Until Every Drop of Blood Is Paid: A More Radical American Civil War
- Thread starter Red_Galiray
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And on that note, this makes me wonder how big the Confederado community there would be compared to OTL.
I’ve been thinking about how confederate apologia might develop in the aftermath of TTL civil war. Imagining the crocodile tears of Confederate apologists in this timeline: “The murderous genocidal butchery of the Southron race by the cruel mongrel Unionists was the greatest war crime in history, over ten million Southron women and children starved to death, oh the inhumanity!”
IIRC, Confederate Apologia would be going around praising the "true Southern cause" that Breckinridge, Lee, and Davis espoused, especially with how Breckinridge was very popular amongst the poorer Southern whites, while at the same time denouncing the Junta and "corrupt planter elites" that they represented.
Honestly given how popular Pedro II was OTL, that the Empire fell is an aberration in history.
He quite literally didn't care when the Republic was proclaimed. He just embarked on a boat to exile and refused to mount any resistance.
It didn't help he didn't have any male heirs as well.
Yep, if Pedro II had bothered to fight he would have easily regained power. The guy lost the motivation.
Didn’t help that he saw no hope in his daughter ruling and didn’t prepare either her or the country for it.
I don't think that on the slavery issue, things will go all that differently - one particular difference on how the abolition process went here is that once the ball started rolling in the 1880s, abolition was popular with basically all sections except for the southwestern planters. Throughout that decade, all they could do was try to slow things down and insist on compensation in case the slaves were freed (which they didn't get in the end), but there was no chance they could pull anything like what the CSA did, and in any case, among the planters, there were many of them who already had seen the writing on the wall (especially once the transatlantic trade was outlawed) and began hiring immigrants to replace slave labor. The most i think can happen from this divergence is that the whole proccess may well be accelerated by a couple of years.
I mean, there are still people today *cough* *points at Florida* *cough* who outright defend Slavery, so there's gonna be some apologists for the coupists too, eventually.
Heres my suspicion on the Klan is that the Coup types will still have devotees, for a full on indepdence war. For one, I highly doubt Tooms and Co. will ever sign a surrender, thus leaving, if you feel like it the right to say "Nuh uh, no legal surrender!", the Toombs types will also still be apologizing for itself, even from Prison, providing justifications for those who feel truly, deeply connected to the idea of Southern, White, Nationhood.
This will be even more the case, If the Union is truly intent on carrying out a fully radical reconstruction, from Day One, the resentments will be even more highly charged, which combined with the prior political narratives and the poverty, will create a ground for a southern independence terrorist movement. However, these guys would be the minority, even among Redeemers and will have alot of difficulties with all levels of Southern society: Poor will view them as the backstabbers which wanted to get them all killed, the upper class will view them as the idiots who got them into this situation.
This will be even more the case, If the Union is truly intent on carrying out a fully radical reconstruction, from Day One, the resentments will be even more highly charged, which combined with the prior political narratives and the poverty, will create a ground for a southern independence terrorist movement. However, these guys would be the minority, even among Redeemers and will have alot of difficulties with all levels of Southern society: Poor will view them as the backstabbers which wanted to get them all killed, the upper class will view them as the idiots who got them into this situation.
I'm not entirely sure I remember you saying that a Lost Cause myth would develop ITTL, but if one did, this seems like the seed of a far more populist, poor white southerner oriented Lost Cause: "we would have won if not for those dastardly planters and their love of slavery". It won't be any less virulently racist than OTL's, but it'll be considerably more refractory.
Especially with how they'd IIRC be trying to make a run for it and escape into exile when they realize the gig is up with this being something that could possibly lead to them setting up some attempt at a government-in-exile.
This is wherethe much increased role of women in the postwar South by necessity will have to do the work. Yess, it happened in Paraguay, too, but that's a much smaller number and easily ignored; the American South was much larger and more important economically, as well as having much more of a chance for reporters to arrive from Europe and send news than it is for Paraguay; it's probably easier for news in the late 1860s to get from New Orleans and Atlanta to Rio and Maaus than it is from landlocked Paraguay with no easy land travel. (It's not like the Amazon is near, though I don't know much about other South American rivers.)
So, if Pedro II looks and sees that, "Wow, women really can accomplish thigns by themselves," and the country begins to see it as viable, then he might decide he can turn it over to her.
They have over 20 years before the OTL coup - I posted a "Possible HIstory" video a while back on Brazil and I think it's doable, but the process needs to start soon, because it will take a while to develop.
I'm not sure if it was touched here, but if it's as in OTL, then yes, it was. They were propping up Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico, but in OTL it failed by the end of the ACW and left.
Oof. Coups 101; managing the optics in the initial period is paramount. It seems that the fire-eaters' arrogance and contempt for all others will be their final, fatal sin.
A small macabre detail: usually firing squads were seen as a more honourable method of execution compared to hanging, especially for civilian traitors and especially in public. Wouldn't that have been employed here instead?
A small macabre detail: usually firing squads were seen as a more honourable method of execution compared to hanging, especially for civilian traitors and especially in public. Wouldn't that have been employed here instead?
The truly critical component of this is that the alapologia of the poor southern whites is explicitly against the southern aristocracy.
Will poor southern whites stop being racist? As you said, no. But the true power in the south has never resided with them, not truly, but instead with the southern elite. The same elite who just gleefully executed Breckinridge... along with inviting further death and destruction of their lives and property. It's going to be far harder to build solidarity between the two going forward, and this maybe even more than land redistribution was probably necessary to ensure that the slavocracy stay marginalized afrer the war.
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