Cinco de Mayo

[KingSweden24]

"...as befit a President who was a career officer in the Army before his entry into politics and was compared favorably to Zachary Taylor or Andrew Jackson for his war heroism, Custer's administration focused primarily on the "decrepit" Army, which Senator Rosecrans described as a "territorial constabulary for policing Indians." The primary concern for Army reformers was the blood feuds between different Army bureaus, cliques and fiefdoms dominated by careerists who chafed at Liberal and Democratic political appointees alike. Corruption was rampant, bureaucratic morass the expectation. Custer was alarmed at how much the Army's readiness, morale and discipline had disintegrated since he had retired just over a decade prior; the Confederacy, a country with a considerably smaller population and industrial base, had a more professional, organized military via its state militia system. "They could lick us just with Kentucky and Virginia," Custer was noted to have said in a Cabinet meeting where he angrily demanded ideas for reform, and his entire Presidency he spent frustrated by the slow pace of reform, resistance to him despite his status in the ranks from career officers (many of whom disliked him from his time of service for his celebrity hounding) and a number of public scandals that he reluctantly allowed to be published despite the potential for reputational harm to build political support for overhaul.

In contrast, Custer, a Navy skeptic by nature, was impressed with the US Navy that his Secretary, William Whitney, inherited from Goff; a straightforward plan to build and modernize a new fleet that could command respect throughout the Western hemisphere with a line of protected cruisers coming out consistently starting in 1889, logistical challenges aggressively attacked and debated, bureaus that coordinated together well, and open conversation around strategy and tactics at both the staff and command officer level. Whitney's business acumen helped straighten out a few poor contracts implemented late in Goff's tenure, but other than that the Navy Secretary was impressed by the hard work of the officers in his charge and he even boasted, "We'll give the British a run within a decade." A bit early for such claims, perhaps, but even Whitney saw where the New Navy was headed..."

- The Fourth Branch: A Comprehensive History of the United States Navy

 

[KingSweden24]

"...Davis was not unmourned as his casket was publicly viewed in New Orleans after his death, but the public grieving of Breckinridge and Forrest had been much stronger as far as the Confederacy's Presidents went, to say nothing of the passing of the generation of soldiers who had delivered secession; Longstreet, speaking at Davis' memorial, spoke not of him as a father of the nation, such as George Washington, but instead as "a man who steered the ship of state through stormy waters with grit and determination, with chop and spray around him, and whatever one said of him at the time, he found us safe to port." Such tepidly positive views of the man, near-destitute at his death due to numerous legal battles attempting to secure his Mississippi properties, effectively living on the charity of friends on Canal Street in his last years, were commonplace about the Confederacy's first President, and with Davis' burial as the punctuation point of the 1880s, the turbulence pre-Grand Consensus continued to pass into faded memory..."

- Dixieland

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the Gallery of Machines and Eiffel Tower remained as the rest of the Champs de Mars was cleared of pavilions and exhibits, returning the vast space to Parisians as parkland just in time for Christmas markets. The tower was illuminated with electric lights in the early evenings, and at its base was erected an ice skating rink open to the public, inaugurated on First Advent by the Emperor and Empress themselves, skating alone, hands clasped, before adoring onlookers. All of Parisian society was there to watch as a small orchestra conducted by Debussy himself scored their skating [1], the Dowager Eugenie watching her son gracefully glide with his beloved wife as she held both her grandchildren close. Those who remembered "the skate under the Eiffel," as a light snow descended over Paris, would come to see it as an elegiac moment, the coda to the Decade d'Or, the final image and note of France's triumphal song as 1889, and the golden age of the Bonaparte dynasty drew to a close beneath the magnificent wrought iron of the most imposing physical monument to Napoleon IV's shimmering reign.

It was but a quiet moment between husband and wife, who skated off the ice to allow the public to join in instead, but for a country, it would be the last relaxed breath of a time of optimism, a time when France forged forward into the future, when all was possible, and the best was yet to come..." [2]

- The Eaglet Takes Flight: The Reign of Napoleon IV 1874-1905

[1] I'd like to think Debussy's orchestra plays "Reverie" during this, because A) I love Westworld and B) it fits
[2] Excuse the purple prose but I've been excited about writing this specific update for months, because...

 

[KingSweden24]

This concludes Cinco de Mayo Part IV: The Liberal Ascendancy

Thank you all for reading this far! As always, I welcome thoughts, feedback, suggestions and criticism as we head into Part V, which will cover the last decade of the 19th century!

 

[KingSweden24]

Part V: Fin de Siecle
​

"...but as the sun began to set on the 19th century, an epoch defined first by the bloodshed of the post-Revolutionary wars and later by advances in technology, communications, medicine and commerce unseen before in human history, a deep dissatisfaction set in, a global malaise triggered by the twin calamities of 1890, and as the centuries prepared to turn the ordinary people began having greater demands. Demands for suffrage, demands for better wages and working conditions, demands for the very abolition of monarchy itself - via mass media, rising standards of living and a better sense of a broader world of radical ideas, scientific discovery and capitalist competition, the age of rule by the common man so presaged in previous revolts was nearing at hand, though the old order was nowhere close to being toppled. Nevertheless, the era of the absolutism, of unfettered monarchy and empire, of aristocratic privilege, found itself in the final decade of the 19th century to be in its twilight years..."

- The Long 19th Century (Pierce Jourdan, 1971)

 

[KingSweden24]

"...having seeded out from St. Petersburg in November to Stockholm, the pandemic spread via passenger ship then railroad across Europe in short order. As much as 60% of Sweden's population was infected within eight weeks; within a month, half of Berlin's population was sick, and by late December the first cases were detected on American soil. The deaths peaked in St. Petersburg in late December of 1889; in America, they peaked in late January. Nothing so virulent had ever spread so quickly since the Black Death in Europe, and the first and most deadly wave was only the beginning of the 1889 influenza's circumnavigation of the globe..."

- The Bug That Traveled the World: The Spread and Aftermath of the 1890s Influenza Pandemic (Cambridge University, 1994) [1]

[1] Not to give anyone Covid PTSD but the 1890-92 flu pandemic was real, probably actually a coronavirus (this was purported just last year by Danish scientists), and had a major impact by killing off a number of pretty important figures in Europe, most prominently Albert Victor of the United Kingdom. I'm going to shake things up by having it take the lives of some different people...

 

[KingSweden24]

"...as the flu spread aggressively through London and then the rest of Britain just before Christmas, Arthur recommended his mother and her staff be nearly entirely isolated at Balmoral, a decision on which he overruled his mother's staff. He was glad he did, when he and his entirely family fell badly sick in early January, and when he read the telegram from his cousin Heinrich in Berlin that solemnly announced the ravage of the Russian flu [1] had claimed the life of his grandmother, the Kaiserine Augusta [2], who was less than a decade older than his own frail, easily depressive mother whom he feared would succumb to the most minor of ailments. "The sickness I weathered, with high fever and misery at Clarence House for well over a week, would have felled the Queen, of that I am sure. Her safety and that of the Crown was paramount, much as she did protest my measures," he recorded in his diary after his recovery. Two good friends of his, relatively young and with peerages, perished in the first wave that tore through London; it nearly claimed several prominent politicians from the Commons as well, and Prime Minister Smith, after surviving a bout, was never in good health again until his death in 1892..."

- The Lion of Edinburgh: Prince Arthur, the Empire and the Twilight of the Victorian Age

[1] Indeed the name used for this outbreak, similar to the 1918 outbreak being termed the "Spanish flu"
[2] This is true to OTL - Wilhelm I's widow, who was nearly 80 years old, did in fact die of the 1889 flu

 

[KingSweden24]

"...concerns over the particularly nasty flu that killed hundreds of thousands in Europe in the winter of 1889-90 struck the Bourse at a particularly poorly timed moment; the over-leverage in foreign markets (particularly in Argentina, where the Credit Maritime competed aggressively head-to-head with Baring Brothers of London), the over-lending to shipbuilding firms, credit granted to poor, barely-solvent governments in Southeast Europe and the Orient all came to a head at once. The price of the grossly overvalued Union Generale bank, which had been driven higher by speculators for close to a decade in tandem with other French banks and affected by counterfeit money, had already begun to decline in early January. Interest rate hikes and concerns about commodity prices out of foreign markets led to a sudden selloff in early February, followed by Union Generale's complete collapse. A quarter of the brokers on the Bourse [1] were poised on the brink of collapse as Union Generale's shares fell by a value of 80% in less than a week, and Credit Maritime's followed it straight down by 55% in ten days. The Bourse was closed on order of the government on February 20, 1890, to prevent further volatility [2], leading to investors running to their banks to withdraw deposits while they still held value, turning a stock market crash into a run on the bank. Armed guards had to fend off people trying to squeeze their way into the banks, and the Bourse's doors remained closed for nearly a week as debates raged at the Banque de France and the Tuileries what may happen should it reopen. The choice to shutter the Bourse, thus only creating more turmoil, remains perhaps the greatest stain on the legacy of Napoleon IV in terms of his fiscal stewardship of France - the free-trading economic liberal had had his first taste of the dirigisme for which his country would be famous in the 20th century, and the Great Panic of 1890 had begun..."

- The Eaglet Takes Flight: The Reign of Napoleon IV 1874-1905

[1] This crisis is a combination of the 1882 Paris Bourse crash and the 1890 Baring crisis, if you're all wondering what I'm drawing inspiration from
[2] As we saw last week, Robin Hood closing trading on certain equities didn't exactly create more faith in the market for those securities. Not to get on my soapbox (my background is in finance), but what France just did here was a really, really bad idea

 

[HonestAbe1809]

At least in this timeline, the name of the disease is accurate. Spain only got saddled with the blame because the so-called "Great War" was being fought and Spain was the one nation that dared to admit that the flu existed. It might have originated on a military base in Kansas.

 

[KingSweden24]

"...Lord Ripon would before his death describe the commodity markets of the late 1880s as being "to Britain what those damned tulips were to the Dutch." For bankers in the City, cotton from Egypt, India and the Confederate States was as surefire an investment as beef from Argentina, saltpeter from Chile, grains from the United States and Canada, and gold and silver from every corner of the world. Commodity extraction, while not as critical to the British economy as it was to the French Bourse, was nevertheless what drove investments in other parts of the world, along with infrastructure development. A new generation of bankers who had found railroads in Britain and Europe to not be the surefire investments they had once been (thanks in part to the 1870 crisis that began in the United States, mushroomed in Austria and France and threw Britain into the Long Depression) looked overseas for ever-multiplying returns. The boom times of the late 1880s thus found ever-further leveraged institutions, in an ever-more interconnected world, and one that was increasingly rickety, where any little shove could take down the entire house of cards.

Though later historians blamed the 1889 influenza strain for the City crisis, this has been shown to be erroneous in many later publications; though the influenza caused real suffering for the masses of angry unemployed who filled the European street for the next several years as the deepest and ugliest depression before or since consumed the industrial world, compounding Britain's Long Depression-diminished economic strife further, it was really the poor investments in Latin America by British banks coming due all at once, Barings in particular, and the sudden panic caused by the effective evaporation of the Paris Bourse in February of 1890. Despite oscillating geopolitical tensions between France and Britain, the British capitalist class nevertheless enjoyed prestige at eager banks and brokerages in Paris, and economic ties between the two economies were perhaps the strongest in history during the late 1880s, when the Tories had not reinstituted their protectionist policies from the Carnarvon years and France was at its free-trading zenith under Napoleon IV. Millions of pounds, all in francs and thus needed conversion, were essentially locked away in shares that may suddenly be worthless - in those breathless days when the Bourse was closed, suddenly the assets of foreign investors in France were of unknown value. As runs on French banks began and telegrams told lurid stories of banks having to hire Korean mercenaries from working class slums to guard their doors, British investors ran on their own banks as the London Stock Exchange rapidly declined, needing to make sure they had some kind of hard asset to rely on in case all their French holdings were rendered worthless. More money was withdrawn from British banks in the last week of February than ever before, both in real, inflation-adjusted and proportional terms; the gold held on hand by City institutions was cut by as much as 60%. With little to back individual stocks, the market collapsed almost entirely; news of bad harvests and firms in Argentina failing to hit their targets struck Barings particularly hard, as the bank suddenly realized that it could no longer pay the interest due to its remaining depositors, and that the shares it held that it would otherwise raise capital with had lost as much as two thirds of their value. One of the most prestigious banks in the City was bankrupt, and the crisis was only just beginning..."

- When Barings Went Bankrupt: Understanding the Worst Financial Crisis in British History (Oxford, 2007)

 

[KingSweden24]

At least in this timeline, the name of the disease is accurate. Spain only got saddled with the blame because the so-called "Great War" was being fought and Spain was the one nation that dared to admit that the flu existed. It might have originated on a military base in Kansas.

Very true! And very unfair to Spain.

 

[Titanium49]

So your first vacation when Covid ends isn’t going to be Cape Horn, I take it?

The was one a fellow from Cape Horn,
Who wished he'd never been born,
And he wouldn't have been,
If his father had seen,
That the end of the rubber was torn.

 

[Titanium49]

I've just binge read the TL and I think it's terrific. It's very plausible but 1 thing I thought was implausible. The French had the Suez and the British couldn't or wouldn't use it. So they built a railway across Canada and good were shipped to the East by London->Halifax or Montreal (Ship) -> Vancouver (Train) -> Hawaii, Hong Kong, Australia or India (Another Ship). I'm old enough to remember the closure of the Suez after the 6-day war in 1967. Ships from Australia went around the Cape of Good Hope and it took 2 days longer. Maybe it'd take 6 days longer to India and 10 to Hong Kong. But I still don't believe that there are any circumstances where it could be done quicker or cheaper by rail in Canada.

I'd also like to suggest some butterflies as to how the Australian Federation might have turned out differently. I read the article posted by another reader, and whilst it's generally true, there are some differences in Australia which weren't mentioned. South Australia was also a free colony and aboriginal South Australians had the vote prior to 1901. New Zealand gave women the vote in 1893 and South Australia gave women the right to vote and stand for parliament in 1894, as I understand it, the 1st place in the world. The 1894 act was simply worded, extending voting rights to all British subjects resident in South Australia. This included the aborigines and missionaries in many cases encouraged them to enrol. Obviously tribal aborigines would not understand the process.

The Australian constitution protected the voting rights of adults entitled to vote in state elections. Probably this was a compromise, like the US where, since the states didn't agree on women's suffrage, it was decided to let each state do what it wants. The racist 1902 Australian voting rights limited the votes to whites and Maori, but aboriginal franchise already existed in some states. Maori were specifically mentioned, presumably because it was still hoped that NZ would join the federation. And whilst the Australian constitution was only amended to explicitly include aborigines in 1967, they were not specifically excluded and had voting rights except in Queensland and Western Australia.

Western Australia is another state where die Schmetterlinge might have flown. It's 1200 miles from NZ to the East Coast of Australia but it's 2000 miles from Perth to the East Coast. I understand that there was significant reluctance in Perth (and WA later voted for secession), but there was a large population in the Kalgoorlie Goldfields consisting of East Coasters. The concern was that had WA not joined, then the Goldfields region would have tried to secede from it and join the federation.

So if le farfalle had flown in other directions, SA and NZ might have formed a closer relationship, encouraging NZ to join, or WA might not have joined. The clause in the Australian constitution which says a new capital shall be built, within New South Wales and more than 100 miles from Sydney, might have said the new capital shall be built between Sydney & Melbourne, on the coast, and more than 100 miles from either, to better accommodate NZ.

 

[Titanium49]

New Zealand gave women the vote in 1893 and South Australia gave women the right to vote and stand for parliament in 1894, as I understand it, the 1st place in the world. The 1894 act was simply worded, extending voting rights to all British subjects resident in South Australia.

It'd make a terrific movie, although fictional (maybe someone could put it in their TL), for the SA government to become aware that the British government is determined to block any votes for women. So rather than get the governor to give royal assent, which London could block, the SA government decides to send the bill directly to Queen Victoria. So the South Australian premier and his wife travel directly to London and a game of cat and mouse occurs where the British establishment goes to great lengths to prevent them having a direct audience with Queen Victoria, whereas the South Australians are determined to present the document personally to the Queen in the belief she would immediately sign it.

 

[KingSweden24]

I've just binge read the TL and I think it's terrific. It's very plausible but 1 thing I thought was implausible. The French had the Suez and the British couldn't or wouldn't use it. So they built a railway across Canada and good were shipped to the East by London->Halifax or Montreal (Ship) -> Vancouver (Train) -> Hawaii, Hong Kong, Australia or India (Another Ship). I'm old enough to remember the closure of the Suez after the 6-day war in 1967. Ships from Australia went around the Cape of Good Hope and it took 2 days longer. Maybe it'd take 6 days longer to India and 10 to Hong Kong. But I still don't believe that there are any circumstances where it could be done quicker or cheaper by rail in Canada.

I'd also like to suggest some butterflies as to how the Australian Federation might have turned out differently. I read the article posted by another reader, and whilst it's generally true, there are some differences in Australia which weren't mentioned. South Australia was also a free colony and aboriginal South Australians had the vote prior to 1901. New Zealand gave women the vote in 1893 and South Australia gave women the right to vote and stand for parliament in 1894, as I understand it, the 1st place in the world. The 1894 act was simply worded, extending voting rights to all British subjects resident in South Australia. This included the aborigines and missionaries in many cases encouraged them to enrol. Obviously tribal aborigines would not understand the process.

The Australian constitution protected the voting rights of adults entitled to vote in state elections. Probably this was a compromise, like the US where, since the states didn't agree on women's suffrage, it was decided to let each state do what it wants. The racist 1902 Australian voting rights limited the votes to whites and Maori, but aboriginal franchise already existed in some states. Maori were specifically mentioned, presumably because it was still hoped that NZ would join the federation. And whilst the Australian constitution was only amended to explicitly include aborigines in 1967, they were not specifically excluded and had voting rights except in Queensland and Western Australia.

Western Australia is another state where die Schmetterlinge might have flown. It's 1200 miles from NZ to the East Coast of Australia but it's 2000 miles from Perth to the East Coast. I understand that there was significant reluctance in Perth (and WA later voted for secession), but there was a large population in the Kalgoorlie Goldfields consisting of East Coasters. The concern was that had WA not joined, then the Goldfields region would have tried to secede from it and join the federation.

So if le farfalle had flown in other directions, SA and NZ might have formed a closer relationship, encouraging NZ to join, or WA might not have joined. The clause in the Australian constitution which says a new capital shall be built, within New South Wales and more than 100 miles from Sydney, might have said the new capital shall be built between Sydney & Melbourne, on the coast, and more than 100 miles from either, to better accommodate NZ.

Ah! Thank you I glad you like it!

Lots of great ideas here that I'll have to poke around with a bit... you make a good point about Canada vis a vis the Suez, that's probably sloppy writing on my part. Canada isn't so much a straight alternative, the Cape route is there for a reason. It's more just that British strategic thinking sans Suez effectively becomes "let no other country, but especially not France, have any maritime or commercial chokepoint anywhere that we cannot control." Hence wanting Pearl Harbour's deepwater facilities available for control over the Pacific, keeping Chile and Madagascar close by as part of the Three Capes strategy Granville developed, beefing up presence in Aden and Perim, watchfulness about any Central American developments, the Admiralty's deep unease with French control over Hainan and Taiwan, particularly the latter, Britain making sure Morocco stays out of anybody's hands. It's all part of a grander strategy than a direct alternative to Suez, born out of France effectively turning everything east of the Straits of Sicily into a French lake between their control of Algeria, partnership with the Ottomans, and their military bases in Alexandria and Port Said.

It'd make a terrific movie, although fictional (maybe someone could put it in their TL), for the SA government to become aware that the British government is determined to block any votes for women. So rather than get the governor to give royal assent, which London could block, the SA government decides to send the bill directly to Queen Victoria. So the South Australian premier and his wife travel directly to London and a game of cat and mouse occurs where the British establishment goes to great lengths to prevent them having a direct audience with Queen Victoria, whereas the South Australians are determined to present the document personally to the Queen in the belief she would immediately sign it.

This is great! I might have to steal this idea, perhaps written as a movie review ITTL?

 

[Titanium49]

Ah! Thank you I glad you like it!

Lots of great ideas here that I'll have to poke around with a bit... you make a good point about Canada vis a vis the Suez, that's probably sloppy writing on my part. Canada isn't so much a straight alternative, the Cape route is there for a reason. It's more just that British strategic thinking sans Suez effectively becomes "let no other country, but especially not France, have any maritime or commercial chokepoint anywhere that we cannot control." Hence wanting Pearl Harbour's deepwater facilities available for control over the Pacific, keeping Chile and Madagascar close by as part of the Three Capes strategy Granville developed, beefing up presence in Aden and Perim, watchfulness about any Central American developments, the Admiralty's deep unease with French control over Hainan and Taiwan, particularly the latter, Britain making sure Morocco stays out of anybody's hands. It's all part of a grander strategy than a direct alternative to Suez, born out of France effectively turning everything east of the Straits of Sicily into a French lake between their control of Algeria, partnership with the Ottomans, and their military bases in Alexandria and Port Said.



This is great! I might have to steal this idea, perhaps written as a movie review ITTL?

Maybe it could be true ITTL. The British establishment may be quite different and may actively try & stop votes for women in NZ or SA. According to Wikipedia, the legislation was sent to London for Queen Victoria to sign, I think the governor did regard it as historic.

 

[KingSweden24]

Maybe it could be true ITTL. The British establishment may be quite different and may actively try & stop votes for women in NZ or SA. According to Wikipedia, the legislation was sent to London for Queen Victoria to sign, I think the governor did regard it as historic.

The more reactionary Tories certainly would, though I wonder how a Liberal government may handle that. PM Joe Chamberlain is right around the corner after all... (whoops heavily foreshadowed spoilers!)

 

[KingSweden24]

"...it was thanks almost entirely to the aggressive and early sale of gold out of the Treasury and the quick purchasing of silver by the National Bank - coordinated between Washington and Philadelphia via telephone - that helped stop the financial contagion from across the Atlantic from wiping out Wall Street in turn. American investors, many of whom had been through the Panic of 1870 and remembered its chaos, were also much less likely to serve as creditors. Nevertheless, just a year into Custer's Presidency, the flow of investment was drying up and it particularly struck the oft debt-laden railroads the hardest, and mass bankruptcies of the main lines began to spread like a ripple across the Union. Though the depression that struck Europe would not be as sharp or deep in the United States, unemployment nevertheless began to spike and asset prices precipitously declined..."

- The Wolverine in the White House: The Presidency of George Armstrong Custer at 100

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the meltdown metastized and spread like the cancer it was when even Rothschild's attempted loan, and the consortium of lenders gathered by the Bank of England, failed to rescue Barings or any of the other banks that collapsed in tandem. The failure was systemic, effectively eliminating the availability of credit worldwide within a span of weeks. The loans needed to sustain infrastructure and commercial development around the world, gone. The Great Depression that had already lasted nearly twenty years at this point would now hit its deepest, darkest valley yet, as bank runs accelerated in London and the government seemed perplexed how to react to the anger within the establishment and on the street..."

- When Barings Went Bankrupt: Understanding the Worst Financial Crisis in British History

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the teetering Confederate economy - overburdened with debt from British banks and overreliant on cash crops - plunged into a deep depression as banks failed and Canal Street brokerages went bust. The detonation of the British debt bomb in early 1890 along with the arrival on Dixie's shores of the highly virulent flu pandemic tore through the land. Unemployment tripled; the New Orleans stock exchange lost close to two-thirds of its value. The aristocracy was hammered along with the working class; the Canal Street panic left former President Longstreet destitute to the point he had to borrow money from friends just to keep his Georgia plantation, and slave sales spiked as desperation for cash increased. The massive offloading of assets before prices declined further only plunged the Confederacy into an even deeper deflationary cycle, which became hard to pull out of as the flu struck the country harder than perhaps any other state in the Western world. It was particularly deadly in the "crackervilles" and workman's camps in Confederate industrial towns and cities, where malnutrition and health was already low, comparatively sparing the chattel labor from the worst. In a matter of months, the exuberant optimism of the late stage of the Lamar Presidency was gone, with instead anger in the town squares and empty stares and words in the halls of power..."

- Dixieland