I wonder if the south regrets not signing the Bliss-Blackburn Treaty. Surprise there hasn’t been any mention of it so close to the end of the war.
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
At a certain point though... why mention something that the US would never, ever accede to at this point? That ship sailed as early as Niagara, if not the Kentucky Kidnap Crisis.
I kinda want to know what Douglas Southall Freeman is like now.
😆
No, I meant more about southern politicians discussing the treaty amongst themselves and simply stating they should have agreed to it, then rejecting it out of national pride.
It might be interesting to read about Asian immigrants moving further east where “Yellow Peril” sentiments aren’t as prevalent as in the West Coast. States only getting a few Asian immigrants yearly would likely not see them as such a threat.
Lycaon pictus
Donor
Did the Army do significant recruiting of Chinese-, Japanese- and Indian-Americans during the war?
Bleeding Heartland: The Midlands Front of the Great American War
"...intended initially as a landship raid carried out from Dickman's headquarters at Corinth and past the Confederate defenses at Russellville and Hamilton, Alabama, the probing efforts suddenly turned into a repeat of the March to the Sea in miniature, from northeastern Mississippi and northern Alabama through the Yellowhammer State to Pensacola and Mobile.
Dickman launched his attack just north of Tupelo on October 12th, [1] advancing seventy kilometers in a single day to Hamilton, which surrendered without a fight. With his own armored columns pushing south from Huntsville in support as the necessity of defending Pershing's flanks lessened with the successful seizure of Savannah, Harbord joined in Dickman's assaults on the 14th, unplanned initially but with scouting aircraft and balloons suggesting that the road towards Birmingham was potentially open.
The advance lasted only sixteen days, across the entirety of Alabama, reaching Pensacola on the 28th and with Mobile sacked on Halloween night. Seventy thousand Americans with a hundred and seventeen landships and the support of twenty-two airplanes managed to in the course of two weeks subdue the entire state of Alabama, whereas Pershing had taken a month and a half to grind his way across southern and central Georgia in a bloody, destructive scythe of death and fire. The Little March thus is less instructive as a military campaign and more so as to emphasize the extent to which Confederate society had simply collapsed by the middle of October. Part of the issue of course was the tens of thousands of soldiers pulled east to fight at Atlanta or halt Pershing's cutting action through Georgia, as well as the thousands of additional soldiers sent to the fortress complex around Vicksburg to defend the Mississippi and land approaches to New Orleans, where Confederate high command assumed the Yankees would attack next. Strategically, these decisions were probably correct, but they left Alabama gutted for garrisons by the time Harbord and Dickman no longer needed to protect Pershing's supply lines any longer.
But the Little March was abetted more than just a hollowing-out of formal Confederate defenses. A division under Mark Hersey captured Tuscaloosa and the University of Alabama on October 15th, finding "an eerie campus of swaying willows, marble pillars, and an institution on the verge of intellectual and financial bankruptcy populated exclusively by the daughters of planters and attorneys cloistered in terror in the single inhabited dormitory." Birmingham, one of the most important steel production centers not only in the Confederacy but in North America, fell almost without a fight, swept through in the course of two days; Dickman ordered the foundries seized, rail lines superfluous to the transport of his men torn up, and depots, armories, and a number of steel mills dynamited to prevent their use by the enemy. Many of Birmingham's factories were now staffed entirely by Negroes, who rose up against their white overseers as the Yankees approached, with foremen and plant security guards lynched and hung from scaffolding and rafters as the plants burned around them. While other such slave uprisings would have been violently put down earlier in the war, Dickman estimated that Birmingham was defended by as few as eight thousand men, the majority of whom were injured veterans of Nashville or Susquehanna rotated far behind front lines or boys as young as eleven or twelve handed pistols and rifles.
The push south of Birmingham into the Cotton Belt revealed a further "evaporation," in Harbord's words, of the Old Confederacy before the Yankee troops. Slaves attacked their overseers and burned plantation houses, and the Home Guard that was normally tasked with combating such threats was overwhelmed by refugees fleeing southwards toward Mobile and New Orleans beyond, increasingly viewed as the "last redoubt" of the Confederacy as their world crumbled around them. Some of these refugees brought their slaves with them, others slaughtered both chattel and free persons of color in their towns to prevent an insurgency in the rear, but most whites fled with little thought to the tens of thousands of slaves behind them, many of whom fled towards Yankee lines while others cloistered together to quickly gather food ahead of winter and hunker down.
Montgomery fell on the 20th, with the Alabama State House and Governor's Mansion burned to the ground as the Governor, Charles Henderson, reluctantly "and with great sorrow" surrendered the city on behalf of a collection of civic leaders, with only a few hundred men to defend the capital. The advance was completed but a week later, sixteen days after it had begun. With American forces on the Gulf, it was a short push to Biloxi, and from there - New Orleans. Ships could now reasonably place forces in Mobile and Pensacola to support a drive westwards towards the Mississippi, with rail lines to Vicksburg and Louisiana cut from the north, west, and now east. Two redoubts of Dixie remained - isolated and separated from one another by six hundred and fifty kilometers and hundreds of thousands of American soldiers.
The Little March may not have broken the Confederacy like its "big" sibling a month earlier - rather, it occurred because the Confederacy was already broken..."
- Bleeding Heartland: The Midlands Front of the Great American War
[1]
Dickman launched his attack just north of Tupelo on October 12th, [1] advancing seventy kilometers in a single day to Hamilton, which surrendered without a fight. With his own armored columns pushing south from Huntsville in support as the necessity of defending Pershing's flanks lessened with the successful seizure of Savannah, Harbord joined in Dickman's assaults on the 14th, unplanned initially but with scouting aircraft and balloons suggesting that the road towards Birmingham was potentially open.
The advance lasted only sixteen days, across the entirety of Alabama, reaching Pensacola on the 28th and with Mobile sacked on Halloween night. Seventy thousand Americans with a hundred and seventeen landships and the support of twenty-two airplanes managed to in the course of two weeks subdue the entire state of Alabama, whereas Pershing had taken a month and a half to grind his way across southern and central Georgia in a bloody, destructive scythe of death and fire. The Little March thus is less instructive as a military campaign and more so as to emphasize the extent to which Confederate society had simply collapsed by the middle of October. Part of the issue of course was the tens of thousands of soldiers pulled east to fight at Atlanta or halt Pershing's cutting action through Georgia, as well as the thousands of additional soldiers sent to the fortress complex around Vicksburg to defend the Mississippi and land approaches to New Orleans, where Confederate high command assumed the Yankees would attack next. Strategically, these decisions were probably correct, but they left Alabama gutted for garrisons by the time Harbord and Dickman no longer needed to protect Pershing's supply lines any longer.
But the Little March was abetted more than just a hollowing-out of formal Confederate defenses. A division under Mark Hersey captured Tuscaloosa and the University of Alabama on October 15th, finding "an eerie campus of swaying willows, marble pillars, and an institution on the verge of intellectual and financial bankruptcy populated exclusively by the daughters of planters and attorneys cloistered in terror in the single inhabited dormitory." Birmingham, one of the most important steel production centers not only in the Confederacy but in North America, fell almost without a fight, swept through in the course of two days; Dickman ordered the foundries seized, rail lines superfluous to the transport of his men torn up, and depots, armories, and a number of steel mills dynamited to prevent their use by the enemy. Many of Birmingham's factories were now staffed entirely by Negroes, who rose up against their white overseers as the Yankees approached, with foremen and plant security guards lynched and hung from scaffolding and rafters as the plants burned around them. While other such slave uprisings would have been violently put down earlier in the war, Dickman estimated that Birmingham was defended by as few as eight thousand men, the majority of whom were injured veterans of Nashville or Susquehanna rotated far behind front lines or boys as young as eleven or twelve handed pistols and rifles.
The push south of Birmingham into the Cotton Belt revealed a further "evaporation," in Harbord's words, of the Old Confederacy before the Yankee troops. Slaves attacked their overseers and burned plantation houses, and the Home Guard that was normally tasked with combating such threats was overwhelmed by refugees fleeing southwards toward Mobile and New Orleans beyond, increasingly viewed as the "last redoubt" of the Confederacy as their world crumbled around them. Some of these refugees brought their slaves with them, others slaughtered both chattel and free persons of color in their towns to prevent an insurgency in the rear, but most whites fled with little thought to the tens of thousands of slaves behind them, many of whom fled towards Yankee lines while others cloistered together to quickly gather food ahead of winter and hunker down.
Montgomery fell on the 20th, with the Alabama State House and Governor's Mansion burned to the ground as the Governor, Charles Henderson, reluctantly "and with great sorrow" surrendered the city on behalf of a collection of civic leaders, with only a few hundred men to defend the capital. The advance was completed but a week later, sixteen days after it had begun. With American forces on the Gulf, it was a short push to Biloxi, and from there - New Orleans. Ships could now reasonably place forces in Mobile and Pensacola to support a drive westwards towards the Mississippi, with rail lines to Vicksburg and Louisiana cut from the north, west, and now east. Two redoubts of Dixie remained - isolated and separated from one another by six hundred and fifty kilometers and hundreds of thousands of American soldiers.
The Little March may not have broken the Confederacy like its "big" sibling a month earlier - rather, it occurred because the Confederacy was already broken..."
- Bleeding Heartland: The Midlands Front of the Great American War
[1]
The fact that University of Alabama has women students in 1916 is something that would have been true iOTL due to Julia Tutwiler, who was an advocate for Educational and Prison Reform. (and also wrote the Alabama state song) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Tutwiler , I wonder if she had a similar life iTTL...
BTW, she died in March of 1916 iOTL, so she didn't see the invasion of her beloved Alabama.
kham_coc
Banned
I just had a thought, in regards to Europe, what happens with the Mona Lisa after France is defeated?
from memory, there was a significant uppswelling of national sentiment regarding it, when it was stolen and returned - One could immagine some Italians would demand it "back" after their victory.
from memory, there was a significant uppswelling of national sentiment regarding it, when it was stolen and returned - One could immagine some Italians would demand it "back" after their victory.
No, but she died knowing that the CSA was a sinking ship and that her beloved Alabama would be invaded soon.
True.
Also, at this point, I *think* there have been US troops in every state except Louisiana and North Carolina (the army guarding the flank toward the Carolinas for the March to the Sea, I *think* has crossed over into South Carolina at some point. Be almost funny if North Carolina wasn't touched.
Ah. Yes, I suppose, though still a little bit late to cry over spilled blood
Oh, definitely. This was the case iOTL, too; Chinese immigrants experienced way less issues when they moved places like Philadelphia or Chicago (their two most common destinations in the early 20th century). Not no issues, of course, but nothing like California, Oregon and Washington.
Almost certainly, though the Army/Navy still saw the greatest utility of immigrants as being cheap factory labor to keep the machine juiced
Couldn't resist lol
Indeed I read of her in preparing this update as I had to double check that Bama was actually co-ed in 1916
Possibly! Of course, the Louvre is not a museum ITTL, so I'm not sure where the Mona Lisa is even located.
How so? The Louvre has been a museum since the French revolution, decades before the POD. You might confuse it with the Tuileries palace perhaps where the Emperor's resided; Catherine of Médicis' palace was not fully connected to the Louvre until the construction of a new wing between both under Napoleon III, but they remained separate palaces.
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O Imperio do Futuro: The Rise of Brazil
"...rejection of France as a mediator and Paris as the place to sign a treaty. It did not get better from there.
The British, naturally, stepped in, and Muller traveled to the Canadian port city of Halifax on London's invitation with the Foreign Secretary, Sir Ian Malcolm, personally in attendance to resolve the issue. Despite the proximity to Philadelphia, the United States sent a gaggle of junior diplomats as well as a justice of their Supreme Court, Julian Mack - a liberal Jew - to treat with Muller rather than President Hughes or Secretary of State Root, both of whom described themselves as far too busy to make the journey what with the impending collapse of the Confederacy. Muller, insulted, announced he would not meet with the Americans until he was met by somebody of "proper station;" three weeks later, on October 24th, the Vice President, Herbert Hadley, arrived as the head of the American delegation, the first Vice President to travel on a diplomatic mission outside of the United States.
While this mollified Muller to a point, it still did not solve the fact that the slight from Philadelphia had not been accidental. He learned quickly, from a British spy in the American delegation, that while the Americans had no intention of prosecuting the still-extant war in the South Atlantic or Caribbean any longer, there was considerable pressure in Congress, especially with a looming election in just two weeks, to take as hard a line as possible on the "slave powers," and that influential abolitionists who had the ear of the Hughes administration were pushing to demand that the price of a peace treaty with Brazil, much as the price of formal recognition of the rebellious Republic of Texas, would have to be total, unqualified, and uncompensated manumission of Brazil's slaves.
As a practical matter, this was not a huge issue; Brazil's youngest slaves were in their mid-forties and estimates suggested there were fewer than ten thousand enslaved persons remaining in the entire country, and the government was expected to pass some sort of abolition in the next two years anyways. The issue was that Brazil was entirely disinterested in being ordered by the United States to do anything; Muller, by any reasonable definition a political moderate in the Brazilian government, took the view that Philadelphia and Rio had essentially fought their part of the war to a draw, taking one dreadnought off the other and with no remaining issues standing in the way of peace. Indeed, harsher men had the notion that as the United States was fighting purely to defend Argentina, and that peace was settled at Asuncion, any agreement was a mere formality dictating status quo ante.
The Halifax Protocol was thus a grotesque compromise which had to satisfy two matters: American domestic political realities, and Brazil's refusal to regard its campaigns against the Americans as anything less than a stalemate. A formal treaty required a two-thirds Senate majority to pass, which a "light peace" against any Bloc Sud member was unlikely to carry; a "protocol," however, had no constitutional weight whatsoever. Hadley, who would along with Hughes be leaving office by March and was simply spent, proposed to Muller the terms of the Halifax Protocol: both countries acknowledged that hostilities were "permanently suspended" and "that no state of war exists," while falling short of a binding peace treaty "until such terms can be negotiated and resolved favorably to both parties." Muller begrudgingly agreed, partly at Malcolm's behest - the Foreign Secretary now had his fingerprints on the documents signed both in Asuncion and in Halifax - and thus the Protocol was promulgated.
For the United States, the Halifax Protocol delivered them the best of both worlds: it allowed the Hughes administration to declare that the war was over on November 11th when the Confederate government surrendered and asked for an armistice before his single term ended, but also allowed them to defer the ideological question of "eradicating slave power from the Hemisphere" to the incoming Root administration and indeed inadvertently formalized the practice that the United States did not treat with countries that allowed legal slavery. Neither side formally revoked their declarations of war but the Protocol was an informal enforcement of peace that, while shaky from the standpoint of international law, nonetheless guided the actions of each government. [1]
Muller never ceased to be insulted, however, and the Protocol engendered a fair deal of ill will in Brazil for years to come. Not only had their victory in Uruguay been mutilated, but they had not even been given the courtesy of all the other powers in the Great American War of signing a treaty formalizing the conflict's end with the United States because they would not allow Philadelphia to dictate domestic policy to them. Anti-American sentiment, fairly limited during the war despite the formal hostilities, erupted upon the Protocol's promulgation as opportunist politicians denounced "Americanism" in all its forms, regarding it as an even more insidious, radical form of Alemism. The phantoms of the war in the Cisplatine had not vanished with its end - indeed, the same impulses that had driven it were perhaps suddenly stronger than ever..."
- O Imperio do Futuro: The Rise of Brazil
[1] In case its not clear from the text, this half-loaf, have-your-cake-and-eat-it bullshit from the US is not going to work long term as far as US-Brazil relations go. While this chapter is specific to Brazil, this is one of our first iterations of the victory disease that's going to start setting in regarding Latin American relations for the US soon
The British, naturally, stepped in, and Muller traveled to the Canadian port city of Halifax on London's invitation with the Foreign Secretary, Sir Ian Malcolm, personally in attendance to resolve the issue. Despite the proximity to Philadelphia, the United States sent a gaggle of junior diplomats as well as a justice of their Supreme Court, Julian Mack - a liberal Jew - to treat with Muller rather than President Hughes or Secretary of State Root, both of whom described themselves as far too busy to make the journey what with the impending collapse of the Confederacy. Muller, insulted, announced he would not meet with the Americans until he was met by somebody of "proper station;" three weeks later, on October 24th, the Vice President, Herbert Hadley, arrived as the head of the American delegation, the first Vice President to travel on a diplomatic mission outside of the United States.
While this mollified Muller to a point, it still did not solve the fact that the slight from Philadelphia had not been accidental. He learned quickly, from a British spy in the American delegation, that while the Americans had no intention of prosecuting the still-extant war in the South Atlantic or Caribbean any longer, there was considerable pressure in Congress, especially with a looming election in just two weeks, to take as hard a line as possible on the "slave powers," and that influential abolitionists who had the ear of the Hughes administration were pushing to demand that the price of a peace treaty with Brazil, much as the price of formal recognition of the rebellious Republic of Texas, would have to be total, unqualified, and uncompensated manumission of Brazil's slaves.
As a practical matter, this was not a huge issue; Brazil's youngest slaves were in their mid-forties and estimates suggested there were fewer than ten thousand enslaved persons remaining in the entire country, and the government was expected to pass some sort of abolition in the next two years anyways. The issue was that Brazil was entirely disinterested in being ordered by the United States to do anything; Muller, by any reasonable definition a political moderate in the Brazilian government, took the view that Philadelphia and Rio had essentially fought their part of the war to a draw, taking one dreadnought off the other and with no remaining issues standing in the way of peace. Indeed, harsher men had the notion that as the United States was fighting purely to defend Argentina, and that peace was settled at Asuncion, any agreement was a mere formality dictating status quo ante.
The Halifax Protocol was thus a grotesque compromise which had to satisfy two matters: American domestic political realities, and Brazil's refusal to regard its campaigns against the Americans as anything less than a stalemate. A formal treaty required a two-thirds Senate majority to pass, which a "light peace" against any Bloc Sud member was unlikely to carry; a "protocol," however, had no constitutional weight whatsoever. Hadley, who would along with Hughes be leaving office by March and was simply spent, proposed to Muller the terms of the Halifax Protocol: both countries acknowledged that hostilities were "permanently suspended" and "that no state of war exists," while falling short of a binding peace treaty "until such terms can be negotiated and resolved favorably to both parties." Muller begrudgingly agreed, partly at Malcolm's behest - the Foreign Secretary now had his fingerprints on the documents signed both in Asuncion and in Halifax - and thus the Protocol was promulgated.
For the United States, the Halifax Protocol delivered them the best of both worlds: it allowed the Hughes administration to declare that the war was over on November 11th when the Confederate government surrendered and asked for an armistice before his single term ended, but also allowed them to defer the ideological question of "eradicating slave power from the Hemisphere" to the incoming Root administration and indeed inadvertently formalized the practice that the United States did not treat with countries that allowed legal slavery. Neither side formally revoked their declarations of war but the Protocol was an informal enforcement of peace that, while shaky from the standpoint of international law, nonetheless guided the actions of each government. [1]
Muller never ceased to be insulted, however, and the Protocol engendered a fair deal of ill will in Brazil for years to come. Not only had their victory in Uruguay been mutilated, but they had not even been given the courtesy of all the other powers in the Great American War of signing a treaty formalizing the conflict's end with the United States because they would not allow Philadelphia to dictate domestic policy to them. Anti-American sentiment, fairly limited during the war despite the formal hostilities, erupted upon the Protocol's promulgation as opportunist politicians denounced "Americanism" in all its forms, regarding it as an even more insidious, radical form of Alemism. The phantoms of the war in the Cisplatine had not vanished with its end - indeed, the same impulses that had driven it were perhaps suddenly stronger than ever..."
- O Imperio do Futuro: The Rise of Brazil
[1] In case its not clear from the text, this half-loaf, have-your-cake-and-eat-it bullshit from the US is not going to work long term as far as US-Brazil relations go. While this chapter is specific to Brazil, this is one of our first iterations of the victory disease that's going to start setting in regarding Latin American relations for the US soon
That must be where i'm going wrong - I assumed it was all one palace complex. Having walked through the Tuileries Gardens to the Louvre, I hadn't really wrapped my head until I was there how massive it is, so I can see how it is split into two separate uses.
Speaking of - what was Versailles used for during the Second Empire?
AWESOME chapter man! Always happy to the the Empire of Brazil! Really hoping they can push forward and rebuild themselves.
Any particular reason, besides the humanitarian ones (which probably don't matter as much in 1916 as they do in 2023, let's be honest) why the US Navy didn't just send a fleet to bomb Rio de Janeiro and/or Belem/Santos/insert large coastal city here?
Not like the Navy was doing a ton after the Florida Keys anyways.
Not like the Navy was doing a ton after the Florida Keys anyways.
Thank you!
My laziness as an author? Lol
In seriousness to post facto justify, keeping Confederate ports bottled up entirely from European shipping was probably the priority, a lot of naval assets needed to be repaired after Hilton Head even as new ships were produced, and by late 1915 it was clear Brazil was on the verge of exiting the war with Argentina I guess?