Union and Liberty: An American TL

[wilcoxchar]

Update time! I had no idea how long the second section would be.

Part Fifty-Five: Opposing Forces

France Fumbles:
France experienced even more setbacks in 1867 in Belgium. An invasion that the top military leaders proposed would take months if not weeks at the beginning of the war had been going on for over two years now. The Coalition forces had pushed France back from the height of her penetration into Belgium thus far and continued pushing back into France throughout the year. The Coalition was finally able to take Lille and dislodge the French from Waterloo after a grueling month long fight in the trenches. During the year, the Coalition forces also recaptured Mons and Charleroi and crossed the French border up to Valenciennes. Namur became France's only stronghold in Belgium as the winter months set in.

The British, along with sending Irishmen to fight in Belgium, also created and sent the Irish Foreign Legion to assist the Spaniards in fending off the French attack. With the assistance of the Irish Foreign Legion, Spain was able to stop the French from advancing in the Basque country past seizing Guernica and Mondragón, thus saving Bilbao from falling to French forces. Further east, French armies left the Puigcerda Valley yet again and Vielha and Berga by September. This connected the soldiers in the Pyrenees with the soldiers in Catalonia and allowed pressure to be placed on the inland flank of the Spanish trenches. The Spanish were forced to retreat and conceded the seaside village of Lloret de Mar, bringing France one step closer toward reaching Barcelona.


Austria Rumbles:
Up until mid-1867, Austria had been doing fairly well in the Unification War. It had kept Bavaria confined to the Alps, had prevented the Prussians from making significant gains in Bohemia, and had fought valiantly against Italy. However the amount of resources that were necessary to maintain Austria's position in the war up until this point had caused the Habsburgs to neglect Austria's domestic troubles. Small cracks appeared in Vienna's governance of its territories in 1866 with the Italian revolts and the sabotage of the two ships in Dubrovnik, but now many nationalist groups came out into the open. Their success in beginning uprisings in 1867 showed the undercurrent of discontent that plagued the Austrian Empire in the 19th century that would lead to its downfall.

The progress of the war turned gradually worse for the Austrians in 1867. In Bohemia, Austria was outnumbered by the Prussian attacking forces. The army in western Bohemia was joined by a small Bavarian expedition that reached Karlovy Vary in May and started its second attack south and east toward Prague. Combined with the now stronger army in eastern Bohemia under Steffen Osisek, the Prussian armies went south in a move to completely surround Prague and block it off from the rest of Austria. By the end of the year, the only rail link from Vienna to Prague was from the south via Tabor and Benesov.

The fighting in the Alps and the Po Valley also brought some significant defeats for the Austrian armies. In Italy, Enrico Cialdini led a quick drive north from Piacenza that inflicted a decisive defeat to an Austrian army near Cremona. Cialdini continued advancing into Lombardy reaching Brescia and Verona by July. However, Austrian armies in Venetia were able to coalesce around Verona and push Cialdini's men back across the Adige River. At the cost however, Italy was able to move the entire front up to the Adige and they reached the Lago di Gorda in the north. Bavaria, meanwhile, was stagnant along the Alpine border for much of the year.

Combined with these losses in the war, Austria also faced increased trouble with its domestic population. Nationalist movements which until now had operated mostly underground were gaining momentum and starting to launch protest or more violent attacks against Habsburg rule, particularly in Hungary, Galizien, and Dalmatia. Cities all along the Dalmatian coast were witness to protests and dockworkers striked to prevent the stationing of Austrian naval ships in Split and Fiume. In Budapest, a mob of Hungarian nationalists descended on the governor's building demanding that he release political prisoners. Faced with these protests, the prisoners were released. However, when Vienna got hold of this, several members of the Imperial Governing Council in Hungary were sacked and a crackdown on Hungarian nationalist was put in place.

The most prominent uprising that took place in 1867, however, was in the border region of Galizien. Populated by a large majority of Poles and Ukrainians, the region staged a national congress for both groups in the central city of Lvov in October. Austrian guardsmen broke up the meeting after a week when a couple leaders were calling for a demonstration for more regional autonomy for Galizien, and over the next months events spiraled out of control so that by 1868, the city and much of Galizien was in chaos as uprisings spread and anti-Habsburg or pro-independence riots broke out in several towns.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Next update is finished!

Part Fifty-Six: Tipping the Balance

France On the Rebound:
After the setbacks in 1867, France redoubled its efforts in the Belgian front of the Second Napoleonic War. More Frenchmen poured into the trenches and forced the Coalition forces back inch by inch. The year of 1868 in the Belgium was dominated by the Battle of the Sambre[1], a campaign that lasted almost the entire summer and was a decisive struggle over southeastern Belgium. The fighting began in June when British and Belgian troops surged south from Charleroi and captured territory as far as Philippeville along with intense fighting in the trenches just north of Namur. The next months saw the French armies organize quickly to meet the attack and several assaults were launched by the French on Valenciennes, Mons, and recapturing Philippeville. After three grueling months, those three cities had fallen to France, and in November the Coalition forces in Charleroi were surrounded and surrendered. France would hold Charleroi and Namur, the two largest cities in Wallonia, for the rest of the Second Napoleonic War.

In Spain, the French armies were still on the attack as the Spanish forces grew weary of the constant defending. The Irish Foreign Legion was able to help Spain continue holding off any attacks on Bilbao or Vitoria, but France massed further forces in Catalonia and Aragon and moved the front further into Spain in those areas. A new army that had arrived in Pamplona moved south into Spanish territory, capturing the cities of Jaca, Estella, and Carcastillo before a Spanish counterattack was launched. Spain retook Carcastillo, but the capital of ancient Aragon and the city of the Carlist Court had fallen into French hands.

During 1868, the French armies were also continuing their advance on Barcelona. France massed a large offensive on the main road from the central Pyrenees toward the Catalan city that took the towns of Solsona and Manresa by the end of the year. In the trenches of eastern Catalonia, the French were able to overwhelm many of the Spanish positions with the aid of the French navy. By August, French forces had reached the coastal town of Mataro, within twenty miles of Barcelona. For much of the remainder of the year, the French Aerostatic Corps launched balloon raids on Barcelona using the larger capacity baskets and tapered explosives that had been developed since the shelling of Guernica two years earlier. This bombing was much more effective than at Guernica, but the bigger gasbags required for the larger payloads made the Aerostatic Corps an easier target for Spanish artillery and three balloons were lost that year in the skies over Barcelona.


The Fall of the House of Habsburg:
By 1868, Austria was experiencing external attacks from two fronts as well as the beginnings of crippling domestic revolts. The Prussian army in Bohemia was able to close off Prague by May and after a week long bombardment of the city, Prague fell to the Prussian forces. After the fall of Prague, general Steffen Osisek split the armies in Bohemia into two groups. The first, smaller group marched east and captured Krakow in August and put down a Polish uprising. The larger group under Osisek's leadership headed south toward Austria itself and Vienna. They were accompanied by a Bavarian force following the Danube as it flowed east. With the threat of the Prussians and Bavarians on Vienna, Emperor Franz Karl I[2] and rest of the Habsburg royal family fled to Budapest.

In the Alps, the news of a march on Vienna and troubles in the rest of the Empire devastated the morale of many of the soldiers fighting for Austria. Taking advantage of this, Bavaria launched several ambitious offensives in that year, taking Vorarlberg, Gastein, and most of all, Innsbruck in 1868. Italy also did well in the Alpine front, making advances into southern Tirol and further into Venetia. While Italian armies did not reach Venice itself, Cialdini did lead the Italian armies to victory over the Austrians at Vicenza and Padua. Italy also won a battle against the Austrian navy in the Adriatic as many ships were tied up enforcing a quarantine of the island of Venice after a severe cholera outbreak in the city[3].

Further east, the Austrian Empire was beset by political struggles and rebellions. More areas of the Adriatic coast went into open revolt as Croatian, Dalmatian, and Slovenian nationalist groups encouraged their people to move for independence. The rebels in Galizien consolidated and continued to lessen the Austrian influence in the region. In the capital itself and other major cities in Austria and Hungary, socialists, republicans, and all other manner of political advocates held protests and riots against the government offices. The entire country was beginning to fall into a state of complete chaos, as the last remaining Habsburg rule came to its end.

[1] One of the few rivers in Belgium that run east-west, much to my annoyance when trying to name general campaigns. Also, apparently this was the name of an OTL WWI offensive.
[2] Brother of OTL Emperor Ferdinand I. He died in the 1850s leaving no heir ITTL so his brother inherited the throne. Franz Karl in OTL was father to Emperor Franz Joseph and Emperor Maximilian of Mexico.
[3] Approximately 75,000 people would die in Venice during the cholera outbreak of 1868-1869, almost half the city's total population.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Next update is done!

Party Fifty-Seven: Out of Order Comes Chaos

Sambre Stalemate and Barcelona Blues:
After the success of the Battle of the Sambre, France gained comparatively little ground on the eastern side of the Belgian front during the following year. While France did continue to extend its hold across the Sambre to Charleroi, the Coalition was able to move the majority of the front back to the river. In July and August, a large British offensive in the center line of the front recaptured Mons, but failed to reach the border between Belgium and France. Further west along the front, France worked most of the year to take Lille from the Coalition. France finally did manage to secure Lille in October after the British and Belgian garrison was sufficiently weakened by the redirection of Coalition forces toward the Mons offensive.

Meanwhile, the French continued to gain more and more ground in Spain as the Spanish forces were drawn further back into Spain. The Basque front was stagnant for much of the year with France making minimal gains only to secure Estella from a wide Spanish attack. However, the Spanish armies in Catalonia had to endure more retreats as France reached Sabadell in June and Badalona in August. A large network of trenches and artillery pieces were set up near Badalona on the coast up through the hills north of Barcelona to Montcada, where the Ripoll and Besos rivers met and cut a flat plain through the hills to the coast. In early September, a Spanish and British naval contingent was able to get the French navy away from Barcelona, but the French armies still bore down on the defenses. A difficult, slow campaign ensued, much like the previous battle near Girona, and lasted for months as France began to surround the city.


The Final Days:
Up until now, the Habsburg rule over the Austrian Empire had been on the verge of complete collapse in the face of the German and Italian invasions and the rebellions in the south and east. In 1869, the final straw would break in Austria and the Habsburg dynasty would come to a violent, crashing end. In March, the Italian armies under Cialdini captured Venice, Treviso, and Udine, and began to force the Austrian armies into the Alps. Bavarian armies took several Alpine towns and turned their eyes east, marching through Linz in June. Steffen Osisek started to march his armies through the Moravian Plateau toward Vienna in April. The three countries were converging upon Vienna, even when the Habsburgs had already fled the city.

However, in July, a mass uprising in Hungary against Habsburg rule brought an abrupt and somewhat sensible end to the war. Emperor Franz Karl, with gunshots outside of the compound the Royal Family was staying at in Budapest[1], wrote a letter of surrender to Berlin. Within this letter Franz Karl requested two things. First, that the negotiation of peace terms be begun as quickly as possible so that the armies could work together to quell the rebellions that were growing every day. And second, the Habsburg royal family requested asylum in Bavaria on the basis that Franz Karl's wife, Archduchess Sophie, was the aunt of King Maximilian II of Bavaria. These terms were granted by the victorious powers, but only guaranteed for the duration of negotiations, and the Habsburg Royal Family was sped to Berlin on a train.

Emperor Franz Karl and his family arrived in Berlin on July 22nd, 1869 and met with the Prussian, Bavarian, and Italian leaders in the nearby town of Cottbus. The next three months were spent in negotiations over concessions in a territory that one side had increasingly little rule over. In November, the final minutiae of the proceedings had been finished and the Treaty of Cottbus was signed by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and King William I of Prussia, King Maximilian II of Bavaria, and President Giuseppe Garibaldi of Italy on the side of the victors, and Emperor Franz Karl and Archduke Maximilian[2] of Austria on the side of the defeated. The terms of the Treaty of Cottbus included the abolition of the German Confederation with Prussia formally acknowledged as the leader of the German states, the cession of Bohemia to Prussia, the cession of much of Tirol and the city of Salzburg to Bavaria, and the cession of Lombardy and Venetia to Italy. However, formal peace did not bring an end to the uprisings in Austria and the former Habsburg realms were now fast becoming a land of lawlessness and anarchy.

[1] The story of writing the message amid gunshots outside is apocryphal, mind you.
[2] Eldest son of Franz Karl; also known in OTL as Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico

 

[wilcoxchar]

Alright, this update is taking a while to finish due to real life so I'll make this one an add-as-I-write one. Here's what I've got done so far.

Part Fifty-Eight: Peace at Last

Homage to Catalonia: After many back and forth battles in the Mediterranean and France only achieving much success around Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, France finally got the upper hand in the Mediterranean in 1870. In late 1869, France launched a new naval fleet out of Nantes and sailed it toward the English Channel. With several British ships recalled to the Channel to prevent the French gaining superiority in the seas, France caught the naval bases at Malta and the Ionian Islands off guard and landed small forces in various British islands around the eastern Mediterranean. Malta and Corfu were captured by March of 1870, and Kefalonia fell to the French army in September.

On the Spanish mainland, France continued gaining momentum against the Coalition forces in both Catalonia and the Basque Country. Barcelona succumbed to the French siege and balloon bombings after six months as thousands of men lay dead in the streets of the city. The Spanish had resorted to urban fighting to hold off the French as long as they could, and as a result many of the city's buildings were reduced to rubble. After the capture of Barcelona, the French army began advancing northwest. The war ended before any more significant gains were made, however, and Barcelona stood a ravaged husk as French troops filed back to the city during the occupation of the city in the winter of 1870.

In the Basque Country, the Spanish troops and the Irish Foreign Legion were in dire straits. French artillery had been bombarding the Spanish defensive networks and now made extending or repairing the defenses almost impossible. Along with the direct combat, French generals had also enlisted Basques and Carlists in their cause as saboteurs. These saboteurs were disrupting the Spanish rail and telegraph networks and misinformation and dwindling supplies in some areas, causing discontent and several lowered morale among the Spanish infantrymen. The stalemate at the Guernica River that had held off the French for years at last shattered in May of 1870 and French soldiers surged through the widening cracks in the Spanish line like water breaking through a failing dam. By the time the General Armistice was agreed to in November of 1870, the French had seized both Bilbao and Vitoria. Bilbao was one of the cities with a French presence between the General Armistice and the Berlin Conference in March of 1871 finally restored peace to Western Europe.


In Flanders Fields: France also made many gains in the final year of the Second Napoleonic War in Belgium. The French kept the front in the eastern half of Belgium at the approximate line following the Sambre River and moved tens of thousands of men to the western section of the front. The increase in French troops punched a hole in the Coalition lines near Lille and Kortnijk across the Belgian border fell into French hands by April. The French advance widened to include Tournai and Ypres in the next two months as Belgian leaders began considering engaging in separate negotiations with the French.

As the French continued marching through Belgium, the French general Antoine Chanzy turned the army's advance not toward Brussels, but rather toward the coast of Belgium. President Louis-Napoleon had reasoned that Great Britain had become the main opponent to France in the war and advised his military staff to focus on injuring Great Britain as much as they could. Additionally, the British had made a landing of thirty thousand more soldiers, two thirds of whom were Irish, at Dunkerque at the beginning of 1870. French forces had been able to contain this new British force in the city until now, but it was growing ever more difficult as the Royal Navy was sending supplies through several Belgian ports and the French ships in that part of the English Channel were unable to stop enough supply shipments.

General Chanzy kept the pressure against the Coalition lines as the British and Belgians were pushed further back toward the Channel. The French army in the central push was divided into three sections. The Ypres Corps was tasked with taking Nieuwpoort, the Rosselare Corps was tasked with harassing Brugge and taking the city if possible, and the Krontijk Corps was tasked with advancing toward Ghent. The Ypres Corps took Nieuwpoort while the Rosselare Corps reached as far as Oostkamp just south of Brugge by July. The trap was set and the Ypres Corps turned west to accompany the other French armies surrounding Dunkerque.


The Evacuation of Dunkerque and the General Armistice: As the hot summer months bore down on Europe in 1870, the French armies in Belgium were content to sit and hold their positions while the main force of the French northern front was turned toward Dunkerque. The British had unloaded an extra hundred thousand men in the French port city the previous winter, bringing the total number of Coalition soldiers in the Dunkerque area to a staggering 150,000 men. By the beginning of August, the French had almost a complete wall of people and field guns arranged in a tweny mile wide semicircle from Gravelines to Koksijde.

The first site of fighting in the Battle for Dunkeqrue came in Koksijde, where the British armies attempted to push back the French and recapture Nieuwpoort and another supply port. The British force, while concentrated in this circle, was also necessarily spread out all around the circle and the Ypres Corps easily repelled the British attack. Once London realized the situation in Dunkerque as the French started to close in on the city, the Royal Navy attempted landings and naval bombardments at Calais and Boulogne and create a wider field of play in the battle. These landings succeeded for a few days, but within two weeks the British were rebuffed and the small landing parties had to be sailed back across the Channel.

The final assault on Dunkerque took place between August 13th and October 21st of 1870. In mid-August, the French forces began to close in on the city, taking large losses from the British artillery and the Royal Navy. Naval attacks on Gravelines heavily damaged the army there, but the French continued inching forward. The British attempted to break out of the city and gain a wider front as French artillery began lobbing shells into the city, but no attempts in August or early September were successful. Heavy fighting continued until early October, when the French had taken Capelle-la-Grande and it was clear to the British that continuing to hold Dunkerque was an untenable position. The Royal Navy set up procedures for evacuating the troops in the city, but as there were so many it took over two weeks under fire to get the last of the soldiers out. Over 40,000 men died in total during the two months of the French assault on Dunkerque, and the losses by the British were so great that in November Parliament agreed to sign the General Armistice and participate in the Berlin Conference early the next year.

 

[wilcoxchar]

I decided to add the Berlin Conference as a separate update.

Part Fifty-Nine: The Berlin Conference

The Berlin Conference:
The final combat of the European Wars ended when the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, and Spain signed the Great Armistice in November of 1870. All the European powers had suffered from the wars of the 1860s. The Habsburg domain of Austria had completely fallen apart, while Great Britain was experiencing a large amount of unrest from the underground Chartist Societies and pro-Irish organizations disgruntled by the treatment of the Irish during the Great Famine and the seeming use of Irishmen as cannon fodder in the European Wars. However, one power had clearly come out on top in the wars: Prussia. The fall of Austria guaranteed Prussia hegemony over the German states, and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck attempted to capitalize on Prussia's growing position in Europe by hosting the Berlin Conference in 1871 to solidify the new postwar borders in Europe.

The Berlin Conference envisioned by Bismarck was supposed to be a revival and continuation of the Congress system of geopolitics established after the First Napoleonic War with the Congress of Vienna. After the increased competition between European nations in the 1850s that led to the wars, Bismarck felt that peace could be maintained with the same system due to the increased use of the telegraph allowed faster communication between governments and leaders. Privately, however, Bismarck wanted to use the conference to affirm Prussia's consolidation over the German states in the eyes of Europe and entrench Germany as a great power on the European and indeed the world stage.

The conference, which lasted from March into April of 1871, covered three main topics of diplomacy between the attending powers. The first and foremost of these was negotiating the peace treaty and concessions resulting from the Second Napoleonic War. It was decided that the war ended in a French victory, and although the British greatly contested the focus of concessions from them rather than the Belgians at the conference, they reluctantly conceded. The results of the conference saw Britain and Spain cede the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Minorca to France and the return of the Ionian Islands to Greece. Britain's rule over the Mediterranean Sea was thus lessened, although they kept Gibraltar. In Belgium, France gained the department of Namur and the small French-speaking section of West Flanders.

The second major diplomatic session involved in the Berlin Conference was the recognition of parts of the former Austrian Empire that had now stabilized into some form of government. On the Adriatic, several cities had declared independence as free city-states and had formed a league to cooperate against the piracy that had sprung up during the lawlessness. At the Berlin Conference, this league was recognized as being under the supervision of Italy, and the Adriatic League[1] signed a treaty by which Italy had the right to veto any of the league's policies, and that plebiscites would be held at some point to join Italy or not. The independent state of Trent that had been created pending a vote to join Italy or Bavaria in the region ended with the region joining Italy in 1872. Additionally, the newly independent states of Galizien and Moravia were recognized as Russian and German puppets, respectively.

The other matter concerning the German states was the new organization of the German Confederation, now that Austria had collapsed and Prussia had become the most powerful country in Germany. Bismarck attempted to get the powers to agree on reforms which would make Prussia the clear leader of the German Confederation and centralize much of the power of the Confederation in Berlin. Russia and Great Britain initially refused Bismarck's aims on the grounds that it would disrupt the balance of power in Europe, but Russia was placated with a secret non-aggression pact between Germany and Russia. Great Britain still remained the sole dissenter now, but the continental powers agreed to the German goals after the British delegation realized that Germany would simply be replacing Austria as the dominant force in Central Europe. Prussian dominance over the German states was secured and in 1874, the states in the German Confederation were consolidated into a new German Empire. The Dutch provinces that had been part of the Confederation left in order to placate the Dutch and French upon the formation of the Empire. The new German Empire was led by Prussia, while Bavaria and Hanover received special privileges within the new federal government and the smaller German states largely kept their original borders while conceding several functions to the government in Berlin.

[1] The Adriatic League was founded by the cities of Trieste, Fiume, Zadar, Split, Dubrovnik, and Kotor.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Got this update done surprisingly fast last night, so here it is. I couldn't think of how to connect the two sections in the title though.

Part Sixty: The Plight of the Irish

The Irish Diaspora:
Throughout the 19th century, the Ulster Irish and Catholic Irish made up one of the primary sources of immigrants to the United States. The Ulster Irish came from northern Ireland and were usually Calvinist or Anglican, and often had more Scottish ancestry than Irish. The Ulster Irish mostly came to the United States in the 18th century and early 19th cenutry, settling primarily in the northern United States. In the 19th cenutry, many Ulster Irish contributed to the growth of the steel industry in the north and led to the prosperity of cities like Pittsburgh and Indianapolis.

After the National War, however, the majority of immigration to the United States from Ireland came from the Catholic communities in the rest of the island. The mass emigration of the Catholic Irish from Ireland largely began during the Great Famine and the European Wars, but the British government began to encourage Irish resettlement outside the British Isles in the following decades and gradually Anglicization of Ireland through epuration[1] and encouraging the movement of people from England and Scotland to Ireland. The squalid conditions in Ireland during and after the Great Famine and the encouragement of Catholics to leave Ireland created a large Irish diaspora in the late 19th century.

Besides the large urban center in the northern United States like New York and Chicago, the Catholic Irish immigration to the United States in the latter 19th century also centered around areas that already had a sizable Catholic community. For this reason, large Irish communities arose in Batlimore, Cuba, and New Orleans. From New Orleans, the Irish community spread up the Mississippi River and into Saint Louis. The large Irish communities would turn American politics further against the British as the turn of the century passed.

Aside from the United States, the exodus of Catholics from Ireland also led to Irish immigration in other areas. Irish immigration to Ontario and the majority Scottish areas in Acadia combined with a revival in Gaelic language and culture led to Gaelic becoming the largest language spoken in British North America by 1900. Outside of North America, many Irish Catholics migrated to Chile, Argentina, and the Cape Colony in southern Africa. Chile, with a history of encouraging Irish Catholic immigration extending from colonial times, welcomed Irish immigrants. Many of the Irish who went to Chile raised livestock and helped settle the far south of the country in Patagonia and along the Straits of Magellan.


A Natural Born Citizen:
The rising levels of immigration to the United States in the 19th century led to some major questions in Congress and the Supreme Court regarding the status of the country's growing population. The 1873 ruling in the Supreme Court that all people born in the United States became American citizens set the stage for official rulings on when a person became a United States citizen. However, there was also another citizenship issue that came to prominence in the decade after the National War; eligibility for the Executive Office of the United States.

The first section of Article Two of the Constitution states that only "natural born citizens" are eligible for the Presidency of the United States, and the Twelfth Amendment extends this restriction to the Vice Presidency. With more and more first-generation immigrants getting into Congress, the question of what exactly was meant by "natural born citizen" and whether to allow naturalized citizens to be eligible for the Presidency or Vice Presidency increasingly became an issue in the House and Senate.

In 1871, senators Carl Shurz of Missouri[2] and Antonio Seguin from Tejas[3] introduced a constitutional amendment that would enable foreign-born citizens to hold an Executive Office. The amendment had some support within the Senate, but the general nativist sentiment among Congress at the time prevented the amendment's passage. Some senators also raised questions about the motives for the amendment, saying that Schurz was only proposing the amendment so he could be eligible for the presidency, since he was born in Germany. While the Schurz Amendment failed, it laid the groundwork for future attempts at passing similar amendments.

[1] From the French for 'purging', basically ethnic cleansing, although I'm unsure of the details of it in Ireland yet. I didn't think the OTL term should be used since it wasn't really in use until the 1990s.
[2] OTL the first German-American senator
[3] Grandson of Juan Seguin

 

[wilcoxchar]

Update time! I'll post the election results in a few days. Feel free to speculate.

Part Sixty-One: The 1872 Election

Election of 1872:
As Fremont's presidency began drawing to a close, the Republican Party had entrenched itself in the new system of American politics. The institution of slavery had been eradicated in the United States, and the former Confederate states were steadily being readmitted to the Union. By the time the election season started, all the former Confederate states had rejoined the Union except for Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina.

While many people at the time suspected that Fremont would run for a third term as president, Fremont announced that he would not be running in early 1872. In the 1872 Republican National Convention in Chicago, the party leaders struggled to find another man as popular as Fremont who had a good national standing. Vice President David Wilmot was considered, but in the end Wilmot lost the nomination as we was "not considered popular or well known enough in the public view"[1]. Also considered were Chief Justice Abraham Lincoln, Senator Salmon P. Chase, and Winfield Representative Robert E. Lee. After five rounds of voting, Lee was named the Republican presidential candidate, with former general Ambrose Burnside the Vice Presidential candidate. Lee had gained recognition throughout the country for his loyalty to the Union and his part in the creation of the state of Vandalia, while Burnside had a good military record from the National War.

On the other hand, the 1872 election highlighted the state of disarray that the Democratic Party had fallen into after the National War as several candidates sporting a wide variety of issues vied for the Democratic nomination. Some Democrats were concerned that some former Confederate states had not been fully admitted back into the Union yet and wanted to expedite the process. The main issue at the 1872 Democratic Convention, however, was the path the post-war economy should take. One wing believed that the country should pursue protectionist trade policies to help rebuild the southern states and promote industrial growth across the country, while the other wing advocated free trade policies in support of growing businesses and opposed the minting of silver. The free trade wing was known as the "Bourbon Democrats" and won out in the convention as Samuel Tilden of New York and Henry Hastings Sibley of Itasca won the Democratic nomination.

In the general campaign, Tilden ran the more vigorous campaign in an effort to unite the Democrats and regain the dominance the Democratic Party had held in the presidency from 1853 to the start of the National War. Tilden criticized what many southerners considered Lee's overbearing role in the creation of Winfield as a political power grab. The Democratic Party's southern campaigners issued pamphlets in North Carolina, Virginia, and Chickasaw claiming that the Republicans were out to overthrow the plantation society in the southern states, just as Lee encouraged free staters to move to Winfield. Tilden also campaigned intensively on promoting free trade and lowering tariffs, cementing the issue as part of the Democratic political platform.

Lee, on the other hand, promoted the Republican triumph of outlawing slavery and praised the quick readmission of the Confederate states back into the Union. Lee also supported further settling and railroad expansion into the west. The Republican campaign slogan of "LEE Stands for Liberty, Equality, and Expansion" was popular in the cities and in the Old Northwest. When the electoral votes were counted, Lee won handily over Tilden, although the popular vote was much closer. Most of Tilden's victories in the electoral college came from the Democratic political machines like Tammany Hall in New York City and the continuing skepticism toward the Republicans in many states in the south. With Lee set to be inaugurated in March, President Fremont secured his legacy as the president who saved the Union when Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina were readmitted to the Union on January 14, 1873.

Lee/Burnside: 206 EV
Tilden/Sibley: 98 EV

[1] In-universe quote from Republican Realignment: The Formation of the Third Party System.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Before we get into Lee's presidency, it's time to see what Teddy's been up to lately.

The Undisclosed Adventures of Theodore Roosevelt, Episode 3: The Cape Colony Caper

Roosevelt sat on the stage facing the Indian Ocean in the central plaza of the Voortrekker city of Tulbagh[1]. He was flanked, as always on foreign visits, by Vice President Taft and Secretary of the Interior Muir. A man was at the podium addressing a local crowd, but not many of the visiting dignitaries were listening.

"What are we all the way here for again?" Taft leaned over and whispered to Roosevelt.

"We are here to accept a gift of a very large diamond from the Voortrekker Republic to the Poinsettian Institution and the United States as a whole!" Roosevelt hissed. "Now be quiet." Taft straightened himself in his chair and resumed his bored expression.

His thoughts now interrupted by Taft, Roosevelt began listening to the speech being given by Stephanus Willem Pretorius, president of the Zuid-Afrikaanishe Republiek. "The discovery of diamonds and other precious metals in the Colesberg mines has brought a great wealth to the ZAR, but it has also brought antagonization from the British Empire and the Cape Colony in particular. We thank the United States for supporting the ZAR from its birth and showing its continued support in diplomatic forums."

Pretorius switched from the Dutch dialect spoken by the Voortrekkers and turned toward the American delegation. "It is with a great honor and pleasure that I present to the dignitaries from the United States, the Star of Africa diamond! Pretorius pulled a rope and lifted a curtain over a glass case.

The crowd gasped. Roosevelt peered at the case, which had nothing in it. Pretorius turned. "What? The Star of Africa is gone! Someone must have stolen it!"

Roosevelt looked at Muir and whispered to him. "Who would steal that diamond?"

Muir replied, "Well, it was supposed to be almost 100 carats, so it would be worth a lot of money to anyone who could take it. We should start looking to see who got close enough to the displa-"

A crash littered the stage with splinters of wood and an automobile drove onto the stage. A pale-faced young man with dark hair and a beard stepped out of the vehicle and showed the crowd the diamond. "I am taking what rightfully belongs to me, Pretorius. This was dug out of Cape land and all precious metals found in the Cape Colony belong to Norton Industries, and you know that." Just as quickly, the man stepped back into the vehicle and it drove off the other end of the stage and off toward the harbor.

Roosevelt stood up and walked over to Pretorius. "Who was that man?" Roosevelt asked.

"That man, if he is qualified to be referred to as such, is Edward Norton, head of Norton Industries. I recognized the coat of arms on the side of the automobile as the logo of their auto division." Pretorius said, his voice firm and eyes now piercing with rage.

Roosevelt turned to Muir. "We have to catch him and retrieve the diamond!" Muir nodded. Roosevelt turned back to Pretoris. "Do you know where he will be headed?"

"Back to Cape Town, for sure. To give the Star of South Africa to the British government most likely." Pretorius spat.

"Muir and I will take care of Norton and get the diamond back," Roosevelt said.

"Mostly him," Muir added.

He looked over his shoulder. "Ummm, what should we do about Vice President Taft here?" Muir pointed his thumb back at Taft, who was fast asleep in his chair.

"Leave him there," Roosevelt laughed heartily, baring his teeth[2]. "I'm sure Mr. Pretorius can entertain him while we're gone." Roosevelt and Muir walked toward the Tulbagh docks to catch a ship to Cape Town.


They boarded a ship and reached Cape Town that night. The next morning, Roosevelt and Muir began to look for where Norton might have taken the Star of South Africa.

Roosevelt pondered Norton's next move. "My instinct says that he would take it to one of the Norton Industries buildings here in Cape Town. He's probably wants to put the diamond in safe keeping somewhere."

"Look!" Muir shouted, examining a local newspaper. "There is a automobile exposition at the Norton Auto Company headquarters today. It says the Norton will be attending and giving a presentation."

Roosevelt nodded. "That's a start. We'd better get over there right away. If he is stashing the diamond at the NAC building, it may only be temporary. We need to get over there as quick as possible!" They left the hotel they were staying and caught a carriage to the headquarters.


The Norton Auto Company[3] building was a four story complex in the style of the houses built by the Dutch during their stay in Cape Town. It was rather unassuming as a corporate headquarters in its facade, aside from the giant Norton coat of arms adapted for the auto division of Norton Industires plastered high in the center of the facade. Roosevelt and Muir entered the complex around the main building and stepped into a large oval racetrack laid with brick and automobiles of all sorts beside the track.

"Excuse me sirs, please take your seats," an usher came up to them and pointed toward a set of rising benches set away from the track. "Mister Norton is about to give his opening speech to begin the ceremonies." Roosevelt and Muir took a seat in the front row of benches.

While they waited, Roosevelt and Muir spotted several premier auto industry heads as they were preparing their machines for the race. No American autos were represented in the race, but Belgian Paul de Caters of De Caters Motors[4], Otto Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach of Preussicher Motor Werke, and even Sir Arthur Wolseley of Wolseley Motor Company, the oldest auto company in the British Empire.

After half an hour, more people had arrived and the benches were almost full. A man stood at a podium set up in the center of the racetrack and announced the beginning of the ceremonies before the race. "To begin, a speech from the man who made this all possible. I give you, president of the Norton Auto Company, Edward Norton!" The man moved aside as Norton strode up to the podium.

"Good day everyone." Norton began speaking to the crowd. "It is my pleasure to welcome you to this spectacular event. Today you will see specially built automobiles by many of the world's leading manufacturers race for a prize of ten thousand pounds." Norton kept talking as he explained the rules of the race and introduced the drivers and their representative companies.

Roosevelt became bored as Norton droned on, but Muir suddenly nudged the President to attention. "Look, at the trophy that Norton is holding." Roosevelt looked, and there in the trophy he saw the Star of Africa. "We have to get it," Muir whispered. "But how?"

Roosevelt looked around. There were a few guards at the entrance to the track and in the rear of the stands. "I could just go up there and take it."

"Why must you always opt for the brute force approach. Don't you know that almost never-" Muir started, but Roosevelt was already charging off toward the podium, fending off a burly guard as he marched forward. Muir sighed, and stood up.

Roosevelt reached the track and began yelling at Norton, who had stopped his speech because of the commotion. "I know you have the diamond Norton! Give it back and you won't get hurt!"

"Oh, you mean this?" Norton pried the diamond from the trophy and sneered. "Well you'll have to catch me first." Norton ran off the stage and suddenly an auto came zooming from behind the stage. It stopped on the track. Norton turned toward Roosevelt and laughed. "You like? I call it the Mayhem. You won't catch me now, I designed this auto specifically for speed. I'm aiming to set the world speed record after a little more work, but this will give it a good test run. Ta-ta!" Norton gave Roosevelt a mock salute and sped off along the track and out the gate into the streets.

"We have to follow him." Roosevelt turned amid the now confused crowd of spectators and drivers, looking for Muir. First I need an auto, and where is Muir?"

"You rang, Mister President?" Muir sped up in the De Caters racer. "Hop in."

Roosevelt stepped into the racer and Muir began driving after Norton. They sped through the streets of Cape Town, veering around sharp corners as Norton tried to lose them. As Norton drove through a quieter part of the city, Roosevelt got out a rifle and stood up in the seat.

"What are you doing, Theodore?" Muir asked with concern.

"I'm going to try and blast Norton's wheels out. That should stop him." Roosevelt took aim and fired. A cloud of dust rose up from next to the rear right wheel of Norton's auto. Norton swerved along the streets, bumping over the cobble stones. Roosevelt sat back down in the seat. "Damn, missed. Let's just follow him for now and see where he goes."

Muir slowed the De Caters and stayed behind Norton but at a greater distance. Norton also slowed, and began driving up into a hilly area of Cape Town. Muir followed Norton up one inclined street. The autos creaked and bumped at each block as the intersections broke the street into a series of inclines and flat roadway

After driving uphill for six blocks, Norton turned left at an intersection onto a level street. Muir followed and Roosevelt stood to get another shot from his rifle. Crack! Ding. The bullet bounced off the back of Norton's auto, putting a dent in the metal. Norton heard the shot hit his auto and began to speed up. At the next intersection, sped through but Muir had to quickly pull the brake lever to stop the auto from crashing into a passing trolley car.

"Damnit!" Roosevelt swore as they slowed to a stop. After the trolley passed, Muir sped to catch up with Norton. After another two blocks, Norton turned left again and began heading downhill. "Look! He's turning there." Roosevelt pointed. Muir nodded and turned at the same place where Norton had.

Both autos now sped up as they went downhill and both Norton and Muir were stepping on the accelerator pedal. As each auto passed an intersection at these speeds, they were propelled into the air slightly and landed with a thud as the steel springs compressed under the weight of the auto. Norton's auto jumped, Muir's followed close behind and did the same. Another intersection, another short jump. At the next intersection, Norton abruptly slowed his vehicle and skidded into a right turn. Muir followed. Norton went two more blocks and turned left again. Muir turned as well.

Another two blocks and Norton turned right yet again. This time after one block, Norton turned back left onto another downhill street. Muir continued chased Norton downhill, being careful not to jump at the intersections and wear out the suspension more. Norton did catch air crossing these intersections, and after three blocks, turned onto a rough dirt track, kicking up dust as Muir followed.


Muir drove along the dirt road as it sloped upward. Muir coughed and shielded his eyes. "I can't see the road ahead for the life of me because of all the dirt and dust Norton is kicking up". After Norton made a sudden turn, Muir lost control of the De Caters and accidentally drove it up an embankment where it stalled.

"Blast!" Roosevelt spouted. The President stood up in his seat as the auto rolled to a halt. "We've lost him."

"Oh no we didn't," Muir said slyly as a smile crept onto his face. "That road only goes to one place. The top of Table Mountain." Muir pointed ominously up the road. As the dust cleared, it revealed the famous mesa that overlooks all of Cape Town.

Muir got the De Caters back onto the dirt track and sped up the road toward the top of Table Mountain. Roosevelt and Muir reached the flat top of the mountain and halted the racer next to Norton's. The President got out and found chased Norton to the edge of the cliff of the mountain overlooking the South Atlantic. The waves crashed into the rocks below as Norton looked over the edge.

"It seems that you have gotten me into a corner, eh, Roosevelt." Norton jeered.

"Indeed I have." Roosevelt said, his eyes glaring behind his pince-nez. "Now hand over the diamond and you won't get hurt."

"Oh, you mean this diamond?" Norton pulled the Star of Africa out of his coat. He held it over the edge of the cliff. "If I and the Cape Colony can't have what's rightfully ours, then nobody can! One step closer and the diamond goes into the sea!" Norton smiled devilishly. "You're out of options, Mister President."

Roosevelt grimaced. Then suddenly, he had an idea and chuckled. He put a hand in his coat. "You seem to have forgotten one trick I still have up my sleeve." Sunlight glinted off Roosevelt's pince-nez as he drew the grappling hook from his coat and shot it at Norton. Norton was shocked and dropped the diamond, believing that Roosevelt had just shot a pistol at him. The grappling hook caught the diamond in midair and pulled it back to Roosevelt.

The diamond now in safe hands, Roosevelt stepped forward toward Norton. Norton took a step back and looked down as he realized his right heel was now hanging over the edge of the cliff. Roosevelt walked up to Norton and glared at him. "Now then, what do we do with you?" Roosevelt looked menacingly at Norton.

"You- you wouldn't dare!" Norton now looked meek as he stuttered. His eyes darted to Muir as he was standing by the De Caters. Roosevelt hesitated.

Norton's eyes flashed and he pulled a pisto from another pocket in his coat and pointed it at the President's chest. "You really expect me to give up this easily? You push me off the cliff, I take you with me."

Roosevelt looked down at the gun and realized the gun was pointed straight at the pocket that held his speech for the ceremony at the ZAR and his glasses case. Maybe not enough protection to stop the bullet from entering his body, but it was likely ample enough to prevent serious damage.

Roosevelt looked Norton straight in the face and shrugged. "I can deal with a few bullets to the chest."

Norton faltered at Roosevelt's confidence. "What?" Norton yelled. "This is madness!"

For a few moments, Norton and Roosevelt stood on the edge of the cliff. Both men's eyes were locked on to each other.

After a few breaths, Norton regained his composure and was again talking steadily. "No one can take a pistol shot from point blank range and live! What makes you think you can?"

Roosevelt brought his right hand up to adjust the brim of his up. "Beacuse, I'm the President of the United States." In one motion, his hand balled into a fist and ploughed into Norton's face. As Norton started tumbling over the cliff, Roosevelt's left hand caught him by his shirt. The pistol fell from Norton's hand over the cliff, splashing down into the waters below.

Muir rushed over and helped Roosevelt pull Norton up and lay him on the ground. Norton was out cold after Roosevelt's punch. "So, what should we do with him now?" Muir asked. Roosevelt pondered this question and finally came up with a course of action.

The two men dragged Norton and slumped him in the driver's seat of his own racer. They positioned Norton so he was leaning on the steering wheel in order to explain the face wound. Then, Roosevelt and Muir got back in the De Caters and drove back down the road they had come up on. Roosevelt took the diamond out of his coat and admired it. "You know Muir, this will make a fine addition to the Poinsettian Institution."

"Indeed it will, Mister President. Indeed it will."

[1] OTL Durban
[2] I'm thinking like in this picture.
[3] Cape Town is much more developed than in OTL. I wonder why that could be.
[4] Known in America in TTL as Decatur Motors.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Update time! Time for more social stuff, in this case, sports!

Culture #2: Some Sporting Ideas

The Pan-Hellenic Games and the First Olympiad:
The Olympic games embodies both the Classical ideals of the nineteenth century as well as the growing internationalism of the era. But the modern games actually had much of their origins in Greece itself, almost a decade before the first Olympic games of the modern era was held. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Greek Revolution in 1822, King Otto and the Greek Parliament funded a grand sporting exhibition for the Greek people. After the Conference of Berlin, the planners of the Pan-Hellenic Games invited any Europeans to celebrate the arrival of peace on the continent and participate in the games. Only a dozen foreign athletes participated in the Pan-Hellenic Games out of a total 137, but they represented six other nations. In total, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Great Britain, Russia, and Greece played in the Pan-Hellenic Games and laid the ground for a revival of the Olympics a decade later.

In 1877, the Greek philanthropist Evangelos Zappas offered his fortune to fund the creation of an international organization to revive the ancient Olympic games. Other interested European parties followed and the International Olympic Committee was formed and met later in 1877 in Rastatt in Baden[1]. William Penny Brookes, who had previously organized smaller Olympiads in Britain, was elected president of the committee and the IOC began developing the basics of the modern Olympiad. The first IOC meeting established that the games should be open to all nations and emphasized the amatuerism that should be in place in the competition. Later, in 1879, the committee met in Athens and convinced the Greek government to hold the first modern Olympiad in the Greek capital in 1882.

The 1882 Olympic games took place from May 12 to May 19 of 1882 in Athens. While only 256 athletes competed in the 1882 Olympics and only 47 of those athletes were from outside Greece, this was double the number of athletes that the Pan-Hellenic Games had drawn and the games were a sensation in national newspapers around the world. Countries from Europe and both Americas were represented in the games, although there was a notable absence of the Ottoman Empire or its satellites in Serbia, Romania, and Egypt, which forbade its athletes to go. Some of the noted competitors were Dmitri and Grigori Rasputin, two peasant brothers from Siberia. The two brothers had been found by Russian officials and were funded by the Tsar personally to go to Athens. They took gold medals for Russia in the equestrian events and returned home heroes[2]. Also notable was Francis Duquesne, an American from Georgia who edged out Ioannis Xenakis of Greece to win the gold medal in the first international running of the marathon.

Early Baseball:
The late 19th century saw the beginnings of many of the professional sports leagues in the United States today. With cheaper cross-country transportation and the spreading of instant communication networks with the telegraph and later the telephone, organizing larger sports leagues became economically feasible. One of the first sports to benefit from this was baseball. The first baseball league, the Union Base Ball Association, was established in 1863 during the National War. However, it was an amateur league and the teams were primarily situated in the northeastern United States. The first professional baseball league would not be founded until the 1870s.

The first professional baseball league in the United States was the American Professional Base Ball Association, which split off from the UBBA in 1873 after eight teams decided they want to play professionally. These original teams were New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Boston, Hartford, Columbus, Baltimore, and Miami[3]. The APBBA remained relatively static over the next decade, although the Hartford team folded in 1877 and was replaced by a team in Syracuse. While the APBBA was relatively successful, it only had a limited audience in the northeastern United States. Reluctance by the members of the APBBA to expand the association resulted in its stagnation, and the opportunity for other leagues to arise.

The lack of a professional baseball league in the Midwestern United States presented a grand opportunity to Albert Spalding of Rockford, Illinois. Spalding had been playing for Brooklyn since 1878, and tried to urge the APBBA to expand into the Midwest, having played amateur baseball in his youth and knowing how popular the sport had become in the region. The APBBA's foot-dragging caused Spalding to leave Brooklyn in 1884 and move to Chicago. After a year of gathering investment, Spalding founded the Midwestern Baseball League in 1885. The MBL originally had six teams in Chicago, Rockford, Indianapolis, Cairo, Saint Louis, and Milwaukee. The MBL only lasted twelve years with several difficulties with the teams before going bankrupt and being absorbed into the APBBA (by then renamed the American Baseball Association), but Spalding's efforts helped spread professional baseball in the United States and standardize the rules of the sport. Spalding would also later serve as president of the American Baseball Association from 1897 to 1904 as owner of Rockford.

Football Crosses the Atlantic:
During the late 19th century, another new sport managed to catch on in various parts of the United States. This sport was football. Football had originated in Great Britain and was first formalized with its modern rules in 1863 when the Football Association was formed. With the large amount of Irish emigration from the British Isles in the 1860s and 1870s, many immigrants to the United States began playing the game and it became popular in many cities where many Irish settled. From those areas, the sport spread and grew in popularity, especially in urban areas.

Like Great Britain, the United States has more than one national football association that play internationally. This is the result of an interesting quirk of history and highlighted lingering regional identities in various parts of the country. Besides the Football Association of the United States, the country also has national associations representing New England (all states east of New York), and Texas (the states of Houston, Tejas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua)[4].

The New England Football Association, or NEFA, was the first national football association in the Americas, having been founded in 1890. NEFA began once football initially becoming popular with the Ivy League schools in the Northeast and the seven Ivy League schools started an intercollegiate football league. The league eventually dropped its exclusiveness to universities. In 1890, the Ivy League of Football reorganized itself along the regional identity of New England, adding city leagues and removing Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton. This new New England League created the NEFA as an overall way to organize the league and its scheduling, but soon established itself as a football association on the national level.

The Texas Football Association began once Irish immigrants to New Orleans started moving west and bringing their interest in the sport with them. Interest in football grew in Tejas and Houston, and many regional activists, Anglo and Ibero alike, promoted football as a way to revive the Texan regional identity. The Texan Football Association was eventually founded in 1918, two years after the United States Football Association, after several teams in the Texas region protested against longer travel times to the rest of the nation. The USFA met in Saint Louis in 1917 and allowed the formation of the Texas FA a year later.

[1] It's nice to have a small neutral country in Europe other than Switzerland and Belgium.
[2] Aristocratic propaganda, gotta love it. Grigori is the famous OTL Rasputin, Dmitri is his younger brother who died as a child in OTL.
[3] I haven't decided how the naming will work for teams yet, so right now I'm just listing the cities.
[4] This isn't set it stone yet, as I'm still not sure if or how far the US will expand into Mexico.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Update time again. I might add a bit to the Lee's Recession part later with more details, but I'm still not entirely sure how exactly the economy would be affected.

Part Sixty-Two: The Postwar Recessions

Colorado Silver Boom:
The Colorado Gold Rush that had occurred in the early 1860s caused a boom in the territory's population, but after the National War that poulation increase was starting to die off as gold findings became less frequent. As people who had come to the territory for gold prospecting began to leave, some small mountain towns were abandoned. However, another mining boom that hit Colorado in the 1870s would bring another wave of immigration and lead to Colorado becoming a state in 1876.

One of the long term developments which aided the Colorado Silver Boom was better mining techniques such as the use of pyroglycerin in clearing mine shafts, which allowed for deeper mines in the later 19th century. However, the main cause of the boom in the short term was the Coinage Act of 1873. The Coinage Act of 1873 returned the country to primarily using gold and silver coins instead of the printed currency that was used during the National War. The increased demand for silver sparked a second rush on Colorado, although silver was already being mined in small qunatities near some cities in the mountains.

The Colorado Silver Boom was largely different from the previous gold rush because of the increased presence of railroads and larger mining companies. The Nederalnd Mining Company gained one of the largest grants for mineral rights during the Silver Boom on land in Clear Creek Canyon. Further south, railroads penetrated further into the Rocky Mountains and helped miners go further and further west. The city of South Park in the shadow of Mount Evans boomed during the 1870s because it served as a major trasnportation link on the Ferroplano, South Park, and Divide railroad which became a major connector from Ferroplano to silver mining towns like Leadville and Aspen.

The economic impact of the Colorado Silver Boom was felt all around the United States. During the 1870s, over 60 million dollars worth of silver was mined in Colorado mining districts. The increase in the supply of silver caused a rise in inflation as it was coined or brought into general circulation. In the short run, the Colorado Silver Boom contributed to the general recession in 1874 and 1875 as investment from banks leveled off from the post-National War economic boom.


Lee's Recession: The decades after the National War in the United States were a time of turbulence for the American economy. Having experienced a large state of expansion during the National War, the United States entered into a deep recession in March of 1866 as the former Confederacy began to reincorporate itself into the American economic system. This postwar recession lasted into late 1867, but picked up in time for Fremont to win reelection in 1868.

Despite a slight recession in 1870, the United States economy had expanded for the remainder of Fremont's presidency and into the beginning of Lee's administration. However, this postwar expansion could not last forever. By 1874, the economic troubles that faced Europe during and after the wars in the 1860s had arrived in the United States. This downturn was exacerbated by the Coinage Act of 1873 and the readmission of the final three former Confederate States to the Union. The Coinage Act of 1873 resumed specie payments after they were suspended during the National War. The supply of silver increased, leading to a short period of inflation and decreased economic activity.

The recession lasted into the summer of 1875 and saw a number of smaller railroads go bankrupt and be bought up by larger, more successful companies. Several shortlines were bought up by the Union Pacific Railroad including the Oregon Railroad from Langley to Vancouver and the Itasca Northern connecting Duluth, the capial of Itasca, with Minneapolis in Demoine. Lee even made a personal statement praising the expansion of Union Pacific. Lee supported the railroad because of its use of his plan for the Transcontinental Railroad and attended the final connection to the western terminus in Astoria in 1874. The recession started a major period of consolidation in the railroad and other industries that would continue through the end of the 19th century.

 

[wilcoxchar]

I've got most of this update done, but some of it is still on my laptop and apparently I had to format the flash drive again so everything's still not backed up. I'll post what I have now and get the other stuff finished and added once I back up the files again.

Part Sixty-Two: Order From Chaos

The State of Illyria: After Galizien and Moravia were stabilized as independent states, the rest of the former Habsburg lands remained in a state of disorder for several years. However, by 1880, the region was finally coalescing into a small number of political entities. In Austria proper, two main polities that emerged as the dominant countries. The Slovene lands and southern Austria were merged into the Illyrian Republic as local cities formed together to stabilize the region. From 1876 to 1879, Illyria was ruled by a Cities' Council in Klagenfurt where each municipality sent a delegation and elected one of the delegates to be the Supreme Consul for that year. However, the Illyrian Republic descended into a tyranny within a year after president Hugo Poltermann[1] dissolved the Cities' Council that had originally formed the state.

The Viennese Commune:
In Vienna, the exile of the Habsburgs brought a number of opportunist political groups out of the shadows. A new generation of liberal militants rose up in an attempt to ignite a second round of revolutions akin to the Midcentury Revolutions. While these liberals were somewhat successful, they were pushed back east of the Danube by the local military elements in three months of the uprising in 1872, where it soon dissipated. However, the liberal element lingered in the Viennese underground, and encouraged further revolts in later years. By 1876, another underground movement had been growing in Vienna: a new socialist movement. In March of 1877, the leading aristocrat in the Viennese socialist movement, Gustav von Hayek[1], had recruited a German follower of Hegel by the name of Karl Marx to help direct the planned uprising against the military law that had been largely established in the capital.

Marx and von Hayek made their plans and the uprising began in the middle of May of 1877. The two main worker districts in the city were located in the northwestern edge of the city where many factories were located and in the south by the main railway station. Marx took command of the northern group while von Hayek took command of the southern group. On May 17th, a planned protest in Stephensplatz brought the military to put the protest down. While much of the local militia was distracted by this protest, Marx's group overran the nearby gun manufactory and the military hospital. Von Hayek's group seized the arsenal to the east of the railway station after hours of fighting. From this first day of the worker uprising, the fighting in the city lasted five months before the last of the military elements had been trapped in the city center. The worker uprising now had the support of most of the citizens of Vienna and after a ten day siege of the Innere Stadt with captured artillery placed in the surrounding glacis, the flag of the new Wiener Arbeiterstaat[2] was raised at the top of the Stephensdom. Over the next year, the Wiener Arbeiterstaat would absorb control over the surrounding towns and villages and come into control over all of Austria proper.


The Hungarian Republic:
The nation of Hungary managed to stay relatively together, although Romanian, Serbian, Slovakian, and Croatian nationalist rebellions broke out with varying success soon after the exile of the Habsburgs. The Diet in Budapest continued to function as the supreme Hungarian political institution in the early 1870s, although powers were increasingly given to the new executive position of Chancellor, as the separatist uprisings in the more remote Hungarian lands grew worse. The first Hungarian Chancellor was Hungarian nationalist and poet Sándor Petőfi.

During Petőfi's time as Chancellor, the Romanian and Slovakian rebellions were largely crushed, and a number of nationalist reforms were enacted, such as requiring Hungarian instruction in all primary educational institutions and requiring that all electoral ballots be printed in Hungarian. Many policies were also implemented to crush localized rebellions and encouraged migration of citizens from central Hungary to the outer regions in a process of Magyarization. Many of these policies promoted the Magyarisation of the Hungarian hinterlands and were supported by Petőfi's economic and interior minister Kálmán Tisza.

Petofi was Chancellor of Hungary until 1885 and did much to stabilize the country. The Slovakian and Romanian revolts were quelled and many ethnic Romanians in Hungary fled across the Carpathians to Romania. While these two groups were appeased, the Croatians in the south sought most of Petofi's attention in the Magyarisation campaigns. Attempts to generate a Croatian national revival similar to the one that occurred in Illyria were stamped out and towns north of the Szava River were subject to large forced movements of Croatians south of the Szava River, which the Hungarian government claimed was the natural southern border of Hungary proper. Croats and other minorities were mainly encouraged to emigrate from the country through economics means, and by issuing regional passports. An agreement with the Adriatic League in 1878 was made to increase trading through the coastal cities, but also included an allowance of free passage in the cities for people holding the regional passports that were not from Hungary proper[4]. Many poorer Croatians began emigrating to other countries through this method to seek better economic conditions, and the 1880 Zagrab earthquake only accelerated the exodus as economic conditions in Slavonia worsened.

After the Zagrab earthquake, the railway connection between Budapest and the Adriatic Sea had been severed. The Hungarian National Railway, when rebuilding the connection, moved the railway further south and east, crossing the Szava River at Sziszek. After 1885, Kalman Tisza was elected by the Diet to succeed Petofi as Chancellor of Hungary. Tisza continued the persecution of the various minorities in Hungary and expanded the Magyarisation efforts in all regions. In 1889, the Hungarian Diet passed a law that enforced Hungarian as the sole language in primary schools and made Hungarian the official language of government transactions. Despite major rioting in Slovakia and Croatia in the 1890s that were put down by police and army regiments, the Magyarisation campaigns slowly increased the Hungarian population ratio in the outlying regions, spurred by poor economic conditions compared to opportunities in the cities in Hungary proper, as well as in other countries. By 1900, over 5 million ethnic Croatians had left Hungary, primarily to Italy, Canada, and the United States, and the provinces between the Drava and Szava rivers had become over 50 percent Hungarian.

[1] The Illyrian movement was an OTL Slovene/Croatian nationalist movement in the early 19th century. ITTL after the collapse of the Habsburgs, it got hijacked by Styria during the chaos in order to gain control over the Slovene lands. This is why the country is controlled by a German.
[2] In OTL the grandfather of economist Freidrich Hayek
[3] Viennese Workers' State.
[4] This is similar to an effort at Magyarization in Hungary in OTL, where Hungary arranged a direct steamship route from Rijeka to New York with the Cunard Steamship Company, but the company didn't issue passports to ethnic Hungarians.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Just managed to bang out an update while in the library between classes. Some minor things will probably get ret-conned in the future as I don't have my notes with me (usb is still being annoying, I'm guessing it's with my user profile for the uni computers), but it should be fairly consistent.

Part Sixty-Three: Red Sea Rising

A Newcomer to the Colonial Game:
By the late 1870s, Germany had recovered from the effects of the Grand Unification War. Prussia had assured its dominance over a unified German state with Emperor Wilhelm I and chancellor Otto von Bismarck at the country's helm. Now that Bismarck had secured Germany's presence as a power in Europe, he started looking to proclaim Germany's presence among the world's foremost great powers. In the imperialist world on the late 19th century, this meant going overseas to Africa or Asia and gaining colonies. As most of Asia was already claimed by the Atlantic countries, Germany had to look to the uncolonized shores of Africa to find its place in the sun.

The first target of the German colonial regime was the Sultanate of Oman. Oman and its dependencies on the east coast of Africa had been embroiled in a decade-long succession war after the death of Sultan Sa'id bin Sultan. Thuwaini ibn Sa'id had taken control over the area around Muscat in Oman, while Mayid ibn Sa'id controlled the majority of the East African regions of Oman from Zanzibar. From 1877 to 1879, Germany sent governors to mediate the situation and gradually assume control over the region. In 1879, Germany overthrew Sultan Mayid ibn Sa'id and took direct colonial administration over the East African coast from Mogadishu to the Rufiji River. Germany established a colonial fortress on Zanzaibar and improved much of the island making it the administrative center of what would become German East Africa. Thuwaini ibn Sa'id was overthrown by Ibadi clerics in 1881 who moved the capital of the region to the city of Nizwa. While Oman was able to remain independent a few more years under Ibadi rule, Germany incorporated the provinces around Muscat into management from Zanzibar by 1885.

After building further fortresses in Mombasa, Mogadishu, and Mzizima[1], Germany began looking for elsewhere to stretch its colonial regime. While the German colonial ministry encouraged settlement of the German colonies in Africa and Muscat, they were primarily focused on resource extraction. Exploration of the East African interior via the river systems was done to penetrate German trade and claims further into the continent. German explorer Colonel Hans Kowalski discovered the Sachsensee after trekking up the Rufiji River past its source, and later discovered the Bismarcksee which later was found to be the source of the Nile[2]. Germany quickly extended its control of the coast north from Mogadishu as well, reaching the tip of the African Horn by 1890.


Egypt in Revolt:
While Germany was expanding its influence in Africa, the Ottomans were slowly losing their hold on parts of the continent. On the death of Muhammad Ali Pasha in 1853, the Ottomans attempted to reassert their control over Egypt by making his first son Ibrahim Pasha governor of Egypt. However, a coup in 1854 by his brother Sa'id Pasha ousted Ibrahim and through a treaty with the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmecid, Sa'id Pasha was recognized as the governor of Egypt, Sudan, and Palestine, and the Hedjaz, all the lands which traditionally went to the governor of Egypt. Ibrahim was sent in exile to Istanbul where he lived for the remainder of his life.

Sa'id Pasha governed Egypt effectively and made many reforms to modernize the country just as Muhammad Ali had done. While Egypt was nominally under Ottoman control, it operated virtually independently as a state. Among other projects, Sa'id oversaw the construction of a new harbor in Alexandria and a modernization of the Egyptian navy, the establishment of the Bank of Egypt in 1862, and Sa'id made trading concessions to bring Egypt to a better relationship with France under Louis Napoleon. Through this relationship, Sa'id Pasha began plans to build the Suez Canal under French backing and moved to become more independent from the Ottoman state.

While France had attempted to finance a canal connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea earlier in the century, serious consideration only arose after the Second Napoleonic War when France achieved greater control over the Mediterranean in a time of peace. Looking to expand the abilities of French colonial and trading aspirations, Louis Napoleon and Sa'id Pasha agreed on concessions that Egypt would make toward France to allow the canal to be built through Egyptian territory. The Ottomans, influenced by British diplomats, attempted to stop the canal from going through and used it as an excuse to reassert their control over Egypt. Sa'id Pasha declared Egypt officially independent from the Ottoman Empire in 1877 and Louis Napoleon provided assistance to the Egyptians in the resulting war. The Egyptian Revolt lasted three years, but in 1880 the Ottomans signed a peace granting Egyptian independence with control over much of the lands that Sa'id Pasha had control over. Over the next decade, the Suez Canal completed construction in 1887 and Egypt gradually became a French protectorate as further concessions were granted to French advisors and the French government.

[1] Mzizima is the former name of Dar es-Salaam.
[2] Sachsensee = Lake Nyasa, Bismarcksee = Lake Victoria

 

[wilcoxchar]

Got another update finished!

Part Sixty-Foure: Catholics and Indians

The Wandering Pope:
After the Modern Papal Schism began and Pope Pius was welcomed back to Rome by Garibaldi in 1868, the faction of the cardinals that had dissented from the Papacy and elected the Anti-Pope Alexander IX were in exile in Spain. The Anti-Papists (or Temporal Catholics as the called themselves to differentiate between them and the Anti-Papists of the Medieval era) stayed in Spain for the remainder of the Second Napoleonic War. Meanwhile, they attempted to build support among the Spanish for returning the Temporal Catholics to Rome. The Anti-Papists said that Pope Pius was working with Garibaldi and the French in order to liberalize the Catholic Church. However, these claims did not create much sympathy for the Anti-Papacy in Spain. After Isabella II was forced to abdicate the Spanish throne in favor of her son Alfonso XII in 1872, King Alfonso began a series of liberal reforms and disallowed the Anti-Papists from remaining in Spain.

After they were removed from Spain, the cardinals and many followers of Anti-Pope Alexander IX went to Portugal where they asked the Portuguese government to grant them a small parcel of land to represent the Pope's true temporal rule while they were exiled from Rome. However, the Portuguese parliament and King Pedro V were in support of Pope Pius, and no land was granted. With this, Alexander IX and the Anti-Papist cardinals traveled from country to country around Europe, looking for someone to take them in. But with most of Europe recovering from the wars in the 1860s, no government was willing to support the Anti-Papists. Seeing no safe haven in Europe, the cardinals began to look elsewhere.

In 1875, Alexander IX received a diplomatic letter from the Bishop of Tlaxcala informing the Anti-Papists of the support for their cause in the New World. While the Anti-Papists had been looking for a home in Europe, in the Americas their support among Catholic clergy had been growing. Roman Catholicism in the Americas was generally more conservative than Catholicism in Europe, and the clergy in many regions took to the Temporal cause as a support for the Church's conservative views. Alexander IX accepted the Bishop of Tlaxcala's offer and set out to the Mexican states. The Temporal Catholics were given the city of Puebla[1] by the Bishop of Tlaxcala. The Temporal Catholics began to gather more support in the more conservative areas of Ibero-America, with their major supportive areas being clustered near the Caribbean in Tlaxcala, Ecuador, Saint-Domingue, and rural Colombia.


Indian Incursions:
After the National War, the expansion of the railroads across the Mississippi and toward the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific coast encouraged further immigration to the western United States. As more and more Americans were enticed to migrate west for land, wealth, or precious metals, the expansion of settlements in the Great Plains began to conflict with the lands occupied by the natives and tensions between the American settlers backed by the United States army and the native Plains tribes increased.

In the southern Great Plains, the Kiowa Indians had already been pushed off their original lands. In the early 19th century, the Kiowa had been pushed out of Calhoun by incoming Dutch and southern immigrants, and had moved to eastern New Mexico and the interior of Tejas and Houston. But by the 1870s and 1880s, the growth of the railroads brought even more settlers and cattle ranching began to cut into the Kiowa lands. Chief White Bear of the Kiowa led a band to start raiding towns in western Houston in the 1870s, and the United States reacted in kind. After the Chisholm Raid by White Bear, a United States army regiment under the command of Colonel William Cody retaliated. The result was the Battle of Wichita River in 1874, which killed over 40 Kiowa. After two more clashes between the Union army and White Bear, the Kiowa finally gave up and agreed to vacate Tejas and Houston and were put in a reservation in eastern New Mexico.

In Colorado, many of the Ute tribes had been more at peace with the settlers because they had mostly relocated to the more sparsely settled areas of western Colorado beyond the first ridges of the Rockies. However, the Colorado Silver Boom brought more settlers deeper into the mountains and the railroads followed. After some confrontations between Ute tribesmen and the Mormons in Utah and against settlers in Shoshone Territory, Chief Ouray of one of the Ute clans urged peaceful action and negotiation with the settlers. Ouray's appeals to the Colorado territorial government led him to a meeting with Colorado governor John Evans and President Lee in 1876 during a celebration of Colorado's admittance to the Union. During this meeting, Lee expressed praise for Chief Ouray, and after discussion with governor Evans it was agreed that a reservation for the Ute would be set up in the southwestern corner of Colorado.

[1] In the early parts of the shift, the Anti-Papacy operated out of the Puebla Cathedral as its see.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Update time!

Part Sixty-Five: The Western Frontier

Cowboy Dutch:
Life on the Great Plains during the 1870s was rough and rural. Most of the people who migrated wewst across the Mississippi went into farming or ranching, or worked in the smaller towns scattered across Calhoun, Houston, and other states in the Great Plains. Many of the largest ranches were owned by the early Dutch immigrants to Calhoun or Spanish vaqueros who lived in the region for decades, who had gained the land from various federal land grant acts in the 1840s. While most of the ranches were populated by cattle for livestock, a few like the Vanderhof Ranch in Calhoun kept herds of the native bison which roamed the Great Plains prior to the European colonization of North America. As more and more of the land in the Great Plains was parceled out into farms and ranches and the region became more populated, the natural habitat range of the bison dwindled, but these ranches helped to keep the bison alive as a species while they were nearly hunted to extinction in the wild.

The growth of cattle ranching in the Great Plains also spurred growth in cities on the Mississippi River as well as cities where the railroads snakes west across the plains. In the 1870s, Saint Louis, Cairo, Memphis, and New Orleans grew largely due to the development of the meat packing industry in those cities[1]. The invention of refrigerated railway cars allowed the beef cattle to be processed in large factories in those cities and then shipped north to the cities along the Great Lakes or east to the East Coast. Saint Louis became the prime location for the meat packing industry and developed into a major population center and transport hub. Several of the factories employed the unskilled Irish immigrants who came to the United States during the latter 19th century, and continued to attract immigrants well into the 1900s.


New Pioneers:
The 1870s was also a time of greater exploration of the western United States and of a greater understanding of the area. Several expeditions were made into the Rocky Mountains by a new generation of exploers. Future president Theodore Roosevelt was part of a grand surveying expedition that sought to map out the entire country. The United States Topological Survey was authorized in 1874 by President Lee and lasted four years. Roosevelt, along with other explorers including William Cody and John Wesley Powell were sent on expeditions throughout the western United States. The various ranges of the Rockies and the Cascades were mapped out. Several peaks were summitted for the first time by Europeans, including the 1877 expedition by Cody and Powell to climb Mount Jefferson[2] in Colorado, the nation's highest peak.

Part of the reason for the rush to map the nation was the growth of mining claims throughout the remote mountain regions of the country. Along with the increase in mining of the Rocky Mountains, a number of people migrated and staked claims in the Cascades in Oregon and Columbia Territories after the discovery of gold despoits along the Fraser River. The city of Gilpin at the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers became a major mining town and boomed to a population of 25,000 by 1880. The region along the lower reaches of the Fraser River saw a large amount of growth as well and prompted the Union Pacific Railroad to extend its line on the Pacific coast up to Langley in Oregon Territory. The rush also prompted some migration in British North America as well as miners searched for gold in the upper Fraser. The influx of people to the regions helped revive the economy of Fort Simpson and Northcote[3] and led to the creation of the separate district of New Caledonia covering the British possessions west of the Rockies.

[1] Cow towns between the ranches and the major meat packing cities also grew during this period. Examples are Laramie, Pahsapa, Crockett, Houston, and Stuyvesant, Calhoun.
[2] OTL Mount Elbert, Colorado. This should give you some clue about my plans for future territorial growth of the US.
[3] Formerly Fort McLoughlin, named after HBC governor Sir Stafford Northcote.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Update time!

Part Sixty-Six: The Grand Peace

Money Matters:
After the European Wars, the late 19th century ushered in an unprecedented period of peace and extended cooperation between all countries in Europe and in North America. As Europe rebuilt from the war, most countries on the continent demonetized silver and adopted the gold standard. In an effort to keep up economic growth among the great powers, several attempts were made to coordinate international policy on gold reserves. The United States, meanwhile, kept to its own as one of the only countries to remain on a bimetallic standard for the dollar. The foremost cooperative effort in Europe was the creation of the European Monetary Standard[1].

The European Monetary Standard was developed after discussions between France and Germany over how to pursue the friendship between the two countries. In 1886, President Charles de Freycinet of France[2] and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Germany signed an agreement to set the standard weight of one unit of franc and the goldmark to one tenth of a troy ounce of gold. Moravia, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland joined the European Monetary Standard as they used the franc and goldmark as their currencies, and Baden put its thaler on the EMS in 1887. The Dutch guilder and the Belgian franc finalized the creation of the EMS and put their currencies on the Standard in 1890 and 1892 respectively.

The new coins of the European Monetary Standard were minted with the profile of a prominent figure of that country on the front and with the coat of arms of each country on the reverse. France's featured Louis Napoleon, who had served as the French president for over a quarter century. Germany's goldmark had Otto von Bismarck's profile on its front. The Belgian france featured King Ludwig I, while the Dutch guilder had King William III on the front. The Badener thaler had a portrait of Duke Frederick I.


The Sleeping Bear:
While most of the great powers of Europe had been posturing for dominance and squabbling amongst themselves, the Russian Empire had retreated into a policy of isolationism after the Napoleonic Wars. After the death of Czar Nicholas I in 1846, Alexader II focused on internal policy. As he possessed liberal-minded leanings, Alexander did much to reform the Russian political system. In 1861 he abolished serfdom throughout the Russian Empire. Alexander also supported the construction of railways for both military and economic purposes. The newly created Ministry of Railways and Communication oversaw a great expansion in the mileage of railways and telegraph lines to many cities in Russia proper.

Alexander I also encouraged development of the interior of the country and Siberia. During Czar Alexander's reign, cossack hosts were organized in the southern regions of the Russian expanse in Siberia, primarily around Lake Baikal and along the Amur River on the border between Russia and China. Along with the cossacks, migration eastward into Siberia increased greatly in the 19th century as mining facilities were constructed. The port cities of Magadan and Chumikan[3] developed into the primary Pacific shipping points for the Russian Empire. Further settlement in the farther reaches of Siberia was expedited by the discovery of gold in the mountains around Chumikan and in the Uda River.

Russian settlement of the Uda River region in the 1870s led to increased tensions with China when it was rediscovered that the Uda River had been intended as the boundary between Russia and China as defined by the Treaty of Nerchinsk. In 1885, an opportunity arose with the outbreak of the Sino-Korean War and France stepping in to aid Korea in their rebellion. The new Tsar, Nicholas II[4], was eager to expand Russian territory in Siberia and Central Asia and so Russia began pressuring the Chinese government to formalize a new treaty on the border of the two countries. Distracted by the Korean rebellion and the French invasion, China agreed to set up negotiations with Alexander Sibiryakov, Russian governor of the Far East. After weeks of negotiations in 1887, the Treaty of Chita formally marked the border with China giving numerous concessions. The new border in the Far East was generally established at the Amur River, then following the Ussuri and Khor Rivers up to where it reached the Pacific Ocean. This gave Russia full control of the Amur Delta while leaving parts of the Pacific coast of Manchuria in Chinese hands.

[1] Similar to OTL's Latin Monetary Union.
[2] Louis Napoleon died at age 73 in 1881.
[3] Chumikan is at the very western point of the Sea of Okhotsk.
[4] OTL Tsesarevich Nicholas, Alexander II's first son who died at age 21 in 1865.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Merry Christmas everyone! And your present, an update!

Part Sixty-Seven: The Election of 1876

Election of 1876:
President Lee had enjoyed a fairly popular first term, despite the economic downturn in 1874 and 1875. The remainder of the former Confederate states had been readmitted to the Union, industry and railroads in the North and West were expanding at an ever faster rate, and Americans were enjoying a better standard of living than ever before. However, deep divisions were still present in some areas of the country. Many of the former Confederate States had been experiencing lackluster economic growth after the National War. Only Louisiana, Jackson, and Cuba seemed to recover quickly, and most of their recovery was due to the continued growth from immigration from Ibero-America. A new resurgence of Nativism in the rural regions of the South caused most of this wave of immigrants to remain in the coastal cities or the more welcoming cities along the Mississippi River. The Nativist sentiments permeated the Democratic Party and, along with the rising importance of their free trade platform in the Northeast, were the main issues facing the nomination for the 1876 Democratic Convention in New York City.

At the Convention in July of 1876, the Democrats once again nominated Samuel Tilden for their presidential candidate. Tilden's economic positions coincided with the party positions and with many of the wealthy industrialists in the Northeast. The Democrats also nominated Francis Blair, a senator from Missouri, as their Vice Presidential candidate. While Blair had been a member of the Republican Party prior to the National War, he had switched to the Democratic Party after the war. Blair had felt that the Republicans were taking their positions too far with furthering immigration and had opposed Fremont's support of the Lincoln Court's ruling on Fox v. Bennett[1]. The Democratic Party hoped the nomination of Blair would gain them votes in the more conservative Southern states and balance the industrial candidacy of Tilden with a rural Vice Presidential candidate.

The results of the 1876 election were a victory for Lee and the Republicans, however both the results in the presidential election and the Congressional elections showed that the Republican dominance of American politics was slipping. Lee's electoral margin over Tilden was much smaller than in 1872, with almost all of the former Confederate states voting Democratic. In the Congressional elections, the Democrats gained a number of seats. Hiram Bingham II, a Congregationalist minister[2], defeated two term Republican senator Henry B. Anthony of Rhode Island to gain a place in the Senate. In the South, the Lamar family continued to grow in influence. Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar won election to the House of Representatives while his first cousin Bonaparte Lamar[3] was elected as governor of Houston. The Democratic Lamar family continued to have influence in Southern politics throughout the remainder of the century and into the 1900s.

Lee/Burnside: 182 EV
Tilden/Blair: 147 EV

[1] The court case on former slaves being citizens of the United States.
[2] OTL Hiram Bingham II was a missionary in the Kingdom of Hawaii.
[3] TTL son of Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Update time! I have plans to add another small section and footnotes onto it later in the day.

Part Sixty-Eight: Capitalism Rising

The Fourteenth Amendment:
When President Lee was reelected to a second term in 1876, several Congressmen voiced their concern about Lee's age. The issue of Lee's age was compounded by the fact that the issue of presidential succession and whether the Vice President took on the role of President or Acting President had still not been settled. With President Lee being inaugurated in 1877 months after his 70th birthday, the issue was brought up in Congress and Lee made it a priority.

The issue was brought before Congress and it was decided that a Constitutional Amendment would be required to ensure the viability of the law. Senator Charles H. Voorhis of New Jersey was one of the primary advocates for the amendment that ended up passing. The Fourteenth Amendment, which states that the Vice President succeeds the President in both official title and duties in case the President is incapacitated, was proposed in May of 1877 after both houses of Congress passed the amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified by the states over the next months and entered the Constitution in August of 1877.

The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment came at a very fortuitous moment. In November of 1877, President Lee suffered a stroke. Twenty-five days after Lee had the stroke, he died in the Walt Whitman National Hospital in Washington, DC, and Ambrose Burnside took the office of President of the United States on November 23, 1877.


Consolidating America:
Much of Ambrose Burnside's presidency was a great period of economic progress for the United States. The recovery from the periodic recessions of the previous decade would be driven by a number of wealthy financiers and consolidation of several smaller companies into single national conglomerates. In addition, the popularization of the European inventions of the telephone and typewriter in the United States would revolutionize the ways companies would practice business.

The major corporations that formed during the 1870s and 1880s were dominated by just a few financiers, who became known as the "Big Four". These men were Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Pierpont Morgan, Leland Stanford, and Anthony Joseph Drexel[1]. Vanderbilt made his fortune in the steamship industry on the Mississippi River prior to the National War, but afterward moved into the railroads. Vanderbilt was most notably the chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad from 1867 until his death in 1879. Vanderbilt presided over the ceremonies of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1874 at Astoria and shook hands with President Lee at the event.

John Pierpont Morgan, meanwhile, conquered the banking and financial industry. Morgan's investment bank financed the creation of many of the country's largest corporations during the late 19th century, including Drexel's steel empire. Drexel began the Allegheny Steel Company in 1883 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh had developed into a major steel production city during the National War, and it only grew afterward. However, Drexel also helped to develop other cities along Lake Erie such as Cleveland and Sandusky in Ohio and Miami and Detroit in Michigan as the Allegheny Steel Company built mills in those cities. Drexel had also bought up several mines in northeastern Marquette after iron ore was discovered in the region in order to control the supply for the steel as well as the production.

Leland Stanford, like Cornelius Vanderbilt, was greatly involved in the railroad industry after the National War. Stanford managed a number of different railroads in the United States after the National War, but grew to national prominence after his successful rebuilding of the South Carolina Railroad from the ruins the former Confederacy had fallen into after the war. By the time Stanford moved on to chair the Missouri and South Platte Railroad in 1878, the South Carolina Railroad had even extended its coverage to the now bustling cities of Gadsden[2] on Tampa Bay and Birmingham in central Alabama.

The Barons of the South:
In the 1870s and 1880s, most areas of the former Confederacy remained rooted to their agricultural ways and continued to lag behind the North economically. However, some areas managed to attract industrial and manufacturing businesses, primarily along the Mississippi River and the coal mining region in central Alabama. The buildup of these regions were often led by Northern industrialists such as Leland Stanford seeking profitable ventures in the dilapidated South.

However, there were some Southerners who rose to the ranks of the Northeastern magnates and helped redevelop parts of the former Confederate States during the latter half of the 19th century. Coal mining near Birmingham and Montgomery in Alabama spurred the growth of that state, but overall it still lagged behind the North. Samuel Clemens, a Missourian who took over operation of the Vanderbilt Steamship Company after Vanderbilt moved to the railroad industry, did much to revitalize the cities along the lower course of the Mississippi River. However, much of Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansaw, and Chickasaw that was further away from the river stayed agricultural and economically undeveloped.

In Cuba, the Villamar family[3] soared in political and economic influence and made Cuba the jewel of the Caribbean. In particular, Rodrigo de Villamar employed thousands of Cubans in cigar factories and modified the cigar production process to a series of precise movements that any worker could do. Through this method, the cigar factories under Rodrigo de Villamar employed many of the unskilled laborers in Cuba and greatly increased the efficiency of the entire production method[4].

[1] All four were big industrialists in OTL, but you'll note the lack of some other well-known names.
[2] OTL Tampa, Florida.
[3] A major aristocratic family in Cuba in the 18th and 19th century, and the ancestors of one of my friends.
[4] While the meat packing industry is cited as the precursor to assembly line production, cigar factories also had similar aspects.

 

[wilcoxchar]

I wanted to get the next update out before I left for DC tomorrow, so here it is. Not sure how satisfied with it I am and I welcome suggestions to improve it.

Part Sixty-Nine: Rolling Back the Rights

The Battle for Capitol Hill:
While Lee was a fairly effective leader and handled the machinations of Congress well to get his legislative goals passed, Burnside was far less effective at dealing with Congress. Part of the difficulty that President Burnside had with Congress came from his antagonization of Speaker of the House James G. Blaine. Blaine wanted to repeal some of the more radical policies regarding the South and civil rights that had been passed by the Fremont and Lee administrations. Blaine was also a supporter of some of the proposals that the growing Nativist contingent in Congress made. This political antagonism developed into a personal dislike between the two men, which greatly hindered Burnside's influence in the House of Representatives.

President Burnside also had difficulties ensuring that the laws that the administration passed continued to be enforced. The best example of this was the struggle to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1877. Passed by Congress during Lee's term and signed by Burnside as one of his first acts as President, the Civil Rights Act of 1877 set out to enforce the implication of the Fox v. Bennett decision and uphold the rights of people who were American citizens by birth. However, Burnside also did not take much confidence in himself to his presidency, continuously doubting in private whether he was fir for the job. Because of this, he kept many of Lee's Cabinet appointments who were ineffective at their positions, such as Attorney General Edwards Pierpont. Pierpont and others failed to adequately enforce the federal legislation and it became the duty of the states to uphold the 1877 Civil Rights Act.


Lax Americana:
Burnside was also ineffective at ensuring that the United States government's policies were upheld by the states. Under Burnside's administration, some Southern states found ways to go around the civil rights acts that had been proposed during the Fremont and Lee administrations. Burnside did not make maintaining these policies a priority during his time in office and the policies gradually fell by the wayside. In Georgia and Mississippi, laws were passed mandating literacy tests for a person to be able to vote. These laws impeded many free blacks as well as poor, rural whites from voting.

Burnside attempted to pass laws through Congress and through executive orders which would ban the practices of literacy tests, poll taxes, and other methods of disenfranchising poor Southern voters. But under Burnside's administration, the policies were not enforced in the Southern states and the orders would be reversed in the next decade. As the Democratic Party returned to political office in many Southern states after the initial Republican gains right after the National War, the more lax approach of these politicians to enforcing the civil rights acts passed in Washington led to a gradual disenfranchisement of thousands in those states.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Here we go!

The Undisclosed Adventures of Theodore Roosevelt, Episode 4: Troubled Waters

Cornelius Vanderbilt walked up to the the bank of the Mississippi River. He grinned. "Soon this river will be flowing like it never has before!" Vanderbilt turned away from the river and looked at his companion. "The time is right, Sheffield. Now that the pyroglicerine is in place and I have the deed to the land in my pocket," Vanderbilt patted the breast of his coat, "I shall soon be the owner of the largest shipping port in the Gulf of Mexico!" Vanderbilt cackled. "Push the plunger!" Sheffield pushed the plunger down. A few seconds later, the ground shook as mounds of earth shot up from near the water in front of them. As they stood watching, the level of the tide slowly began to rise and the rush of the river grew louder.


The steamboat swayed on its mooring as the current tried to push the boat down the river. The music was blaring and everyone was dancing and chatting on the deck. Governor Parker leaned back against the railing, holding a drink in his hand. He had organized this little fundraiser during Carnival to woo the major business interests to his side. Parker took a big sip of his drink. The lights of Baton Rouge swayed as the boat rocked. Then something strange began to happen. The roaring of the Mississippi seemed to get slightly quieter, and the lights appeared to be moving upward at a very slow pace.

Parker felt his head. "It must be the liquor," he thought. But after another few minutes, the other guests on the boat started looking around confused as well. Parker looked at the shoreline of the river. It was definitely getting lower. "I will be right back!" Parker told his guests. He ran off the boat to the nearest telephone and called the person he knew could fix whatever was happening: Theodore Roosevelt.


The morning after Muir heard the news from governor Parker, he ran to get the President. Roosevelt was having a bout of singlestick with the Canadian ambassador on the lawn of the Executive Mansion. "Gentlemen." Muir cleared his throat and motioned the President toward him.

Roosevelt caught the ambassador's thrust and moved the stick away. "If you will excuse us, Sir Doyle, I have necessary matters of state to attend to." Doyle nodded and said goodbye as he walked back to the Executive Office Building. Roosevelt walked with Muir south toward the waiting airship.

"It is urgent, Theodore. Governor Parker just telephoned from Baton Rouge. For some reason the water levels in the Mississippi River are decreasing dramatically."

Roosevelt rubbed his chin. "I wonder what could be causing this. Are you certain the governor is not simply drunk and imagining this?"

"Yes. He said that he had been getting word from New Orleans and other cities on the Delta that the river is running exceptionally low as well." They had reached the airship and began to board. As the airship rose into the sky and moved toward the southwest, Roosevelt and Muir continued discussing the matter.

"Have we received any reports from any other areas regarding the levels of the river?" Roosevelt asked.

"No. It's strange, it seems that only the very lowest reaches of the river are experiencing lowered river banks."

"Hmmm. I've seen a lot of floods in my time, but never any times where the river stops flowing. We will definitely have to investigate."

They continued their discussion of the phenomenon as the airship kept on toward Baton Rouge.


After mooring the airship on the Louisiana Capitol Building grounds, Roosevelt and Muir went to talk with the governor. Parker told them what had happened, and Roosevelt decided that they would need to follow the river upstream to see what had happened. The three men went up in the presidential airship to get a better view of the river.

Seventy miles up the river near Simmesport, Roosevelt looked down and saw the break in the banks of the Mississippi. "That's probably why the river is losing water."

"But that's never been there before." Governor Parker thought for a moment.

"Where does it lead?" Muir asked.

Parker followed where the new river channel headed. The new channel was already gathering more water than the old Mississippi. "It looks like it goes to Simmesport and connects up with the Atchafalaya River."

As the presidential airship hovered low over the new channel, Vanderbilt and Sheffield drove up to check on the channel. "Drat, it's the President!" Vanderbilt said as he saw the airship, the large presidential seal painted on its side. Sheffield stopped the automobile and Vanderbilt leaned out of the auto. "You can't stop me this time, Roosevelt! My plan is already in motion and Vanderbilt City will soon become the most powerful shipping port in the world!" Vanderbilt got back in the auto and drove off.

"What did he mean by 'Vanderbilt City'?" Roosevelt wondered.

"I'm not sure, but we need to see what he's up to and stop this diversion," Parker said. "I don't think either the Mississippi or the Atchafalaya can take much more of this without the Mississippi's course switching permanently."

Roosevelt looked at the channel watching the water rush through. He watched Vanderbilt's auto driving off into the distance. "Looks like we need to split up. Parker, you go to Simmesport and see if you can get some people to help block the channel. We'll go stop Vanderbilt." Governor Parker nodded and they lowered him down to the ground. "Now then," Roosevelt said turning to the pilot, "follow that auto!"


As Parker set out to Simmesport, the airship sped off southward in pursuit of Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt and Sheffield followed the meandering course of the Atchafalaya River as the airship loomed in the sky behind it, until they arrived at the mouth of the river. Roosevelt and Muir looked out the window to see a large factory complex in the city at the river mouth.

"This must be Vanderbilt City," Roosevelt said.

Muir brought out a map of the state. "It says here that that's Brashear City, if I'm correct and we've reached the mouth of the Atchafalaya."

The airship hovered over the factory. Roosevelt grabbed a revolver and a knife and opened the door to the gondola. "Muir, you go back up to Simmesport and help Parker get the channel closed up. I'll deal with Vanderbilt."

"Are you sure you can handle him alone, Mr. President?"

Roosevelt winked at Muir. "Oh come now, John. It's just like hunting moose." Roosevelt clutched his hat and jumped out of the airship. Muir signaled to the pilot to turn the ship around and head back upriver.


Vanderbilt walked around the floor of the factory, inspecting the large tanks of prepared pyroglycerin ready for packing. Each tank had a large name listed on the side. Vanderbilt stopped at the end, looking up at a large map of the south central United States displayed on the wall. Red dots marked where the planned channels were to be blasted out.

"I think we will divert the Red River next." Vanderbilt turned to Sheffield. "How is the pyroglyverin coming for it?"

"The tank is full and ready for packing, sir."

"Excellent."

Just as Vanderbilt turned around, Roosevelt crashed through the skylight in the center of the factory and landed on the catwalk.

Vanderbilt jerked his head up at the sound of the glass breaking. "Roosevelt! What is it with you and crashing through my window!"

Roosevelt stood up on the catwalk. "I just thought I'd drop by and see what you were up to." The President took the revolver out of its holster.

Vanderbilt looked for the stairway up to the catwalk. It was behind Roosevelt on the far side of the factory aisle. He started running across the floor. Roosevelt took his revolver and aimed at Vanderbilt. Roosevelt shot, but it hit the floor just behind Vanderbilt. Roosevelt shot two more times but kept hitting just behind Vanderbilt as he ran across the floor.

"Wait, wait! Stop shooting! This entire place could explode!" Vanderbilt yelled as he ran across the floor. At this thought, Roosevelt put the revovler back in its holster. Vanderbilt reached the other side of the factory and climbed up to the catwalk.

As Vanderbilt reached teh catwalk and began advancing toward Roosevelt, the President took out his knife. Vanderbilt took a knife of his own out of a coat pocket. Roosevelt and Vanderbilt postured at each other on the catwalk.

Vanderbilt took the first strike. He thrust the knife and lunged at Roosevelt, who stepped back to avoid it. While he clutched the knife in his right hand, Roosevelt brought his left around to swipe the knife out of Vanderbilt's but Vanderbilt drew his hand away too quickly. Vanderbilt attacked again, only for Roosevelt to dodge his blade. The fighting went on with both men moving back and forth on the catwalk, but Roosevelt slowly gained the upper hand.

As they continued lunging at each other with the knives and fists, Sheffield slunk off into the shadows.

"Your insidious plan will never succeed, Vanderbilt. As a conservationist and a force for good, I will never let you destroy the Mississippi River delta!" Roosevelt stood back a moment. "I already have people working to fill in your little channel."

"Oh, but I will. You can't stop the forces of the market, and I am the greatest corporate force that ever lived!"

"That's a lot of high and mighty talk for someone as low as you." Roosevelt made another thrust with the knife.

Vanderbilt continued fencing with Roosevelt for another few minutes, then heard a distant engine starting. Vanderbilt stopped attacking and only dodged the President's attacks. The engine got louder, and Sheffield brought the auto around the corner and onto the factory floor.

"Well, it seems my ride is hear. I'm sorry Mr. President, but our little meeting must end here. Along with your life." Vanderbilt jumped off the catwalk into the auto as Sheffield drove it through the factory. Roosevelt put his hand on the railing in order to jump off after them, but stopped when he heard a rumbling. A spray of fire shot up from the tank furthest to the wall as the pyroglycerin in the tank combusted.

"That can't be good." As the tanks around it began exploding, Roosevelt looked for a way out. The door that Sheffield and Vanderbilt had driven through had already closed, but Roosevelt spotted a hatch in the ceiling that led up to the roof just as the section of catwalk near it collapsed. With the explosions getting louder and closer, Roosevelt ran along the catwalk, put his foot on the railing, and jumped.

His hand caught the handle of the hatch and it swung open. Roosevelt managed to vault himself through the hole and onto the roof just as the nearby Sabine tank exploded. Flame and smoke burst through the roof as Roosevelt looked behind him. Roosevelt began running along the roof, with the tanks below bursting and more columns of fire shooting up through the metal roof. As he reached the end of the roof, Roosevelt jumped off as the entire building went up in flames. After he landed, Roosevelt got up and turned around, the large fireball where the building once stood reflecting in his pince-nez.


The President made his way back up to Simmesport. The work on filling in the channel was already far underway as he arrived.

"Is Vanderbilt taken care of?" Muir asked as Roosevelt joined Muir and governor Parker.

"Yes, he is. He had a huge pyroglycerin factory in Brashear City."

"What was he going to do with it?" Parker asked.

"It looked like he wanted to divert all the nearby rivers into the Atchafalaya so he could control a shipping empire from the city. But that plan went up in smoke." Roosevelt cracked a smile and laughed. The three men continued talking as they oversaw the rest of the work.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Here's the next regular update. It's a big one.

Part Sixty-Nine: Our Nieghbors Up North

A Company Project:
The latter half of the 19th century also was an important time for the area north of the United States, then united under the British crown as British North America. The period saw a great amount of development of the regional economy and a large influx of immigrants, just as in the United States, led to the settlement of the interior plains of British North America. A large part of the development of the western reaches of British North America came with the extensions of the railway from Hudson Bay and the eastern dominions out to the Pacific Ocean.

The Hudson Pacific Railway is for the most part the successor to other routes that had been used by trappers and settlers to cross the northern plains since the English and French arrived in North America. After the British defeat in the Oregon War, the Hudson Bay Company and Great Britain saw that maintaining a solid transportation link between Canada and the western coast of North America as well as the development of a naval base on the Pacific coast was a necessary goal to maintain British control of the northern Pacific. For this purpose, the only settlement suitable was Fort Simpson on the border with Russia.

There was also debate between the Hudson Bay Company and Great Britain over where the railroad itself was to connect at the eastern end. The HBC initially proposed that the railroad should follow the route of the York Factory Express and connect to the Hudson Bay port of York Factory, the colonial headquarters of the Hudson Bay Company[1]. The British government wanted to keep the railroad along the southern edge of British North America and connect the railroad with already existing rail in Canada. As Parliament had been granting more powers within the administration of British North America to the Hudson Bay Company, the HBC's plan was decided upon in 1875 under the auspices of HBC governor Stafford Henry Northcote. The railroad was completed in 1882, with extensions to the east being constructed in 1885.


The Mormon Revolution:
With the growing powers of the Hudson Bay Company in western British North America, the policies in Prince Rupert's Land started to become rather harsh on the Mormons who had migrated there. The power of enforcement of the laws in Rupert's Land had been given to the Hudson Bay Company since 1821, but starting in the 1860s, the British government gradually granted legislative powers to the HBC as well[2]. As more immigrants came into the eastern plains and the western gold mining towns, HBC governor William Garnett decided it was necessary to enforce stricter, more conservative policies. These policies did not sit well with the Mormon community in Winnipeg and the surrounding area.

While the Mormon opposition to the HBC's conservative laws grew, the Hudson Bay Company continued to pass legislation in an attempt to curb some of the American immigration to British North America and increase the control that the HBC had over the territory, both economically and politically. In 1865, the Colonial Transit Act imposed a regulation that all goods being exported from Rupert's Land and New Caledonia had to pass through Hudson Bay Company office cities. The only HBC offices at the time were in York Factory on Hudson Bay and Fort Simpson on the Pacific Ocean. As most of the international exports from the Mormon populated areas was to the United States, the law was very inefficient for the economy of the Mormon towns, and an appeal to the colonial office in York Factory for the creation of an HBC office in Winnipeg was denied[3]. Regulations such as these continued to be passed, and the region exploded into open rebellion in 1880.

The Mormon Revolution was led by Lewis Farnsworth, a local leader from the Mormon community in Whitmer. As the region was sparsely populated and was surrounded by several large lakes, the rebellion was easily defensible against attacks by HBC or British soldiers. The successful defense of the small isthmus in the Battle of Cedar Lake by the Hudson Bay Company defined the northern extent of the Mormon raids during the rebellion. However, the rebellion also cut off much of the communication between the Hudson Bay Company and Winnipeg, and the rebellion is remembered as a period of lawlessness in the city. After 17 months of open rebellion against the Hudson Bay Company, the new governor of the HBC Lord Dufferin[4] called Farnsworth to a meeting in London. Farnsworth made his case to Lord Dufferin who took the issue in front of Parliament. In 1886, the British government agreed to establish the Dominion of Deseret in the lands in southeastern Rupert's Land with large Mormon populations, including Winnipeg. Whitmer, as the original Mormon settlement in the area, was made the capital of the new Dominion, and soon a railroad connected it with Winnipeg in the south.


The Yukon Purchase:
With the Hudson Bay Company gaining more control over the lands in northwestern North America, the economic productivity of the territory began to decline with the decline of the fur trade. As more people in the region concentrated in the towns and began settling the Great Northern Prairie, the main driver of the economy and the Hudson Bay Copmany's profits from the region switched from fur trapping to grain exports and mining the northern Rockies. At the time, however, the far northwestern region of the Hudson Bay Company's jurisdiction was not very accessible to settlers coming from the east and was mostly settled by Russian fur trappers from Alyeska and Sitka.

As such, when the British government granted the Hudson Bay Company the authority to enter into treaties with foreign powers regarding their jurisdiction in 1890, governor Andrew Carnegie[5] went into negotiations with Alyeska governor Alexander Sibiryakov to formalize the border between Russian and British territory in North America. Over the next months, the border was hammered out and ended with the Treaty of Saint Petersburg, signed by Queen Victoria, Tsar Nicholas II, Carnegie, and Sibiyakov in 1895. Sibiryakov's priority was to make sure as much of the Yukon River watershed fell into Russian territory, and he almost succeeded at gaining all the land that drained into the Yukon.

The Treaty of Saint Petersburg set out the border as following the Portland Channel and Coast Mountains up to the northernmost point where it crosses the 130th meridian west, then along the 130th meridian to the continental divide, and following the continental divide to the Arctic Ocean. The far northern portion of the border remained undefined as the divide does not reach the Arctic Ocean, but the Mackenzie River and its tributaries were identified as being within British North America. In return for the territorial concessions made by Great Britain and the Hudson Bay Company, Russia paid the British Crown five million pounds and conceding Russian claims to any land south of the Hari River valley in Afghanistan.

[1] York Factory is the main port for goods and people going to and from Hudson Bay.
[2] Found the 1821 info on Wiki in the Rupert's Land article, but not sure exactly what act it was or to what extent their initial powers were.
[3] The Winnipeg office was abandoned after the Oregon War.
[4] In OTL a governor-general of Canada and Viceroy of India.
[5] The first Canadian to be governor of the Hudson Bay Company.