The creative avenues for such a war to break out would fascinate me, certainly.
"And a rifle for Seamus, and a pistol for little Padraig, and I even got hand grenades for Siobhan to fit in her laundry basket!"
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
We joke but if McClellan had won in 1916 there's a non-zero chance that more than a few surplus arms shipments would have gotten lost and just so happened to find their way into Irish hands. Of course, the American government would deny like hell that anything intentional ever happened but it would be an open secret.
OTL the various IRA groups got tons of support from both Democratic and Republican Irish expats on this side of the pond. No reason why a Democratic Party even more in thrall to the Northeastern Irish vote wouldn't try to help the Irish back home as a way to show the American Irish that they care.
Lol.
Well, we've roughly understand that we have, in the modern day, the US as Sweden, Sweden as Portugal, Canada as Northern Ireland, the CSA as Northern Ireland, Ireland, and South Africa mashed up, Argentina as Australia or Canada, Quebec as Mexico, Mexico as Canada, France as Spain or Greece, Brazil as Spain, China as Laos or Myanmar... lots of fun.
Not a ton of glimpse, as far as I recall, into what Germany, Britain proper, Russia, and a few other big places look like in the present.
Every man at the local pub contributes to The Cause tin. It could be Boston or New York or Chicago, but it is the same.
im a sucker for sports and politics coming to heads and think its an often over looked place of real political upheaval happening throughout history.
Poor Croke Park destined for blood to be shed within it
They seem pretty decent, with the important caveats that A - everyone in GB's political structure has Irish blood on their hands and B - a big part of the reason they look decent is that the Nationals are terrible. Cecil embracing with the Orange Order when they more or less launched a mutiny against King and country and got away with it scot-free means I'll like anyone who opposes him on principle.
That’d happen anyway, haha, but it is definitely something that would have been buffed up with a McClellan administration. London is breathing a sigh of relief that Root won, for sure
Most of these are pretty close! Haha
In fairness, part of that is because I haven’t totally mapped those other places entirely out
My intent with these two parties was for them to start in a similar place in the 1870s (Gladstonian Liberalism) and then follow the divergences from there. Now as we can see, they are very different parties, of course in part due to the contexts of their countries (the US Liberals naturally slot into the center-right since there’s no aristocracy/monarchy for traditionalist conservatism to defend)
Thanks! I agree entirely. And I liked the idea of Ireland blowing up over not being allowed to go to the first World Cup
Joe Chamberlain was a gigachad but other than I’d agree that the rest of them are kinda whatever, imo, including Chamberlain’s son
Well, I note from the 1914 elections results that combining Cecil's Nationals and Balfour's New Conservatives (I believe they went back into the fold at some point, right ?), the government has a theoretical 298 seats majority (without accounting any by-election losses in the intervening time).
Liberals (235) and Labour (58) combined hold 293 seats meanwhile. I assume O'Brien All-For-Ireland 8 MPs would not stay in Westminter either, so...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Nationals relied so far on the supply of confidence by the Liberals because without the Irish MPs, nobody could get an absolute majority.
Now, what happens to the deal between Nationals and Liberals if, with the IPP gone, the former does not necessarily require the latter's support?
Therein lies the rub. The necessity of Liberal support (made possible by the fact that many Liberals, including Chamberlain, were as late as 1914 quite hawkish on Ireland) cabined what exactly the Nats could do there; going all-in on support Carsonism would have ended their government. 1914 was a very bad election for British politics all around as it took out the Liberal incumbents without giving the Nats any kind of particular mandate to deal with the Curragh Mutiny (uhh, understandably, considering the parties involved).
If O'Brien doesn't abstain with his partisans out of some realpolitik (believable, as OTL O'Brien was regarded as too conciliatory by Redmond/Dillon to say nothing of the hardcore Republicans, and he was ambivalent about abstentionism), now the Nationals have a suddenly gigantic problem if they piss off the Liberals, and Cecil and co. are way more unpopular by late 1916/early 1917 on both sides of the Irish Sea and thus have even less leeway to fulfill their ambitions if Liberal confidence evaporates.
Last edited:
I'd have supposed so, but we know from the 1914 elections infobox the next election is not due before 1918, so I suppose Cecil ministry is going to last into late 1917.
Besides, my thinking has also been that if O'Brien does not abstain, then it does not change the equation that much for the Nationals, they are still reliant on Liberals to supply confidence. On the other hand, if O'Brien does abstain, the Nationals would be let loose, which would make things even worse for Ireland I suppose.
Besides, my thinking has also been that if O'Brien does not abstain, then it does not change the equation that much for the Nationals, they are still reliant on Liberals to supply confidence. On the other hand, if O'Brien does abstain, the Nationals would be let loose, which would make things even worse for Ireland I suppose.
Carolina Crisis (Part I)
"...between the 4th of November, when Charleston was captured and burned to the ground with the Union flag flown high over the ruins of Fort Sumter, and the 11th of November, when the guns went silent for the first time in three years and two months at noon that day, a Saturday. Exactly seven days, a week more akin to a decade, that spelled the end of the war, the Vardaman era, and the Confederate civilization that was..." [1]
- The Last Days of the Old Confederacy: How the War Was Lost in 1916
"...close contact; Root had in part excused his distance from the campaign trail to indignant Liberal county and precinct officers on this matter. By early November, the backchannels were no longer just obscure nephews of powerful Senators but rather military officers, suggesting a very important shift south of the frontlines - that it was now the Confederate Army seeking peace feelers first and foremost, rather than the civilian government. Indeed the weekend prior to the election was a busy one, what with Charleston being razed that Saturday as one final boost with the public for the Root-Garfield ticket, while all night Sunday Root and Bliss were meeting directly with George Willcox McIver, a senior member the Army Staff Office of the Confederate States who had been entrusted personally by General Francis Kernan to treat with the United States.
Though historiography often neglects to mention this aspect of the war, both sides were utterly exhausted by November of 1916, though in different ways. The Confederacy was essentially a machine running on fumes, spent of men, materiel and food. The United States had an entirely different set of problems, with supply lines stretching across an area the size of Western Europe subject to frequent raids and sabotage, and Pershing's aggressive offensives in Georgia and the Carolinas was creating ever-greater issues when it came to sustaining that force, often at the price of once-more disproportionate losses in the field, with only victory papering over how threadbare and ad hoc the daring, universally popular general's operations actually were. While the daunting task of demobilizing the war economy was only just starting to become apparent to Root's advisors, he nonetheless was determined to end the war before his inauguration to be "the President of Peace."
That said, political realities on both sides of the front intervened. McIver brought with him an offer of immediate ceasefire and an American "humanitarian" evacuation of Savannah, Charleston and, as of November 3rd, Wilmington, North Carolina to allow supplies to reach the Confederate public from overseas; in addition to this, positions of retreat would be agreed upon, with the Confederacy requesting that the Carolinas be evacuated entirely and Pershing's army be reconcentrated in Atlanta and Birmingham, to allow the free flow of goods east-west. From there, the Confederacy would propose a negotiated peace under an Anglo-German - with France explicitly excluded to appeal to American sensibilities - purview, ideally in Berlin, Hamburg, or London.
For once, Hughes sided with the hawks, and upon hearing this offer on November 6th - a Monday - rejected it in no uncertain terms. His reasons for that rejection were not out of belligerency, as it was with Lodge's staunch opposition, but rather that he was persuaded by the eminently pragmatic Senator George Turner of Washington, an idiosyncratic Democrat who was Lodge's counterpart on Foreign Affairs, that McIver's offer was "a shadow of Bliss-Blackburn and a facsimile of Niagara." What he meant by this, with the latter example meant especially to appeal to Hughes' outrage at his treatment at the Niagara Conference that he would carry to his deathbed, was that McIver had brought more of the same Confederate arrogance that had led to the war. The terms clearly favored the Confederacy in giving them space to regroup over several months, its promises were vague to nonexistent, and they still spoke of a polity that held out hope that Britain's benevolent negotiation, especially under a much more right-wing and sympathetic government than had existed at Niagara three years ago, would succeed in securing milder terms for the Confederate government. Hughes agreed with this, and ordered Root, who preferred to keep McIver in Philadelphia for several more days to string him along and let "battlefield realities" force a better offer, to send the general home.
McIver's mission, however, had not been sanctioned by President Vardaman, but rather been the first feeler by the ASO, and General Kernan at its head. Kernan was fully aware that the Confederate war economy was in outright collapse and that General Lejeune was only going to keep American forces out of North Carolina for another week or so at most from the north, and that Pershing's press towards the Tar Heel State's underbelly was essentially unhindered after the fall of Columbia and Charleston - indeed, McIver had been sent across enemy lines towards Philadelphia before either of those cities fell. Political realities in the temporary capital of Charlotte, however, leaned against recognizing this openly, with it dismissed outwardly as defeatism even as most of the Confederate political class understood this reality, too. Thus Kernan was trying to have his cake and eat it, too - ending the war while minimizing the political damage to those who decided if he could keep his job.
Unfortunately, McIver's return across the lines was arrested by Confederate soldiers and officers who quickly deduced what had happened and replied to Army Staff Office asking for instructions, where a junior officer named Wendell C. Neville, unsympathetic to Kernan's efforts and regarding the peace feelers in war as tantamount to treason, cabled not the General to respond but rather former ASO Chief Hugh Scott, who immediately informed the Cabinet what had occurred. On November 8th - a Wednesday, and the day after the election - Vardaman brought Kernan to his home to demand answers. Kernan politely responded with the truth and offered his resignation, which Vardaman accepted. An hour later, Kernan and his deputy Henry T. Allen had both left ASO, and Scott was back in charge, a restoration of hawkish bluster, but the war would last less than three more days."
- The Root of the Problem: The Tumultuous Term of America's 29th President
"...particularly Woodrow Wilson's seminal The Last Days of the Old Confederacy, and Yankee historiography has tended to be even harsher. Vardaman was, for all his numerous faults, no fool - he was a demagogue but also a very cunning opportunist, and by late October and early November of 1916, it was clear even to him that the Confederacy was not going to "win" the war. But for somebody who had predicated his intraparty coup d'etat against Tillman and Smith on account of them being insufficiently able to competently prosecute the war (perhaps fair) and made his political image dependent on victory, down to the naming of his coalition of convenience with Thomas Martin (an utter disaster from the beginning for Confederate cohesiveness politically, and a failure in the field militarily), conceding that he had lost was a lethal predicament. His speeches had thundered about a refusal to surrender, and his self-image was that of a man who would not be cowed. By the last days of his Presidency, Vardaman's definition of victory had changed to holding out in a "Carolina citadel" and a negotiated peace that would see the Yankee threat withdrawn.
That this was utter fantasy should be self-evident, as it was even to Vardaman's allies like Martin, but it was politically convenient fantasy, and at least conceded to the reality that the Confederacy had essentially lost. But for this to work, Vardaman needed the line held at the Roanoke-Dan and the Savannah Rivers, and attempts to press into Carolina arrested; the successful offensive by Pershing to take South Carolina's major cities, and the rapid advancement of Marines into North Carolina from Wilmington towards Fayetteville (thus punching into the defensive rear of Confederate forces under Edward Millar) from November 3-7, made this evaporate. Vardaman was thus under considerable personal and political strain by the 7th, when he was informed that Kernan was negotiating a separate peace under his nose with the United States after Kernan's emissary, General George W. McIver, was discovered secretly crossing back into the Confederacy near Virginia Beach. In a tragic irony, the terms that Kernan had sent north with McIver were almost comically vague and were dismissed by the Hughes administration out of hand, but they were terms Kernan had put out specifically because he did not believe that Vardaman could stomach anything more realistic. Vardaman, however, was indignant that Kernan had "placed the dagger in his back" by operating independently of the State Department, and on the morning of the 8th Kernan asked to resign rather than be sacked once it was clear he lacked the President's confidence. Henry Allen, his loyal deputy, resigned alongside him, and Hugh Scott - the blustering, braggadocious general who had headed ASO during Plan HHH three long years ago, was brought back to "finish the war with honor."
Vardaman's ideal peace terms probably looked similar to what Kernan had sent with him - foreign intervention for a negotiated peace, a buffer zone between armies, an end to the blockade - but the Confederate political and military establishment had no way of knowing this, and throughout the 8th of November, rumors spread rapidly through Charlotte. The demoralized Red Scarves militia that had essentially withered on the vine as it became clear that their cause was for naught were suddenly reenergized - their hero had finally sacked the defeatists and brought back the champion who had sacked Washington and Baltimore to complete the "Carolina Citadel!" For more sober-minded men, the decision of Scott did not signal any interest in finding a quick solution to prevent further disaster. With ASO dependent on rumor to know what was happening out west - armies were enveloping Shreveport and Vicksburg last they heard, and New Orleans was perhaps in artillery range by land and sea - there was simply no way to keep fighting the way the Confederacy had. Kernan's resignation was the final straw, and several Army units in Charlotte, their officers generally chosen for their loyalty to Kernan personally, revolted. Barricades were set up throughout the city and gunshots echoed deep into the afternoon - the Carolina Crisis, or Charlotte Putsch in certain historiographical trends in Dixie, had begun..." [2]
- The Bourbon Restoration: The Confederate States 1915-33
[1] Interestingly, the 4th and 11th fall on Saturdays this year, 2023, as well.
[2] We have a mere one or two posts of the GAW left at this point
- The Last Days of the Old Confederacy: How the War Was Lost in 1916
"...close contact; Root had in part excused his distance from the campaign trail to indignant Liberal county and precinct officers on this matter. By early November, the backchannels were no longer just obscure nephews of powerful Senators but rather military officers, suggesting a very important shift south of the frontlines - that it was now the Confederate Army seeking peace feelers first and foremost, rather than the civilian government. Indeed the weekend prior to the election was a busy one, what with Charleston being razed that Saturday as one final boost with the public for the Root-Garfield ticket, while all night Sunday Root and Bliss were meeting directly with George Willcox McIver, a senior member the Army Staff Office of the Confederate States who had been entrusted personally by General Francis Kernan to treat with the United States.
Though historiography often neglects to mention this aspect of the war, both sides were utterly exhausted by November of 1916, though in different ways. The Confederacy was essentially a machine running on fumes, spent of men, materiel and food. The United States had an entirely different set of problems, with supply lines stretching across an area the size of Western Europe subject to frequent raids and sabotage, and Pershing's aggressive offensives in Georgia and the Carolinas was creating ever-greater issues when it came to sustaining that force, often at the price of once-more disproportionate losses in the field, with only victory papering over how threadbare and ad hoc the daring, universally popular general's operations actually were. While the daunting task of demobilizing the war economy was only just starting to become apparent to Root's advisors, he nonetheless was determined to end the war before his inauguration to be "the President of Peace."
That said, political realities on both sides of the front intervened. McIver brought with him an offer of immediate ceasefire and an American "humanitarian" evacuation of Savannah, Charleston and, as of November 3rd, Wilmington, North Carolina to allow supplies to reach the Confederate public from overseas; in addition to this, positions of retreat would be agreed upon, with the Confederacy requesting that the Carolinas be evacuated entirely and Pershing's army be reconcentrated in Atlanta and Birmingham, to allow the free flow of goods east-west. From there, the Confederacy would propose a negotiated peace under an Anglo-German - with France explicitly excluded to appeal to American sensibilities - purview, ideally in Berlin, Hamburg, or London.
For once, Hughes sided with the hawks, and upon hearing this offer on November 6th - a Monday - rejected it in no uncertain terms. His reasons for that rejection were not out of belligerency, as it was with Lodge's staunch opposition, but rather that he was persuaded by the eminently pragmatic Senator George Turner of Washington, an idiosyncratic Democrat who was Lodge's counterpart on Foreign Affairs, that McIver's offer was "a shadow of Bliss-Blackburn and a facsimile of Niagara." What he meant by this, with the latter example meant especially to appeal to Hughes' outrage at his treatment at the Niagara Conference that he would carry to his deathbed, was that McIver had brought more of the same Confederate arrogance that had led to the war. The terms clearly favored the Confederacy in giving them space to regroup over several months, its promises were vague to nonexistent, and they still spoke of a polity that held out hope that Britain's benevolent negotiation, especially under a much more right-wing and sympathetic government than had existed at Niagara three years ago, would succeed in securing milder terms for the Confederate government. Hughes agreed with this, and ordered Root, who preferred to keep McIver in Philadelphia for several more days to string him along and let "battlefield realities" force a better offer, to send the general home.
McIver's mission, however, had not been sanctioned by President Vardaman, but rather been the first feeler by the ASO, and General Kernan at its head. Kernan was fully aware that the Confederate war economy was in outright collapse and that General Lejeune was only going to keep American forces out of North Carolina for another week or so at most from the north, and that Pershing's press towards the Tar Heel State's underbelly was essentially unhindered after the fall of Columbia and Charleston - indeed, McIver had been sent across enemy lines towards Philadelphia before either of those cities fell. Political realities in the temporary capital of Charlotte, however, leaned against recognizing this openly, with it dismissed outwardly as defeatism even as most of the Confederate political class understood this reality, too. Thus Kernan was trying to have his cake and eat it, too - ending the war while minimizing the political damage to those who decided if he could keep his job.
Unfortunately, McIver's return across the lines was arrested by Confederate soldiers and officers who quickly deduced what had happened and replied to Army Staff Office asking for instructions, where a junior officer named Wendell C. Neville, unsympathetic to Kernan's efforts and regarding the peace feelers in war as tantamount to treason, cabled not the General to respond but rather former ASO Chief Hugh Scott, who immediately informed the Cabinet what had occurred. On November 8th - a Wednesday, and the day after the election - Vardaman brought Kernan to his home to demand answers. Kernan politely responded with the truth and offered his resignation, which Vardaman accepted. An hour later, Kernan and his deputy Henry T. Allen had both left ASO, and Scott was back in charge, a restoration of hawkish bluster, but the war would last less than three more days."
- The Root of the Problem: The Tumultuous Term of America's 29th President
"...particularly Woodrow Wilson's seminal The Last Days of the Old Confederacy, and Yankee historiography has tended to be even harsher. Vardaman was, for all his numerous faults, no fool - he was a demagogue but also a very cunning opportunist, and by late October and early November of 1916, it was clear even to him that the Confederacy was not going to "win" the war. But for somebody who had predicated his intraparty coup d'etat against Tillman and Smith on account of them being insufficiently able to competently prosecute the war (perhaps fair) and made his political image dependent on victory, down to the naming of his coalition of convenience with Thomas Martin (an utter disaster from the beginning for Confederate cohesiveness politically, and a failure in the field militarily), conceding that he had lost was a lethal predicament. His speeches had thundered about a refusal to surrender, and his self-image was that of a man who would not be cowed. By the last days of his Presidency, Vardaman's definition of victory had changed to holding out in a "Carolina citadel" and a negotiated peace that would see the Yankee threat withdrawn.
That this was utter fantasy should be self-evident, as it was even to Vardaman's allies like Martin, but it was politically convenient fantasy, and at least conceded to the reality that the Confederacy had essentially lost. But for this to work, Vardaman needed the line held at the Roanoke-Dan and the Savannah Rivers, and attempts to press into Carolina arrested; the successful offensive by Pershing to take South Carolina's major cities, and the rapid advancement of Marines into North Carolina from Wilmington towards Fayetteville (thus punching into the defensive rear of Confederate forces under Edward Millar) from November 3-7, made this evaporate. Vardaman was thus under considerable personal and political strain by the 7th, when he was informed that Kernan was negotiating a separate peace under his nose with the United States after Kernan's emissary, General George W. McIver, was discovered secretly crossing back into the Confederacy near Virginia Beach. In a tragic irony, the terms that Kernan had sent north with McIver were almost comically vague and were dismissed by the Hughes administration out of hand, but they were terms Kernan had put out specifically because he did not believe that Vardaman could stomach anything more realistic. Vardaman, however, was indignant that Kernan had "placed the dagger in his back" by operating independently of the State Department, and on the morning of the 8th Kernan asked to resign rather than be sacked once it was clear he lacked the President's confidence. Henry Allen, his loyal deputy, resigned alongside him, and Hugh Scott - the blustering, braggadocious general who had headed ASO during Plan HHH three long years ago, was brought back to "finish the war with honor."
Vardaman's ideal peace terms probably looked similar to what Kernan had sent with him - foreign intervention for a negotiated peace, a buffer zone between armies, an end to the blockade - but the Confederate political and military establishment had no way of knowing this, and throughout the 8th of November, rumors spread rapidly through Charlotte. The demoralized Red Scarves militia that had essentially withered on the vine as it became clear that their cause was for naught were suddenly reenergized - their hero had finally sacked the defeatists and brought back the champion who had sacked Washington and Baltimore to complete the "Carolina Citadel!" For more sober-minded men, the decision of Scott did not signal any interest in finding a quick solution to prevent further disaster. With ASO dependent on rumor to know what was happening out west - armies were enveloping Shreveport and Vicksburg last they heard, and New Orleans was perhaps in artillery range by land and sea - there was simply no way to keep fighting the way the Confederacy had. Kernan's resignation was the final straw, and several Army units in Charlotte, their officers generally chosen for their loyalty to Kernan personally, revolted. Barricades were set up throughout the city and gunshots echoed deep into the afternoon - the Carolina Crisis, or Charlotte Putsch in certain historiographical trends in Dixie, had begun..." [2]
- The Bourbon Restoration: The Confederate States 1915-33
[1] Interestingly, the 4th and 11th fall on Saturdays this year, 2023, as well.
[2] We have a mere one or two posts of the GAW left at this point
Heartwarming: The worst people you know are all fighting
Gotta say, the Wilson books are a lot more even-handed than I would have guessed given his OTL fanboying of the Old South. Not that I'm complaining - I'd rather live in a TL where Woodrow was a historian as opposed to POTUS, but then again that scenario reeks of monkey paw so I should be careful what I wish for lol.
Also, as someone who is supremely petty himself, I do appreciate Hughes still being (rightly!) royally pissed off about his treatment at Niagara.
Also, as someone who is supremely petty himself, I do appreciate Hughes still being (rightly!) royally pissed off about his treatment at Niagara.
Thank you!
And so the end has come, CSA Army vs rabid red scarves
Indeed
My thinking around Wilson was that A) he’s trying to give a serious academic study of the war while clearly sympathizing with his homeland, B) it’s too soon after the war for any kind of Lost Cause historiography to have taken root and C) he really hates Vardaman and blames him for accelerating Confederate defeat
Good points. Focusing on the bold: did WW hate Vardaman OTL? It seems like he would - Wilson skews way more towards the "genteel" side of the Old South as opposed to the firebreathers like Vardaman.