Reminds me of Baron Von Strucker in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Strucker (to his men): We will never surrender!
Strucker (to his 2IC, 1 second later): I'm going to surrender.
Yeah pretty much lol.
I always find it hilarious that they had pre Bellum stories written, and a big part was the slaves would remain loyal throughout the entire war, which would always be short because the Southerners made for better soldiers compared to those "mongrel shopkeeper Yankees".
Calling them delusional is a insult to actually delusional people.
Slavery had a way to rot both their morals and their brains.
Grant or Lincoln would never do that but I could see common soldiers acting on their own likely defacing his grave since in their minds he and all the other slaveowners or planter class who caused this war. And it's them who are prolonging the war longer it should last just because they don't want to give their powers and slaves. And that's not counting how much grief Lee caused the Union with his leadership in the field.
I assuming there plenty of hate in Union forces and there be even more when they hear that the Planter class decided to go down fighting than just end it.
That's pretty likely, but I hope that hatred can be directed exclusively against the planters, and mostly those with the Junta. The Union soldiers liked to see themselves as being liberators, as fighting to free White Southerners from the power of the rebel government. For most Yankees this should be the ultimate proof that the Southern masses want peace and reunion but are held back by despotic slaveholders.
I do wonder how the Implosion of the CSA would influence political thought in Europe, because ITTL, it's plain to almost everyone that the Civil War was just the Slavocrats playing pied-piper, singing the siren's song of "Racial Supremacy/Solidarity/Warfare" to trick the Poorer Whites into a Lemming-like lunge, stopping right at the edge of the cliff of combat, laughing as those foolish enough to follow them are thrown into the man-made hell of a civil war in which they had no real reason to fight.
Replace "slavocrats" with "aristocrats", "race" with "ethnic", and delete "civil", and that situation can fit almost every European Colonial Conflict and Inter-Imperial Wars, especially the Franco-Prussian War.
I anticipate that the Civil War in the US would greatly shape the way the propogandist narratives of imperial/ethnic glory unfold throughout Europe, from being fully embraced IOTL, to being roundly criticized ITTL.
I think the greater influence may be on European communist who could see the US Civil War as a clear example of class warfare. Is there a difference between US slavers and British industrialists or nobility, they may ask. I don't think the leaders of the countries could be capable of such self-reflection.
How are the freedmen going to preserve their independent yeoman lands in the face of the march of capitalist development that will inevitably come from the north? I suppose any kind of Granger/Populist movement will include a lot more Black people or even be dominated by them - maybe we’ll see a Black William Jennings Bryan figure emerge
I won't lie, it'd be hard. White yeomen lost a lot of their lands as a result of this capitalist development, as they became indebted to banks and other persons and had to sell or give up their lands in the face of their inability to pay back their debts. Stronger debtor relief and protection laws, which would probably be priority number 1 for any Republican government regarding its White constituencies, can probably afford some protection to Black farmers too. Ultimately, I do envision a future populist movement in the South that will be biracial.
If nothing else it's exactly the sort of thing they would consider beneath the dignity of a civilised nation - an unspoken part of the Old World order which roughly functioned fine until WW1 (and even then, not until deep into WW1 for various reasons) was that nations and their monarchs were permitted to lose wars whilst retaining a sense of dignity, and thus losing was tolerable. If military coups against governments for losing wars became normalised, then there would be little incentive for monarchs to not fight to the last man - because in that case, they already are.
I suppose it could just be added to the laundry list of arguments against republicanism though.
In all honesty I doubt the Civil War would be seen as much more than silly Americans with their silly republican ideals doing silly republican things like fighting brutal civil wars (with all the European civil wars conveniently memory-holed for the time being). It would be beneath the serious gaze of the great powers in how they conduct their affairs because it's "only those Americans". New World affairs just weren't seen as being of equal important to Old World affairs to the Old World powers until the 20th century, it's only in hindsight with historians looking back that that stance has been re-evaluated to consider 19th century New World events as important as they really were.
Somehow in the course of writing this post I managed to completely forget that 1848 happened in... 1848, and we are already in the 1860s. In which case the rise of radical nationalism is already guaranteed IMO, and nationalism has already been thoroughly appropriated by the forces of reaction - Bismarck would already have made his "blood and iron" speech assuming it wasn't butterflied away (and even if it had, the underlying policy would not have been)
I think the war may be dismissed at first by most Europeans. The chaotic way in which the Confederacy falls ITTL would probably make Europeans afford it less recognition, seeing it as an unjustified revolt instead of a legitimate attempt to create a nation. But ultimately most Europeans saw the US as a land of violence and demagoguery due to its dangerous democracy. If anything, the conclusion they may draw is that such democracy can only create instability and that the upper caste must not forget its noblesse oblige to prevent it from being overthrown - basically repeating the lessons of the French revolution. Later, in hindsight, they may realize the greater significance of the war.
Well, I guess now is the time to reread the story then lol.
This reminds me of a scene in Downfall: a bunch of hardcore die-hards talk about how they are either going to die fighting or kill themselves. Seconds later, it is announced the war is over... and only two of them actually go through with it. I imagine in a Downfall-style film ITTL, there would be a bunch of planters talking big game about a militia they had formed and lead are about to whip the Yankees... and then news comes that both all of the regular Southern armies had been forced to surrender. Cue panicked attempts to find a nice boat out of the States.
Yeah... now I have to wonder how long it will take for the Confederacy to collapse under such circumstances. Winter is coming, which will hinder offensive operations... but this will be the worst winter of the war. Will the regular Confederate armies be able to hold together under such leadership?
Something like that. All of them talking of defiance to the end and never surrendering, but when people tell them that the Lincoln soldiers are coming it's "legs do your duty!"
Ironically enough they may benefit from Breckinridge's hated decrees, which allowed for comparatively greater food production. Otherwise, they may be forced to decide if poor widows and children should eat, or if the soldiers should.
Let's not forget that back then, the question of whether slaves supposedly liked to be there was impacted by the poor understanding of trauma at that time. Stockholm syndrome, the oft-forgotten fawn part of the fight, flight, or freeze system (fawn being what one does when one can't do any of the others), and so on mean the trauma could easily have been hidden.
You had battle fatigue in the Civil War as a thing, but it wasn't really understood and, as we have discussed before, certainly wasn't diagnosed. I have mentioned before that it would be great to have a totally different psychoanalysis and Psychiatry develop based on whether one has experienced trauma as the center, rather than what Freud did with some of his odd stuff. There would be a huge number of possible case studies and the trauma has been much worse here, so it is plausible.
All you really need is some doctor who finds it interesting that what was known as Soldier's Heart back then was also present in civilian populations. He decides to start making a study of it. This article
http://traumadissociation.com/ptsd/history-of-post-traumatic-stress-disorder.html has a few possible ways, including maybe following the lead of an 1813 study of a girl traumatized by Napoleon's invasion of russia. ( I'm sorry, but for some reason when I click on that link thing on my tablet I can't get the window to pop up showing where I can link the page to the words "this article.") It would only take someone coming to Dr Jacob Da Costa... well I think you'll enjoy it. And I've done so much on my grandmother's side it lets me include someone on my grandpa's besides the two guys that went from Brooke County Virginia to Ohio to fight for the Union in 1862.
That's a great point. I don't think enough attention has been given to how trauma affected enslaved people, and could have led them to affect emotional attachment or loyalty to their enslavers as a way to survive and endure slavery. It's been mentioned before, but maybe this crueller war could result in a better understanding of the human psyche.
In a way, I have a hard time envisioning Southern culture during this time without slavery. It was so entrenched in all aspects of society from the top down that Southerners, even poor Southerners, might have a hard time reconstructing the Southern identity without slaves. In the absence of Lost Cause mythology and revisionism, something must replace it amidst Reconstruction (like a Southern cultural revival). I reckon that it will not be a pretty/easy process thanks to former Confederates and the KKK, but one that both free blacks and whites are willing to work together for.
As for Breckinridge, maybe this whole tragedy is why I want him alive after the war. Aside from the schadenfreude I will get to experience seeing Breck experience the literal destruction of his homeland to the North, the coup by the Slavocrats might motivate him to take part in Reconstruction and be far more involved in Southern politics/culture than OTL, so it would be a case of irony that he will help destroy the last embers of the Planter class after deciding to lead a nation made to cater to the Slavocracy.
Though, I wouldn't mind him becoming a martyr for the next generation of Southerners that despise the Slavocracy.
Now that's an interesting viewpoint. I never saw Appomattox in that light, but in a way, those theatrics did set the stage for how Reconstruction would be weakened and ultimately subverted by former Confederates who were never punished after the Civil War.
ITTL will be very different. It's gonna end with Richmond up in flames, and I doubt the Union will be as merciful as its OTL counterpart.
I actually questioned this myself, as I was curious as to how Gobineau would've reacted to the more violent fall of the Confederacy.
Considering how Gobineau despised America for its lack of "noblesse oblige" among its wealthy aristocracy, it might actually be easier for him to excuse the utter failure of the CSA by saying that they were American mongrels that mixed with other races (including inferior white races) too often, as opposed to him who were of 100% pure, superior Aryan stock. He also criticized the materialism of Americans, so the Slavocrats' suicide during the ACW might validate his criticisms of America as a whole.
I don't think this alternate Civil War will change Europe's views on colonialism or white supremacy, mainly because their racism was also deeply tied to classism (with many racial theorists, especially Nordicists, dividing the Caucasian race into Mediterraneans, Nordics, etc.) as well as nationalism. They're still going to colonize much of the world due to internal competition and a paternalistic belief that their Civilization is the means of civilizing lower races, something that OTL America also came to adopt.
But what if it didn't happen ITTL for America?
Rather than the ACW, I believe Reconstruction and subsequent periods in ITTL America's history will directly challenge European racial theories. As white supremacists are discredited and fall by the wayside in the midst of black enfranchisement, education, and a rise in political power, new theories will be devised by American scientists that will rightfully contradict Europe's views on Africans and even other Caucasians.
Yes, we'll probably need to Reconstruct Southern culture as much as Southern politics and economics.
Breckinridge after the war IOTL didn't support Reconstruction like, say, Longstreet did, in the sense that he never became a Republican nor did he hold office ever again. But there are signs that he regretted the rebellion, believed the South should accept the results of the war, and didn't favor violent attempts to overthrow Reconstruction. He always refused to speak to meetings of rebel soldiers, was identified with the "liberal" faction in Kentucky, favored the admission of Black witnesses to Kentucky courts, and spoke against the Klans as "idiots or villains." If he lives, he could be an important voice in favor of Reconstruction - but if he dies he could be a singificative martyr and the greatest victim of the slavocracy. Decisions, decisions.
I'm frankly somewhat cynical regarding racial theories. I can see Americans simply saying that of course Black Americans are successful and smart, because they were blessed by American civilization. The Black people in Africa, and other races? They are still savages. If anything, a successful Reconstruction may teach some people that the White Man's Burden is practicable and beneficial. But for others it indeed will serve as a way to discredit and contradict these atrocious views.
I wonder how different
Southern Gothic, as a genre, would be ITTL.
IOTL, Southern Gothic kinda was taking an objective look at the South after the Civil War, and that objective look at the silent horror that was the South, with the amount of men dead for an institution so undeniably evil, led to to have the perfect mix of despair, horror, and a dispossessed decay.
It was the exact opposite of Antebellum Nostalgia, somewhat of a reaction to that reactionary strain of nostalgia, and instead of the racism of that nostalgia, it was
real.
But in this timeline, the South went through something hundreds of times more horrific, and committed things hundreds of times more unforgivable. There won’t be a nostalgia for the “good ol’ days,” because that era would be universally recognized as an era of ignorance to the obvious unfolding events that led to the carnage that succeeded it.
Southern Gothic, as a genre and cultural marker, would therefore be entirely different in this more radical Civil War. My prediction is that it is either nonexistent, or a hundred-thousand times more dark, depressing, and
real.
also: i just realized that due to this Civil War ITTL killing like 50% more of the Southern White Male Population, there’s a 50% chance that many of the most famous works of the Southern Gothic literary genre are butterflied out of existence due to their authors having been killed in the Civil War, so every Southern Gothic work written by any man who lived during the Civil War has been butterflied, but there’s a solid chance that a Southern Gothic work written by a woman who lived during the Civil War is going to gain
Blood Meridian-levels of
immortal literary infamy.
For anyone else who enjoys Southern Gothic, what are
y’all’s thoughts on the status of the genre ITTL?
I should look for a writer and ask him to help me with this, since it's very interesting but I don't know much about this literary genre. I do think the antebellum romanticization may give way to something like... I don't know, how France sees the Ancien Regime? How Latin America sees the colonial era? Basically a period of stagnation, oppression and inequality, that resulted in a violent explosion that allowed for a brighter future.
the best (funniest too) “way out” that is somewhat possible for everyone as well as Breckinridge is if he fakes his death in a way that makes the Slavocrats responsible (so probably a false-flag arson done by Nationalists who never get caught but are heavily-hinted to be affiliated with some big Slavocrats), and flees to the Brazilian Amazon to live the out rest of his anonymous life as a free man.
Is it bad that a war criminal who headed a genocidal Ethnostate would fake his death and flees to Brazil to escape Justice in the form of a victorious army filled with righteous fury? Yes.
But, wouldn’t it be ironic?
I can see people ITTL expousing this "theory." The equivalent of "Hitler fled to Argentina."
(I don't know if my ancestor ever went by Jim, but after I came up with the "I'm a doctor, not a..." quote, I couldn't resist.
Especially because alien has such a perfect ring here in the 1860s, meaning strange, yet also fits the Star Trek vibe.)
Very nice
Thank you for this!
No, I've done 3 or 4 o'makes, as they are called in another thread. Search the previous posts for one titled "3 farmers," one with Start and Catto with baseball stuff, where start is going to go from Brooklyn to Philadelphia, and 1 or 2 others.
It has been a few years since I did one though, since Red's updates are much more frequent now. Oh, except for the one on movement. That I posted a couple months ago, I forgot about that one.
Yes, this is one of the few timelines good enough to inspire fan fiction period
But I certainly understand if you haven't been reading for a while period I'm sure there are some who just started on this timeline period
Indeed, I encourage people to write these stories or contribute in any way they want. For me the greatest honor a writer can receive is knowing their work has inspired other people.
I wonder if the National Bankings acts have passed or not.
Yes. I didn't explore them fully but Chapter 31 establishes explicitly that the National Banking Act of 1863 was passed. I planned to come back to the Northern economy during the elections, and we may see a little more of banking there.
I know it is more then bit late, but from chapther 29
It should be soldier unless it is intentional since it is a quote.
You all can reply with any corrections, observations or questions from any chapter or post! But in this case, I'm afraid, this is not a typo. Whenever you see something between quotes, assume it's a literal quote taken from one of my sources, which means that it's taken with all its typos. This is especially true of quotes attributed to people from the era, which often have grammar or orthographical errors. I don't modify quotes unless it's necessary (i.e. changing Army of the Potomac to Susquehanna).
Would Reconstruction delay the expansion out west?
I don't think so. For many Republicans and Northerners more generally the chief reason to oppose slavery and the Slave Power was to secure western expansion, because they believed that if slavery "contaminated" the territories then White northerners could not develop them in the image of the Free Labor North. Other Republicans, prominently among them Seward, thought that slavery needed to be eradicated so that the US may achieve its destiny, a destiny that included expansion.
Probably not. I expect the Exodusters being a much stronger force in this TL - a Freedman population which is better supported and which is a better financial situation (lets see if we can get a stronger Freedman Bank off the ground) is likely one which is also going to take greater advantages of homesteading out West. This is likely going to be GREAT for Black-White relations as the Western Experience becomes one which they share together (even though, I'd suspect that most Freedmen would move to their own towns and communities at least at first). But that sadly isn't neccesarily a good thing for the Native Americans either who would be facing a united front of anglo-whites, immigrants and freedmen.
I am not sure. The Exoduster movement started when Reconstruction ended, and during it there was little interest in immigration to either the North or the territories. A more successful Reconstruction may actually result in far more Black people remaining in the South.
The narrative of TTL's Civil War is likely to play out thusly, I imagine.
There is likely to be a direct line drawn from the American Revolutionary War to this one and, in the popular imagination, the latter will likely be viewed as a spiritual successor to the former. The villain of the story has made itself manifest; it's the planter class that dragged everyone into this sorry mess in the first place. It may seem absurd to compare British authorities to the current regime in Richmond, but there is likely going to be talk of the initial independence movement not doing enough to stamp out this particular group and the slave holding states, in general, are likely to be viewed as hostages. The Three-Fifths Compromise, to use one example, will be viewed on a spectrum from a ghastly mistake to an unfortunate necessity for basically every American POV but the most reactionary. The convictions of the most radical patriots in the northern colonies will have been proven right and historiography ITTL is likely to point out how loyalist many of the colonies down south were until manumission was threatened. How this might effect perception of certain Founding Fathers is an interesting question, but one that might be more difficult to answer until we see more of the postwar landscape. It provides a clean political break for many Southerners, black, white, and otherwise, to wash their hands of the old system and to say (with varying degrees of truthfulness) that they were victims too. More broadly, it offers an ending to this chapter for the nation moving forward, even if I'd imagine that an upcoming Gilded Age is liable to make many veterans think of the slavers whose asses they're currently kicking.
A downside, of course, is that those who had pretensions to aim at a higher station - i.e., amass even more wealth through slaves than the small handful they might've owned - will probably benefit from this too but I imagine the powers that be will see it as an acceptable compromise if they promise not to foment any further discontent.
Chapter 47 deals with this by showing how the Republican position was basically that the Founders committed a mistake in compromising with slavery, because they believed that slavery would end on its own in due time, and it would have had it not been for the Slave Power which maintained slavery artificially alive. This may neatly absolve several Founders of responsibility, by portraying them as the hostages of slavers against whom they could do little.
Jefferson especially will be seen as an idealist. I think he will be said to have thought that everyone would just go along with abolition, and when they didn't, he was too dumbstruck to really do anything but go along with the masses, too tied down with economics. After all, this was the same idealist who thought that America would never need a navy, even after the Quasi-war. Childlike is too severe, though some may carry the meme that far, but in general, he might be seen as an early proponent of the Star Trek narrative where you can just beam down to a planet and espouse certain things and people will just go along with that. Because that is how it happened on Star Trek:TOS.
Yes, in the short run Jefferson probably will be portrayed as someone who was deluded by the Slave Power who lied to him and said they would part with slavery. In due time Jefferson probably would come to be regarded as a hypocrite. We could see a much less prominent Jefferson as a result.
Probably not. Reconstruction is going to be extremely disruptive, and there would be many Southerners of all kinds, even former Confederates that might want to find new opportunities westward.
IIRC, Lincoln promised to begin building the Transcontinental Railroad and promote construction out west, so he'll likely start that process during his second term once the Civil War is finished, as will his successors.
If anything, the more significant loss of life compared to OTL might be the main contributor to the Western territories' decreased development since many able-bodied men and women (both black and white Americans) are dead. Though, freedmen's contribution to the Wild West is certainly going to be higher in the form of colored troops or cowboys.
I already established that Lincoln has begun the construction of the Transcontinental railroad.
Yup. I agree we have little chance of butterflying phrenology or eugenics at this point.
Even with (somewhat) more equitable social relations between Black and white people ITTL, it's unlikely to stop the pseudoscience too much. Europe is going to continue spreading itself out across the globe and will look for justifications to prove themselves superior to the people they'll come into contact with. It isn't something logical to begin with, and is entirely self-serving, so it won't really matter what evidence is thrown up against it. At best, white Americans might come to see Black people living in the country as exceptions to the rule (and the more virulently racist ones are sure to posit this is due to white admixture, like many racists then and now do). We're also probably a long ways off between a lessening of restrictions on miscegenation laws outside of certain states - and the mentally ill and physically invalid are going to have a rough time of things even into the modern era. In other words: the American view on race relations might come to resemble that of Europe more... but it will still be vile, comparatively speaking. As was commented on already, the natives might be able to weather things a bit better here, but only just, and that largely depends on geographic location.
That said, the demographic dive things have taken is an interesting one. Encouraging more pro-natalist policies is likely to be a priority of the next administration (or even as part of Lincoln's second term) but I wonder how this will effect immigration since that will be paramount in the United States taking over the west. I imagine it's possible laws might remain quite loose and we might see shifts in races and ethnicity that weren't there OTL, such as no Chinese Exclusion Act equivalent, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Some Southerners looked to immigration or the "importation" of Chinese laborers to try to replace their enslaved laborers. Ironically we may see greater support for Chinese immigration because some Southerners will be so racist they will think them preferrable to Black laborers.
Could there be some sort of movement to get Black people to marry white people, similar to Blanqueamiento in Latin America?
A funny idea, but probably too unpalatable to Americans. Interracial marriage was acceptable in Latin America due to a long custom of it since the Conquista, such that there were proposals of blanqueamiento from the very moment the colonies became independent. A Senator from Gran Colombia for example proposed to round up White prostitutes and send them to Black settlements to "abolish the Negro race through love." But I find it harder to believe that something like that could be implemented. Heck, even nowadays many Americans feel that interracial marriage is a big deal and believe in the "one drop rule," concepts that are completely ridiculous in Latin America.
sciencing.com
