Until Every Drop of Blood Is Paid: A More Radical American Civil War

[thenextguy]

Yeah the breaking of the slave system and the repression of its former beneficiaries and controllers isn’t going to remove the legacy of two hundred or so years of slavery. Although it’s likely that universal suffrage, full civil rights and voting rights protections, and open racism becoming unacceptable will happen earlier

 

[Tsar Nicholas The Cringe]

Yeah the breaking of the slave system and the repression of its former beneficiaries and controllers isn’t going to remove the legacy of two hundred or so years of slavery. Although it’s likely that universal suffrage, full civil rights and voting rights protections, and open racism becoming unacceptable will happen earlier

The key question is this: how much more would white Americans be willing to defend black Americans TTL.

Remember, for all that the South gets bashed for its racism, racism itself found a home in many parts of America: from the sundown towns of the Midwest to racist redlining even in supposedly "left-leaning cities."

In the first few years after the OTL Civil War saw a flourishing of civil rights and expansion of the franchise, but this was a shaky progress that rested on treating the South like an occupied colony. After the 1870s, Republicans practically threw in the towel, and the positive elements of Reconstruction gradually wittled away. By 1910, every Southern state had some kind of exclusion of its black community, but some of the positive legacies of Reconstruction lingered well into the 1920s.

TTL, would the American army be more willing to stop shit like the Wilmington Riot, Red Shirt hooligans like Ben Tillman, and the Tulsa Massacre while also stopping the more implicit institutional forms of racism?

 

[DTF955Baseballfan]

Actually, I do wonder how this timeline will affect Pullmans—IIRC Pullman's first or second car was chosen to carry Lincoln's body on the funeral train (because it was, like, the nicest railroad car in North America), which played no small roll in him getting his big break, and for people to both want to be able to ride in a Pullman passenger car, and for railroads wanting to buy those cars to offer to passengers. Assuming that he still manages to get people to want to ride them and railroads to buy them, I also wonder how Pullman Porters will be affected. For us, they were synonymous with "African-American," and were, like a teaching job for African-American women, a highly valued job that was respected, respectable, paid well, and (I think) a job that suffered fewer indignities and insults than usual. Is that still the case here? After all, my understanding is that the main reason it was almost (if not actually entirely, not 100% sure there) entirely Black was because it was acceptable for Black people to have a job where they were subservient, even if they were dressed nicely and paid well and also got tips. This is just speculation on my part, but I also imagine that it would've rankcled a lot of white people to have a white Pullman Porter subservient to a Black passenger, either as another passenger, or as that white Pullman Porter.

It seems like a pretty obvious job, since the job of Porter was really just growing and railroads were beginning to expand so much, I imagine that it will be a rather common job for them to have.

Plus, as you said, the Union was an excellent one. And that is something that should be encouraged no matter what.

Perhaps, like I did with baseball and other entertainment have done a little with medicine, if Red isn't as well versed in railroads you can put a little side piece in yourself in the next thread. You seem to have an excellent amount of knowledge on the subject and I'm sure that it would be worthwhile. It could just hint at a few things like I did with baseball integration like I have done and maybe focus on one character or two.

 

[Tsar Nicholas The Cringe]

It seems like a pretty obvious job, since the job of Porter was really just growing and railroads were beginning to expand so much, I imagine that it will be a rather common job for them to have.

Plus, as you said, the Union was an excellent one. And that is something that should be encouraged no matter what.

Perhaps, like I did with baseball and other entertainment have done a little with medicine, if Red isn't as well versed in railroads you can put a little side piece in yourself in the next thread. You seem to have an excellent amount of knowledge on the subject and I'm sure that it would be worthwhile. It could just hint at a few things like I did with baseball integration like I have done and maybe focus on one character or two.

In this TL, would we still see the segregation of sports, or would sports like baseball be something that ties all Americans together?

 

[DTF955Baseballfan]

In this TL, would we still see the segregation of sports, or would sports like baseball be something that ties all Americans together?

The Civil War certainly caused the proliferation of baseball in the south, there is no reason why that can't continue. I suspect that there will be a number of Southerners who died in the Civil War who would have given birth to some of the pros of the '80s and '90s. But it would certainly still be a popular boys game.

Early on I did a tidbit which is most likely threadmarked now which had the first paid star, Al Reach, going to Philadelphia and interacting with Octavius Catto, a black star who also during the war recruited for black soldiers to join the union army. Catto wanted to have all black teams in the same organizations this all white teams. Here, his interaction with reach and just general butterflies could easily cause him to say that he will accept as a compromise having black players in among the white players on white teams.

And, I suspect that they would allow that. They would probably be some opposition, but whereas in our timeline the 1867 meeting of the Association of professional baseball leagues decided they did not want integrated teams or black teams in their association, here they would probably accept it because there were just be more of an interest in seeing the groups integrate. Whereas in my If Baseball Integrated Early universe, it required a young superstar surviving Civil War to push it through, the anti-Cap Anson if you will.

 

[MagicCarpetMadeofSteel]

It seems like a pretty obvious job, since the job of Porter was really just growing and railroads were beginning to expand so much, I imagine that it will be a rather common job for them to have.

Plus, as you said, the Union was an excellent one. And that is something that should be encouraged no matter what.

Perhaps, like I did with baseball and other entertainment have done a little with medicine, if Red isn't as well versed in railroads you can put a little side piece in yourself in the next thread. You seem to have an excellent amount of knowledge on the subject and I'm sure that it would be worthwhile. It could just hint at a few things like I did with baseball integration like I have done and maybe focus on one character or two.

I'm quite flattered, but while I know much more about railroads than most people, I don't feel like I know enough to really say much, especially with more niche or in-the-weeds stuff, such as the nitty-gritty of Pullman Porters (i.e. when did they start being a thing? Were they mostly Black from the get-go, and if not, when did that start happening? Were they paid well from the get-go, or was that something that took agitation to get (since the BSCP wasn't founded until the 1920s, but being a Porter was a desirable job well before then. I think.)? Were they treated any more respectfully, or were they actually treated less respectfully because, on top of being Black, their job made people think that it was ok to order them around? etc. etc.), as well as how Black people were treaty by and interacted with railroads just kinda in general.

I know Central Pacific (who later became Southern Pacific, now part of Union Pacific), which built the Transcontinental Railroad from West to East, employed thousands of Chinese (and I assume East Asian more broadly? Like, surely there were at least some Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Siamese (Taiwanese), etc. people who also immigrated to California because of the gold rush and all that, and they were just called "Chinese" because the majority were from China and white people couldn't be bothered to make the distinction? See, this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about. I have no idea here, but I can be pretty confident that the books I read and pop-history/for-the-general-populace-and-not-railroad-nerds documentaries I watched about the Transcontinental Railroad that said "Chinese" were oversimplifying, kind of like how when talking about the Holocaust we typically only specifically mention the 6 million Jews, and not who made up the other 4 million, since the other 4 million were, like, a dozen different minorities, political dissidents, and other """undesirables,""" because that tends to bog the sentence down. Anyway,) laborers to build their part, and I know the Union Pacific, who was building East to West, ended up employing a lot of Civil War veterans, but I don't know how many, if any, were Black veterans. Now that I think about it, I don't even know if they were mostly from the Union, the Confederacy, or a mix of both. On the one hand, most CSA vets probably wouldn't have had the resources to go out that far just to find work, but on the other hand, I imagine they would've been the ones that had nothing to go back to, generally speaking. Of course, maybe veterans working on the railroad did so simply as a way to try and get away and "start over" and put their trauma behind them, since a healthy understanding of mental health and trauma won't exist for...a while, and thus them going to a therapist isn't gonna be a thing.

Also, there was a lot of corruption, but I'm not sure who did what, and exactly what forms that it took. The main thing that comes to my mind is that (at least) one of the two railroads basically had the surveyors lie, and say that an area with plains had hills, and areas with hills had mountains (in addition to a lot of free land on either side of the tracks, the railroads were also, IIRC, paid a certain amount of money for every miles of track they laid, and were paid more for more difficult terrain, which is why they lied (or, they bribed the surveyors to lie, same difference). It also meant that the route, when it was completed, was meandering and longer than it needed to be, again, so the railroads could be paid more money. It's a whole thing and honestly the fact that all that shit stayed at least enough under wraps to not be a massive scandal is baffling. Actually, if we want to have a pro-business/pro-labor Republican split and/or maybe strengthen labor a little bit/tamp down on corruption, if there's a realistic way to blow open some this corruption, you might be able to incorporate this. The public being outraged that their tax money is essentially being stolen by these greedy railroads would both bring an impetus to do something (i.e. regulation, oversight, whatever. No matter how pro-business you are, a private company that's receiving government money and lying to get much more than it should ain't gonna fly, especially in the post-war 1860s were the government's trying to pay off its war debt and keep spending down while still doing Reconstruction, highlight the need for reform/addressing corruption, and also be a major point of contention, since (more or less) everyone in the Republican party will agree that railroads are important, a Transcontinental Railroad is especially important, but disagree on how to punish the railroads, how to keep it from happening again, and so on and so forth.


I got distracted, but my other main problem is that I can't write dialogue, and I generally don't do creative writing, so I cannot emulate you and other by writing a cool side-story focusing on railroads or specific people important to railroads, and walls of text about them, while informative, don't have the same appeal.

 

[Red_Galiray]

I won't pretend to be an expert on Latin American history, but I heard it mentioned earlier in the thread that an earlier American women's rights movement may provide Dom Pedro II with incentive to allow his daughter to take the throne. IIRC Argentina did rather well in Latin American history for a while, with the 1930 Coup undoing much of that and paving the way for Peron. Perhaps some Latin American countries doing better could assist the region as a whole?

Brazil is possible the country where the most interesting butterflies could be found, given how it's bound to just have more Confederados and it still being a slaveholding nation. I would like to maintain the Empire and keep the nation stable. I'm not sure what would be done for Argentina.

I mean TBF most of that was due to disease and famine that was already ongoing since the revolution started. Even without the war unless you had massive relief efforts you're still looking at a massive death toll anyways. Also what's interesting is a lot of the anti-war protests against annexation were due to racism. With a more tolerant US you might actually see the war prosecuted with a goal of eventual statehood which in turn would likely make things even nastier. Personally I just want the US to recognize the 1st Republic and make some perpetual basing deals. Maybe turn Zambales into an American Hong Kong since that's where the Subic Bay Naval Base was OTL.

That's true, but surely the American war of conquest significantly aggravated the famine. And I've heard the US was pretty brutal to partisans. And I still don't wish to see the US add any territories, so I'd try to bend US radicalism towards establishing some sort of sister republics or something like that. I rather agree with your idea of a Republic under American influence and with American ports.

I think what I was trying to ask was what was life like under Soviet-backed regimes, as well as express my extreme disdain for Kissinger and his role (or at least my perception of it) in encouraging the U.S. to tolerate some of the worst leaders ever because "they're bastards, but they're our bastards". To be clear, no, the U.S. was not less bad*, and while I'm emotionally detached/disassociated from the shit U.S. imperialism has caused, I'm still ashamed of it.



*Meaningfully. Another person who made the analogy that U.S. imperialism being "better" is like saying that one parent only physically abused you, while the other physically and emotionally abused you. Which is technically better, but it's still fucking child abuse that's going to leave you emotionally and perhaps literally scarred for the rest of your life.

(Literally the only reason I have any patience for the numerous times people have discussed U.S. imperialism and its nature in this timeline is because the scale of human suffering associated means that a U.S. doing imperialism but also, like, building a couple hospitals or whatever does mean the negligible, drop-in-the-bucket difference means hundreds or thousands of people who now have an appreciable improvement. I think.)

Surely you understand how, even though this comparison it's true on its face, I still find it odious since I'm not emotionally detached from the consequences of US imperialism.

I’m not sure if Red_Galiray has any plans for a women’s suffrage movement, but I’m honestly of the impression that women’s right to vote is much easier than one would think.

If you can get TTL’s drafters of the 14th and 15th amendments to use more ambiguous language, and get the Supreme Court stacked in the right way by the right people, the OTL Minor v. Happersett could go quite differently.

While there may be concerns of women’s suffrage being “too early” for the public to approve, such a turn of events wouldn’t be too dissimilar to Loving v. Virginia giving interracial couples the right to marry roughly 30 years before the majority approved of it.

As long as the opposition fails to secure a constitutional amendment nullifying the ruling (harder than one would expect) within around a decade, it could be accepted as reality until the next generation grows up not knowing a world in which it was forbidden.

There are plans indeed. An especially interesting possibility is Southerners becoming pro-women's suffrage just to get more White voters, given how the war disproportionately affected Southern White males while losses among the Black community are more even, so to speak. There is also the intersection between the abolitionist and suffragette movements in the US, with them being allies in the antebellum but fracturing over the 14th and 15th amendments to the point that many feminists, most notable Elizabeth Cady Stanton, became virulent racists. Preventing that, or at least getting the still pro-civil rights factions to dominate, would lend strength to Reconstruction. And your idea is very, very interesting! I rather like it because that's actually how my country, Ecuador, got female suffrage - the constitution only said citizens had a right to vote, not male citizens, so a woman sued and the highest court decided that women could vote.

As I’ve mentioned previously, southern whites have a very large incentive to push women’s suffrage as the civil war disproportionately killed southern white men compared to African American men and southern women. If women are allowed to vote, only around 2 states are majority black by eligible voters. If women aren’t allowed, I would imagine it is more like 5.

A plausible yet ironic outcome.

On that note, one could make an argument that the Confederacy would be viewed by "neutral" historians through the perspective of a country which personified the sunk cost fallacy, particulalry with the Junta's response to Breck deciding enough was enough was to coup and execute him.

And having the Union treat Commerce Raider crews as pirates could lead to a situation in which TTL’s Hague Conventions view attacking merchant ships as a war crime (not that it matters much, but still).

I don't think they'd go that far still, especially since the Confederacy wasn't recognized as a legit nation by the US and was considered a rebellion. So the US trials of the raiders would be trying them as pirates because the US never considered them anything but as a US citizen. I don't think you'll be able to get banning of unprovoked attacks by merchants as a war crime from that.

I agree with @Steelers94. But one thing I could see was some convention on rules for supplying insurgents with ships - an alternate Alabama claims case with bigger international repercussions.

Well he's definately capabale of getting a national following, his main fault seems to be he didn't have an easy time playing nice with established politicians. Now the Democrats being basically out of the picture helps with this but he definately needs someone on his team who can do party building, a good Mark Hanna basically. He'd probably also need to get the Silverites/ bimetalism crowd on board. Also if the French do have an easier time establishing a Republic, they were pretty big on bimetalism and a more stable Third Republic could pull close to ITTL United States to be the major powers backing a bimetal standard.

I'll have George in my mind then! Also, very interesting point in regards to France. Especially if we assume a more antagonistic relationship with Britain and France's own attempts to establish a Latin Union, we could see the US and France allying to establish a kind of "bimetal" union.

@Red_Galiray What do you think ended up happening to David Rice Atchison ITTL?

From his Wikipedia page, in case you want to know what kind of man he was like:

Huh, for some reason I had been convinced Atchinson died during the war. I find him a particularly detestable figure for his work as a Border Ruffian. Given how much more they are hated due to actually succeeding in making Kansas a slave state and the harsher guerrilla war, and how he had occupied a high position in the US government, Atchinson actually could end up hanged if caught. Yet, given that he escaped IOTL to Texas after failing at a military career in Missouri, he probably has escaped the US and has had his properties confiscated.

Guess the question is what the town would be renamed ITTL.

Geary!

I was wondering if the anti-anti-miscegenation laws of the New England states, such as Massachusetts, would have stayed in place with a more radical progressive national mood, or if they would have been repealed when white supremacy reasserted its hold over America in the proceeding decade of the nadir of race relation like in otl?

Well, the plan is for White supremacy to never reassert as firm a hold over the US ever again and for race relations to never reach such a nadir in the first place.

Oh, I'm sorry. I was just trying to draw a comparison between the US in this timeline and in the original timeline (OTL), where the US also experienced a period of transformation after a destructive war. However, over time, the nation returned to a more conservative and white supremacist direction. In this timeline, the Republican Reconstruction is much more radical and lasting, but this is still the US, not a Marxist state. So I think the pendulum theory will eventually apply and there will be some form of a conservative backlash, like in the 1970s. What I am wondering is whether anti-miscegenation laws would be part of that backlash. Capisce?

It is true that eventually the revolution will exhaust itself and we'll see a retreat from the activist state in certain respects. But a much deeper and radical revolutionary tide is bound to leave more lasting, profound changes that could not be rolled back. Think of how, for example, the situation after the collapse of Reconstruction, though terrible, was still never as bad as the Black Codes Southerners had once envisioned. Or how even the 70's conservative backlash you describe never resulted in the Civil Rights Act or Voting Rights Act being repealed. I think I can say with some certainty that we won't see legal segregation or anti-miscegenation laws.

(Also... capisce?)

Regardless, even if, for whatever reason, it's still a job extremely strongly associated with African Americans (The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is and always shall be the undisputed union GOAT), at least we won't ever have that practice of Pullman Porters being called "George." (Before sometime in the 20th century—somewhere between 1900 and 1920 or 25, I'm not really sure—Pullman Porters did not have name tags, and instead of, I dunno, fucking asking them for their name, the common practice was to refer to the Porter as "George," regardless of their name, short for "George Pullman's boy," which is a practice that can be easily and directly tied back to slavery. ANYWAY. Enough of me rambling about railroads, Pullman Porters,—although I'm hoping you're taking notes, Red_Galiray!—and the various other railroad-related things.

I'm afraid that even though this is rather interesting I'm not terribly interested in railroads. But we could see indeed some changes in the kind of jobs African Americans are associated with. Hell, a funny consequence of this TL may be a US with no real tipping culture.

Ehh...

I am a little bit more pessimistic. While I try to look for optimism and hope in America's dark periods, a LOT of American history shows that the government seemed to go out of its way to make Black Americans miserable.

From slavery, to sharecropping, to Jim Crow, to sundown towns, to racist housing and urban planning, to the drug war, to judicial inequities, the ghost of racism still lingers in America in a lot of ways.

I imagine ITTL there could be progress, but it could be very fragile.

I ask you to approach this TL from an idealistic, even optimistic angle. To believe that a better US is possible, instead of it being inherently racist. Otherwise, if you believe that is simply not possible, this TL may not be for you.

Yeah the breaking of the slave system and the repression of its former beneficiaries and controllers isn’t going to remove the legacy of two hundred or so years of slavery. Although it’s likely that universal suffrage, full civil rights and voting rights protections, and open racism becoming unacceptable will happen earlier

Certainly not, but we can lay foundations. The next generations, growing up in a nation where Black people are prosperous citizens with full rights and the popular and official narrative demonizes slaveholders and the old South, certainly will think very differently from previous generations.

The key question is this: how much more would white Americans be willing to defend black Americans TTL.

Remember, for all that the South gets bashed for its racism, racism itself found a home in many parts of America: from the sundown towns of the Midwest to racist redlining even in supposedly "left-leaning cities."

In the first few years after the OTL Civil War saw a flourishing of civil rights and expansion of the franchise, but this was a shaky progress that rested on treating the South like an occupied colony. After the 1870s, Republicans practically threw in the towel, and the positive elements of Reconstruction gradually wittled away. By 1910, every Southern state had some kind of exclusion of its black community, but some of the positive legacies of Reconstruction lingered well into the 1920s.

TTL, would the American army be more willing to stop shit like the Wilmington Riot, Red Shirt hooligans like Ben Tillman, and the Tulsa Massacre while also stopping the more implicit institutional forms of racism?

Something you must understand is that racism was a self-reinforcing phenomenon during the era. The Republican ideology held that the US was a perfectly harmonious society unlike Europe with its class warfare, and that anyone was able to raise through life if only they worked hard enough. That was the Free Labor ideology that guided them. But then they saw Black Americans, who still suffered from poverty and oppression. Instead of accepting that this was a result of violent White supremacy, Republicans and Americans more broadly came to believe that Black Americans were inherently bad, lazy, immoral people - preferring this interpretation to accepting that socioeconomic factors may make it impossible for some to raise through hard work alone. So, they saw Black people suffering from oppression, decided it was their fault and withdrew their support, which in turn made that oppression deepen, which in turn justified withdrawing more support, and so on. Here we'll see the opposite - anti-racism as a self-reinforcing phenomenon, whereby Black success will convince Americans that they are good citizens worthy of the aid that will in turn secure further success. Add to this firmer foundations and a US government more willing and able to interfere, not just with the Army but through the National Guard and US Constabulary, and you've got the basis for a better United States. Not an egalitarian utopia, but much better than OTL.

In this TL, would we still see the segregation of sports, or would sports like baseball be something that ties all Americans together?

I'd like to see that.

I got distracted, but my other main problem is that I can't write dialogue, and I generally don't do creative writing, so I cannot emulate you and other by writing a cool side-story focusing on railroads or specific people important to railroads, and walls of text about them, while informative, don't have the same appeal.

My own updates, which form, of course, the bulk of the TL, are not really creative writing as such, but rather consciously imitate the style of a popular history book. I guess the writing is not too terrible to bear, but I must confess I'm somewhat insecure of my prose nontheless. But I digress. My point was merely that you're welcome to try to write or share anything even if it's just normal academic text rather than a side-story or dialogue.

 

[King(Henry)George]

One final thing on policy downstream of southern demographics: there’s probably an increase in tolerance of female homosexuality and FtM transgender people. If there’s a shortage of marriageable white men, you’re going to see a significant amount of FF households. This is in addition to probable increased tolerance of polygamy whether formal or informal. There would probably also be a temporary reversal of age gaps in marriage.

Evidence from Paraguay suggests a rise in female educational attainment and labor force participation. On the other hand there also seems to be an increase in out of wedlock births. All three of these effects continue passed the point where gender ratios have returned to normal.

In terms of the strength of effects, I think support for women’s suffrage > female labor force participation > age gap > women’s educational attainment > FF households > out of wedlock births > tolerance of polygamy

 

[Tsar Nicholas The Cringe]

One final thing on policy downstream of southern demographics: there’s probably an increase in tolerance of female homosexuality and FtM transgender people. If there’s a shortage of marriageable white men, you’re going to see a significant amount of FF households. This is in addition to probable increased tolerance of polygamy whether formal or informal. There would probably also be a temporary reversal of age gaps in marriage.

Evidence from Paraguay suggests a rise in female educational attainment and labor force participation. On the other hand there also seems to be an increase in out of wedlock births. All three of these effects continue passed the point where gender ratios have returned to normal.

In terms of the strength of effects, I think support for women’s suffrage > female labor force participation > age gap > women’s educational attainment > FF households > out of wedlock births > tolerance of polygamy

The question is this: a lot of America's reactionary attitudes are directly the result of America's racist shadow. If that racism is considerably less potent, could America abolish the death penalty, push abortion, and implement other ideas on the same time scale as European countries did with little push back? Or even if America is less hostile to black people, there would still be conservatism on other social issues?

Something you must understand is that racism was a self-reinforcing phenomenon during the era. The Republican ideology held that the US was a perfectly harmonious society unlike Europe with its class warfare, and that anyone was able to raise through life if only they worked hard enough. That was the Free Labor ideology that guided them. But then they saw Black Americans, who still suffered from poverty and oppression. Instead of accepting that this was a result of violent White supremacy, Republicans and Americans more broadly came to believe that Black Americans were inherently bad, lazy, immoral people - preferring this interpretation to accepting that socioeconomic factors may make it impossible for some to raise through hard work alone. So, they saw Black people suffering from oppression, decided it was their fault and withdrew their support, which in turn made that oppression deepen, which in turn justified withdrawing more support, and so on. Here we'll see the opposite - anti-racism as a self-reinforcing phenomenon, whereby Black success will convince Americans that they are good citizens worthy of the aid that will in turn secure further success. Add to this firmer foundations and a US government more willing and able to interfere, not just with the Army but through the National Guard and US Constabulary, and you've got the basis for a better United States. Not an egalitarian utopia, but much better than OTL.

So in a more destructive civil war, would the TTL Republicans be more willing to embrace black civil rights in terms of trying to build a more cohesive national identity to prevent the violence of the TTL Civil War from coming back?

 

[Kylia]

(Also... capisce?)

American slang term derived from Italian and popular in mob movies that means 'understand?' or 'I understand' depending in the context

capisce - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

en.wiktionary.org

 

[TheDetailer]

Huh, for some reason I had been convinced Atchinson died during the war. I find him a particularly detestable figure for his work as a Border Ruffian. Given how much more they are hated due to actually succeeding in making Kansas a slave state and the harsher guerrilla war, and how he had occupied a high position in the US government, Atchinson actually could end up hanged if caught. Yet, given that he escaped IOTL to Texas after failing at a military career in Missouri, he probably has escaped the US and has had his properties confiscated.

Oh nice! That’s good to know then atleast.

Might I also ask what happened to these gentlemen?

- Benjamin Tillman
- Alcibiades DeBlanc
- Isham G. Harris
- Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar
- And Richard Coke

It is true that eventually the revolution will exhaust itself and we'll see a retreat from the activist state in certain respects. But a much deeper and radical revolutionary tide is bound to leave more lasting, profound changes that could not be rolled back. Think of how, for example, the situation after the collapse of Reconstruction, though terrible, was still never as bad as the Black Codes Southerners had once envisioned. Or how even the 70's conservative backlash you describe never resulted in the Civil Rights Act or Voting Rights Act being repealed. I think I can say with some certainty that we won't see legal segregation or anti-miscegenation laws.

(Also... capisce?)

Nice stuff!

Well, the plan is for White supremacy to never reassert as firm a hold over the US ever again and for race relations to never reach such a nadir in the first place.

Good stuff.

Certainly not, but we can lay foundations. The next generations, growing up in a nation where Black people are prosperous citizens with full rights and the popular and official narrative demonizes slaveholders and the old South, certainly will think very differently from previous generations.

Something you must understand is that racism was a self-reinforcing phenomenon during the era. The Republican ideology held that the US was a perfectly harmonious society unlike Europe with its class warfare, and that anyone was able to raise through life if only they worked hard enough. That was the Free Labor ideology that guided them. But then they saw Black Americans, who still suffered from poverty and oppression. Instead of accepting that this was a result of violent White supremacy, Republicans and Americans more broadly came to believe that Black Americans were inherently bad, lazy, immoral people - preferring this interpretation to accepting that socioeconomic factors may make it impossible for some to raise through hard work alone. So, they saw Black people suffering from oppression, decided it was their fault and withdrew their support, which in turn made that oppression deepen, which in turn justified withdrawing more support, and so on. Here we'll see the opposite - anti-racism as a self-reinforcing phenomenon, whereby Black success will convince Americans that they are good citizens worthy of the aid that will in turn secure further success. Add to this firmer foundations and a US government more willing and able to interfere, not just with the Army but through the National Guard and US Constabulary, and you've got the basis for a better United States. Not an egalitarian utopia, but much better than OTL.

So freaking based. I approve. 👍👍

 

[Alexander Sturrn]

- Benjamin Tillman

Unless the cranial tumor that in OTL cost him his left eye actually killed him here - and good riddance if it did - he never actually fought in the War, so he should still be alive.

I would not be surprised if we'll meet him during the Reconstruction Era of the Sequel Story, especially since in OTL, he was part of a Paramilitary Group leading a Terror Campaign of lynching, ballot box stuffing and intimidation against South Carolinas black community. And given that with a more radical Civil War, the conflict between the violent Southern Reactionaries like the KKK and the federal Government is practically bound to also be more radical...well, you do the math.

 

[Leonidas]

Let’s be real, there is absolutely not gonna be socially acceptable polygamy in TTL’s South when people are still pissed at the Mormons for trying that.

 

[TheDetailer]

Unless the cranial tumor that in OTL cost him his left eye actually killed him here - and good riddance if it did - he never actually fought in the War, so he should still be alive.

I would not be surprised if we'll meet him during the Reconstruction Era of the Sequel Story, especially since in OTL, he was part of a Paramilitary Group leading a Terror Campaign of lynching, ballot box stuffing and intimidation against South Carolinas black community. And given that with a more radical Civil War, the conflict between the violent Southern Reactionaries like the KKK and the federal Government is practically bound to also be more radical...well, you do the math.

Yes indeed, it will be fire fighting fire.

 

[DTF955Baseballfan]

Unless the cranial tumor that in OTL cost him his left eye actually killed him here - and good riddance if it did - he never actually fought in the War, so he should still be alive.

I would not be surprised if we'll meet him during the Reconstruction Era of the Sequel Story, especially since in OTL, he was part of a Paramilitary Group leading a Terror Campaign of lynching, ballot box stuffing and intimidation against South Carolinas black community. And given that with a more radical Civil War, the conflict between the violent Southern Reactionaries like the KKK and the federal Government is practically bound to also be more radical...well, you do the math.

They were so hard up for soldiers. I think Tillman would have fought in the war anyway. In the last month or so I can definitely see him dying like Lee, just the victim of a sniper.

Alternatively , you could argue that the tumor does kill him because the doctors were able to save him were elsewhere.

 

[Taunay]

Brazil is possible the country where the most interesting butterflies could be found, given how it's bound to just have more Confederados and it still being a slaveholding nation. I would like to maintain the Empire and keep the nation stable. I'm not sure what would be done for Argentina.

If you have any questions about Brazil or its relationship with Argentina in the late 19th century feel totally free to ask me. I'm not a historian by any means, but I do think I have some good knowledge

 

[Tsar Nicholas The Cringe]

Unless the cranial tumor that in OTL cost him his left eye actually killed him here - and good riddance if it did - he never actually fought in the War, so he should still be alive.

I would not be surprised if we'll meet him during the Reconstruction Era of the Sequel Story, especially since in OTL, he was part of a Paramilitary Group leading a Terror Campaign of lynching, ballot box stuffing and intimidation against South Carolinas black community. And given that with a more radical Civil War, the conflict between the violent Southern Reactionaries like the KKK and the federal Government is practically bound to also be more radical...well, you do the math.

I think it is a black mark on society that a man who harbored genocidal thoughts about blacks and robbed them of rights managed to become a celebrated political figure.

 

[MagicCarpetMadeofSteel]

Surely you understand how, even though this comparison it's true on its face, I still find it odious since I'm not emotionally detached from the consequences of US imperialism.

Uhhh, yes? I'm honestly tempted to go and delete that first comment, because other than bashing Kissinger, I think I'd like to take back what I said there. As for the comment you were replying to, I did paraphrase another user, and said that even if American Imperialism is technically less bad, because the cumulative suffering of the people is slightly less (maybe) than if it'd been someone else, it's still imperialism, it's still bad, and they'd still have been infinitely better off if they'd been left alone—N O amount of infrastructure, and hospitals, and basic education, and even higher education, and limited self-government can make up for the fact that they were violently subordinated to another state that did so to extract resources and wealth from them, and as a place to sell their manufactured goods to (while ensuring that a. any artisans couldn't compete with the prices and are forced to become laborers too, and b. that this place doesn't start its own industrial base to compete with it, since countries with new, small industrial bases can't compete with established mature ones without protectionist tariffs, government subsidies, or both), which destroys essentially the entirety of the country's middle class.

Like, if we use the Philippians as an example, sure, if America r e a l l y puts its money where its mouth is and builds schools and roads and hospitals and railroads and even a small college, then sure, we'll probably see a reduction in infant mortality, and improved literacy, and we might even have some (more) Filipino authors or inventors or what have you that we didn't see in our timeline (I must confess, I'm wholly ignorant of what Spanish rule in the Philippians looked like, and what America's was like—other than there being a really brutal guerilla war. That I'm almost certain had America doing a lot of war crimes. Anyway, point is I don't know how many Filipinos managed to become writers or inventors or whatever in spite of their oppression.), that still doesn't remotely make up for all the people who died in that famine I've seen people mention, and the ones who were killed and brutalized in the guerilla war, and the ones who died prematurely and lost limbs because of the horrendous working conditions, and the ones who died prematurely because they couldn't afford the American-trained doctor and the American/"western" medicine, because they're paid next to nothing.
While I'm sure they don't upset me nearly as much as you, comments about American imperialism being "not as bad" still piss me off, because getting 10 college-educated Filipinos, 100 middle or high school educated Filipinos, and 1,000 Filipino lives saved thanks to then-modern medicine totally makes up for the 10,000 killed, maimed, brutalized, or raped in the Guerilla war, the 100,000 worked into an early grave by American companies, and the 1,000,000 who see a major drop in their wealth and quality of life. No. Fuck that shit. That's terrible. That should've never happened. That's something to be ashamed of. That's the main point I was trying to say. The asterisk was that, because of how many people are suffering, an imperialism that's 98% resource and wealth extraction vs. 99.9% does translate into, using my hypothetical, 1,000 people who didn't die. Which I don't want to forget? I suppose, reading and learning about the immense, and nearly incomprensible levels of suffering, I'm desperate to find even the smallest silver lining. I have chronic depression. I need to be able to find a spot of good and decency in the mist of human suffering, especially in the past, which I can't hope to change even a little. I can give money for aid and sign petitions and call my congressional representative and senator to try and do something about things going on right now, such as Ukraine. Reading about this stuff? Reading about the Holocaust? Reading about the Rwandan Genocide? I feel sick, and helpless, and I need something that tells me that it's worth carrying on and living, and that life isn't pointless.

But enough about that. Just because I want to also hear about that 1 Filipino in 10,000 that "got out," and led a life filled more than denied opportunities and hardship and misery (and also joy, and happiness, and everything else, however hard they might be to find) (as well as) the 9,999 who weren't so lucky, doesn't mean you're obliged to tell me about him or her, and if I'm uncomfortable reading only about the other 9,999, too bad for me. So, sorry. It is an odious comparison, and if you can figure out an America that, at least by the 1890s, is more interested in "Sister Republics," (assuming that you decide to go that far into this timeline), I'll be happy to read about it. My intent wasn't to make the comparison, but I realize now that I did, and I'm sorry.

I'm afraid that even though this is rather interesting I'm not terribly interested in railroads. But we could see indeed some changes in the kind of jobs African Americans are associated with. Hell, a funny consequence of this TL may be a US with no real tipping culture.

While that's completely fair, and I don't want nor expect your focus on Reconstruction to be derailed (I swear I wasn't trying to do that, it was just my stream of consciousness), I do think that it's something you're gonna have to focus on. The Transcontinental Railroad bill/law, along with the homestead act, was an extremely important piece of legislation, and railroads were extraordinarily important for the American economy overall, and even more so for the Great Plains and West/Mountain West. If you were doing a post-WW2 America timeline, you couldn't not talk at least a little about the rising importance of cars, the increasing investment in county, state, and federal highways, and, of course, the Interstate Highway System (assuming Eisenhower still gets elected and all that). As for tipping, my understanding is that tipping (at least for wait staff and the like, no idea for positions like Porters) rose to prominence in the 1920s or 1930s, so you're both right and wrong.

My own updates, which form, of course, the bulk of the TL, are not really creative writing as such, but rather consciously imitate the style of a popular history book. I guess the writing is not too terrible to bear, but I must confess I'm somewhat insecure of my prose nontheless. But I digress. My point was merely that you're welcome to try to write or share anything even if it's just normal academic text rather than a side-story or dialogue.

Maybe, but I think it's worth noting that a formal essay is a far cry from a "popular history book." While certainly not creative writing per se, a good, engaging non-fiction book still has a certain prose, and some sort of narrative. I haven't had/taken the time to read some of the American Civil War history books you've been drawing from and (doing a quite good job of!) imitating, but if this is like them, I think it's fair to say that they also have a narrative, or an arc. A Civil War book that starts in the late antebellum, setting the stage, then has the war's many scenes and acts, from comedy to tragedy, which is another way of saying that we go over what happened and why, or our (/the author's) best guess of why, and how that affected what happened next. I can certainly try to do that, but I know enough about railroads to know that there are holes so big in my knowledge that you could make a double-track tunnel out of them, it's extremely hard for me to keep a narrow focus, and I honestly get more satisfaction from sharing what I know and seeing someone else use that new information in whatever they were writing. I reserve the right to change my mind, however.

 

[TheDetailer]

I think it is a black mark on society that a man who harbored genocidal thoughts about blacks and robbed them of rights managed to become a celebrated political figure.

Indeed me too.

 

[Steelers94]

Let’s be real, there is absolutely not gonna be socially acceptable polygamy in TTL’s South when people are still pissed at the Mormons for trying that.

Wasn't the polygamy backlash more due to them being Mormon then the actual polygamy?