Actually, I think it's just called the Phlogisateur / Phlogisticator...
Look to the West (Thande's first proper timeline, and it's about time!)
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Actually, I think it's just called the Phlogisateur / Phlogisticator...
burmafrd
Banned
One thing: the visceral reaction in ENA to what happens in England.
Talk about a wake up call.
This should make them all want to get stronger and make sure it never happens to them- and they share a continent with potential enemies, not an Island that is easier protected.
ANother thing about ENA: immigration. What kind of changes are you looking at?
One must remember that massive immigration in the OTL did not start untill the 1840's, and by then the US had spread to the Pacific coast.
It appears to me that progress west is as of 1803 actually a little ahead of OTL; of course the blockages of the indian territories, etc is different. Still I see no reason that the midwest area and everything north of the Spanish areas do not start getting people in numbers.
Talk about a wake up call.
This should make them all want to get stronger and make sure it never happens to them- and they share a continent with potential enemies, not an Island that is easier protected.
ANother thing about ENA: immigration. What kind of changes are you looking at?
One must remember that massive immigration in the OTL did not start untill the 1840's, and by then the US had spread to the Pacific coast.
It appears to me that progress west is as of 1803 actually a little ahead of OTL; of course the blockages of the indian territories, etc is different. Still I see no reason that the midwest area and everything north of the Spanish areas do not start getting people in numbers.
Thande
Donor
Part #62: The Monroe Doctrine
“To understand the character of American exceptionalism, one must look at the mother country. From the 1500s to the first decade of the nineteenth century, England and then Great Britain saw itself as being apart from Europe: her Navy, her ‘Wooden Walls’, meant that the narrow English Channel might as well have been a vast ocean, shielding her from any hostile invasion. England was splendidly isolated and, therefore, special. When English settlers came to America, they brought this attitude with them. Though what became the Empire of North America was not an island, was always vulnerable to attacks by native Indians or rival colonial powers, nonetheless the idea of the nation having a special, unique place in the world was retained. And it continued in America after events had led to its death in Britain…”
*
From – “The ENA in the Jacobin Wars” by Ralph Law (1963) -
When the American general election of 1799 returned a majority for the Constitutionalist Party led by James Monroe, this ended four years of Patriot rule and was in some ways seen as a referendum on Lord Hamilton’s handling of the war. The former Patriot ministry[1] had been unable to avoid being defined in terms of the war; Hamilton had only become Lord President two months before the news of Thomas Jefferson’s murder by the French Revolutionaries reached the ENA and led to the direct declaration of war on France. Furthermore, Hamilton had become Lord President in the wake of the death of the respected first Lord President George Augustine Washington, Viscount Washington, who had ruled as a crossbencher and above party identities. Although the later parties had slowly begun to coalesce during Washington’s ministry, the lines were not strictly drawn until his death and Hamilton’s rise to power. This meant that the Patriot party itself became strongly associated with the war in the public imagination.
Although there was little criticism of Hamilton’s handling of the war – reports of American troops serving in Ireland and France, liberally spiced with propaganda, remained popular items in American newspapers – an impression slowly developed that the Patriots were more concerned with European affairs than American ones. This was not entirely unjustified. Though Hamilton was not among them, much of the Patriots’ power base consisted of the rich and powerful who still saw themselves as half-British and did not fully embrace the new national identity that had dawned in the 1750s. Such men did not strongly distinguish between Britain and the ENA, and thus were seen as being too slavish towards what London wanted – “London” meaning of course the Parliament of Great Britain in Westminster, for the office of the King and Emperor was above all national concerns.
Lord Rockingham in particular, having politically fought for full American independence in the Troubles of the 1760s, became more conservative in his old age and did not endear himself to Hamilton’s government, in contrast to the more understanding relationship under the Portland ministry (which in reality was Edmund Burke’s). The situation was not helped by the fact that the two governments were convinced that the other automatically owed them on historical grounds: Rockingham thought that, having helped the Americans receive the right to manage their own affairs, they should repay that trust by automatically joining Britain in all suggested joint operations, while the Americans grumbled about Britain owing her freedom to their fathers and grandfathers serving Prince Frederick in the Second Glorious Revolution.
Relations became politically strained, although the relationship between British and American (and Irish) units in the field tended to be fairly cordial: a few more fossilised British officers held contempt for the colonial units, but these were few and far between thanks to the purges of the British Army after the Second Glorious Revolution. The shrewder among the British officer corps recognised that any reinforcements were desperately needed, given that the existing small volunteer army was trying to face down the French’s far larger conscript force with their new steam weapons. Furthermore, while American discipline remained slightly less than British standards (a relic of the fact that many of the regular army troops had formerly served in Confederate militias) the Americans avoided many of the problems Britain had encountered with using troops from the Germanies, such as the language gap and disagreements over the rules of war.
There was a strong sense that Fredericksburg, having fought hard in the 1760s to achieve a full measure of power, was now becoming subordinate to London again. This was a significant aspect of the Constitutionalists’ victory in the 1799 general election, but a larger one was the sense that the Patriots had been neglecting domestic affairs. In particular, the tensions with Spain in the Oregon country and Noochaland[2] were perceived as being mishandled by Hamilton’s foreign secretary, Samuel Ellery, who was rumoured to be a political appointment. His older brother William was an important figure (the de facto prime minister) of the New England Commission[3] and some newspaper editorials argued that the less-than-capable younger Ellery had been appointed in order to gain his brother’s assent on one of Hamilton’s bills to expand New England settlement in the former Canada. The bill had been popular with the common New England settlers themselves, but not so much with the great and the good of the Confederation, who believed that they would have problems enforcing their will (especially regarding taxation) north of the St Lawrence, hence the requirement of Ellery’s support.
Whether there was any truth to this accusation is now questionable, but the scandal broke only a month before the election and served to deliver a narrow majority to the Constitutionalists. Once the Lord Deputy (the Duke of Grafton) had sworn in James Monroe as Lord President, however, the Constitutionalists almost immediately faced problems. The party’s origins had been more diverse and mercurial than those of the Patriots, who could be described as the conservative forces of the powerful in America and in particular those who owed the strong position of they and their families to their support of Prince Frederick during the War of the British Succession. The Constitutionalists had formed simply as a bloc in opposition to the Patriots, but their broad support base began to show fracture lines as soon as the Patriots were relegated to the opposition benches of the Continental Parliament. The primary supporters of the Constitutionalists were lower-class Americans, in particular those who wanted to settle elsewhere and gain land for themselves and, incidentally, their country.[4]
However, a large section of Constitutionalist support came from the gentry of the southern Confederations (Virginia and Carolina) who were paranoid about the basis of their wealth – chattel slavery – being undone by high-minded northerners. Although Hamilton himself had enforced a ban on discussing slavery in Parliament[5] and his own opinion on the subject seemed ambivalent, the Patriot ministry had seen a general shift in attitudes in New England, Pennsylvania and even New York towards opposing slavery. The southerners pointed out that it was easy for the northerners to do so, given that the usual solution was shipping freed slaves over to Freedonia and there were not that many blacks in the north (except New York) to begin with. By contrast, they made up a large percentage of the whole population in the south, and quite apart from the end of slavery also ending the power base of the southern gentry, the consideration of trying to ship those thousands upon thousands back to Africa would be an astronomically expensive undertaking.
Despite this, the Constitutionalists also enjoyed support from a smaller faction (mostly northern) which was radical abolitionist and opposed the Patriots because they believed that true reform would be too slow and cumbersome with the Patriots’ conservative, old-boys’-network style, as well as Hamilton’s lukewarm attitudes on the topic. This had been an acceptable contradiction while the Constitutionalists were in opposition, but now they were in power, the strains became apparent. However, the party’s majority was too slim to shed either support base, even the more minor abolitionists, with the result that Monroe was forced to try and placate both. He therefore gave the position of Secretary of State for the Continental Department[6] to the abolitionist faction’s leader, the Pennsylvanian Benajmin Rush, while giving the equally important position of Foreign Secretary to the Carolinian Henry Charles Pinckney, a prominent member of the southern planter faction.
This balance of power persisted in its stability for surprisingly long, largely because of the uncomfortable virility of the opposition Patriots. Contrary to the Constitutionalists’ expectations, the Patriots remained under the leadership of Lord Hamilton, who shed Samuel Ellery rather than be tarred by the scandal and defeated an unofficial leadership challenge by Andrew Chase. Hamilton remained energetic as Leader of the Opposition, in particular criticising Monroe’s decision to refuse a peerage, thus making him the first Lord President who was not, in fact, a Lord. Hamilton painted this as a cynical decision on the part of Monroe to ape William Pitt with his ‘Great Commoner’ image, and contrasted this to the Constitutionalists’ large number of rich slaveholders (though Monroe himself had a relatively humble background). Partly out of fear of the Patriots being in a position to exploit any division, the Constitutionalists thus held together despite their ideological contradictions, at least long enough to force through new laws that all parts of the party agreed on.
Initially these simply extended, and made permanent, the institutions that Hamilton had brought in with the intention that they be temporary emergency measures to help with the war – the Commission for Continental Regiments was renamed the Continental War Office (CWO) and given the powers to raise yet more troops, and for domestic affairs as well as those in support of Britain in Europe. Equally, the American Commissioner to London had his office upgraded to that of Lord Representative, thus giving him the devolved authority to sign treaties on behalf of the Lord President. This measure was enacted in response to a public outcry when, in May 1800 (after peace between Britain and France) a canny French privateer took advantage of the fact that the peace had not yet been ratified by the ENA to capture an ENA cargo ship, the captain of which happened to be Elbridge Gerry Jr, son of the New England Patriot MCP. The name of the privateer was eventually leaked as Marcel Mandereaux, with the result that the New York Register coined the portmanteau “to gerrymander”, meaning to commit attacks after the official end of a war.[7]
The Constitutionalists enjoyed a decidedly mixed relationship with Britain; both Fox and the King concurred with some of the Constitutionalists’ reform ideas, but both were strongly opposed to furthering the institution of slavery. Most bills aimed at this were shot down by the Lord Deputy on the King’s orders. This served to weaken the power of the southern planter wing of the party and also stoked resentment of London’s interference in the southern Confederations. Ultimately it led to the definition of the Imperial and Confederal divide in Parliament. Originally the chief divide had been over how closely the ENA should be tied to Britain, but a consensus emerged after Hamilton’s ministry and a few early Monroe reforms. Now, the argument shifted to whether the most power should reside in the federal parliament in Fredericksburg (as the Imperials argued) or with the local assemblies in the Confederations (as the Confederates preferred). Because it was becoming evident that the Fredericksburg Continental Parliament was becoming increasingly abolitionist in sentiment (in a lukewarm sort of way) the southern planters began congregating around the Confederal viewpoint, while abolitionists began to see a strong central government as a way of forcing their views through regardless of objections further down. However, this would not fully develop for decades to come.
The fragile balance was altered by a series of events, beginning with the resolution of the Noochaland crisis in 1802 by Pinckney. This reversed the trend of decline in power for the planters and concerned the abolitionist wing of the party. Pinckney’s faction grew in power until the Cuba Question of 1803. Cuba had been effectively part of the ENA since the Second Platinean War, but now it was to be officially annexed to Carolina as a province and there was the question of whether a review should be held on the status of slavery in the island. This also spilled over into issues of whether anti-Catholic laws like those in Canada should be enacted, or whether this would offend the Spanish straight after the Noochaland dispute had been calmed, and whether the property ownership (including slaves) of the Spanish aristocracy there should be respected. The latter aspect served to divide the left wing of the Constitutionalists enough that the right was able to push through a pro-Carolinian version of the bill, but only with some backbench support from the Patriots. According to King Henry’s wishes, the Lord Deputy refused to grant Royal Assent to the bill – upon which Monroe unexpectedly resigned and called a general election, making it a referendum on the bill.
Even more unexpectedly, considering that Hamilton fought a strong campaign, the Constitutionalists were returned with an increased majority. This was just as well, because Rush resigned as Continental Secretary and withdrew his support from the party in the wake of the Lord Deputy being forced by popular acclamation to grant Royal Assent. The seceding MCPs formed the American Radical Party. Monroe retained enough MCPs to govern with a majority, though not much larger than the one he had previously enjoyed. From this moment on, the Constitutionalists’ formerly schizophrenic identity became more solid: southern, Confederal, anti-abolitionist. A conflict remained between settlers and planters, but this was more minor in character. To replace Rush, Monroe appointed another member of the planters’ now dominant faction, Thomas Heyward, who was known for a moment of heroism during the Second Platinean War in which he had defended an American regiment’s colour from a Spanish attack and lost an arm in the process.
The most significant foreign policy event of Monroe’s second ministry was the Haiti Affair. In 1800, Jean de Lisieux had been trying to get rid of Admiral de Villeneuve, who he despised but had become fairly popular for his courageous if only moderately successful attack on the British and Royal French fleets during the Seigneur Invasion. Villeneuve was sent on a flag-flying tour with what remained of the Republican sail-fleet. In February 1801 he called in at Norfolk, Virginia, in order to deliver a personal apology to the Continental Parliament and the people of Virginia for the murder of Thomas Jefferson: Villeneuve, it is recorded, made a surprising impression upon the crowds he addressed. Given that he was not known for being an especially complex man in terms of rhetoric, it seems likely that Villeneuve himself was truly remorseful about the incident, even though the apology itself had been a cynical ploy penned by Lisieux to try and quell the British and Americans while he dealt with European problems.
In July of that year, Villeneuve’s fleet visited Nouvelle-Orléans and presented an ultimatum by Lisieux to the Governor-General, Charles-Michéle Ledoux, to cleave to the Republican line or face the consequences. Ledoux, like Rochambeau before him, correctly interpreted this as an empty threat: even if Lisieux’s France had managed to scrape together enough ships to send an armed force to Louisiana, such an intervention into America’s backyard would certainly provoke at least a deep cooling of relations and possibly even a renewal of the war. Ledoux called Villeneuve’s bluff, though given the civilised manner in which the admiral had presented his threat, he was not subject to any of the humiliation that Robespierre’s envoys had suffered in India.
With a heavy heart, Villeneuve followed the secondary part of his mission. Ledoux had refused, so he was required to stir up the natives against him, just as Leclerc had with Mysore against Rochambeau. However, the fact that Ledoux’s diplomacy had resulted in a ring of friendly Indian tribes around Louisiana protecting it (in particular, from enterprising Carolinian settlers) made this task impossible. Villeneuve decided to take a different tack: the French colony in Santo Domingo and the surrounding islands was also technically part of New France (of which Louisiana was the last remnant) and he would still be fulfilling his orders if he armed the opposition there. This meant giving Republican muskets to black rebels, which hardly fitted Linnaean ideology, but Villeneuve was a pragmatic man. By the end of 1801, the pro-Republican rebels in Haiti – led by Vincent Ogé, a wealthy free black who had tried to reform the system from within before turning to violence – had received most of the weapons Villeneuve’s ships carried in their holds.
Villeneuve moved on by the beginning of 1802, returning to France in 1804 after a mission to La Pérouse’s Land, but the rebellion he had fanned the flames of continued to cause problems for Ledoux. The remnant of Royal France in Europe was far too busy with its own concerns to give orders on this question, leaving the Governor-General in the unenviable position of having to handle the situation himself. In 1803, Ogé’s rebels defeated a newly raised Louisianan army (including recruits from Ledoux’s Indian allies) at Roseaux, and by the end of 1804 had overrun the Spanish half of the island as well – by this point, of course, the Spanish colonies in the New World had formed the Empire of the Indies, which was itself too busy fighting a desperate war of survival with the UPSA to worry about a minor West Indian colony.
The inability of the Louisianans to crush the self-declared Haitian African Republic became a major concern in the halls of power in Fredericksburg. Many Carolinians had long wanted to conquer Louisiana and settle it, and saw this as a moment of weakness they could exploit. Cooler heads prevailed, however, recognising that while Ledoux could not fight a war on the end of a supply line, in Louisiana itself he and his predecessors had long been preparing for such an invasion. The ENA could certainly take the colony, but only with grievous losses – Ledoux had had several forts built, stronger and more permanent than the usual in the Americas, he had used his political skills to form alliances with the local Indians and arm them with modern weapons, and Nouvelle-Orléans had been reinforced against an amphibious descent (which the British had already tried once before without success). Essentially, while an ENA military operation would almost certainly succeed eventually, an unofficial Carolinian filibuster would not, and the other Confederations saw little reason to risk jeopardising the Empire’s diplomatic relationship with the two Frances (and Britain) over an annexation that would only benefit Carolina. Besides, Louisiana had acted as a drain for all the French colonies fleeing Anglo persecution in other parts of the former New France (Canada, Acadia, the Mississippi valley) and had absorbed enough people that it would now be a sullen and resentful acquisition, not easy to ‘dilute’ or acculturate. And indeed many of its people remembered well their parents’ hatred of the British and the Empire, and would not be obedient citizens to rule.
However, the idea of a radical black Republic was about as alarming to most Americans as it was to both sets of French – ironically, even the Freedish leaders condemned the Republic’s Robespierre-inspired institutions, while only Fox actually praised it. Something had to be done, and that something was the Treaty of Baton Rouge (1805). Another coup for Pinckney, this was signed between the ENA and Louisiana, and saw the following exchanges;
1. Louisiana abandons all sovereignty over Santo Domingo, which is now considered Imperial territory. (New Spanish assent was received informally and later added via amendment).
2. Otherwise, Louisiana’s territorial integrity is recognised and respected by the ENA;
3. The ENA’s Preventive Cutter Service will defend shipping from the remaining French/Louisianan islands such as Guadeloupe, in exchange for a share in the trade profits.
This was basically an acknowledgement by the Royal French and exilic Spanish of Imperial power over the whole West Indian Sea, which had become an American lake – at least for the present. And in August 1805, an American force – Carolinian-dominated, but including representatives from all the Confederations – landed on Santo Domingo and prepared to embark on one of the most controversial operations ever fought…
[1] As in Britain, the term ministry is used in the ENA to refer to a period of time in which a party is in power, where ‘administration’ is used in the OTL USA.
[2] Vancouver Island.
[3] The Confederate assembly of New England. Its name derives from a much earlier body active in the 1600s.
[4] There are two opposing effects at work here. Firstly, the Patriot government tended to frown on settlement beyond a few initiatives that could, in theory, be directly controlled by the government (such as Hamilton’s plan in Canada), fearful of losing control of their citizens. Secondly, however, there is the fact that the ENA does not have universal suffrage – like Britain in the period, voting requires proof of property ownership, although the limit in America is only 10s rather than 40s in Britain (prior to Fox’s reforms). One easy way to gain the right to vote is to win land and settle it. The result is that the speed of American settlement is about the same as OTL – but because there are more avenues to expand into (Canada, Cuba) the westward expansion is slower.
[5] As he did in OTL in one of the bodies he chaired.
[6] Or Continental Secretary; the American equivalent of Home Secretary.
[7] An illustration of how words can mean different things in different universes…
“To understand the character of American exceptionalism, one must look at the mother country. From the 1500s to the first decade of the nineteenth century, England and then Great Britain saw itself as being apart from Europe: her Navy, her ‘Wooden Walls’, meant that the narrow English Channel might as well have been a vast ocean, shielding her from any hostile invasion. England was splendidly isolated and, therefore, special. When English settlers came to America, they brought this attitude with them. Though what became the Empire of North America was not an island, was always vulnerable to attacks by native Indians or rival colonial powers, nonetheless the idea of the nation having a special, unique place in the world was retained. And it continued in America after events had led to its death in Britain…”
– From the introduction to A History of the North American Empire, edited by Pyotr Lomonosov, translated from Russian
*
From – “The ENA in the Jacobin Wars” by Ralph Law (1963) -
When the American general election of 1799 returned a majority for the Constitutionalist Party led by James Monroe, this ended four years of Patriot rule and was in some ways seen as a referendum on Lord Hamilton’s handling of the war. The former Patriot ministry[1] had been unable to avoid being defined in terms of the war; Hamilton had only become Lord President two months before the news of Thomas Jefferson’s murder by the French Revolutionaries reached the ENA and led to the direct declaration of war on France. Furthermore, Hamilton had become Lord President in the wake of the death of the respected first Lord President George Augustine Washington, Viscount Washington, who had ruled as a crossbencher and above party identities. Although the later parties had slowly begun to coalesce during Washington’s ministry, the lines were not strictly drawn until his death and Hamilton’s rise to power. This meant that the Patriot party itself became strongly associated with the war in the public imagination.
Although there was little criticism of Hamilton’s handling of the war – reports of American troops serving in Ireland and France, liberally spiced with propaganda, remained popular items in American newspapers – an impression slowly developed that the Patriots were more concerned with European affairs than American ones. This was not entirely unjustified. Though Hamilton was not among them, much of the Patriots’ power base consisted of the rich and powerful who still saw themselves as half-British and did not fully embrace the new national identity that had dawned in the 1750s. Such men did not strongly distinguish between Britain and the ENA, and thus were seen as being too slavish towards what London wanted – “London” meaning of course the Parliament of Great Britain in Westminster, for the office of the King and Emperor was above all national concerns.
Lord Rockingham in particular, having politically fought for full American independence in the Troubles of the 1760s, became more conservative in his old age and did not endear himself to Hamilton’s government, in contrast to the more understanding relationship under the Portland ministry (which in reality was Edmund Burke’s). The situation was not helped by the fact that the two governments were convinced that the other automatically owed them on historical grounds: Rockingham thought that, having helped the Americans receive the right to manage their own affairs, they should repay that trust by automatically joining Britain in all suggested joint operations, while the Americans grumbled about Britain owing her freedom to their fathers and grandfathers serving Prince Frederick in the Second Glorious Revolution.
Relations became politically strained, although the relationship between British and American (and Irish) units in the field tended to be fairly cordial: a few more fossilised British officers held contempt for the colonial units, but these were few and far between thanks to the purges of the British Army after the Second Glorious Revolution. The shrewder among the British officer corps recognised that any reinforcements were desperately needed, given that the existing small volunteer army was trying to face down the French’s far larger conscript force with their new steam weapons. Furthermore, while American discipline remained slightly less than British standards (a relic of the fact that many of the regular army troops had formerly served in Confederate militias) the Americans avoided many of the problems Britain had encountered with using troops from the Germanies, such as the language gap and disagreements over the rules of war.
There was a strong sense that Fredericksburg, having fought hard in the 1760s to achieve a full measure of power, was now becoming subordinate to London again. This was a significant aspect of the Constitutionalists’ victory in the 1799 general election, but a larger one was the sense that the Patriots had been neglecting domestic affairs. In particular, the tensions with Spain in the Oregon country and Noochaland[2] were perceived as being mishandled by Hamilton’s foreign secretary, Samuel Ellery, who was rumoured to be a political appointment. His older brother William was an important figure (the de facto prime minister) of the New England Commission[3] and some newspaper editorials argued that the less-than-capable younger Ellery had been appointed in order to gain his brother’s assent on one of Hamilton’s bills to expand New England settlement in the former Canada. The bill had been popular with the common New England settlers themselves, but not so much with the great and the good of the Confederation, who believed that they would have problems enforcing their will (especially regarding taxation) north of the St Lawrence, hence the requirement of Ellery’s support.
Whether there was any truth to this accusation is now questionable, but the scandal broke only a month before the election and served to deliver a narrow majority to the Constitutionalists. Once the Lord Deputy (the Duke of Grafton) had sworn in James Monroe as Lord President, however, the Constitutionalists almost immediately faced problems. The party’s origins had been more diverse and mercurial than those of the Patriots, who could be described as the conservative forces of the powerful in America and in particular those who owed the strong position of they and their families to their support of Prince Frederick during the War of the British Succession. The Constitutionalists had formed simply as a bloc in opposition to the Patriots, but their broad support base began to show fracture lines as soon as the Patriots were relegated to the opposition benches of the Continental Parliament. The primary supporters of the Constitutionalists were lower-class Americans, in particular those who wanted to settle elsewhere and gain land for themselves and, incidentally, their country.[4]
However, a large section of Constitutionalist support came from the gentry of the southern Confederations (Virginia and Carolina) who were paranoid about the basis of their wealth – chattel slavery – being undone by high-minded northerners. Although Hamilton himself had enforced a ban on discussing slavery in Parliament[5] and his own opinion on the subject seemed ambivalent, the Patriot ministry had seen a general shift in attitudes in New England, Pennsylvania and even New York towards opposing slavery. The southerners pointed out that it was easy for the northerners to do so, given that the usual solution was shipping freed slaves over to Freedonia and there were not that many blacks in the north (except New York) to begin with. By contrast, they made up a large percentage of the whole population in the south, and quite apart from the end of slavery also ending the power base of the southern gentry, the consideration of trying to ship those thousands upon thousands back to Africa would be an astronomically expensive undertaking.
Despite this, the Constitutionalists also enjoyed support from a smaller faction (mostly northern) which was radical abolitionist and opposed the Patriots because they believed that true reform would be too slow and cumbersome with the Patriots’ conservative, old-boys’-network style, as well as Hamilton’s lukewarm attitudes on the topic. This had been an acceptable contradiction while the Constitutionalists were in opposition, but now they were in power, the strains became apparent. However, the party’s majority was too slim to shed either support base, even the more minor abolitionists, with the result that Monroe was forced to try and placate both. He therefore gave the position of Secretary of State for the Continental Department[6] to the abolitionist faction’s leader, the Pennsylvanian Benajmin Rush, while giving the equally important position of Foreign Secretary to the Carolinian Henry Charles Pinckney, a prominent member of the southern planter faction.
This balance of power persisted in its stability for surprisingly long, largely because of the uncomfortable virility of the opposition Patriots. Contrary to the Constitutionalists’ expectations, the Patriots remained under the leadership of Lord Hamilton, who shed Samuel Ellery rather than be tarred by the scandal and defeated an unofficial leadership challenge by Andrew Chase. Hamilton remained energetic as Leader of the Opposition, in particular criticising Monroe’s decision to refuse a peerage, thus making him the first Lord President who was not, in fact, a Lord. Hamilton painted this as a cynical decision on the part of Monroe to ape William Pitt with his ‘Great Commoner’ image, and contrasted this to the Constitutionalists’ large number of rich slaveholders (though Monroe himself had a relatively humble background). Partly out of fear of the Patriots being in a position to exploit any division, the Constitutionalists thus held together despite their ideological contradictions, at least long enough to force through new laws that all parts of the party agreed on.
Initially these simply extended, and made permanent, the institutions that Hamilton had brought in with the intention that they be temporary emergency measures to help with the war – the Commission for Continental Regiments was renamed the Continental War Office (CWO) and given the powers to raise yet more troops, and for domestic affairs as well as those in support of Britain in Europe. Equally, the American Commissioner to London had his office upgraded to that of Lord Representative, thus giving him the devolved authority to sign treaties on behalf of the Lord President. This measure was enacted in response to a public outcry when, in May 1800 (after peace between Britain and France) a canny French privateer took advantage of the fact that the peace had not yet been ratified by the ENA to capture an ENA cargo ship, the captain of which happened to be Elbridge Gerry Jr, son of the New England Patriot MCP. The name of the privateer was eventually leaked as Marcel Mandereaux, with the result that the New York Register coined the portmanteau “to gerrymander”, meaning to commit attacks after the official end of a war.[7]
The Constitutionalists enjoyed a decidedly mixed relationship with Britain; both Fox and the King concurred with some of the Constitutionalists’ reform ideas, but both were strongly opposed to furthering the institution of slavery. Most bills aimed at this were shot down by the Lord Deputy on the King’s orders. This served to weaken the power of the southern planter wing of the party and also stoked resentment of London’s interference in the southern Confederations. Ultimately it led to the definition of the Imperial and Confederal divide in Parliament. Originally the chief divide had been over how closely the ENA should be tied to Britain, but a consensus emerged after Hamilton’s ministry and a few early Monroe reforms. Now, the argument shifted to whether the most power should reside in the federal parliament in Fredericksburg (as the Imperials argued) or with the local assemblies in the Confederations (as the Confederates preferred). Because it was becoming evident that the Fredericksburg Continental Parliament was becoming increasingly abolitionist in sentiment (in a lukewarm sort of way) the southern planters began congregating around the Confederal viewpoint, while abolitionists began to see a strong central government as a way of forcing their views through regardless of objections further down. However, this would not fully develop for decades to come.
The fragile balance was altered by a series of events, beginning with the resolution of the Noochaland crisis in 1802 by Pinckney. This reversed the trend of decline in power for the planters and concerned the abolitionist wing of the party. Pinckney’s faction grew in power until the Cuba Question of 1803. Cuba had been effectively part of the ENA since the Second Platinean War, but now it was to be officially annexed to Carolina as a province and there was the question of whether a review should be held on the status of slavery in the island. This also spilled over into issues of whether anti-Catholic laws like those in Canada should be enacted, or whether this would offend the Spanish straight after the Noochaland dispute had been calmed, and whether the property ownership (including slaves) of the Spanish aristocracy there should be respected. The latter aspect served to divide the left wing of the Constitutionalists enough that the right was able to push through a pro-Carolinian version of the bill, but only with some backbench support from the Patriots. According to King Henry’s wishes, the Lord Deputy refused to grant Royal Assent to the bill – upon which Monroe unexpectedly resigned and called a general election, making it a referendum on the bill.
Even more unexpectedly, considering that Hamilton fought a strong campaign, the Constitutionalists were returned with an increased majority. This was just as well, because Rush resigned as Continental Secretary and withdrew his support from the party in the wake of the Lord Deputy being forced by popular acclamation to grant Royal Assent. The seceding MCPs formed the American Radical Party. Monroe retained enough MCPs to govern with a majority, though not much larger than the one he had previously enjoyed. From this moment on, the Constitutionalists’ formerly schizophrenic identity became more solid: southern, Confederal, anti-abolitionist. A conflict remained between settlers and planters, but this was more minor in character. To replace Rush, Monroe appointed another member of the planters’ now dominant faction, Thomas Heyward, who was known for a moment of heroism during the Second Platinean War in which he had defended an American regiment’s colour from a Spanish attack and lost an arm in the process.
The most significant foreign policy event of Monroe’s second ministry was the Haiti Affair. In 1800, Jean de Lisieux had been trying to get rid of Admiral de Villeneuve, who he despised but had become fairly popular for his courageous if only moderately successful attack on the British and Royal French fleets during the Seigneur Invasion. Villeneuve was sent on a flag-flying tour with what remained of the Republican sail-fleet. In February 1801 he called in at Norfolk, Virginia, in order to deliver a personal apology to the Continental Parliament and the people of Virginia for the murder of Thomas Jefferson: Villeneuve, it is recorded, made a surprising impression upon the crowds he addressed. Given that he was not known for being an especially complex man in terms of rhetoric, it seems likely that Villeneuve himself was truly remorseful about the incident, even though the apology itself had been a cynical ploy penned by Lisieux to try and quell the British and Americans while he dealt with European problems.
In July of that year, Villeneuve’s fleet visited Nouvelle-Orléans and presented an ultimatum by Lisieux to the Governor-General, Charles-Michéle Ledoux, to cleave to the Republican line or face the consequences. Ledoux, like Rochambeau before him, correctly interpreted this as an empty threat: even if Lisieux’s France had managed to scrape together enough ships to send an armed force to Louisiana, such an intervention into America’s backyard would certainly provoke at least a deep cooling of relations and possibly even a renewal of the war. Ledoux called Villeneuve’s bluff, though given the civilised manner in which the admiral had presented his threat, he was not subject to any of the humiliation that Robespierre’s envoys had suffered in India.
With a heavy heart, Villeneuve followed the secondary part of his mission. Ledoux had refused, so he was required to stir up the natives against him, just as Leclerc had with Mysore against Rochambeau. However, the fact that Ledoux’s diplomacy had resulted in a ring of friendly Indian tribes around Louisiana protecting it (in particular, from enterprising Carolinian settlers) made this task impossible. Villeneuve decided to take a different tack: the French colony in Santo Domingo and the surrounding islands was also technically part of New France (of which Louisiana was the last remnant) and he would still be fulfilling his orders if he armed the opposition there. This meant giving Republican muskets to black rebels, which hardly fitted Linnaean ideology, but Villeneuve was a pragmatic man. By the end of 1801, the pro-Republican rebels in Haiti – led by Vincent Ogé, a wealthy free black who had tried to reform the system from within before turning to violence – had received most of the weapons Villeneuve’s ships carried in their holds.
Villeneuve moved on by the beginning of 1802, returning to France in 1804 after a mission to La Pérouse’s Land, but the rebellion he had fanned the flames of continued to cause problems for Ledoux. The remnant of Royal France in Europe was far too busy with its own concerns to give orders on this question, leaving the Governor-General in the unenviable position of having to handle the situation himself. In 1803, Ogé’s rebels defeated a newly raised Louisianan army (including recruits from Ledoux’s Indian allies) at Roseaux, and by the end of 1804 had overrun the Spanish half of the island as well – by this point, of course, the Spanish colonies in the New World had formed the Empire of the Indies, which was itself too busy fighting a desperate war of survival with the UPSA to worry about a minor West Indian colony.
The inability of the Louisianans to crush the self-declared Haitian African Republic became a major concern in the halls of power in Fredericksburg. Many Carolinians had long wanted to conquer Louisiana and settle it, and saw this as a moment of weakness they could exploit. Cooler heads prevailed, however, recognising that while Ledoux could not fight a war on the end of a supply line, in Louisiana itself he and his predecessors had long been preparing for such an invasion. The ENA could certainly take the colony, but only with grievous losses – Ledoux had had several forts built, stronger and more permanent than the usual in the Americas, he had used his political skills to form alliances with the local Indians and arm them with modern weapons, and Nouvelle-Orléans had been reinforced against an amphibious descent (which the British had already tried once before without success). Essentially, while an ENA military operation would almost certainly succeed eventually, an unofficial Carolinian filibuster would not, and the other Confederations saw little reason to risk jeopardising the Empire’s diplomatic relationship with the two Frances (and Britain) over an annexation that would only benefit Carolina. Besides, Louisiana had acted as a drain for all the French colonies fleeing Anglo persecution in other parts of the former New France (Canada, Acadia, the Mississippi valley) and had absorbed enough people that it would now be a sullen and resentful acquisition, not easy to ‘dilute’ or acculturate. And indeed many of its people remembered well their parents’ hatred of the British and the Empire, and would not be obedient citizens to rule.
However, the idea of a radical black Republic was about as alarming to most Americans as it was to both sets of French – ironically, even the Freedish leaders condemned the Republic’s Robespierre-inspired institutions, while only Fox actually praised it. Something had to be done, and that something was the Treaty of Baton Rouge (1805). Another coup for Pinckney, this was signed between the ENA and Louisiana, and saw the following exchanges;
1. Louisiana abandons all sovereignty over Santo Domingo, which is now considered Imperial territory. (New Spanish assent was received informally and later added via amendment).
2. Otherwise, Louisiana’s territorial integrity is recognised and respected by the ENA;
3. The ENA’s Preventive Cutter Service will defend shipping from the remaining French/Louisianan islands such as Guadeloupe, in exchange for a share in the trade profits.
This was basically an acknowledgement by the Royal French and exilic Spanish of Imperial power over the whole West Indian Sea, which had become an American lake – at least for the present. And in August 1805, an American force – Carolinian-dominated, but including representatives from all the Confederations – landed on Santo Domingo and prepared to embark on one of the most controversial operations ever fought…
[1] As in Britain, the term ministry is used in the ENA to refer to a period of time in which a party is in power, where ‘administration’ is used in the OTL USA.
[2] Vancouver Island.
[3] The Confederate assembly of New England. Its name derives from a much earlier body active in the 1600s.
[4] There are two opposing effects at work here. Firstly, the Patriot government tended to frown on settlement beyond a few initiatives that could, in theory, be directly controlled by the government (such as Hamilton’s plan in Canada), fearful of losing control of their citizens. Secondly, however, there is the fact that the ENA does not have universal suffrage – like Britain in the period, voting requires proof of property ownership, although the limit in America is only 10s rather than 40s in Britain (prior to Fox’s reforms). One easy way to gain the right to vote is to win land and settle it. The result is that the speed of American settlement is about the same as OTL – but because there are more avenues to expand into (Canada, Cuba) the westward expansion is slower.
[5] As he did in OTL in one of the bodies he chaired.
[6] Or Continental Secretary; the American equivalent of Home Secretary.
[7] An illustration of how words can mean different things in different universes…
Ooh, getting juicy. I hope that the HAR survives... the concept is just so cool, and its existence would really help in making Racialism much more tolerante.
Or the opposite could happen and Carolinian slave owners could become even more paranoid of slave uprising than they were in OTL due to the massive amount of white blood which would be spilt in Hispaniola, leading to even nastier treatment of slaves and even more radicalized racism.
Hmm... If the ENA does conquer Haiti, perhaps a new Confederation could be formed from the Caribbean territories. Except that Carolina already has Cuba. Nevermind.
Pure awesomeness, regardless.
Pure awesomeness, regardless.
Huzzah, an update! I wonder what Lisieux's reaction will be to black Racialists.
Japhy
Banned
Interesting events, I have a feeling that one day the Confederation of Carolina is going to have a violent problem with the rest of the Empire, especially if they are hemmed in by French Louisianna and a lack of support for further southern expansion after the controversial events on Haiti.
I do have a question though not related to the previous post. Three of the Confederations (New York, Pennsylvania, and Virgina) have claim to all lands with in their north south borders for the entire length of the the Empire, are the settlers in the Western Provinces having problems in relation to the Eastern Establishment, in OTL US History, settlers in Western claims of the Eastern states in places such as Kentucky and Tennessee fought violent and political conflicts with their "overlords" along the coast, will something similar happen with the Confederations?
I do have a question though not related to the previous post. Three of the Confederations (New York, Pennsylvania, and Virgina) have claim to all lands with in their north south borders for the entire length of the the Empire, are the settlers in the Western Provinces having problems in relation to the Eastern Establishment, in OTL US History, settlers in Western claims of the Eastern states in places such as Kentucky and Tennessee fought violent and political conflicts with their "overlords" along the coast, will something similar happen with the Confederations?
Ah, so the entire island of Hispanola is now American, and the west Carribean is virtually American or maybe about to be. Nifty.
Updated map, Roberto! I'm still up for helping a bit as well on ENA namage, Thande-I've corrected my original notes a great bit, as it's amazing how many OTL American states or cities or geographic areas had an English name once or easily translatable to one (think like, St. Louis to St. Lewis easy here).
....and alongside my starting a debate on the British Central American lands being taken I'm probably seeming incredibly arrogant still offering help. Maybe? Yar.
Updated map, Roberto! I'm still up for helping a bit as well on ENA namage, Thande-I've corrected my original notes a great bit, as it's amazing how many OTL American states or cities or geographic areas had an English name once or easily translatable to one (think like, St. Louis to St. Lewis easy here).
....and alongside my starting a debate on the British Central American lands being taken I'm probably seeming incredibly arrogant still offering help. Maybe? Yar.
Brilliant update, Thande! I don't actually know which I prefer reading about more - Jacobin Europe, the ENA or Meridional America. Hell, I love all of it!
EDIT: I'm also increasingly intrigued by Superia/Susan-Mary and the frozen north...
EDIT: I'm also increasingly intrigued by Superia/Susan-Mary and the frozen north...
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while this whole thing is most excellent, the places I most want to hear about are 'Russian' Japan and what the Maori are getting up to in the pacific with their french advisers [or whatever].
well, and the french tech. steam punk is made of win, no matter how sane and logical it's application
the Americas just aren't that interesting to me.
not that my opinion should mean a lot here or anything, but yeah
well, and the french tech. steam punk is made of win, no matter how sane and logical it's application
the Americas just aren't that interesting to me.
not that my opinion should mean a lot here or anything, but yeah
Awesome, the intrigues of the Continental Parliament unfold! Very much liked the bit about American exceptionalism -- interesting how you've transmuted the trappings of the American national character but preserved much of its content.
You've made a very good case for the continued survival of Louisiana, but I'd have one quibble with the Treaty of Baton Rouge: it doesn't address the primary reason that the ENA outside of Carolina would want to acquire New Orleans -- free navigation of the Mississippi. Given the patrols the ENA's Revenue Service will perform for Guadaloupe and Martinique, it seems to me that some kind of agreement about free navigation of the Mississippi would be a good deal for both sides: the ENA gets easy transport and Louisiana gets to be an entrepot for trade of all sorts. It might however be the subject of a different accord, I suppose.
Also, I keep wondering if and how the following tidbit from Interlude #4 (Post #333) will become true:
So the ENA gets to the Pacific for certain. When I first read this, I thought it meant each confederation would straddle the continent, but on second reading it need not imply that at all. However, it doesn't add any more confederations to explain how the far West will be governed.
You've made a very good case for the continued survival of Louisiana, but I'd have one quibble with the Treaty of Baton Rouge: it doesn't address the primary reason that the ENA outside of Carolina would want to acquire New Orleans -- free navigation of the Mississippi. Given the patrols the ENA's Revenue Service will perform for Guadaloupe and Martinique, it seems to me that some kind of agreement about free navigation of the Mississippi would be a good deal for both sides: the ENA gets easy transport and Louisiana gets to be an entrepot for trade of all sorts. It might however be the subject of a different accord, I suppose.
Also, I keep wondering if and how the following tidbit from Interlude #4 (Post #333) will become true:
So the ENA gets to the Pacific for certain. When I first read this, I thought it meant each confederation would straddle the continent, but on second reading it need not imply that at all. However, it doesn't add any more confederations to explain how the far West will be governed.
Aren't Noochaland/Vancouver and the Oregon Country at least nominally part of the ENA? In which case, the question is not whether the ENA reaches the Pacific, but how. And if I'm wrong... well, nobody's specified which seas are doing the shining, after all.
Well, that's a good point. While Thande doesn't spell out what happened it does seem as if the Nookta settlement happens in some fashion similar to OTL, per the above. However, in previous posts he has hinted that Russian colonization in the Pacific may be more pronounced TTL.
An intersting notion.
And then of course there's Susan-Mary to parse out -- which makes me wonder if the allusions above the New England's worries about governing / collecting taxes in Canada across the St. Lawrence will bear some Republican fruit.
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