A Glorious Union or America: the New Sparta
- Thread starter TheKnightIrish
- Start date
Bureaus and Bureaucrats coming next to be followed by the Great Sifting...
The Freedman's Bureau? Interesting.
TFSmith121
Banned
Thank you - merchant marine is tough;
Given the transition to steam and composite/iron construction, the UK had a significant edge by 1865 that was impossible for any other nation - including the US - to make up.
That being said, the mail contract ships provided a way to keep modern construction techniques in play; the City of Tokio and Ohio class ships make it clear iron-hulled screw steamers were within the capabilities of Roache and Cramp, certainly.
Best,
Given the transition to steam and composite/iron construction, the UK had a significant edge by 1865 that was impossible for any other nation - including the US - to make up.
That being said, the mail contract ships provided a way to keep modern construction techniques in play; the City of Tokio and Ohio class ships make it clear iron-hulled screw steamers were within the capabilities of Roache and Cramp, certainly.
Best,
TFSmith121
Banned
An isthmian canal, mail contract ships, and overseas
An isthmian canal, mail contract ships, and overseas dependencies - Hawaii and Alaska being the most obvious - in the 1870s would not hurt; passage of the Seaman's Act earlier than 1915 and the Jones Act earlier than 1920 would be necessities. A partnership between the Republican Party and the mariner's unions would be helpful, as well - maybe something coming out of the volunteer mobilization for the Navy during the war. Getting a better decision in the Arago case, or something similar to it earlier, would be a necessity.
Basically, the realities of the impact of the Civil War on American sailors and shipping companies were shattering to the Merchant Marine, with the percentage of American foreign trade carried aboard U.S.-flag shipping dropping from 72 percent in 1855 to 42 percent by 1865.
In 1866 came the first effort at organization on U.S. West Coast, with the Seamen's Friendly Union and Protective Society. It failed. In 1875, the United Seamen's Association formed in New York and petitioned Congress for laws to protect seamen. It too failed. The Great Lakes union revived in the 1870s, and won a uniform wage of $2.50 per day and represented 4,000 men across the Lakes in 1879. Finally, in 1885, the Coast Seaman’s Union, or CSU, was formed in San Francisco; Anders “Andrew” Furuseth, a Norwegian-born mariner, became secretary. The new union was influenced by the Knights of Labor, and union rhetoric had strong overtones of republicanism, with Chairman Burnette G. Haskell stating:
…This strike was ordered to SAVE THE UNION, to enforce your rights as free men, as Americans, as haters of slavery. Never give it up until ordered by the Union Never yield a single inch…Remember your glorious history and die in the streets of San Francisco of starvation before you think of yielding.
In 1891, the CSU became the Sailor’s Union of the Pacific, or SUP; with 4,000 members and a $50,000 treasury, it was “probably the strongest labor union local in the country.” The new union appealed to Congress for a “Sailor’s Bill” to include the prohibition of “involuntary servitude” and corporal punishment of mariners by ship’s officers. Furuseth dominated the American maritime unions well into the 20th Century; his appeal was a combination of hard-headed organizing and public calls for paternalism:
You can put me in jail, but you cannot give me narrower quarters than as a seaman I have always had. You cannot make me lonelier than I have always been.
In 1892, for the first time, mariners attempted a national organization. Representatives from the Pacific and Gulf Coasts and the Great Lakes formed the federated National Seamen's Union of America, later to become the International Seamen's Union. West Coast affiliates included the Sailor’s Union of the Pacific. The Atlantic Coast Seamen's Union (founded 1889) could not afford to send a delegate. They did manage a "good luck" telegram.
Despite the national effort, in 1897, the US Supreme Court dealt a blow to seamans’ rights by re-affirming the power of ship’s masters in the Arago case. The court upheld imprisonment and return aboard ship for desertion, holding that the "surrender of personal liberty" involved in the merchant seamen's contract was valid, and had not been nullified by the Thirteenth Amendment. The justices cited precedents derived from medieval maritime law, including the Catalan compilation known as the Consolat de Mar, which evolved as an authority for Mediterranean shipping between the years 1200 and 1400 A.D. The only dissent came from Justice John Harlan, who stated that "we may now look for advertisements, not for runaway servants as in the days of slavery, but for runaway seamen." Union activists saw the decision as the equivalent of feudalism and leftists labeled it the "Dred Scott decision number II. “
Sources:Lawrence C. Allin, “The Civil War and the Period of Decline: 1861-1913.” America’s Maritime Legacy: A History of the U.S. Merchant Marine and Shipbuilding Industry Since Colonial Times, Robert A. Kilmarx, editor. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1979),
Richard Schneirov, Labor and Urban Politics: Class Conflict and the Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago, 1864-97. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998)
Stephen Schwartz, History of the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific (San Francisco: Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, 1985)
Gustavus Myers, History of the Supreme Court of the United States (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1912)
An isthmian canal, mail contract ships, and overseas dependencies - Hawaii and Alaska being the most obvious - in the 1870s would not hurt; passage of the Seaman's Act earlier than 1915 and the Jones Act earlier than 1920 would be necessities. A partnership between the Republican Party and the mariner's unions would be helpful, as well - maybe something coming out of the volunteer mobilization for the Navy during the war. Getting a better decision in the Arago case, or something similar to it earlier, would be a necessity.
Basically, the realities of the impact of the Civil War on American sailors and shipping companies were shattering to the Merchant Marine, with the percentage of American foreign trade carried aboard U.S.-flag shipping dropping from 72 percent in 1855 to 42 percent by 1865.
In 1866 came the first effort at organization on U.S. West Coast, with the Seamen's Friendly Union and Protective Society. It failed. In 1875, the United Seamen's Association formed in New York and petitioned Congress for laws to protect seamen. It too failed. The Great Lakes union revived in the 1870s, and won a uniform wage of $2.50 per day and represented 4,000 men across the Lakes in 1879. Finally, in 1885, the Coast Seaman’s Union, or CSU, was formed in San Francisco; Anders “Andrew” Furuseth, a Norwegian-born mariner, became secretary. The new union was influenced by the Knights of Labor, and union rhetoric had strong overtones of republicanism, with Chairman Burnette G. Haskell stating:
…This strike was ordered to SAVE THE UNION, to enforce your rights as free men, as Americans, as haters of slavery. Never give it up until ordered by the Union Never yield a single inch…Remember your glorious history and die in the streets of San Francisco of starvation before you think of yielding.
In 1891, the CSU became the Sailor’s Union of the Pacific, or SUP; with 4,000 members and a $50,000 treasury, it was “probably the strongest labor union local in the country.” The new union appealed to Congress for a “Sailor’s Bill” to include the prohibition of “involuntary servitude” and corporal punishment of mariners by ship’s officers. Furuseth dominated the American maritime unions well into the 20th Century; his appeal was a combination of hard-headed organizing and public calls for paternalism:
You can put me in jail, but you cannot give me narrower quarters than as a seaman I have always had. You cannot make me lonelier than I have always been.
In 1892, for the first time, mariners attempted a national organization. Representatives from the Pacific and Gulf Coasts and the Great Lakes formed the federated National Seamen's Union of America, later to become the International Seamen's Union. West Coast affiliates included the Sailor’s Union of the Pacific. The Atlantic Coast Seamen's Union (founded 1889) could not afford to send a delegate. They did manage a "good luck" telegram.
Despite the national effort, in 1897, the US Supreme Court dealt a blow to seamans’ rights by re-affirming the power of ship’s masters in the Arago case. The court upheld imprisonment and return aboard ship for desertion, holding that the "surrender of personal liberty" involved in the merchant seamen's contract was valid, and had not been nullified by the Thirteenth Amendment. The justices cited precedents derived from medieval maritime law, including the Catalan compilation known as the Consolat de Mar, which evolved as an authority for Mediterranean shipping between the years 1200 and 1400 A.D. The only dissent came from Justice John Harlan, who stated that "we may now look for advertisements, not for runaway servants as in the days of slavery, but for runaway seamen." Union activists saw the decision as the equivalent of feudalism and leftists labeled it the "Dred Scott decision number II. “
Sources:Lawrence C. Allin, “The Civil War and the Period of Decline: 1861-1913.” America’s Maritime Legacy: A History of the U.S. Merchant Marine and Shipbuilding Industry Since Colonial Times, Robert A. Kilmarx, editor. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1979),
Richard Schneirov, Labor and Urban Politics: Class Conflict and the Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago, 1864-97. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998)
Stephen Schwartz, History of the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific (San Francisco: Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, 1985)
Gustavus Myers, History of the Supreme Court of the United States (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1912)
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Bump bump - i'm looking forward to the Collectors and Proscribers and Secret Service.
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty Eight Bureaus and Bureaucrats - The Freedmens, The Collectors, The Proscriptors, and the Secret Service
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty Eight
Bureaus and Bureaucrats - The Freedmens, The Collectors, The Proscriptors, and the Secret Service
Bureaus and Bureaucrats - The Freedmens, The Collectors, The Proscriptors, and the Secret Service
From “The Rivals – Lincoln and his Cabinet” by Amelia Doggett
Grosvenor 2008
“One of the most significant consequences of the Civil War was the dramatic growth of the Government. The number of clerks employed by the Federal Government had rocketed during the war and with the peace there seemed little likelihood of their number being quickly reduced again. In fact new employment would be found for many with the proliferation of Bureaus and Offices during the Reconstruction period…”
From “The Noblest of Undertakings” by T. Peck Williams
University of Virginia 2008
“The Freedmen's Bureau was created in 1865 by an act of Congress called the Freedman's Bureau Bill. It was passed in May 1865 in order to aid former slaves through food and housing, oversight, education, health care, and employment contracts with private landowners…
That bill was closely related to the Civil Rights Act of 1865 which was to follow later in the year…
The Bureau of Refugees and Freedmen usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was intended to last for three years after the end of the Civil War. The Bureau was part of the United States Department of War. Temporarily led by Major General Oliver O. Howard, Phil Kearny’s former chief of staff, Major General John J. Peck would be appointed to lead the Bureau in early 1866…
Oliver Otis Howard and John James Peck
The Bureau encouraged former plantation owners who had not gone into exile to rebuild their plantations, urged freed Blacks to gain employment, kept an eye on contracts between labor and management, and pushed both whites and blacks to work together as employers and employees rather than as masters and as slaves…
Throughout the first year, it became clear that these tasks were more difficult than had been previously believed though the threat of proscription meant many Southerners, who would not otherwise have co-operated, made the best of what they considered a bad situation with the help of the Bureau…
With the appointment of General Peck in 1866 and the passage of the Second Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, at his insistence, its powers were expanded to help find lost family for African Americans and teach them to read and write so they could better do so themselves…
Bureau agents also served as legal advocates for African Americans in both local and national courts, mostly in cases dealing with family issues. By 1868, the Bureau had been refunded for another 3 years and as a result had over 2,500 staff and associated volunteers...
The Bureau helped solve everyday problems of the newly freed slaves, such as clothing, food, water, health care, communication with family members, and jobs. It distributed 20 million rations of food to African Americans and set up a system where planters could borrow rations in order to feed freedmen they employed…
The most widely recognized among the achievements of the Freedman’s Bureau are its accomplishments in the field of education. Freedmen had a strong desire to learn to read and write and worked hard to establish schools in their communities prior to the advent of the Freedmen's Bureau. Oliver Otis Howard made education the corner stone of the Bureau’s work and this was continued by John J. Peck. Howard applied for confiscated property from the Bureau of Collectors, he offered government buildings, books, and furniture to superintendents to be used in the education of freedmen and provided transportation and room and board for teachers…
By 1866, missionary and aid societies worked in conjunction with the Freedmen's Bureau to provide education for former slaves. The American Missionary Association, and later the African-American Missionary Society, were particularly active, establishing fourteen colleges in southern states for the education of freedmen. The primary focus of these groups was to raise funds to pay teachers and manage schools, while the secondary focus was the day-to-day operation of individual schools. After 1866, Congress appropriated further funds to use in the freedmen's schools...
By 1870, there were more than 1,000 schools for freedmen in the South. Brigadier General Samuel C. Armstrong, Peck’s successor, wrote that the freedmen "have the natural thirst for knowledge," aspire to "power and influence … coupled with learning," and are excited by "the special study of books"…
A Freedmen's School
Some of the assistant commissioners, realizing that African Americans may not receive fair trials in the civil courts, tried to handle black cases in their own Bureau courts. Some Southern whites objected that this was unconstitutional. In Alabama, state and county judges were commissioned as Bureau agents. They were to try cases involving blacks with no distinctions on racial grounds. If a judge refused, martial law could be instituted in his district. All but three judges accepted their unwanted commissions, and the governor urged compliance. The fear of proscription for stateless former-rebels was a great tool in ensuring the co-operation of many…”
From “The Rivals – Lincoln and his Cabinet” by Amelia Doggett
Grosvenor 2008
“Having lost the battle over the Secret Service Chase wanted to ensure the Bureau of Collectors [Collections, Confiscation, Contraband and Condemned Property] would have his mark upon it. Chase’s first step was to wrong foot his opponents by willingly appointing an army general, albeit a volunteer lawyer from Ohio, Jacob Dolson Cox. Chase saw that the Bureau had the potential to become a very powerful tool of patronage and influence and as it fell solely under the Treasury Department he intended it would serve his purposes, and Secretary Chase’s primary purpose was to obtain the Presidency in 1868…
Jacob Dolson Cox would be rewarded by a subsequent administration for his integrity at the head of the Bureau of Collectors
The Bureau itself had wide ranging powers under the Confiscation Act of 1865 to seize property and "manage" it. The long term purpose of the Bureau's assists were yet unclear in mid-1865...
It immediately took responsibility for any “non-human” and non-military contraband captured or impounded by the army or navy. A huge portion of this consisted of cotton which the Bureau was fully authorized to dispose of at “market values”…
The agents of the Bureau were also responsible for the identification and confiscation of all land belonging to senior Confederates (as Lincoln had directed Chase to limit such confiscations to senior Confederate government and state officials, and general officers) and to former rebels who had willingly gone into exile already. As the Office of Expatriated Persons and Proscription advanced in identifying former rebels for proscription so too did the Bureau of Collections in confiscating their estates…
The Bureau faced two series challenges: (i) identifying rebel assets that were not real property for example bank account balances, shareholdings etc; and (ii) dealing with pre-collections disposals whether to independent third parties at a market value or sham disposals to related parties...
By the end of 1867 the Bureau had over 25 lawyers permanently on staff in Washington D.C. alone…
Cox would stay at the helm of the Bureau for the next 4 years. He proved to be a very efficient administrator. He was also politically adept enough to keep Secretary Chase’s support without having his independence or integrity suborned. In fact setting aside an Ohio bias in the employment by the Bureau Cox managed to resist the temptation to abuse his power…bearing in mind he was by the end of 1866 managing the largest estate of land in the country. Dan Sickles, in eyeing Cox’s role hungrily, described the Bureau of Collections as “a nation unto itself, with its own treasury and bureaucracy. It wants only an ambitious chief…”.
From “The Rivals – Lincoln and his Cabinet” by Amelia Doggett
Grosvenor 2008
“As a friend of the President’s and as a member of the influential Ewing and Sherman clans it is unsurprising that Thomas Ewing Jr was appointed to head the Office of Proscription [Expatriated Persons and Proscription]. The appointment of a Kansan (albeit an adopted one) went some way towards placating the Radicals in Congress…
Thomas Ewing Jr, brother in law of General William T. Sherman
The function of the office was to liaise with the Office of Military Intelligence to identify Confederate officials and soldiers. All these individuals, thus identified, would be listed as expatriated persons. Using captured records and registers taken from Union prison camps, the Office would begin to create a national picture of who had served the Confederacy and in what capacity…
Beyond identifying all expatriated persons the Office was to prepare lists for submission to a Joint Congressional Committee of persons who should be proscribed, that is, exiled from the United States as undesirable stateless persons. Having received the approval of Congress the list was to be submitted to the President for final approval…
Ewing’s first list, considered by Congress in September 1865, caused great controversy. He had included all members of the Confederate Executive and Legislative Branches, all members of its Supreme Court, all State Governors, and all commissioned Generals in the Confederate service. Although Ewing stated it was the first of several lists and was presented to allow the “work…of proscription of the most serious transgressors to begin without further delay” Radicals railed against the list as being indicative of the Executive Office’s influence exercised to ensure proscription was a “weak half measure” (William Gannaway Brownlow)…
Ewing’s second list, presented in early November 1865 would include many state and Confederate officials as well as prominent field officers. Several prominent southern newspaper editors would be added to this second list by the Congressional Committee…
The President may have been minded to amend the 1865 Lists as the legislation allowed him to exercise his discretion. However Southern reaction to the Civil Rights Bill passed in late 1865 hardened attitudes across the North and confirmed that some southerners still hadn’t learned their lesson. The President approved both lists and almost 700 men then in Federal custody were designated as proscribed persons. They would be provided with passage to an American or European port of their choosing (sometimes), to begin their permanent exile. Another 534 who were proscribed but who were not in Federal custody had to be apprehended and interned pending their deportation. Military units, mainly cavalry, were regularly assigned to assist the Office of Proscription in apprehending such individuals…
Any proscribed person found in the United States after their proscribed would be subject to arrest and a period of imprisonment before again being deported. Any property held by them would be confiscated. Anyone convicted of assisting a proscribed person gain entry to, or subsist within the United States, could also be imprisoned or subjected to a heavy fine...
1866 would see Congress and the radical press push for further lists to be prepared. These demands were only exacerbated by the sensation surrounding the first trials for treason and murder…”
From “A History of the United States Office of Military Intelligence” by General (Rt) Roger McKee
MacArthur University 2001
“With a reported one third of the currency in circulation being counterfeit at the time, the Secret Service was created on July 5 1865 in Washington D.C. to suppress counterfeit currency. The Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase had sought that the Service be placed under the jurisdiction of his Department, but Congress thought otherwise. The Office of Military Intelligence had had great success in identifying southern Counterfeiters during the last year of the war and it was felt General Stone’s Office was best placed to found the new service. The Secret Service therefore fell under the auspices of the Department for War…
Colonel George H. Sharpe became Chief Sharpe
Chief George H. Sharpe was sworn in by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. It was commissioned in Washington, D.C. as the "Secret Service Division" of the Department of War with close ties of the Office of Military Intelligence. Its initial mission was the suppression of counterfeiting. The legislation creating the agency was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln's in April 1865. At the time, the only other federal law enforcement agencies were the United States Park Police, the U.S. Post Office Department's Office of Instructions and Mail Depredations (now known as the United States Postal Inspection Service), and the U.S. Marshals Service…
In the years to come the Secret Services’ remit would widen dramatically…”
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Not only that but both the Feedmen's Bureau and the Secret Service are part of the War Department whose remit has now been expanded quite substantially. With a law enforcement agency part of the War Department I'm guessing no Posse Comitatus act will be forthcoming in TTL.
I have posted a Poll to see which bits of the Civil War you all enjoyed the most so I have an idea about the next wars/battles I write.
A Glorious Union Poll
A Glorious Union Poll
First of all, great replies TFSmith121! Hopefully, with Lincoln (known as a friend of workers) serving a longer second term, workers might get a better chance at organizing....we will see...
Next: Another great Chapter KI! We will now see the policies in action and their effects.
BTW One question; if a Confederate is proscribed, I assume he can still be tried even if he is no longer a US citizen? I'm just wondering if and how proscription will affect the ability to bring war criminals to trial. I suspect some people (Radicals in particular) will be asking similar questions.
Next: Another great Chapter KI! We will now see the policies in action and their effects.
BTW One question; if a Confederate is proscribed, I assume he can still be tried even if he is no longer a US citizen? I'm just wondering if and how proscription will affect the ability to bring war criminals to trial. I suspect some people (Radicals in particular) will be asking similar questions.
The Confederate can only have committed Treason if his acts occurred before taking service in the Confederate cause. Beauregard is still going to be tried for treasonous correspondence prior to resigning. Jeff Davis will still stand trial for murder (Hunter and the protesters). Joe Johnston will stand trial for the massacre at Baton Rouge. Rhett for murder as well as for generally being a get (look it up - its an Irish slang word for idiot).
But you are right Ben Wade in previous chapters has been going made because more people won't be tried for treason...
Another excellent update. I'm wondering though who will get the job of defending the President? With an attempt on Lincoln's life that tragically killed his wife there must be calls for a permanent body guard.
Now the army would be an obvious choice, but the warning bells of a Praetorian Guard would be there for many learned men.
What's your thoughts KI?
Now the army would be an obvious choice, but the warning bells of a Praetorian Guard would be there for many learned men.
What's your thoughts KI?
Regarding the people you mentioned, since all of them were on the proscribed list, I assume that their proscription will be deferred until their trials are over, then unless they're are sentenced to death, they would then be deported.
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President Lincoln will resist a formal bodyguard I suspect, but the military, Marshal's Office or D.C. Police all seem plausible.
Hmm...DC Police wouldn't have the national authority if the President were to leave DC. Hmmm...I could see the military push for them to take lead but it ending up with the Marshal. Cool insight, thanks.
Regarding the trials, currently we have mostly senior Military and Political leaders on trial, but I suspect the Radicals will be pushing for additional trials. One possible group would be those political leaders and newspapermen who called for and/or organized the votes for secession; after all these took place before the Confederacy was formed and therefore could be considered treason. Rhett's father, for example was a fire-eater secessionist who tried repeatedly to engineer secession movements; a prime target for a trial.
Shouldn't Johnson's conduct in California before he left the colors stand as evidence for leniency. Unlike many other southern officers who betrayed their country Johnson acted in perfect conduct until his resignation. You could say Calfornia remaining in the union is partially thanks to his honorable conduct.