. Athelstane

    December 7, 1941. The Day Japan Attacked the Panama Canal

    This is quite good as a rewrite, and I do think it makes the incident look more plausible.
  11. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    True enough.
  12. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    ...alone in 1852. Whoever is running his actual government is going to have a role in shaping his political evolution, too. I cannot say that it is *impossible* for the France of the late 19th century to find itself under an autocracy or even a dictatorship. I do say that the broad trajectory...
  13. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    Indeed!
  14. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    Not just him, but also Prince Robert d'Orléans, Duke of Chartres. In the ranks, wags took to calling them "Captain Parry" and "Captain Chatters." But yes, you're right, there was a lot of sympathy for the Union cause in liberal French society. In our history, Napoleon III dies in 1873. A little...
  15. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    "a competent but unremarkable commander." It is interesting to put it this way. Breckinridge's true measure as a commander was, I think, somewhere between this gloss and the "New Stonewall" accolades he was collecting from Southern newspapers after New Market and Second Kernstown. He was one of...
  16. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    Curious now what I missed in his postbellum career?
  17. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    Harry Turtledove would approve!
  18. Athelstane

    Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond

    Breckinridge really would be the best - even if he did not have quite as many opportunities to shine in *this* timeline's war as he did in ours - he had, after all, been vice president of the US, but also had won more votes in the South in the 1860 US presidential election than Jefferson Davis...
  19. Athelstane

    Robert Falcon Scott survives returning from the South Pole

    I have the 2012 Karen May article (PDF), by the way, if it would help.
  20. Athelstane

    Robert Falcon Scott survives returning from the South Pole

    It was during the Great War. U-boats were operating in the Atlantic, but not in the Barents Sea. It seems he wanted to steer as far clear of the war zone as he could manage.
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