UNION AND LIBERTY: AN AMERICAN TIMELINE

By Wilcoxchar

Part One: The First Term of Andrew Jackson (1828-1832)

The Tariff of Abominations and the Southern Reaction: In 1828, President John Quincy Adams passed a tariff increase to help American manufacturers compete with their European counterparts. This sealed Adams' fate in the Election of 1828 as Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun put reducing the tariff as part of their running platform.[1] Jackson beat out Adams in the election with 178 or 68% of the electoral votes. With the election won Jackson and Calhoun were sworn into the White House on March 4, 1829.

The Nullification Crisis: After Jackson's ascension to the Presidency, South Carolina declared a right to nullify the Tariff of Abominations. Jackson opposed the nullification, but did not want to cause a confrontation with Calhoun as Calhoun had openly supported South Carolina's position on the tariff, and a fissure between the President and the Vice President would not help to strengthen the Union. Jackson also sympathized with the southern side of the debate to some degree. On April 13, 1830, at the Democratic Party celebration of Thomas Jefferson's birthday, a series of toasts would emphasize each member's position on the issue. When it came to Jackson, he raised his glass and said, "Our Federal Union: It must be preserved." Calhoun spoke next, and stated "Union and Liberty, our two most dear."[2] Calhoun's toast echoed the closing remarks by Daniel Webster during an earlier debate on the issue of Nullification. While the toasts showed the differing opinions between the President and the Vice President, it also showed their willingness to work together to preserve the United States.

In the summer of 1830, Jackson declared that he would reduce tariff levels to appease South Carolina and attempt an end to the Nullification Crisis, but he and Calhoun disagreed on how far to lower the tariffs. Calhoun wanted to lower tariffs immediately to below the levels before the Tariff of 1828 was passed, while Jackson wanted to gradually lower tariffs to somewhere in between the 1816 levels and the levels of the Tariff of Abominations. During talks in Congress, the two sides agreed to gradually reduce tariffs to the levels of the Tariff of 1824 over the next three years.

Arkansaw Statehood: In 1831, the state of Arkansaw was admitted to the United States, becoming the 25th state.

The Election of 1832: With their friendship restored, Jackson and Calhoun won the nominations for President and Vice President for the Democratic Party in 1832. Henry Clay was nominated as the Presidential candidate for the National Republican Party. The main issue during the election was the Second Bank of the United States, which Clay was in favor of and Jackson was against. Jackson had vetoed a renewal of the bank's charter during his first term as President, and convinced much of the populace during his campaign in 1832 that the bank was unnecessary and would lead to an elite. His appearance as the Common Man continued, and he won the election of 1832 with a landslide victory.

Under Jackson and Calhoun, the Democratic Party swept the south and the west, as well as much of the northeast. The Democratic Party achieved 190 electoral votes out of a possible 289, gaining 65% of the votes. Clay managed to win Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Kentucky, and Maryland, earning the National Republicans 32% of the electoral vote. Vermont was won by the small Anti- Masonic Party led by William Wirt, but this minor party soon faded. Jackson and Calhoun were inaugurated and took office for a second term on January 21, 1833.

[1] In OTL, this was not part of Jackson's platform. [2] Calhoun's toast in OTL was "The Union; next to our liberty, the most dear." This event showed the rift that had grown between Jackson and Calhoun that would lead to Jackson picking Van Buren as his VP for 1832.

Part Two: Jackson's Second Term

New York v. New Jersey: Even after the United States had been created, some states still had quarrels with each other that had carried over from the time as British colonies. The most important of these were territorial disputes that came about from inaccurate surveying or overlapping claims. One of these was the dispute between New York and New Jersey over their border as it approached New York City.

The border between New York and New Jersey after it reached the Hudson River according to New Jersey was a bisection of the Hudson, while in New York it was said to be the western shore of the Hudson. In the 1820s, New Jersey began to develop shipping industries on the western shore of the Hudson, and in turn New York attempted to tax the shipping for crossing the border into New York as the ships came in and out of New York Bay. Several New Jersey companies refused to pay the tolls on the shipping and the state brought the issue up in court. The dispute went all the way up to the Supreme Court as the Court is obligated in the Constitution to hear "controversies between the states".

During the hearing, not only were the trade issues brought up but also the underlying dispute over the two states' territorial boundaries. After four days, the Court headed by Chief Justice John Marshall eventually decided in favor of New Jersey in a 5-2 decision. Justices Marshall, Duvall, Story, Mclean, and Baldwin were of the majority opinion, while justices Johnson and Thompson forming the dissenting opinion. They determined that New Jersey did not have to pay New York for the tolls, but went further and stated that the eastern border of New York and New Jersey would bisect the Hudson River through the Narrows. This landmark ruling gave Staten Island to New Jersey and established the precedent of the Supreme Court having ultimate jurisdiction over boundary disputes between states.

Indian Removal: Throughout his presidency, Andrew Jackson oversaw the policy of moving many of the Indian tribes west of the Mississippi River. Many of the Choctaw voluntarily moved off their lands after ceding the remaining territory to the United States government, and were moved west to areas in what is now the state of Arkansaw. While it was the intention of the federal government to move the Choctaw further west, the governor of Arkansaw allowed the Choctaw who desired to settle in Arkansaw and purchase land there. During Jackson's administration, ten thousand Choctaw moved into Arkansaw, while the same number remained in Mississippi where they were treated harshly by incoming settlers.

Many of the Chickasaw and Creek received monetary compensation for their remaining lands in Georgia and Alabama. Most of these tribes used the money to move west of the Mississippi and settle or south into Mexico. But a few decided to buy land in Alabama north of the Tennessee where they set up small communities in the sparsely populated frontier regions of the state. Their largest community was in Waterloo, Alabama, in the northwestern corner of the state. While the town had grown with the influx of Native Americans, the town has mostly died out during the 20th century as a result of emigration north to the Midwest.

The Seminoles were the toughest group to be removed, and the only group to remain in their ancestral lands until after the Jackson administration. The Seminole Wars is a term given to the many skirmishes the natives had with settlers and the militias gathered by the city of Saint Augustine. After offers of moving west had been accepted then rejected by a council of Seminole chiefs, the tribe stood its ground and fought for over ten years before they submitted and reached an agreement with the federal government. Owing to the poor climate of much of Florida and the resistance of the Seminoles, the federal government was slow to deal with the Seminoles and eventually let them remain on their land in the interior of Florida.

The Cherokee presented a complicated situation and in the end were the only of the Five Civilised Tribes to be forcefully removed from their land successfully. The Supreme Court decision of Worcester v. Georgia and Jackson's unwillingness to let the federal government handle the situation led the Georgia state militia to take action against the Cherokee. Many of the Cherokee were rounded up and forced to move west, on a journey where many of them died. Eventually, at Memphis in 1833, the Cherokee chiefs signed a treaty which formally ceded their land to Georgia and granted them new land south of the Platte River in what is today Pahsapa. While this conflicted with the locations of other Native American tribes, the Cherokee were moved to a reservation there and remain there to this day. Assassination of Jackson: The first attempt to assassinate Jackson came in 1833. On May 6, Jackson was on his way to lay the cornerstone of a monument to Mary Ball Washington in Fredericksburg. During a stopover in Alexandria in what was then Virginia but is now part of Winfield, a man by the name of Robert B. Randolph appeared and attempted to stab the President with a dagger. Jackson managed to dodge the blow and proceeded to chase after Randolph and beat him with his cane. Jackson had previously ordered the dismissal of Randolph from the navy for embezzlement, but in the end Jackson decided that the beating was punishment enough to Randolph and did not press charges. A short chronicle of the event was written by Washington Irving, who was present at the time and was serving as the minister to Spain under Jackson's administration.

The second attempt to assassinate a president was also toward Jackson, this time successful. In 1835, as Jackson exited the Capitol Building after the funeral of South Carolina senator Warren R. Davis Richard Lawrence stepped out toward Jackson and fired a pistol at the President. The bullet entered Jackson's chest and Lawrence was restrained by the crowd, including David Crockett, one of the first senators from the state of Tejas. Jackson died of blood loss four days later and was given a state funeral. He was succeeded by Vice President John C. Calhoun on February 3, 1835. Lawrence was deemed insane but his crime was viewed as so great that he was sentenced to death seven years after Jackson's death.

Part Three: Calhoun's First Year

The Texas Rebellion: Beginning in the summer of 1835, Mexico increasingly had problems with its frontier region of Texas as well as some other provinces as the conflict between centralisation and federalism increased. Along with Texas, the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Zacatecas, and Yucatan rose up in open revolt against Santa Anna. On October 2, the Battle of Gonzales was fought between Texas and Mexico, the first engagement of the Texas Rebellion. Two months later, on December 7, the Texans captured San Antonio and on December 19, signed their declaration of independence from Mexico at the city of Washington-on-the-Brazos, later to become Austin after the man considered as the Father of Texas.

President Calhoun's response to the start of the Texas Rebellion was that the United States should support the Texans in their struggle for independence from the 'corrupted democracy of Santa Anna's Mexico', as he stated in a speech in New Orleans. Calhoun also said that he would not directly intervene unless Mexico invaded the United States, in order to avoid angering the northern states by seeming like he overtly supported the expansion of slavery.

Expansion of Rail: During his travel to the speech in New Orleans, Calhoun became the first president to travel in a railroad car when he travelled on the Baltimore and Ohio rail connection between Washington, DC and Baltimore. Afterward, he was determined that rail expansion would serve to greatly help the country in its industrial growth. During 1835 and early 1836, he helped pass legislation to finance a railroad between Columbia and Charleston in South Carolina, as well as approving a bill to create a congressional transport committee, primarily to assist with and oversee the connection of the nations interior industrial and population centers with its ports. This would facilitate economic growth as well as encourage passenger travel in greater parts of the United States.

Toledo War: The Toledo War was a boundary dispute between the Territory of Michigan and the State of Ohio. The dispute had erupted when it was discovered that the southernmost point of Lake Michigan, the basis for the northern boundary of Ohio, was found to be more southerly than previously thought. Although there were few confrontations between the two, both the governments of Michigan Territory and Ohio refused to back down even with Calhoun and members of Congress.

The tensions between Michigan Territory and Ohio remained well into 1836. As William Henry Harrison, an Ohioan, seemed like the front runner for Calhoun's opposition in the election, Calhoun realized he didn't have anything to gain from siding with Ohio. With this, the President began supporting Michigan's position, and urged Congress and the Ohioans to side with his position. In June of 1836, Calhoun signed a bill that would accept Michigan as a state, as soon as the boundary with Ohio was settled. In August of 1836, the governors of Michigan and Ohio, with pressure from Congress and Calhoun to settle the dispute, allowed the border to be resurveyed.

To ensure impartiality, they chose a little known surveyor named John C Fremont, who was then an officer in the United States Navy. Fremont surveyed the line eastward from the southernmost point of Lake Michigan to Lake Erie, and found that the line did indeed pass south of Toledo. In compensation, Michigan allowed those who wanted to move to Ohio to do so, and compensated them for their land holdings on the Michigan side of the border.

While Michigan gained the Toledo Strip during the war, it also lost a large amount of land. This land went to the creation of the Pembina Territory in anticipation of the admission of Michigan as a state. The border between Pembina Terrtitory and Michigan Territory was formed by the Mississippi River up to the Chippewa River, then following that river to its source, then plotting a course north northeast to Lake Superior. Montevideo became the first capital of Pembina Territory.

Election of 1836: Throughout 1836, the election was fought with a tough campaign. Calhoun ran as the incumbent for the Democratic Party, nominating George M. Dallas, former senator and attorney general of Pennsylvania, as his running mate. William Henry Harrison and Henry Clay ran in their newly created Whig Party, while Daniel Webster and Willie Magnum ran for the National Republicans. While Calhoun's decision in the Toledo War lost him Ohio, it has been determined by historians that he would have likely lost Ohio anyway as it was Harrison's home state. Harrison's and Webster's attempts to gather public opinion were futile and Calhoun was elected, showing the continuing disunion of the Anti-Jacksonian parties.

Calhoun/Dallas: 150 Harrison/Clay: 74 Webster/Magnum: 67

Part Four: The Mexican Collapse

Admission of Michigan: On February 4, 1837, Michigan was admitted as a state in the Union. Before it was admitted, the land to the west of Lake Michigan was separated off to form the Marquette Territory. Detroit became the capital of the state of Michigan, which it remains to the present day. Stephen T. Mason, who was territorial governor during the Toledo War, was elected the state's first governor. John S. Homer, who opposed Mason in the 1836 territorial elections, became the first governor of Marquette Territory, moving to the new territorial capital of Green Bay.

Fall of the Mexican Republic: As 1837 began, the Texans faced another attack by Mexico. As Santa Anna marched against Texan forces, other regions in Mexico began rebelling. The Yucatan, which had rebelled two years before, rose up once again to overthrow the policies of centralization of Santa Anna. In the north, citizens in Santa Fe and many of the Spanish missions along the California coast rose up as well. Santa Anna figured that if he himself crushed the Texans, then the rest of the country would fall back in line.

Santa Anna initially won a string of victories capturing San Antonio and Corpus Christi. Upon reaching Beaumont, he caught a group of the Texans retreating to the east. Santa Anna, taking a major gamble ordered his men to pursue the Texans all the way across the Sabine River, at which point they began putting up a fight. The Texans managed to push Santa Anna back across the river, but not before letting civilians know that the Mexican army had crossed into the United States. Santa Anna lost that gamble, and on April 12, 1837, Congress approved a declaration of war on Mexico. United States troops moved into Texas and soon were chasing Santa Anna back toward the Rio Bravo. Other forces were assisting with the revolts in California and Santa Fe. John C Fremont, now part of the United States Corps of Topographical Engineers, took part in the expedition to assist the rebels in Santa Fe. Later, he traveled west and led the rebels in California down from San Francisco to capture the missions in San Diego and all the way to Baja California.

Meanwhile, Zachary Taylor drove the Mexican army out of Texas and assisted the new rebellion in the provinces of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas. In September of 1837, they declared their independence as the Republic of the Rio Bravo. Minor skirmishes continued throughout Mexico into 1838 as the independence forces and United States army contingents continued to battle the remnants of the Mexican army. The rebels cooperated with the United States forces and Santa Anna was soon captured by the Texans and imprisoned. However, despite Fremont in the west, Zachary Taylor in the north, and the country growing more and more unstable, the government in Mexico City refused to give up. It was decided that an attack on Mexico City itself would have to be made. General Winfield Scott led an army to attack Veracruz and push forth to Mexico City. He followed the approximate route of Hernan Cortez, leading to one of his nicknames being the Second Cortez. After the occupation of Mexico City, the government surrendered, and Santa Anna was freed to negotiate with the various proclaimed governments that Mexico was now at war with. In a humiliating affair, Santa Anna signed the Treaties of Galveston on May 5, 1838. In the treaties, Santa Anna and the Mexican government recognized the independence of the newly proclaimed republics of California, Rio Bravo, and Yucatan. In addition, all land east of the Rio Bravo was ceded to Texas, Veracruz was opened to all United States navy vessels, and a sum was paid to the United States government. Soon after Santa Anna returned to Mexico City and the United States forces had evacuated, he was overthrown and replaced by Federalist Anastasio Bustamante. This would only lead to further troubles and civil strife in Mexico throughout the 19th century.

Part Five: The Remainder of Calhoun's Presidency

Martin Van Buren's Ambassadorships: During Jackson's presidency, Calhoun had seen that Martin van Buren was becoming a prominent politician. Van Buren, a Dutch New Yorker, had been governor of New York as well as Jackson's Secretary of State for much of his Presidency. Calhoun, wishing to keep van Buren away from the United States to keep him out of politics, appointed van Buren to a number of ambassadorships during his presidency. Among his posts, van Buren attended the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838 as ambassador to the United Kingdom. In 1839, van Buren was appointed ambassador to the Netherlands, where he played a small part in the negotiations leading to the independence of Belgium and helping the Netherlands retain all of Limburg and Luxembourg, as well as Liege to keep the country contiguous. In exchange, Belgium received the Dutch possessions on the island of Borneo, which at the time were losing money and that the Dutch considered a bad investment. Speech on Republics: In 1839, President Calhoun made a speech in Washington on the benefits of a republican system, and encouraged all the Latin American republican movements to flourish. This speech inspired many people, especially the men fighting for the independence of the Piratini Republic. The leaders, including Guiseppe Garibaldi, were encouraged by Calhoun's speech, and managed to hold off the Brazilian Empire for six more months. In 1840, Calhoun authorized the sending of hundreds of men to go assist the Piratini Republic in their fight. By August, the Piratini forces signed a ceasefire with Brazil, and became yet another independent republic in Latin America with the former Brazilian provinces of Rio Grande do Sul and Juliana.

State of Jackson: With the intervention in Mexico, there wasn't much that Calhoun could do about the resistance of the Seminoles in the Florida Peninsula. While settlers were not moving to the lower portion of the peninsula, many were moving to the panhandle. As these settlers wanted to be part of a state, Congress passed a bill to divide the territory of Florida into two along the Aucilla River. The western portion soon was admitted on June 18, 1838, as the state of Jackson after the former President, while the rest remained a territory. The capital of Jackson was decided between Pensacola and Tallahassee, and Pensacola was decided on as many citizens of Jackson thought Tallahassee was too close to the Seminole lands and was vulnerable to raids. Also, the population of Pensacola experienced a massive increase as immigrants flocked to the city after the collapse of the Mexican state.

Election of 1840: Unfortunately, the United States intervention in Mexico and Jackson's earlier policies which Calhoun for the most part continued pushed the country into a recession in the later 1830s. Combined with the consolidation of the Whigs and National Republicans into the Whig Party, Calhoun ran into trouble during the election of 1840. While he tried to appeal to much of the nation as the continuation of the Common Man espoused by Jackson, he did not achieve very much success. The country was in an economic downturn and had grown fed up with Jackson's policies. William Henry Harrison successfully ran with the platform of the Common Man and a war hero while making Calhoun look like a wealthy southerner. Where Calhoun tried to make Harrison seem out of touch and unfit to administer the nation, Harrison's campaigners not only twisted the attacks to Harrison's favor, but pointed out that they also had Daniel Webster, then a renowned senator and politician. These campaign tactics helped William Henry Harrison win the election handily, and he was sworn in on March 3, 1841.

Calhoun/Dallas: 93 Harrison/Webster: 205

Part Six: The Whigs in Control

Competition with Clay: Right from the start of Harrison's term, the President had difficulty with the Whig leader and renowned speaker, Henry Clay. Although Clay had a powerful influence in the senate, he tried to influence the executive actions of Harrison such as appointing his cabinet. Even though the Whig party platform promised to reduce the Jacksonian spoils systems of cabinet appointments, Clay wanted to appoint Whig members who to help his advancement in the party.

Harrison resisted Clay's pressures for the most part, but had to concede a few positions to keep Clay content and agreeable, for Clay was a very influential man in the confirmation process by the Senate. However, Harrison did manage to keep most of his appointments seemingly nonpolitical and based on merit, such as the nomination and confirmation of former president John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State. Thomas Ewing was made Secretary of the Treasury and Zachary Taylor, one of the main generals on the side of the United States in the Mexican Collapse, was appointed as Secretary of War.

The Third Bank of the United States: As part of the Whig party platform, Harrison revived the Bank of the United States for the third time in the nation's history. However, to appease those senators and representatives who had supported Jackson in the closure of the bank, Harrison had the charter length reduced from the previous twenty years to a three year charter to ensure more Congressional oversight on the actions of the Bank. During the year of the charter's expiration, Congress would deliberate on whether to renew the charter or to let it expire. The Bank reopened in June of 1842 with Nicholas Biddle once again at its head.

The Bank helped the United States government recover from the debt it had incurred during the Mexican Collapse by offering loans to many new businesses that had sprung up. Along with the American System, the Third Bank helped spur the growth of railroads in the United States during the 1840s. The Bank also helped to standardize the currency used in the United States during this period, as notes from the bank were often used instead of notes from State Banks when making large purchases.

The American System: The last large part of the Whig party platform that Harrison impelemented during his presidency was the idea of the American System. Harrison gradually impelemented this policy over the full length of his term. Despite the reluctance of the South, a high tariff was placed on many raw material as well as manufactured goods. However, to appease the south and the new neighbors in the west, the tariff was exempted for United States exports to Texas, California, Rio Bravo, and Yucatan. To support the expansion of American internal infrastructure, Harrison and the Transport Committee authorized a number of bills which financed the construction of railroads. These railroads were primarily in the north, and connected the shipping centers in New York and New England to the burgeoning cities on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. While a few railroads were constructed in the southern states, they did not see much rail growth aside from small state or private investments.

Part Seven: A Growing Nation

Iowa Purchase: Up until 1841, the border of the state of Missouri had been a straight north-south line. The area between that border and the Missouri River in the west had been granted to the Iowa tribe. After encroachments by white settlers, the Bureau of Indian Affairs began negotiations with the Iowa and other tribes who lived on the land. The government eventually bought the land for eight thousand dollars and the natives agreed to move to lands west of the Missouri River. The purchased land, known as the Ioaw Purchase, became part of the state of Missouri, finalizing the state's current borders. Admission of New States: In March of 1842, the census from Marquette Territory had reached 75,000 people, and a bill was passed to have it admitted as a new state. Green Bay became the state's capital because of its central location within the state and its having been the territorial capital.

After the admission of Marquette, some Southern states began to complain about the large numebr of northern states that were being admitted to the Union. They lobbied in Congress for the admission of Florida as a state, despite the continued presence of Seminoles in the rural swamp areas of the territory. In May, 1843, a bill was finally passed to admit the state after a number of settlers, encouraged by their state governments, move down into Florida and settled either on the coasts or in the northern reaches of the territory. The city of Jacksonville was declared the capital until the problem of the Seminoles was dealt with, then a new state Congressional meeting would decide whether to stay in Jacksonville or move to a different city further south.

A few months later in August, the settlers in the southern area of Pembina Territory applied for statehood. Congress passed the bill, and the new state of Demoine was established with the city of Waterloo as its capital due to its cental location, rather than the larger but far more northern city of Minneapolis. Later in the year, two forts would be established in the state; Fort Raccoon near the confluence of the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers, and Fort Decatur, near where the two forks of the Des Moines River join together.

Oregon Trail: After the original explorations by Lewis and Clark, and the later expeditions by explorers and military men such as John Jacob Astor, Zebulon Pike, and Benjamin Bonneville, many settlers traversed the American West toward the Oregon Territory. Many of these first wave of settlers were descendants of Frenchmen in Upper Louisiana who desired better fur trapping grounds further west. However, this wave was not very large and many of the settlers were subject to attacks by the native tribes. In the 1840s, a second wave of settlers began coming west, following the paths set before them. While only a few made it all the way to the Pacific and the Columbia River, many others settled towns along the trail, along the Platte River as well as along the Snake River.

A Multicultural Nation: Since 1820, when immigration records began being kept in the United States, there had been a wide influx of immigrants from many places in northern Europe. During the 1830s, that number only increased with over six hundred thousand coming to the United States in that decade. The 1840s only brought more people as Europe went through hardships. Irishmen came after crops started failing and settled mostly in New England. Englishmen and Scotsmen, many among them refugees fleeing the British Isles after the Chartist Uprisings, either went to Canada or settled all among the eastern and southern states. German immigrants in the 1840s, fleeing general hardship, settled in independent Tejas, as well as along the upper Mississippi, the Great Lakes, and along the Missouri as it approached the Mississippi. Dutchmen, upset by the strife cause by the Belgian Revolution and a heavy storm that battered the Low Countries in January of 1843, came and settled not only in the Hudson Valley, where the remnants of New Netherland still remained, but also in New Orleans and the lowlands along the lower Mississippi and Arkansaw rivers. Many of these immigration patterns would leave their mark in the town names that are in those regions today.

Part Eight: The Election of 1844

Election of 1844: Both conventions of 1844 highlighted the troubles faced by both parties of thattime to unify a country that was growing ever more sectionalized. The Democats were looking to recover the Presidency after the loss to Harrison, while the Whigs still had internal disputes with the power-hungry Clay.

The Whigs were divided as to whether to renominate Harrison, the incumbent, or Clay, who had run previously and was an expert speaker. At the nomination, after five rounds of ballots, the votes were about half and half between Harrison and Clay. After four more rounds of ballots, Harrison got the nomination, but an embittered Clay never announced his support for Harrison. The nomination of Harrison would also end Henry Clay's congressional career, for he had resigned his position in the senate during his run for the nomination.

The Democrats were also divided on their candidates, but their trouble was how to regain the executive office instead of a power struggle. The two major candidates for the nomination, former President Calhoun and New York governor Martin van Buren, were both from opposite ends of the country but neither would accept the Vice Presidential seat. At the convention, the two remained at a deadlock after many rounds of ballots. Van Buren's insistence on immediate negotiation with Britain over the Oregon Country made him a pacifist in the eyes of the public, while Calhoun was seen as being too southern of a candidate and his failure to win reelection in 1840 had hurt his standing with the party. In addition to this, Lewis Cass, a Michigan senator, still had a few dozen votes that were blocking the supermajority necessary for either to get the nomination. During a meeting between rounds of voting, discussion turned to a compromise candidate. After great deliberation, various Democrat party memebrs introduced the name of James K. Polk, speaker of the House and a representative from Tennessee. Talks with Polk began, and after his agreement to run for the nomination and Cass throwing his support behind Polk and solely running for Vice President, the momentum toward Polk had begun. After two more ballots, Polk had become the clear nominee and was nominated, with Cass as the Vice Presidential candidate.

The election itself was less intense as the two primaries, but it was still a hard-fought election. Polk laid out a clear platform for his campaign, that made four points. Polk's goals were to get some or all of the Oregon Country, bring Texas into the United States, get rid of the National Bank, and establish an independent treasury system that would separate the government funds and revenues from the national banking systems. Harrison tried to compete with Polk but found it difficult without Clay to support him on the campaign. Harrison could not claim that he was the western candidate because both he and Polk hailed from western states. Harrison attacked Polk that he was not baptized because his father was a deist, to which Polk responded that Thomas Jefferson and many of the founding fathers were also deists. Harrison also attacked Polk's relative obscurity within the political scene, but to no avail. In the election, Polk defeated Harrison and won the presidency, carrying much of the South and the key states of Virginia and Pennsylvania. Also, the Congressional elections of 1844 gave the Democrats a majority in the Senate.

Polk/Cass: 172 Harrison/Webster: 123

Part Nine: The Annexation of Texas

Annexation of Texas: After his inauguration, President Polk set out to accomplish the first goal that he set out during his election campaign; to bring the Republic of Texas into the Union. Polk sent Joel Roberts Poinsett as the United States consul to Texas to negotiate the terms of the annexation in June. By August, the Congress of Texas voted in approval the annexation and the motion gained the approval of David Crockett, then President of the Republic. Meanwhile, Polk gathered support from Congress to support bringing Texas into the United States.

Polk and many of the Democrats spent the majority of the summer of 1845 garnering support in Congress for the annextion of Texas. While many northern senators initially opposed the idea of bringing more slave states into the Union, especially one as big as Texas, some were won over by a compromise to bring the remainder of Pembina Territory in within the remainder of Polk's term. Still, a two thirds majority could not be reached in the Senate at the next vote. At the next Senate meeting, however, president pro tempore John Tyler managed to bring some of the Whigs opposing annexation to ratify the treaty, and in September, Texas was brought into the Union.

Texas was initially brought into the United States as a territory, but its more populated areas quickly became states. In March of 1846, the area of the Republic of Texas was divided into three parts. Tejas and Houston, separated by the Colorado River, were admitted that month. Samuel Houston became governor of Tejas and David Burnet became governor of the state of Houston. David Crockett, president of Texas at the time of annexation, was elected as one of the first senators from the state. The admission of Tejas and Houston brought in two more slave states, although the states tried to remain neutral on the issue when it was brought up. The states of Houston and Tejas hold a number of interesting facts in their early history. During the four months the Tejas state capitol building in San Antonio was being constructed on the west side of Alamo Plaza, the legislative sessions were held across the plaza in the chapel of the Alamo mission, which had seen a minor battle during the Texan War of Independence. The admission of Houston to the United States is an interesting note in history, for it marks the only time a President has had a state named after him before holding his office as President.

Part Ten: Of States and Banks

Admission of Pembina and Itasca: After Tejas and Houston had been brought into the Union, northern congressmen were clamoring for new states to be created out of the lands in Pembina Territory. The population of the territory had been increasing as immigrants poured in and as copper mining boomed in the region. By the beginning of the Polk administration, many cities and forts had been founded along the many rivers and lakes in the area. In the summer of 1847, Pembina Territory as divided by the Minnesota and Red Rivers, and the state of Itasca was created from the eastern portion with Duluth at the western end of Lake Superior as its capital.

A year later, there were many pressing for the admission of Pembina to the Union. However, there were problems with the native Sioux tribes living in the region. After forts were built at positions on the east side of the Missouri, settlers and soldiers began coming to the region. The settlers tended to cluster around the forts to protect them from raids by the native Americans for a while, but soon the population grew large enough that the government of Pembina Territory decided that buying land from the Sioux was necessary. Representatives from the Sioux tribes and the United Staes government met in early 1848, and negotiated treaties regarding the movement of the Sioux and other tribes in the area.

The agreements either states that the tribes would live in peace with the settlers in their current living areas, or that they could move north or west across the Missouri River. Despite the Sioux tribes' signing of the treaties, compensation was often never paid because of corruption or the money was sent directly to settlers and traders who Sioux leaders had become indebted to. Pembina was finally admitted as a state in late 1848, with the first state capital at Yankton on the Missouri.

Expiration of the Third Bank: With Polk coming into office and the Democrats gaining a majority in the Senate once again, the era of the Third Bank was coming to a close. The bank's charter was set to expire in 1845, and despite the lobbying by the Whig congressmen to renew the charter, any bill that was passed to renew it was vetoed by Polk. The Bank finally expired at the end of 1845, and Biddle, who had been the president of the Second and Third Banks, died soon after. However, not all policies from the Third Bank were discarded. The issuing of United States notes was kept, but moved under the jurisdiction of the United States Treasury Department. The Treasury continued to issue these US notes, and backed them with gold and silver, which could be redeemable at select Treasury offices around the country. These becamse the first official national currency and, while not going far in replacing the use of coins, were often used for large-scale purchases and increased the credibility of paper currency in the United States, leading to the repeal of the Coinage Act passed by President Calhoun a decade earlier.

Part Eleven: The Beginning of the Oregon War

Tension in Oregon: By the summer of 1846, tensions between the United States and the British officials in North America were high. The Provisional Government established by American settlers at Champoeg three years earlier had been growing, with incoming settlers using Champoeg as a main camp before going off to establish their own communities in the Oregon Country. A petition sent by William Gilpin and Fremont as a The dispute over the northern border of Maine remained unsettled, and the influx of American settlers into the Oregon Country was spreading north. While it was clear that the government in London had no desire for war, the United States and the settlers in Oregon were much more eager. Many forts were established by the United States and the Champoeg Provisional Government in the region to protect the settlers. Thus, when some British soldiers tried to force a community of American settlers off their land along the Fraser River near Fort Langley, shots were fired and the Oregon War had begun.[1]

While the information of the fighting traveled east to Washington and London, the Champoeg government led by Gilpin and Fremont and the forces of the Hudson Bay Company conducted the affairs of the war in Oregon. American settlers quickly took the lightly defended Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River and reconstructed the fortifications at Fort Nez Perce, which had been abandoned by the British after a fire two years earlier, but were unable to gain control of any British forts north of the Columbia River. The Champoegans did manage to hold on to most of the American forts on the north bank of the Columbia, including Fort Bonneville at a southern bend in the river and Fort Choteau at the confluence of the Wenatchee and Columbia Rivers.[2]

[1] The actual beginning of the Oregon War is disputed, but this is what is commonly stated in United States history textbooks. [2] Fort Bonneville and Fort Choteau did not exist in OTL. Fort Bonneville is named after general Benjamin Bonneville and Choteau is named for trader and explorer Rene Auguste Choteau. Part Twelve: The Summer Campaigns

Summer of 1846: Word of the outbreak of hostilities in Oregon spread quickly to the two governments, but it reached Washington first. The United States ordered troops to advance northward to stop the British from sending further supplies to Oregon via land. Echoing the War of 1812, most of the fighting was centered around the Great Lakes. However despite small gains by either side during the summer months, the majority of the fighting outside of Oregon came to a stalemate. There were only three real pushes that either side made in the summer months of the war. A United States force went north along the Red River to Winnipeg and laid siege to the city, but failed to capture it. The British, in turn, captured Sault Saint Marie in Marquette but failed to advance any further. In Maine, a combined land and naval attack under the joint command of General Winfield Scott and Commodore Matthew C. Perry advanced into New Brunswick. While Scott's advance stalled before it could reach Fredericton, Perry was able to lead a raid and bombardment of Saint John's. Perry had to retreat, however, when a British flotilla arrived south from Halifax to engage.

In Oregon, the summer months saw the most brutal fighting in the war. In June, President Polk and Congress passed a bill organizing any United States forces in the Oregon Country under Fremont. Fremont, commanding the newly formed Oregon battalion, moved north from Oregon City and in late July took Fort Vancouver after the short Battle of Bellevue, in which the 700 Americans and 400 local Chinook natives defeated the 300 British who were defending the fort. The Chinook had sided with the Americans after Fremont promised they could keep the lands they had settled on. Fremont continued north and rached the outskirts of Fort Nisqually by the end of August. Aside from Fremont's campaign, Gilpin led forces from Forts Choteau and Bonneville along the north bank of the Columbia River to encircle Fort Okanogan. They reached the fort and surrounded it starting in early August. To cease supplies from reaching the fort, the soldiers attacked and fired upon any ships in the Columbia River that were heading for the fort. The small fort did not hold out for very long due to the lack of supplies and the men inside had surrendered by the end of the month. Meanwhile, a small British naval force on the Pacific began harassing shipping enterring the Columbia and bombarding Fort Astoria.

Part Thirteen: A Winter in Oregon

Oregon War, Winter of 1846: As the months went on and summer turned to winter, the British soldiers in Fort Nisqually were running low on supplies and surrendered. Fremont continued north along the coast while William Gilpin's men went upstream along the Columbia. Gilpin and his company quickly reached and captured Fort Colville. Gilpin continued up the Columbia River and in October, intercepted a supply train taking supplies from the Hudson Bay Company headquarters of York Factory to British settlements in Oregon. After the supply wagons surrendered, Gilpin's men hatched a plan where they would follow the supply train west to Fort Thompson and use it to capture the fort. The plan worked, and Fort Thompson fell at the beginning of November. The capture of the supply train would play a vital part in the success of the Americans during the winter campaigns in Oregon.

While Gilpin was heading for Fort Thompson, Fremont's men continued north along the coast and reached Fort Langley in mid-December. By then the fort was dangerously short on supplies after Gilpin had captued the supply train. After a week, the soldiers in Fort Langley laid down their arms and surrendered. Fremont and Gilpin remained in Fort Langley and Fort Thompson for the remainder of the winter.

Meanwhile, in Britain, Parliament was clamoring for negotitations to begin with the United States as they had other things to worry about. The winter of 1846-47 was a harsh one in Britain, and combined with the tensions and emigration of many Irishmen due to the ongoing famine on the island, many Parliamentarians felt that the protection of the Columbia Department was of low interest to the United Kingdom at the time. In early 1847, it was decided that negotiations with the United States would begin. President Polk was also eager to begin negotiations as support for the war was beginning to fall in the States as well.

Part Fourteen: The End of the Oregon War

A Snowy Ceasefire: As the United States and the United Kingdom moved toward negotiation, fighting died down in Oregon. The United States Pacific Squadron, led by John Sloat and based in Monterrey, California, drove off the British ships near Fort Astoria. The Pacific Squadron then continued north and began denying ships from passing near Fort Victoria. After a few days, the Pacific Squadron travelled up toward Fort Langley and met Fremont and his men at Warren Bay.[1] Fremont and Sloat coordinated an amphibious landing on the east side of Vancouver Island and proceeding south to capture Fort Victoria. However, they never got the chance to enact this plan.

In early February, a ceasefire was arranged between the United Kingdom and the United States, and the path was laid toward negotiation. A month later, the peace negotiations began in Madrid, with Washington Irving as United States ambassador to Spain representing American interests and Sir Frederick Pollock,[2] a Privy Councillor, representing Britain. Alexander Christie was also present at the negotiations as a voice of the Hudson's Bay Company. The deliberation on the specifics of the peace treaty last for a few weeks, but finally a workable peace was made.

The Peace of Madrid: The Peace of Madrid was signed on March 18, 1847, after being ratified by both Congress and Parliament. While it was clear that the United States won the Oregon War, the country did not accomplish all its war aims and even have to make some concessions. The main body of the treaty was concerned with the concessions in the Oregon Territory. Firstly, the United States did not gain up to the 54 40'N line that surrounded American support for the war. The border line was arranged at the 52nd degree North latitude, so as to pass between Vancouver Island and Queen Charlotte Islands. Further, Great Britain retained fishing rights off the coast of Oregon north of Vancouver Island.

Also in the Peace of Madrid, the two sides also took the opportunity to settle the remaining territorial disputes along their shared border. To connect the region under jurisdiction of the United States north of the Lake of the Woods in northern Itasca, the border was extended west to the Red River. Also, Maine's border was settled as the River Saint John's going to the longitude midway between the American claim up to 1798 and the American claim after 1798. The border would then continue south along the longitude until it reached the Saint Croix River, and would follow the Saint Croix River to the coast. An odd inclusion into the treaty was the article calling for the return of the skull of Chief Comcomly, which had been stolen from his burial ground in 1834 by a physician to be placed in a museum in England.[3]

After the Peace: With the Oregon War ended, the two sides returned to diplomatic normalcy, but the war would begin a rift between Great Britain and the United States that would affect world politics for at least a century. The American reaction to the end of the war was generally positive. The United States had bested her former master for sure, unlike the ambiguity of the American victory in the War of 1812. However, some Americans felt disheartened that the United States did not gain all of the disputed territory in the peace. In Britain, the war was looked upon as a minor affair compared to Britain's domestic troubles of the time. However, Parliament was alarmed at the relative lack of defense that the colonies in British North America put up, especially Nova Scotia and New Brunswick with their important naval bases, and attributed it to the decentralization of the colonies and the slow dispensations from Parliament. As a result, the British government encouraged confederation in the Maritime colonies, granting self- governance to Nova Scotia in 1848. New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island followed with self-governance in the 1850s. In 1861, the last step to confederation was completed with the Charlottetown Conference. At the conference, the three colonies were joined into the Acadian Union, with the administrative capital settling in Moncton, New Brunswick.

[1] Warren Bay is OTL Boundary Bay, which lies on the border between British Columbia and Washington. But with no boundary, I had to think of a new name. Warren Bay is named after the USS Warren, the first ship of the Pacific Squadron that Fremont saw coming north. [2] Frederick Pollock was a Privy Councilor in OTL, but not in 1847 according to Wikipedia. IOTL he is also known for the Pollock Octahedral Numbers Conjecture apparently. [3]This happened IOTL, but I don't think it was ever returned.

Part Fifteen: Advance of Religion and Science

Mormon Exodus: After being banished from towns in Ohio and Indiana, many followers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for their religious beliefs, they founded the town of Nuavoo in western Illinois. However, they continued to be persecuted by the state legislature and mobs of angry citizens. In 1847, after resolving to find elsewhere to settle, the Church split into two groups. One group, led by Hyrum Smith, brother of Church founder Joseph Smith Jr., went north to British North America. The other group, led by Brigham Young, went west looking for land in the sparsely populated Republic of California.

Smith's group headed north, arriving at Fort Decatur in April. His group continued northward eventually traveling along the east bank of the Red River. Finally crossing into Britain in late 1847, the group set up camp for the winter near Winnipeg. In the spring, Smith decided on a settlement after considering various possible sites around Lake Winnipeg and the surrounding area. The settlement was in between Lake Manitoba and Lake Saint Martin.[1] Smith named the settlement Whitmer after one of the Three Witnesses.

Young's group, the Vanguard Company, went west and consisted of the majority of the Mormons who fled Nauvoo. The group crossed Demoine and then followed the Platte River west, much like those heading to Oregon Territory. After following the Platte and the North Platte for months, the Vanguard Company broke off the river as it turned south. After reaching Fort Vasquez,[2] the company turned full south and entered the Republic of California in early 1848. Young consulted with trappers and frontiersmen about numerous sites for settlement as Smith did in Winnipeg, and decided on two places for settlement. The first and primary town, Vanguardia, would be on the east edge of Ute Lake. The second settlemnt, Youngstown, was much further south and east, along a bend in the Colorado River.[3] Over the years the population grew and smaller settlements spread out throughout the area, especially between the well travelled trail between Vanguardia and Youngstown. To this day the Mormon Church is one of the largest religious groups in the state of Espejo.

The Poinsettian Institution: In July of 1847, Joel Roberts Poinsett founded the Poinsettian Institution, an organization to promote the advancement of science and general knowledge. The creation of the Institution was funded by the estate of Louis Elizabeth Hungerford,[4] after the death of his father, Hubert. Louis had read the will of his great-uncle James Smithson, which had stipulated that should Hubert die without heirs, the estate would go to the United States government for an "establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

Initially keeping the estate upon his father's death in 1835, Louis had over the next decade become infatuated with science and the world around him, and after reading a copy of Charles Darwin's Journal and Remarks on his voyage on the HMS Beagle, decided to fulfill Smithson's will and donate the wealth of the estate to the United States government. After the money was given to the government, Poinsett oversaw the creation of the Institution, and was its first Secretary.

[1] OTL Fairford, Maintoba [2] OTL Fort Bridger, Wyoming [3] Vanguardia is Provo and Youngstown is Moab [4] This is the first fictional person I have mentioned in the timeline. In OTL, Hubert did not have any heirs, and the money went to the government automatically.

Part Sixteen: The Last of the Jacksonians

Purchase of Cuba: In 1848, Polk set out to complete the final part of his platform, and sent ambassador Washington Irving to discuss a purchase of Cuba by the United States. Irving was authorized to offer anywhere up to one hundred million dollars. The idea was supported by southerneres as Cuba already had slavery and it wouild create some balance to the gains from the Oregon War. Initially Irving's offers were not met with much approval by the Spanish, but when words of yet another revolt on the island, this time led by Narciso Lopez, the Spanish government agreed to sell the island for seventy milliond dollars, and allowing Spain to keep naval vessels in Cuban ports. Cuba was officially transferred from Spain to the United States on January 1, 1849.

Election of 1848: The road to the 1848 election began with President Polk announcing that he would not be running for a second term. Polk stated that he had accomplished all his goals as President and thus had fulfilled his time in the White House. Since Polk was not in the running, the Democrats nominated Vice President Lewis Cass as their candidate, with Martin van Buren as the Democrat candidate for Vice President. On the Whig side, they nominated two generals from the Mexican-American War. Winfield Scott was picked for President and Zachary Taylor was chosen for Vice President.

The campaign of 1848 was the first one to bring up the issue of salavery. Scott and Taylor managed to remain vague on the issue, and managed to win many voters in the South. However, the Democrats were troubled by van Buren's outspoken platform against slavery. Van Buren's position gave the Democrats an image of a Northern ticket. This lost them many votes in the South, while gaining them little in the Northern states where few people considered slavery a major issue. In the end, the election marked the end of the era of the Jacksonian Democrats, and saw Winfield Scott become the last President running on the Whig Party. Prior to leaving office in March of 1849, Polk's last action as President was the creation of the Department of Interior, which would oversee domestic affairs in the United Staes.

Scott/Taylor: 165 Cass/Van Buren: 139

Part Seventeen: Technological and Social Innovation

The Age of Steam: Winfield Scott's presidency occurred during a time of great change in the United States. With innovations in steam technology over the past few decades and the spread of the electrical telegraph patented by Samuel Morse in 1837 across the country expedited communications and transportation across the country.

Transportation technology was renewed with the creation of major railway and steamship companies in the 1840s. By 1850 the United States had close ten thousnad miles of rail, including a railroad connection Boston to Richmond, Virginia. Companies such as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Great Lakes Railway along wtih financial backing from industrialists like James Gadsden in South Carolina and David Levitt in Massachusetts spurred the construction of the United States rail network. James Gadsden in particular played an important role in the expansion of the South Carolina Railroad. By 1851 when Gadsden left the executive position, the railroad had expanded from its beginnings as a connection between Charleston and Columbia to connect Savannah, Atlanta, Jacksonville, and Pensacola. River transportation was also revolutionized during the first half of the 19th century as steamships became commonplace. The Erie Canal and other canals built across the country allowed for river transport alongside rail. The most well known businessman to invest in steamships was Cornelius Vanderbilt. After profiting from his operation of a ferry between Staten Island and Newark in New Jersey and a steamship service between Manhattan and Albany in New York during the 1830s, Vanderbilt struck further west to make his real fortune.[1] In 1844, Vanderbilt founded a business that offered steamship transportation centered around Saint Louis along the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio rivers. The business grew quickly, and by the time Scott entered office, Vanderbilt's company was one of the most profitable and one of the largest private employers in the United States.[2] The success of Vanderbilt's steamship company helped to start the growth of the area between Saint Louis and Cairo the population center it is today. Fourierism in the United States: In the early 1800s, Charles Fourier advocated a social system based on cooperation and concern toward one another. He believed that everyone in a community should work toward to better the community, and advocated self-sufficiency as he thought that trade was the root of poverty and conflict. Fourier advocated these societies to be organized into small communes called 'phalanxes'. His ideas became known as Fourierism and laid some of the groundwork that led to the modern ideas of socialism.

In the United States, the disipline of Fourierism caught on in parts of New England, as the idea of small communal utopias spread across parts of the country. The main advocate of Fourierism in the United States was Horace Greeley, founder of the New York Tribune and a major figure in the Whig and later Republican parties. Greeley sponsored the founding of a number of towns based on the ideals of Fouriers teachings in the 1850s including Phalanx, Massachusetts, Reunion, Calhoun, and Harmony, Roosevelt. These and other Fourierist towns did not last long due to their relative isolationism and the ideals advocated by Fourier and Greeley lapsed for another thirty years.

However, the socialist ideas of Fourier and other socialist thinkers of the mid- nineteenth century did reapper in the 1870s and 1880s. Many of Fourier's ideas of cooperation were revisited in a number of towns that called themselves 'transforms' throughout the western United States. These towns, however, accepted trade as a means to assist in ending poverty and their leaders held a Fourier Transform Council to discuss the advancement of Fourier's ideas in the United States. The Council met five times in twenty years until a Fourier Party was formed in 1898, eventually becoming part of the Progressive Party.[3]

[1]This part about Vanderbilt is all OTL, except where he heads west. [2]This is also OTL, according to Wikipedia. [3] Yes, I mostly did that paragraph so I could make a Fourier Transform pun.

Part Eighteen: The Country Goes West Westward Settlement: The 1850s saw renewed interest in migrations to the sparsely populated west. After the increased access between the eastern seabord and the Midwestern states, people tired of the urbanization of the northern cities moved further west in search of land and wealth. Soon, small towns sprung up along the Platte, Kanza[1], and Arkansaw rivers as settlers continued to move west. Many of these settlers in the northern part of what would become Kearny Territory were descendants of French and the surviving towns' names reflect their French heritage. Meanwhile, the southern area was mostly settled by southerners who were seeking to start up farms in the newly opened lands.

Further north, settlers bound for Oregon Territory during the 1850s often did not make the full journey and instead built their homes along the tributaries of the northern Missouri River. These towns caused the population of the Unorganized Territory to boom, and representatives from the territory lobbied in Washington for incorporation into official territories. In 1851, Congress and President Scott passed legislation to officially created organized territories. The area would be divided into three parts. The border of the state of Houston was extended northward to the Missouri and everything east of that became Kearny Territory. In addition, the 42nd northern parallel that formed the border between California and the United States was continued east to the border of Kearny Territory. The area to the north became Dakhota Territory while the area to the south was merged into New Mexico Territory, as it was most easily reachable from Santa Fe.

These settlements brought many hardships, especially in Dakhota Territory. Besides moving west of the Missouri River, there had been no agreements made between the native populations and the United States government on American settlers in the area. As such, the natives sometimes resorted to raiding American settlements if necessary. Scott being the military man he was, authorized the construction of military outposts along the rivers to protect settlers from native incursions. Some major forts established during the 1850s include Fort Collins and Bent's Fort in Colorado, Fort Laramie in Pahsapa, and Fort Washita in Calhoun.[2] Some of these forts have become historic sites, while others have developed into cities of their own, but all of them are a testament to the settling of the Great Plains and the western United States.

The Issue of Slavery: With the incorporation of the western territories into the nation, the debate over the expansion of slavery intensified in Congress. Cuba was admitted as a slave state, making the balance in Congress nineteen slave states to seventeen free states. While this balance seemed to favor slavery in the territories, the senators of Missouri and Delaware were divided on the issue as European immigrants came to those states and the urban population increased. This created a deadlock on slavery legislation for much of Scott's presidency.

However, there was another reason for this deadlock. Up until 1851, most of the bills that had been proposed were to decide the issue for the entire Unorganized Territory, with a few proposing the border between free and slave states extend west from the northern border of Missouri or at the 42nd parallel north. With the division of the territory, it became possible to decide on each territory individually. With the epxansion of New Mexico Territory and the many settlers coming from Tejas and Houston, slavery was allowed in the territory.

But with the uncertainty of whether the United States would gain California or any territory south of the Rio Bravo, the Missouri Compromise that was passed in 1820 was brought into review. This brought the possiblity of slavery into both Kearny and Dakhota Territory. While there was not much doubt over whether Dakhota would become a free territory, Kearny Territory presented an opportunity for the southern states to gain the concessions they had been looking for. The dispute over Calhoun Territory would not be resolved during Scott's administration, and the resolution of the dispute would bring much animosity between the northern and southern states.

[1]The Kansas River. [2]All these forts existed in OTL.

Part Nineteen: Coming Changes

Foreign Happenings: While the United States was experiencing increased sectionalism and technological innovations, Europe was undergoing a series of changes as well. In what would become known as the Midcentury Revolutions, France went from being a monarchy to a republic, the Austrian Empire was reformed, and the stage was set for Italian Unification. There were attempted changes in some of the German states, but none of them got very far.

In France, after the death of king Louis-Philippe in early 1850, the wave of revolutions and rebellions was kicked off as many Parisians, inclduing Orleanists and Republicans, gathered to protest the continuation of the monarchy in his son. After a week of revolts and virtual lawlessness in Paris, a provisional government was able to be formed. After months of deliberation, elections were organized in the country and Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was elected the first titular president of the Second French Republic.

Meanwhile, in the Americas, Mexico's internal conflicts continued. In fact, as time went on the instability in Mexico heightened. During the 1840s Mexico had no less than twenty changes in the presidency, with Antonio López de Santa Anna and Anastasio Bustamante each holding the presidency four nonconsecutive times during the decade. The struggle between the various factions in the Mexican government often led to brief civil wars or insurrections in different provinces of the country, but all of these were put down forcefully. This instability would continue for many years to come, until finally shattered as the United Provinces of Central America had in the 1830s.

Mexico's instability caused many problems among its neighbors. With many Mexicans eager to get away from the violence and civil strife, the populations of the neighboring countries swelled. The populations of San Diego and Yuma in California doubled between 1840 and 1850 while new towns were settled along the Verde River. The Republic of Rio Bravo and Republic of Yucatan also saw massive immigration and this put a strain on their economies. The United States and other countries offered aid to Yucatan and Rio Bravo, but it only alleviated the economic strain somewhat. Unemployment and crime became a problem in the cities, and corruption in the government eventually led to these countries increasingly falling under foreign influence.

Election of 1852: Throughout the 1852 election, slavery was by far the dominant issue. In the Whig primaries, Vice President Taylor had fallen out of fashion with the Whig party members and many southerners for his vacillating stance on the expansion of slavery and was replaced by fellow Virginian John Botts. Scott also struggled, but eventually gained the nomination, narrowly defeating Daniel Webster. The Democrats chose rising star Stephen Douglas for their presidential candidate, while Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis was chosen as the vice presidential candidate.

With Scott's slightly abolitionist notions on slavery having been brought out over the course of his term, many Southern states turned against him. This combined with Douglas's promotion of popular sovereignty for deciding slavery in the territories and the Democrat nomination of a candidate from the Deep South for vice president, the Whigs lost much of their fervor and as a result, the election. This would be the last election that the Whig Party would participate in, as in the next few years the party fractured along northern and southern lines.

Aside from the national election, slavery was also important in the state elections. The banning of slavery was on the ballot in both Missouri and Delaware in that year. In Delaware, the vote went in favor of banning slavery as the practice had declined in the state over the last decade, and the final slaves were manumitted with payment from the state in 1853. In Missouri, however, the vote was much closer, and was generally divided between those in the north of the state in favor of banning slavery and those in the south of the state who were against it. In the end though, slavery was upheld in Missouri in 1852.

Douglas/Davis: 168 Scott/Botts: 142 Part Twenty: Coming Together and Growing Apart

A Continental Idea: With increasing amounts of people traveling west, many entrepreneurs and politicians saw a need for an eventual link between the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts in the United States. During the Douglas administration, many proposals were brought to Congress for rail lines connecting the two coasts. Some suggested routes started from Saint Louis or Chicago, which had already been connected back to the major east coast cities, while others proposed paths going up to Minneapolis and then west.

The western end of the proposed transcontinental railway was often more varied. Some proposals desired to keep the railroad in the United States and ended the railway at one of the small but fast-growing costal towns in Oregon Territory. Others saw a more southerly route that passed through the California Republic to end in Monterrey, Yerba Buena, or San Diego. Despite the great interest taken by the government in completing a rail line between the two coasts, sectionalism between north and south stopped any major progress until the 1870s when private companies expanded west.

Popular Sovereignty: With many Americans moving west into the Great Plains, Stephen Douglas passed a bill in 1854 with support from former Vice President Lewis Cass that would open up Kearny Territory to further settlement. With the bill he advocated the position of popular sovereignty and letting the people of a territory decide whether it would allow slavery when it was admitted to the Union. This led to increasing problems as ardent abolitionists and Southern slaveholders moved into the territory to promote their respective positions.

In the months after the bill was passed, both slaveholders and freesoilers poured into the territory. Slaveholders from Missouri and Arkansaw soon clashed with freesoilers from Chicago and New England. These settlers came at odds with each other as the frontier towns swelled with people, and in spring of 1855 violence broke out that would soon engulf the entire territory. The violence began with what is now known as the Haarlem Riots. The town of Haarlem lies on the Sparne River[1] near where it joins the Arakansaw, and grew during the opening of Kearny Territory because of its proximity to Arkansaw and Missouri. In the decade after the city's founding, it had grown to over two thousand people. With such growth, slavery became a great issue in the town. In April of 1855, the murder of a freesoiler by one of the slaveholders in the town spiraled out of control into general violence. The riot lasted almost the entire day before law was restored in the town and in all, seven people were killed. This sparked more riots in the rest of the territory as a proslavery legislature came into power. In July, noted abolitionist John Brown attempted to bar the legislature from entering the territorial capital at Council Grove. While John Brown was killed in the resulting skirmish, he was remembered and soon became a martyr for the freesoilers in Kearny Territory. After further threats against the legislators, the territorial capital of Kearny was relocated southward to Fort Gibson. In response, the freesoilers set up their own territorial legislature in Council Grove. While the violence gradually decreased in 1856, the competing legislatures lasted long after Douglas's administration and the events of 1855 and 1856 greatly hurt Douglas in the eyes of the American people.

[1] The Canadian River

Part Twenty-One: The Adventures of William Walker

Adventures of William Walker: In the 1850s, there were many in the southern United States who desired to extend slavery throughout the Caribbean and Central America. Scoieties such as the Knights of the Golden Circle advocated the idea, and helped encourage adventurous Americans to expand the reach of slavery themselves. The most successful and well known of these adventurers or 'filibusters' as they became known was William Walker.

In 1853, Walker went on a recruiting campaign in the southern states for expanding slavery in the Caribbean and possibly bringing the areas they conquered into the United States as slave states. Gathering only 70 men on the continent, Walker went to Cuba to gather more men. There he met with Narciso López, who joined him and helped to recruit over 200 more men into Walker's band. The next summer, Walker and López set off from Cuba to Haiti, where they landed on Tortuga. The men went to Port Paix on the mainland and set the town up as their base of operations, with Walker proclaiming he and López as President and Vice President of the Republic of Hispañola. After a few months, Walker and his men found they were running out of supplies, and after a skirmish with Haiti's emperor Faustin I, Walker and his accomplices returned to the United States, disgraced.

However, walker did not give up. Three years later, in late 1857, Walker decided to take advantage of the unrest in Nicaragua. Getting financing from Cornelius Vanderbilt after he promised Vanderbilt shipping rights along the Rio San Juan as well as the rights to build a canal across Nicaragua, Walker gather almost one thousand followers and settled in the Mosquito Coast on the eastern shore of Nicaragua. Proclaiming he was there to help the Liberal Party of Nicaragua win favor by annexing the Mosquito Coast. After driving out what little British soldiers there were at San Juan del Norte (now San Juan del Este) Walker continued up the coast until he reached Bluefields, and in early 1858 signed a treaty with the local Miskito recognizing Walker's sovereignty over the land. Shortly after, Walker proclaimed the Mosquito Republic and claimed that the country was sovereign over all the coastline between Costa Rica and Honduras as well as some way inland, although it was never determined how far. With Nicaragua still in turmoil, Walker went with a group of men up the Rio San Juan to capture as much of the river as he could, as it was the planned route for the canal. With the two parties still fighting in the west, Walker easily reached the communities of El Castillo and Boca de Sábalos. However, the forest and disease had taken a toll on the men accompanying him.

Another concern was that the neighboring government of Costa Rica had become worried that Walker's exploits might spread into their country, and was also looking to gain land and resolve border disputes with its troubled neighbor that had arisen with the dissolution of the United Provinces of Central America. Costa Rica sent an army north and met Walker's force outside of San Carlos on Cocibolca[1]. Walker's camp was defeated, but Walker and his men were not executed since they agreed to fight with Costa Rica and cede his Mosquito Republic to the Costa Rican government. Fighting for Costa Rica, they soon defeated Nicaragua and reached Granada[2]. In the peace settlement, Costa Rica gained Rivas department and Rio San Juan department up to the Rio Camastro. Walker was made governor of the new Costa Rican Rio San Juan province and remained in Costa Rica for the rest of his life.

[1] Lake Nicaragua

Part Twenty-Two: A Divided Union

Election of 1856: With attacks directed toward Douglas late in his presidency over his age and his handling of the violence in Kearny Territory, the Democrats dumped Douglas and Davis from their ticket at the convention in Baltimore. After a month of deliberation, the Democrats went with an even more moderate position with their nomination of former Tejas governor Samuel Houston and senator James Bayard Jr. of Delaware. The moderate stance of the Democrats would help them much in the Upper South and the Mid-Atlantic states where the general opinion on slavery was still in flux.

By 1856, the Whigs had disappeared from the political scene and the remnants were now tasked with building new parties from the ashes. Out of these ashes, the former Whigs generally split into two camps; the northerners who were against slavery and the pro-slavery southerners. These two groups formed the Republican Party and the Liberty Party. The first Republican convention in Miami, Michigan, the first to be held outside the original thirteen colonies, ended with the nomination of New York senator William Seward and Ohio senator Samuel P. Chase. The Republicans were ardently against slavery and used the rising tide of abolitionism in the north to great effect. The Republicans also derided the Democrats' measures regarding the violence in Kearny and desired harsh measures in the territory to make sure that such violence was not repeated. The Liberty Party[1], on the other hand, ran primarily on a platform of upholding slavery in the south and the preservation of states' rights, although some went further and advocated the expansion of slavery in the territories and to other countires in the Gulf and the Caribbean. At the convention, the Liberty Party nominated Joesph Brown of Georgia and Charles Magill Conrad of Louisiana. The party gained much of its support in the southern states, and gained popularity in Cuba and with immigrants from Mexico after the endorsement of Jackson governor Felipe Trájano de la Vega[2].

The campaign was a bitter affair with slavery now the main issue for most Americans. Ironically, both the Republican and the Liberty parties appealed to the American sense of freedom, with the Republicans talking about the freedom of man while the Liberty Party pushing the freedom of the states from the federal government. The Democrats advocated a central and moderate path, desiring to heal the sectionalism that had afflicted the nation in the last decade. Douglas and Davis, now disgraced, formed their own minor party in a hope to retain some supporters. After the votes were counted, Houston and the Democrats achieved a very narrow majority in the electoral college. Seward gained over twice as many electoral votes as Brown despite winning about the same number of states, showing the population difference between the north and the south. Douglas's party only managed to win the home states of the president and vice president, and the party withered shortly afterward.

Houston/Bayard: 158 Seward/Chase: 91 Brown/Conrad: 45 Douglas/Davis: 16

[1] Yes, there is a Liberty Party in OTL. No, this isn't them. And I'm not putting an asterisk every time they get mentioned. [2] Another fictional person worth mentioning in the timeline. Part Twenty-Three: From the Mountains to the Sea

Colorado Gold Rush: In 1855, a group of Spanish settlers had struck north from Santa Fe to find a place to settle in northern New Mexico Territory. The settlers followed the Rio Grande and then the foothills of the mountains until they came upon a series of rock formations consisting of uplifted sandstone slabs against the side of a mountain. It was here that they decided to set up their final camp, along a creek that ran through the area. Soon the settlers met with a local Arapaho band led by Chief Niwot. After securing a tentative peace with Niwot, the settlers set up camp. Soon they began traveling up the local canyon into the mountains, and the settlement started to grow. In the spring of 1856, one of the settlers, Lázaro Mendinueta, discovered some gold five miles up one of the canyons.

This discovery began what is now known as the Colorado Gold Rush. For almost a decade after the discovery, almost two hundred thousand settlers from the south and the east poured into the southern Rocky Mountains in search of gold and silver. New cities quickly sprang up in New Mexico Territory. While many of them were small mining towns in the mountains that were abandoned after the rush calmed down, a few on the eastern edge of the Rockies served as important depots and thrived even afterward. Some of these cities include Zeublon near the base of Pike's Peak, Ororio on the South Platte River, Pueblo on the Arkansaw River, and Ferroplano at the point where the Spanish first settled[1]. Ferroplano would come to prominence as the capital of the territory and later state of Colorado.

Houston, We Have Contact: After the undersea cable from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland was completed, countries on both sides of the Atlantic were postulating a telegraph cable to connect the two continents. The quickest path was clearly Newfoundland to Ireland, and in 1855 the London and Acadia Telegraph Company was formed to try and link England with the Acadian Union, and through that, Europe and North America. In 1855 an attempt was made to connect the two sides but the project fell through when the United States Senate narrowly vetoed a funding bill due to the Anglophobe opinions of many senators [2].

After a series of meetings between representatives from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Atlantic European countries, a compromise was made. In 1857, Congress passed a bill for the funding of a telegraph line to run from Nova Scotia to Lisbon. The London and Acadia Company worked with British companies to build the cable, and in 1857 the first laying of the cable began from Halifax. This attempt failed as the cable broke during the journey, but a successful laying was completed a year later starting in Lisbon. In July of 1858 the cable was completed, and President Houston and Queen Victoria sent the first telegrams across the Atlantic.

The title of this section refers not to the first message sent across the cable, as is commonly thought, but to the message sent to Washington from Halifax upon receiving the first message from Queen Victoria. In the first two telegrams sent across the cable, Queen Victoria on a visit to Lisbon wished that the communication line would help improve relations between the United States and the United Kingdom, while President Houston expressed his wish for further cooperation between the United States and Europe.

However, this first cable did not last long. A winter storm in Nova Scotia destroyed the cablehouse at Whitehead where it came up out of the Atlantic. During attempts to rebuild the cable house, it was found that the cable had deteriorated too much for continued use. Another cable was laid in 1859, and this sturdier line survived the next winter. After this first success, more cables were laid in the late 1860s and 1870s, from many different locations up and down both sides of the Atlantic coast.

[1] Colorado Springs, Auraria (now part of Denver), Pueblo, and Boulder, respectively. [2] In OTL this anglophobia was in Congress as well, and the bill seeking funding from Congress only passed the Senate by a single vote.

Part Twenty-Four: Foreign Happenings

Liberian Independence: After the American Colonization Society relinquished control of Liberia in 1847, the government took administration of the colony with the support of some of the Society's original founders. Over the next decade, the government encouraged emigration to Liberia. However, because of the danger of disease and native uprisings as well as distaste for the Colonization Society, only about ten thousand people migrated to Liberia, mostly from Maryland and Virginia. This meager population growth made the colony an economic burden during the 1850s.

The discussions in Congress over what to do about Liberia were relatively one-sided. The Congressmen arguing to keep hold of the colony and find a way to make it sustainable were vastly outweighed by those who sought to rid the colony of American responsibility. With this backing from Congress, President Houston relinquished American control of Liberia and established its independence in 1858. While Liberia was now independent, it was still relatively dependent on the United States to maintain its economy.

The political situation in Liberia would not be much better. Despite the framing of the Constitution based on that of the United States, Americans who had migrated to Liberia would continue to dominate politics and society for the next century. The country would also be plagued by civil wars and rebellions by the natives against what was perceived (and probably rightfully) as their foreign oppressors.

The Voortrekker Republiek: After the British took control of the area around the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch, many of the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of the region began searching for a new homeland away from the British. In 1835, they went east and inland, in what is known as the Great Trek. These Voortrekkers[1], as they came to be known, were mostly farmers and settled in the sparsely populated areas around the local Zulu and other tribes. Gradually over the next decade, the Voortrekkers led by Piet Retief and Gerhard Maritz established towns in and around the Zulu lands.

Despite the attempts to coexist with the native tribes, the amount of Boers that were migrating to the area meant that tensions were inevitable. In 1846 after the death of the Zulu chief Dingane, his successor and half brother Mpande was unhappy with Dingane's concessions to the settlers and attempted to expel the Boers from Zulu lands. The Voortrekkers resisted, and in two years the technologically superior Trekkers soundly defeated the more numerous Zulu. The two most distinguished generals, Andries Pretorius[2] and Hendrik Potgieter, led the creation of a new state in the Zulu lands and the land west in what became the Natal Republic. By 1855, the land east of the British Cape Colony was dominated by three Voortrekker states; Transvaal, Oranje, and Natal. Despite being recognized by the United Kingdom, the three states still felt diplomatic pressure from Cape Town and London. Starting in the late 1850s, the process to unify the Voortrekker states began with a free trade area among them. The process accelerated in 1859 when land disputed between different families led to a unified court system. The unification was eventually completed in 1872 with the creation of the Zuid-Afrikaanishe Republiek (also known as the Voortrekker Republiek). A weak federal government was established and Matthew Pretorius, son of Andries, was elected the country's first stadtholder. The United States was one of the first countries to recognize the republic under president Grant, along with the Netherlands.

The Ganges Revolt: In the early 1800s as the British East India Company gradually gained control over more and more of the subcontinent, the British government took steps to regulate the company. The British East India Company not only had its commercial functions removed save for trade in tea and opium, but the Crown in London began imposing regulations on it. Championed by William Wilberforce[3], the regulations were implemented in order to increase social freedoms for the local population. Such reforms in the Charter of 1833 included assisting with the codification of the laws so the populace would more easily understand them and mandating that no candidate for office under the East India Company be disallowed due to his religion, place of birth, or his race. Shortly after the 1833 charter was passed, Wilberforce died and the Company was mostly left to its own devices.

Wilberforce's reforms inspired others to either seek further reforms through Parliament or travel to the Indian subcontinent themselves. However, Wilberforce's advocacy of combining the reforms with Christian evangelism had lasting effects in the subcontinent. The evangelism was resented by many Indians who thought that the British were trying to convert them and cause them to lose their caste, and the outlawing of local practices such as Sari angered many local leaders. Other laws such as the Doctrine of Lapse, which mandated that if a feudal lord died without a male child, the land would be forfeited to the East India Company. The resentment was unknowingly fueled by some Chartists who fled to the subcontinent after the Chartist Uprisings in the 1840s by encouraging democratic reform.[4]

The tensions continued to mount between the local populace and Company authorities during the passage of the Charter of 1853. While some reforms were enacted in London by Prime Minister Palmerston including allowing Indians to serve in the Indian Civil Service, many higher caste Indians felt that this did not go far enough. The situation exploded into rebeliion in 1858, when the ruler of Awadh, one of the autonomous princely states, died without a direct heir to the throne. As the British East India Company attempted to seize the land, the local population rose up. The rebellion soon spread to other areas, as the native soldiers in Bengal and Gwailor rose up as well. While the Ganges Revolt as it would be later known in Britain started out well with the rebels capturing the holy site of Varanasi in the east and the outskirts of Agra in the west, the rebellion soon ran out of steam as they faced royal troops from Delhi and British forces sent from Calcutta. The main turning point was the Siege of Patna, in which over four hundred rebelling Sepoys were killed or captured. The revolt was further demoralized by the participation of some Princely states, mostly Rajputana, against the rebels and the continued loyalty of the Sepoys in Bombay and Madras to the East India Company. The revolt was finally put down in early 1859. Afterward the area around Gwailor was granted to Rajputana, Awadh was put under control of the East India Company, and the reforms that were advocated by Wilberforce were scaled back. The revolt would leave a lasting impression on the British stay in the subcontinent and the local population for the remainder of the century and beyond.

[1] ITTL Voortrekkers or Trekkers is a more popular term than Boers, at least in the United States, because the pioneer idea appeals more to the American people. [2] The guy that Pretoria is named after. [3] Wilberforce was a big rights advocator in the early 1800s. He ended the slave trade in Britain and set up the world's first animal rights organization. [4] Most of the root causes of the Ganges Revolt are the same as that of the Sepoy Mutiny in OTL, although I increased Wilberforce and the Chartists' involvement a bit.

Part Twenty-Five: Houston's Triumph

Kearny Statehood Act: While the violence in Kearny Territory had generally died down when Houston entered into office, the tensions in the territory still ran high. Kearny continued to grow in population with settlers on their journey to the Rockies, and there were increasing calls for the territory to be admitted to the Union as a state. However, there was still struggle in both Kearny and in Washington over if it should be admitted as a free or a slave state.

In the summer of 1857, a solution was proposed by Indiana representative Joseph A. Wright. The bill would divide the territory of Kearny in two, with the two provisional governments serving as the state legislatures. This way, the balance of free and slave states would not be upset. After a census determined that the area was indeed populous enough to warrant the creation of two states from the territory, Congress spent the next months deciding where the boundary of the two states would fall. The southerners of course wanted the border to be as far north as possible while many northerners desired a border that included Council Grove in their state, which was then the seat of the freesoilers government in Kearny Territory. The border was soon agreed to be at 38 degrees 30 minutes north, and in October of 1857, President Houston admitted the states of Kearny and Calhoun into the Union.

Election of 1860: The election of 1860 saw the Liberty Party struggle to retain its votes after the success of Houston in maintaining the middle-ground on the issue of slavery. After the votes were counted, they only kept votes in Georgia and South Carolina with Joseph Brown and South Carolina Congressman Andrew Bulter as their candidates. The Republicans, on the other hand, gained votes in much of the North as the idea of abolition became more widespread and people became more vocal about it.

While Fremont and his new running mate Horace Greeley were boosted by public sentiment and the use of Greeley's New York Tribune as a mouthpiece for the part, it was not enough to gain the Republicans the Presidency. Houston and Bayard kept their moderate stance, and achieved reelection based on the success of Houston's first term, despite losing the rest of New England to the Republicans. In March of 1861 Houston was inaugurated, and it seemed that the country would be truly united. However, many of the deep-rooted divisions in the United States were still unresolved. This was most evident in that if Pennsylvania, which had been a close-run affair in the election, had gone Republican, Fremont would have been the first Republican president.

Houston/Bayard: 161 Fremont/Greeley: 136 Brown/Bulter: 19 Part Twenty-Six: Demographic Effects

Reform from Religion: While the Second Great Awakening had mostly already run its course, the political ramifications of the movements it created were only beginning. During the middle of the 19th century, the idea that the world needed to be reformed to achieve the Second Coming of Christ spawned a number of unitopical movements[1]. One of the earliest movements was abolitionism, which was prominent in the 1840s and 1850s. Later in the century there would be many other campaigns surrounding particular issues, such as the moderation[2] movement that advocated banning the production and sale of alcohol that was moderately successful in the southern states. The 1870s and 1880s also saw a rise in nativism and anti-Catholicism as a reaction to the rise in immigration of Poles and Italians after the Piave War[3].

Census of 1860: Though the nation had been growing throughout its history, the United States census in 1860 showed many remarkable changes in the past decade. First was the sheer increase in the population of the United States. The first official national census in the state of Cuba since the state was added to the Union showed that the island held a population of over one million people. That population statistic led to an increase in seven electoral votes in Cuba, bringing the votes for Cuba to ten, the same number of votes as was given to Georgia and Maryland. Adding in the incorporation of Cuba, the population of the United States had grown by over ten million in a decade for the first time in its history. The country now held almost thirty-five million people.

With the increase in population, many cities had flourished. In the south, New Orleans and Pensacola continued to take in immigrants from South America, Further along the Mississippi, the area around the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers had greatly increased in population since 1850, with Saint Louis and Cairo doubling in population. Other cities in the Old Northwest including Chicago and Cincinatti also experienced large influxes of people.

California Gold Rush: In California, the population had grown to over one-hundred and fifty thousand by 1860. The majority of this growth was immigration, with the Mormon settlement in the east of the country and immigrants from Mexico in the south. However, California was not finished growing. The gold rush that occurred during the first half of the 1860s would almost double the population. Immigrants from not only the United States but South American countries such as Chile and Bolivia and a few from the Far East flocked to California.

In 1863, the Californio majority became worried about the number of Americans entering their country, claiming that the immigration was diluting California's religious and linguistic identity. The California legislature passed a bill restricting American- owned gold mines, and thus much of the American immigrants, to the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. While there were some protests, few plots owned by American immigrants were west of those mountains, so there was not much displeasure among the Americans. Another consequence of the California Gold Rush in the 1860s would be the San Xavier Purchase, in which the remainder of what is now Colorado was purchased from California after the local population called for the area to join the United States.

[1] Single issue campaigns [2] The temperance movement [3] Not sure if this is what the war will be called, but La Guerra Piavare sounded nice in Italian

Part Twenty-Seven: The Game is Afoot

Final Collapse of Mexico: Mexico had been dealing with internal strife almost constantly since the revolts that sparked the Texas Rebellion in 1835 and 1836. Struggles continued between centralists and federalists and other divisions in the country through the following decades as the government changed hands a number of times. In the 1850s, the government in Mexico City began to lose authority over the edges of the country. In 1858, the northern cities of Tuscon and Chihuahua kicked out federal officials. This proved to be prophetic for the history of Mexico, and within five years the country fell into anarchy and a full scale collapse of authority from the capital.

The chaos in Mexico lasted the better part of a decade. The many rebelling groups were mostly in the south of the country, however, and did not affect the north as much. The northern states quickly organized into the republics of Sonora and Chihuahua. In the south, unrest continued as federal soldiers quickly lost to rebel groups and goberitos[1]. After almost five years, southern Mexico finally organized itself into a group of smaller nations, roughly corresponding with states or groups of states from before the collapse. In the aftermath nine countries were created from Mexico: Sonora, Chihuahua, Durango, Queretaro, Granidalgo, Tlaxcala, Jalisco, and Oaxaca. The federal government remained in Mexico City and retained control over the federal district as well as the states of Morelos, Mexico, and Guerrero. The short-lived Maya Republic of Chiapas was soon divided between Oaxaca and Guatemala, which annexed the region of Los Altos, which had been part of the Federal Republic of Central America before that country's breakup.

With all the confusion, a group of Southern filibusters took advantage of the situation and made a landing in the village of Rio Banderas outside of Veracruz. The filibusters, led by former vice president Jefferson Davis, moved north and captured Veracruz in two months. Davis soon proclaimed himself Alcalde-General and made Laurence T. Buford his Tenente-Alcalde[2]. Veracruz was later caught in a dispute between Oaxaca and Tlaxcala and after mediation by the United States, the city became independent, and continued to be an important port in the Gulf of Mexico.

Beginnings of Colonialism: The 1860s saw the beginning of a new wave of colonialism and imperialism for many European nations, this time focused on Asia and Africa. While the United States did not get involved aside from its good relations with Liberia, many European nations did. The initial wave of colonialism was led by the Belgians, the French, and the British.

Belgium had a history of colonies almost since the country first gained independence. As Borneo had been ceded to Belgium upon peace with the Netherlands, during the first half of the nineteenth century Leopold I focused on obtaining safe shipping routes between Belgium and its East Indian colony. To secure the route, Leopold negotiated naval rights with the United Kingdom and annexed the region around Erasme Bay[3] as a waystation. These colonies were all Belgium had until the succession of Leopold's son as Ludwig I of Belgium in 1859. Ludwig came to power at a young age, and was eager to pursue expansion of Belgium's overseas possessions.

In the early 1860s, Belgium gradually moved in from Borneo to the mainland of southeast Asia. Belgian forces embarked from Borneo and in a two year struggle, entered the city of Saigon and conquered Quinam. Soon after, Belgium also took the port of Da Nang and the ancient city of Hue, causing unrest in the Tonkin lands. After the Tonkin lords collapsed, Belgium moved in to annex the entire area aside from a few isolated local tribes which held out for a few more decades. During this period, the Belgians also established the kingdom of Cambodia as a protectorate in exchange for defense against Siam, but this would turn into colonial domination in later decades.

Other colonization efforts were taken by the United Kingdom and France during the 1850s and 1860s. Great Britain expanded its presence in the Gold Coast and north of the Cape Colony. After the Ganges Revolt settled down, Britain also sent an expedition led by the Great Eastern, a grand steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, to Japan. This expedition was ultimately successful at achieving diplomatic relations with Japan, and culminated with the Anglo-Japanese Friendship Treaty signed by Lord Elgin who accompanied the expedition and representatives of the Shogunate in 1861.

Meanwhile, the French also sought more colonies after the full annexation of Algeria and the accession of Louis-Napoleon to the French presidency. In 1856, France purchased the anchorage of Obock in the Gulf of Tajdoura. With concessions made by Sa'id Pasha of Egypt three years later, France's interest in the Red Sea grew. The French government soon expanded their colony in Obock to include the nearby town of Assab, and established a hold over the Hanish Islands in the Red Sea and the area surrounding the port town of Mocha on the Arabian Peninsula. Around 1865, the French government also sent a naval and trade expedition to Korea. This expedition obtained a French base in Ganghwa Island similar to the situation of the Dutch in Dejima, and allowed French missionaries limited freedoms in the city of Incheon.

[1] Warlords; the term comes from the shortening of the term for 'little governor' [2] Mayor-General and Lieutenant Mayor, respectively [3] Walvis Bay

Part Twenty-Eight: A Constitutional Crisis

The Death of Samuel Houston: While Houston had done well in reaching compromise during his first term in office, his second term was more divided as the southerners were desiring more concessions. Houston's refusal to intervene in the collapse of Mexico created a rift between him and many expansion-minded constituents in the south and led to Jefferson Davis goin on his own filibustering expedition. This rift continued to widen in the first year of his second term upon the death of Roger Brooke Taney. In his place, Houston appointed Abraham Lincoln of Illinois as the Chief Justice of the United States. During Lincoln's confirmation process, previous cases regarding slavery in Illinois were brought up, showing Lincoln arguing both for and against slavery. His exact position on slavery was never revealed at the nomination hearings, but he was narrowly nominated by Congress to the post.

In December 1861, Vice President James A. Bayard fell ill and caught pneumonia in the unusually harsh winter of that year. Only a few weeks later, President Houston was shot after a speech in Raleigh, North Carolina. With the President and the Vice President both incapacitated, Congress convened to determine what should be done. The Constitution at the time was unclear and conflicting in what to do in this situation. While Calhoun had taken the title of Acting President upon the death of Andrew Jackson, he did not take the title of President until his election in 1836. This left the succession rules open for debate. Some suggested that the succession be determined by the House of Representatives as it was in 1824, but there were no clear candidates and a system was not put in place to select candidates in the short time frame necessary. Others suggested that the President pro Tempore of the Senate take the office, but many Congressmen objected. After a month, Congress created a Joint Emergency Presidential Selection Committee. However, this committee would prove to be very controversial during the month of February and the course of selecting who would succeed Houston as President.

Part Twenty-Nine: A House Divided

A House Divided: After a week of discussion, the Emergency Presidential Selection Committee narrowed the candidates down to three men: President pro tempore of the Senate David R. Atchison, Andrew Johnson, Speaker of the House, and Secretary of State William Seward. As the committee debated and drew ballots, speculation on who would be the new President of the United States spread across the nation. A rumor quickly grew in the southern states that Lincoln would veto the appointment if Seward did not get the presidency. Of course, this infuriated many southern slave-owners as Seward was a well known Republican and abolitionist. After the second week of debate, Francis W. Pickens of South Carolina, a member of the committee, walked out and refused to participate, and was quoted as calling the committee 'undemocratic' and 'and affront to the ideals of our republic'. It is not known what cause this outburst, but up until that moment the committee had met in secret, with the only news reaching the public being a statement at the end of each day's proceedings. Two days after Pickens walked out, the situation escalated. A convention in South Carolina issued a declaration of secession similar to Declaration of Independence, listing the grievances the state held with the federal government. Georgia followed soon after. Upon news of the secession reaching Washington, the committee chastised the leaders of the secession movements for what was termed their hotheaded and rash action. That days ballot count saw a plummet in the support for Atchison, but still no majority had been reached. With the bid to maintain slavery in the United States and his own presidential bid closing fast, Atchison issued an executive order to allow slavery on the basis of the right to property. With many New England states now threatening to secede, this order was quickly challenged in the Supreme Court, and in a decision that took only two days of deliberation Chief Justice Lincoln published the decision declaring the order unconstitutional on the grounds that Atchison did not have the authority as he did not hold the office of President of the United States.

This decision by the Supreme Court tipped many other states over the edge. Mississippi and North Carolina seceded on the day after the decision was issued, with Florida following the next day. Reacting to the news that more states had seceded, the committee was prepared to vote Seward as President. However, still a majority could not be gained for Seward as some members of the committee from southern states still in the Union had abstained from that day's vote. As papers reported this, many people in the south assumed that Seward would become the President in a few days time. Violence soon erupted in many southern states and Louisiana, Alabama, and Virginia became the next states to secede. On the 26th of February, 1862, the independent states formed a loose federation, the Confederate States of America. Three days later, on March 1st, the committee confirmed Andrew Johnson as the next president of the United States. The day after, Arkansaw had defected to the CSA. On the 3rd, Virginian troops in Alexandria proclaimed that Alexandria was part of the state of Virginia and thus part of the CSA. One of the officers fired a shot across the Potomac to signify Virginia's sovereignty. This became known as the shot that broke the Union.

Great Men, Section 1: Henry Clay

Henry Clay was a great statesman and orator who served in the United States Senate. Born in Virginia in 1777, Clay's family moved to Kentucky soon after where he studied law. During the 1790s and early 1800s, Clay established a lucrative law practice in Kentucky including high profile cases such as successfully defending Aaron Burr in 1806 when he was indicted for planning an expedition into Spanish territory. Along with his success in his legal career, Henry Clay was also influential in Kentucky state politics. Clay was so influential that in 1806, he was selected by the Kentucky legislature to represent Kentucky in the United States Senate during the remainder of John Adair's term, despite being too young to constitutionally serve as a United States senator.

Henry Clay's political career was much more successful and lasted longer than his career practicing law. After his serving in the Senate in 1806, Clay was elected to the House of Representatives in 1811. The first day of his first session in Congress, Clay was elected Speaker of the House. Clay was reelected to the House and to the speakership five time during his fourteen year tenure in the House of Respresentatives. While Speaker, Clay transformed the position into a position of power and manipulated the committee memberships to give the War Hawks control of the important House committees during the War of 1812. Clay took the lead supporting the war as the head of the Democratic- Republican Party and served as a peace commissioner at the Treat of Ghent in 1814. During the remainder of his service in the House of Representatives, Clay was a founding member of the American Colonization Society, advocated the American System, and helped gain Congressional approval of the Missouri Compromise.

Probably Clay's defining moment while Speaker of the House was his manipulation of the results of the election of 1824. While Clay had gotten the fewest number of electoral votes, no candidate obtained a majority. Thus, the election went to the House of Representatives. While Jackson had won the most votes and the popular vote, Clay did not want to see Jackson become presdient. And Clay could not be elected as only the top three candidates were eligible in the House, and Clay had come in fourth. So as Speaker of the House, he gave his support to John Quincy Adams, who won the election. Adams appointed Clay as Secretary of State, which Jackson was enraged at and called a 'corrupt bargain'. This was a major point in the election of 1828, and was one of the reasons that Jackson defeated Adams for the presidency that year[1].

After this election, Henry Clay served as a senator off and on for much of the 1830s and 1840s. Clay was an influential voice during both the presidencies of John Calhoun and William Henry Harrison. Clay served as a moderating force to Calhoun and as internal competition to Harrison, although Harrison accepted some similar policies as Clay such as the American System and the Third National Bank. However, the two broke with each other during the election of 1844. Clay was frustrated by Harrison's increasing resistance to his influence, and after losing the Whig nomination to Harrison, Clay never supported Harrison. This led to Harrison's loss to James K. Polk, but it also led to the end of Clay's Congressional career. Still, Clay is considered one of the great orators of the Senate and along with Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun form the Great Triumvirate which dominated the Senate in the 1830s and 1840s.

For the last years of his life, Henry Clay spent much of his time in Lexington where he set up a moderately successful realty office. In 1853, Clay visited Liberia, the product of the American Colonization Society, and caught yellow fever. Clay died two months after he returned to the United States. Henry Clay was the second person to lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda after Andrew Jackson.

[1] Everything up to about here is OTL.

Great Men, Section 2: Samuel Houston

Houston was born in Virginia in 1793. After moving to Tennessee with his family, Houston ran away from home in 1809. For the next three years, Houston lived with the Cherokee tribe and was adopted into the tribe. After returning home in 1812, Houston participated in the War of 1812 in which he was injured at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. After the war, Houston went into politics. In Tennessee, Houston served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1823 to 1827 and as the governor of the state from 1827 to 1829. In these years, Houston was a loyal follower of Andrew Jackson's policies. However, during the early 1830s, a rift grew between the two over the Indian Removal Act. Because of this rift, Houston left Tennessee for Texas in 1832.

In Texas, Sam Houston rose quickly through the army ranks to become a Major General in 1835, and then was voted as the first President of Texas at the beginning of 1836. He served as the Texan president for one and a half years, until mid-1837 when he resigned to take up a full time command of the Texan army. As commander of the Texan army, Houston led the Texan forces to their victory at the Battle of the Sabine River[1] which brought the United States into the war. After the war with Mexico was won, Houston reran for the Texan presidency, defeating Stephen Austin in 1840. Houston served this second term for three years. Upon the annexation of Texas into the United States in 1846, Houston became governor of the state of Tejas. Houston served as governor for eight years. Houston left public life in 1854 to live with a Cherokee tribe in northern Houston, but returned in 1856 when he was nominated for Democratic candidate for President of the United States. Houston won the election defeating William Seward, Joseph Brown, and Stephen Douglas, becoming President on March 4, 1857.

During his time as President, Houston's main focus was to try to bring the Union back together and avoid a civil war. His main action to reduce tensions between the northern and southern states was the passage of the Kearny Statehood Act, which resolved the conflict in Kearny Territory created by popular sovereignty and divided the territory into two states, one free and one slave. Houston also presided over the majority of the Colorado Gold Rush, which brought tens of thousands of Americans west to the Rocky Mountains. Houston was reelected for a second term in 1860, but he would not serve it fully. In 1862, Houston was shot after a speech in Raleigh by Wyatt Longfellow, a North Carolina native. Unfortunately, Longfellow was beaten to death by a mob before the authorities could restrain them, so it is unknown why Longfellow killed the president.

Some evidence has surfaced over the years, but it is all very dubious. The most commonly accepted view is that Longfellow was simply insane, similar to Jackson's assassin. Sources for this come from accounts shortly after the event in which Longfellow's alleged last words were "Santa Anna will have his revenge!" as he shot Houston. There are other theories however. In 2016[2], a series of letters were discovered in a North Carolina home between Longfellow and former Ohio Congressman William Stanbery. While the authenticity of this evidence has been called into question, some theorize that Longfellow was working with Stanbery to get revenge after the House dismissed Stanbery's accusations of fraud against Houston in 1832 and ruined his future political career[3].

[1] The battle near Beaumont mentioned in Part Four. [2] This timeline will run until around 2025, maybe 2028 to make it two centuries. [3] Other conspiracy theories welcome. Part Thirty: Choosing Sides

Choosing Sides: Andrew Johnson was sworn into office on March 4th, 1862. Over the next week votes were held in many southern states on leaving the Union to join the Confederate States, but only Calhoun voted to secede. The initial military movements of both sides in the months following Johnson's accession to the presidency were primarily consolidation efforts. The United States moved troops into southern Missouri to discourage any local secessionist sentiment in the region, and reinforced the Union position in Washington DC.

Meanwhile, the Confederacy was organizing itself both militarily and politically. On March 17, representatives from the states making up the CSA met in Augusta, Georgia and elected Howell Cobb as the first president of the Confederate States of America. The Confederate constitution outline terms of two years for the president as opposed to four years in the Union, and delegated more explicit powers to the states, but in most other respects it was similar to the United States constitution. The main military movements of the Confederacy in these initial months of the war were the integration of Alexandria into Virginia which began the fighting, and the advancement of troops to secure the state of Jackson, which had not held a vote on secession and was nominally still a part of the Union.

Throughout March and April, not much fighting occurred on the borders of the United States and the Confederacy. There were a few minor advances on either side, such as the capture of Carthage, Missouri by a local pro-Confederate militia led by Claiborne Fox Jackson, but the majority of the fighting was smaller. However, on other fronts the war started quickly. Confederate troops massed and advanced into Jackson in an effort to capture the port at Pensacola before the Union could reach it and resupply the forts surrounding the bay.

The first major battle of the war was the main result of this campaign, the Siege of Pensacola. In mid March, Confederate general Braxton Bragg led 800 men to the outskirts of Pensacola. For three weeks, the siege of the city went on, with Confederate ships occasionally bombarding Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island. While the fort still stood, the city did not fare well. On April 2th, a regiment was sent to the other side of Santa Rosa island, and during a bombardment of Fort Pickens by supporting Confederate ships, the regiment attacked the fort and surprised the Union regiment. The Union force was defeated and the fort was taken[1]. After the fort was taken, Pensacola surrendered and the state of Jackson was officially admitted to the Confederacy on April 11th.

Opening Moves: The summer of 1862 saw many developments in the war. In May, a diplomatic expedition led by Judah P. Benjamin to Veracruz brought the city into the Confederacy. Veracruz gave the Confederates another naval base in the Gulf of Mexico. This, along with the secession of Cuba in August, would put down all plans by the United States to trap the Confederate States through a naval blockade.

Also in the early months of the war, various shadow governments were set up either in the disputed regions or in a nearby city. In southern Missouri, Claiborne Jackson set up a Confederate shadow government based in Neosho. The Confederates also had sympathy in western Tennessee and Kentucky west of the Tennessee River, and a government was declared in Memphis claiming the area as its jurisdiction. A vote was held in towns cities over whether to secede after the other two governments stayed with the Union but few towns ever issued proclamations of secession. The Union also had a number of shadow governments sympathetic to them. The most notable are the Wheeling Legislature in what was then western Virginia and exiles from Jackson, who set up a base in Corpus Christi.

That summer also saw the beginning of battle in many theaters. The Confederacy attacked important border towns such as Kansas City and Memphis. An uprising by Confederate sympathizers was put down in the small town of Dallas in northeastern Houston. But the main fighting during the summer was the Tennessee Valley campaign launched by the Army of Georgia in July 1862. The first main battle of the campaign was the taking of Chattanooga. The Army of Georgia divided into two groups and positioned them on Lookout Mountain and Moccasin Point in the west and along the Missionary Range in the east. After the artillery regiment led by John Pemberton[2] bombarded the Union works, the army advanced on the city from both sides. The Confederacy won the battle with upwards of 600 casualties, and gave the army an auspicious beginning to the campaign. Over the next week, the Army of Georgia trekked north along the Tennessee River aimed for Knoxville. They reached as far as Fort Loudoun before being rebuked and having to turn back. Despite this defeat, however, the capture of Chattanooga and Cleveland secured a vital rail link for future campaigns in Tennessee.

The final event of the summer of 1862 was the Chesapeake Offensive and the First Potomac Offensive by the Union Army. The Chesapeake Offensive secured the portion of the Delmarva Peninsula in Virginia. The First Potomac Offensive attempted to reach Richmond with the thought that Virginia could be taken out of the war with a quick capture of the capital. General McClellan's plan was for the army to sail to Fort Monroe which was still Union-controlled and drive up the peninsula between the James and York rivers to Richmond, bypassing much of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia's defenses. The Army of the Potomac was sent to Fort Monroe and began operations on July 4th. While McClellan did have some early success in the campaign, the majority of the Army of Northern Virginia led by Joseph Johnston were at Bowling Green, not further northward as expected. After a month, the forces under McClellan had established a line at the eastern bank of the Chickahominy River. This would be as far as the campaign would reach, as within two weeks later Johnston had forced the Army of the Potomac back to a line following Queen Creek and College Creek near Williamsburg. With the campaign on the Virginia Peninsula stalled, McClelland launched one last summer offensive in mid-August. A few brigades of the Army of the Potomac landed at Currioman's Landing on the Virginia Neck with the intent of moving west to cut Fredericksburg off from the rest of Virginia. The brigades managed to secure the area but did not advance very far before they were stalled by Confederate forces on the north bank of the Rappahannock River. Whille the Union soldiers won the short battle, they could not continue the offensive. By the end of August, however, the Army of the Potomac had gotten control of much of eastern Westmoreland County including the county seat of Montross. This had a larger than expected effect on the proceedings of the war, because not only did this victory assist with Union control of the Potomac, but the news of it also caused former Chief Engineer Robert E. Lee to decide to stay loyal to hte United States. In explaining his decision, Lee commented that "with my boyhood home and my greatest ahievement under the control of the United States of America, I will protect the things most important to me and remain loyal to this government"[3]. By now Lee had become a popular figure in Virginia, and influenced the popular opinion of the war and the Confederate cause. Lee's decision also encouraged Union loyalist movements in the far western and northern portions of Virginia.

[1] This battle is loosely based on the Battle of Santa Rosa Island which took place in OTL in October of 1861. Except this time, the CSA had the naval advantage and won. [2] Yes, this is the John Pemberton who invented Coca-Cola in OTL. [3] Lee lived at the Stratford Hill Plantation on the Potomac north of Montross until he was eleven, and ITTL he designed and oversaw the construction of Fort Monroe, which is how he quickly rose in his army engineering career.

Speaking to History, Section 1: War Between the States

A House Divided: After the opinion was released regarding Atchison's slavery proposal during the Interregnum of 1862, Chief Justice Abraham Lincoln made a speech in an attempt to calm the spiraling tensions in the southern United States. While the speech was not regarded very well at the time, over the decades it has become one of the most famous speeches of the era. This is mostly because of Lincoln's lines which repeated a portion of Samuel Houston's first Inaugural Address[1].

"As the late president stated when he first entered the office of President half a decade ago, 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' Our nation now stands at the precipice of destruction. This house, where God conceived the noble ideals of freedom and liberty, is on the verge of violent discord ... By the grace of God, our nation is fully capable of surmounting the challenges that face it. We must look to what Unites us instead of that which separates us in order for the Union to be preserved and remain prosperous." Lincoln's speech was futile in preventing the division of the nation, and his words remain a solemn reminder of the perils facing the United States at that time. Andrew Johnson's First State of the Union: The words spoken in Andrew Johnson's first State of the Union address in December of 1862 are the most well known of any State of the Union. While the address to Congress normally focuses on the issues facing the nation at that time and would not usually remain in the minds of the public over a century and a half later, Johnson's First as it is now known has stayed on through the years. The most memorable part of his address was the beginning. "As Houston was laid to rest, the troubles of our nation awoke. Now not a year has passed, and these troubles have boiled over. Gentlemen, our country has now entered a state of war. However, it is not an honorable war. Brother fights against brother."

[1] The 'house divided' line most often attributed to Lincoln was first spoken in OTL by Sam Houston in a speech on the Compromise of 1850

Part Thirty-One: Ending the War's First Year

The Winter of 1862: The final months of 1862 saw a lull in the conflict as the two sides settled in for winter. In September, President Johnson authorized the creation of the Provisional Texan Army[1]. This army was an autonomous organization under the authority of the states of Tejas and Houston, and was created with the precedent of the Champoeg Provisional Government. The legislatures of Tejas and Houston met in San Antonio and chose Juan Seguín as Commander of the Texan Army. In late October, Seguín led a small contingent in an offensive which captured the southwestern corner of Arkansaw bound by the Red River. The force moved south along the river but was stopped shortly after crossing the Louisiana border and was unable to reach Shreveport.

The first year of the war also revealed how divided the individual states were. In the western territories, Ferroplano and Oregon Territory declared neutrality in the conflict. In addition, Northern New Mexico Territory had a large population increase during the war, as pro-Union supporters, many of them Dutch immigrants, traveled west after Calhoun joined the Confederacy. Some of these settlers founded the city of Nederland[2] in Colorado in the mountains west of Ferroplano. Mines near Nederland would later launch the Colorado silver boom in the 1880s and 1890s.

The war also brought the first income tax in United States history. In the Revenue Act of 1862 passed by Congress in November, the federal tax was set at 5% for all citizens who earned more than one thousand dollars per year. This tax would help pay for the war and while it was repealed by the Hancock administration in the early 1880s as the country's need for money lessened, the tax paved the way for future income tax laws passed in the 20th century.

[1] Locally, the army was referred to as the Army of the Second Texan Republic due to the greater autonomy granted to Tejas and Houston during the war. [2] Same place as the Nederland in Colorado in OTL. Part Thirty-Two: The Cumberland Campaign

Cumberland Campaign: In 1863, the Confederates launched their most successful campaigns of the war. The most prominent of these was the Cumberland Campaign, which took place from February to July of 1863. The campaign began with the Army of the Carolinas moving west from Charlotte across the Appalachians into Tennessee. Combined with another offensive by the Army of Georgia northward, Knoxville became threatened once again. While the Union won the Battle of Knoxville, it was at great cost and there were many casualties on both sides. The Army of Georgia turned back, but the Army of the Carolinas instead moved northeast. The army soon reached Greeneville, hometown of President Johnson. General James Longstreet ordered the burning of Greeneville, and much of the town's population fled west to nearby Morristown.

After the Greeneville Massacre, Longstreet and the Army of the Carolinas went north then west toward the Cumberland Gap, reaching the gap on April 10th. As the army entered Kentucky, a message was sent to Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, which was waiting in Charleston. Upon receiving the message, Forrest began moving the Second Corps west following the Kanawha River and the Teays Valley, reaching Huntingon and the Ohio River on May 3rd.

As Forrest went west, Longstreet continued travelling north. On April 14th, the Army of the Carolinas reached Williamsburg, Kentucky but was prevented from continuing north by the Army of the Wabash. Over the next three days, Longstreet managed to defeat General Carlos Buell and the Army of the Wabash but it was a close affair. Longstreet and the army continued north almost unopposed over the next three weeks along the route of the Batlimore and Ohio railroad that ran through central Kentucky. However, Buell managed to catch up to Longstreet at Danville on May 5th. Buell defeated Longstreet on this occasion and diverted the Army of the Carolinas from its path toward Frankfort. But this only made Longstreet swing toward Lexington and continue north after a few days of reorganizing.

Meanwhile, Forrest moved the Second Corps west along the Ohio River, and attempted to cross it several times. The first attempt was at Scunthorpe[1], a major iron town along the northern bank of the Ohio. Forrest failed to achieve a crossing of the river at Furnace on May 5th and was blocked by the Union Army of the Ohio, and decided to continue moving the corps along the southern bank. Forrest attempted further crossings at Portsmouth and Manchester, but had no luck. After another failed crossing at Aberdeen, Forrest had the Second Corps rest for a few days in Dover, Kentucky on May 18th.

[1] Ironton, Ohio

Part Thirty-Three: The Battle of Cincinatti After being diverted at Danville, Longstreet swung the Army of the Carolinas to the east and back north. Longstreet reached Lexington on the 11th of May, and after a day in the city, continued north. General Buell and the Army of the Wabash continued to trail behind. Buell lost Longstreet after Lexington when the Army of the Carolinas continued north along the railroad line but Buell led the Army of the Wabash along the right bank of the Kentucky River. After a week and a half of marching, Longstreet met up with Forrest south of Covington and Newport in Kentucky on the 24th of May. While the meetup of the two forces was unanticipated, Buell was able to relay the general direction of Longstreet's army up to the Union and a set of fortifications were hastily set up south of the two cities.

The Army of the Carolinas had followed the Licking River north and met up with Forrest at Leitch's Station[1]. The Union defenses south of the Ohio River were weak, but there was still a string of forts in the way. On the 27th of May, Forrest and the third corps of the Army of the Carolinas took Fort Whittlesey[2] in the east. Meanwhile, the first corps of Longstreet's army sneaked across the Licking River once more and surprised the battery at Fort Wright. By June, the two nearest forts had been taken and Longstreet and Forrest were free to advance the final miles to the Ohio River. Covington and Newport, then the second and third largest cities in Kentucky, were taken in days as many had already fled across the river to Cincinnati.

On June 4th the final battery south of the Ohio in Ludlow was captured by the Confederates, and Longstreet and Forrest began planning to cross north into Cincinnati. On the 7th, they crossed the two bends in the River on either side of Cincinnati and encircled the city. The city militia lasted for five days with the toughest fighting east of the city at Mount Adams before Cincinnati was taken by the Confederacy. Cincinnati was only held for three days before the Army of the Wabash and the Army of the Ohio reached the outskirts of the city.

Longstreet and Forrest set up quick fortifications and batteries along the edges of Cincinnati, specifically on Mount Adams and Mount Auburn in the east and along Mill Creek in the west and north. Buell's forces were encamped at the bluffs to the west of Mill Creek while the Army of the Ohio led by Ulysses S. Grant was positioned to the northeast of Mount Auburn in Walnut Hills. On the 12th of June, Buell began using the artillery to bombard the Confederate lines across Mill Creek, using the higher ground to his advantage. In the afternoon, Buell's forces charged the Confederate positions as Grant moved the Army of the Ohio south toward Mount Auburn. While Longstreet managed to hold back the Union forces from crossing Mill Creek, Grant successfully took Mount Auburn. Grant's forces were about to cut off the fortifications at Mount Adams when Longstreet diverted some of his northern flank to distract Grant's army while Forrest was able to move into the center of Cincinnati.

The battle wore on for the next six days in the city, but the Union was slowly gaining ground. On June 20th, it became clear that the Confederates could not hold the city for much longer. Longstreet and Forrest gave orders to evacuate across the Ohio while ransacking as much of the city as possible. In the end, the devastation caused by the battle would affect Cincinnati for decades. The population of the city was reduced from 170,000 in 1860 to less than 100,000 in 1870[3]. Longstreet and Forrest continued a spirited defense at the southern bank of the Ohio, and were only pushed back by the end of July after Forrest had to return to Virginia after a Union offensive there.

[1] Wilder, KY [2] Fort Thomas, KY [3] Not sure if these are realistic figures for the Civil War era

Part Thirty-Four: Johnson's Revenge

Johnson's Revenge: Word of the Greeneville Massacre reached President Johnson on April 13th, 1863. Johnson was appalled that the Confederacy would allow such a devious action to take place, but quickly recovered from the shock. On the 22nd of April, Johnson decided that he would personally lead an offensive into Virginia to reciprocate the events at Greeneville. The constitutional authority on this matter had been ambiguous. However, as Washington had been in the battlefield while President and Madison had briefly commanded a naval battery during the Anglo-American War of 1812 [1], Johnson asserted his authority as commander-in-chief. For the next two months, Johnson studied military texts and maps to decide the best course of action against the Confederate forces in Virginia.

The threat of Longstreet's forces against Cincinnati launched President Johnson's plan into action. Johnson began the offensive on June 9th when he took over the Army of the Potomac from McClellan. Johnson led the Army of the Potomac ten miles west before they crossed the Potomac River. Leading the army south, Johnson led his first skirmish at the town of Ayrhill [2] north of Fairfax. Under Johnson's command with assistance from Brigadier General Ambrose Burnside, the Army of the Potomac quickly routed the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia with the aid of the field artillery following Napoleonic style tactics. The Army of the Potomac captured Fairfax on the 11th of June, and curved southwest along the Chesapeake and Ohio railway. Johnson also did his best to ensure a constant telegraph link with Washington during the campaign so he could be updated as soon as possible on any movements or information regarding the Confederate positions.

Johnson advanced the Army of the Potomac south to Fredericksburg and took the city easily. The Army of Northern Virginia, now led by George S. Pickett, continued its retreat toward Richmond, and Johnson continued in pursuit after Pickett. After another rout of the Army of Northern Virginia at Spotsylvania on the 20th of June, Johnson stalled his offensive to wait for word from McClellan about the readiness of his forces on the Virginia Peninsula. Johnson planned an offensive by both his and McClellan's forces toward Richmond, mimicking the Confederate attack on Knoxville. On July 4th, 1863, McClellan began a push up the Virginia Peninsula. Johnson knew that the peninsula was well defended and so allowed for a delay between McClellan's advance and the beginning of the Army of the Potomac's move south.

Once again, however, McClellan's advance was stopped at Williamsburg and McClellan did not move further for the next two weeks. Despite this, Johnson decided to go ahead with his advance on the 16th of July, and found Pickett and the Army of Northern Virginia at a dip in the South Anna River two miles north of Ashland. By positioning the Confederate force with their backs to the river, Pickett ensured that the Army of Northern Virginia would not simply retreat yet again. Three days into the battle, it appeared that the Army of Northern Virginia was going to retreat and that Richmond would soon be captured. But by a pure coincidence, Forrest's cavalry corps arrived from the west in the early afternoon of July 19th. Forrest pinned a quarter of the Union forces between his cavalry and the main Confederate army, and the Army of the Potomac were routed later that evening. Johnson gave control over the Army of the Potomac to Burnside as the army left for Fredericksburg, and President Johnson returned to Washington. While Richmond was not captured during the offensive, much ground was gained in Virginia and the campaign was an overall success for the Union.

[1] The only source I could find for Madison was Wiki, but it seems good enough. And I figured the name of the War of 1812 would be changed since there have been multiple wars between the US and Britain. [2] OTL Vienna, VA. As an example of how influential minor events are, in OTL Ayrhill only changed its name to Vienna to get a doctor to move there.

Part Thirty-Five: Fighting in the West

Western Theatre: The other main Union movements in 1863 occurred in the Western theatre under the movements of the Provisional Texas Army. On July 7th, Juan Seguin and the First Texas Corps began heading northeast from Texarkana. They marched for five days until they met the Confederate Arkansaw Corps on the plains southwest of the town of Hope, Arkansaw. The skirmish went on for much of the afternoon. However, as the First Texas Corps was composed of mostly cavalry and larger than the Arkansaw Corps, it was soon clear to the Confederates that Hope was lost. The Arkansaw Corps retreated to the east and Seguín took the town. Seguín and his men continued northeast on the 15th of July. They kept northeast for another fifty miles until they reached the town of Arkadelphia. While the First Texas Corps took the town easily, they were harassed by citizens of the Confederacy in the hills north and west of the town. It took another three days for the rebels to be rooted out, and the First Texas Corps did not leave Arkadelphia until the end of July. At this point, Seguín pushed the men to reach Little Rock as soon as possible and they reached the edge of the capital on August 8th.

The First Texas Corps entered the city, but two days later Seguín was caught by the Confederate Army of Mississippi coming up from the south. The Army of the Mississippi camped themselves in the hills southeast of Little Rock and cornered the First Texas Corps between those mountains and the Arkansaw River. While they were pinned, Seguín and his men fought bravely in the Battle of Little Rock and after brutal fighting for five days, they managed to push the Army of the Mississippi out of the hills. Another three days saw the Confederate force retreating back across the Arkansaw. After this battle, the First Texas Corps stayed in Little Rock for the remainder of the year and was unable to fully cut the state of Calhoun off from the rest of the Confederate States.

The other main movement by the Provisional Army of Texas during the remainder of 1863 was an attempt to reach New Orleans with naval support and set up a siege and blockade of the city. This attack did not get very far on land, however, due to the marshy terrain in the area. The naval launch was able to get further along before an encounter with Confederate ships in Athafalaya Bay resulted in the ships turning around and going back to Galveston. The Texan Army was able to capture Shreveport in the final months of 1863 though. Additionally, there was more skirmishing around Kansas City between militia forces from both the Union and Confederate sides which resulted in the loss of some ground for the Confederacy.

Part Thirty-Six: The Turning Point

The Virginia Campaign: After the advances by the Union into Virginia and Arkansaw, the Confederate army went into a defensive position in the following spring. The Army of the Mississippi took back the Arkansaw capital from Seguín in April and restored the transportation link between Calhoun and the remainder of the Confederacy. The Army of the Carolinas retreated slightly from the Ohio River toward the hills of the Appalachians but maintained its presence in Kentucky. Seeing the ease with which the Provisional Army of Texas had moved into Arkansaw and Louisiana, the Confederate military also moved some corps from the eastern theatre to strengthen their position in the western theatre.

For the majority of the spring, there was a lull in Union movements and offensives. The only major action was an attempted landing and raid in Cuba, which was spotted early by a Confederate naval patrol. The Union was attempting to land at Daiquirí, east of Santiago on the southeastern end of the island. The cavalry corps stationed in Santiago was alerted and under Colonel Joesph Wheeler the landing party was driven back and forced to retreat[1]. Unfortunately, this small victory in the spring would not be much consolation for the Confederacy by the end of the year.

In early June, the Union began another offensive to capture Richmond and bring Virginia out of the war. This offensive, unlike previous attempts by the Union, was a two-pronged assault aimed with taking both Richmond in the east and the city of Charleston in the west. The Army of the Ohio captured Charleston on June 20th and the Wheeling Legislature moved to Charleston on the 24th. The state of Vandalia was proclaimed and by the end of the year, Vandalia became an official state of the United States. However, at the time of admission to the United States, not all the state had come under Union control. After the fall of Charleston, the Confederacy dispatched Forrest to the west once again to take back the city. However, this proved to be a regretful decision by the Confederacy. Forrest was in control of a larger force than the one which he accompanied in the raid on Cincinnati and this left a smaller garrison in Richmond and the surrounding area. The weaker force at Williamsburg allowed McClellan to break through the Confederate defense line while Burnside advanced south from Fredericksburg. Continuing along the northern bank of the James River, McClellan was able to take Petersburg on July 15th cutting off the main rail link going south from Richmond. As McClellan was moving toward Petersburg, Burnside, now commanding the larger force in the Army of the Potomac, began the offensive south from Fredericksburg and reached Ashland on July 19th. The two parts of the Army closed in on Richmond and the city surrendered after a four day siege on July 27th. With Richmond and Charleston in Union hands, Virginia was for the most part knocked out of the war and Robert E. Lee was made military governor of the state.

The Confluence Campaign: With the Union gaining ground in the eastern theatre, the Confederacy became desperate and in the summer of 1864 launched a large offensive in the western theatre up the Mississippi. With the Confederate purchase of a few small armored ships from the British navy, they had an advantage and sailed up the Mississippi from Memphis. Accompanied by the Army of Mississippi, the Confederates took many towns in western Tennessee and helped Chickasaw officially secede from the Union and join the Confederacy on July 2. Ten days later, the Confederacy defeated a contingent of Union gunboats in the Battle of the Confluence near the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers near Cairo, Illinois. Admiral Gustavus T. Beauregard, leader of the Mississippi Squadron, claimed victory at the battle[2].

After the victory at the Battle of the Confluence, the Army of the Mississippi divided, with one corps led by Edmund Kirby Smith moving up the west bank of the Mississippi and the rest of the army now led by Braxton Bragg moving east along the south bank of the Ohio. Smith's corps was joined by Claiborne Fox Jackson's Ozark Militia as they marched toward Saint Louis. The newly formed Ozark Corps went up the river and entered Cape Girardeau on July 15th, and continued north on the west bank of the Mississippi to Sainte Genevieve. As the Ozark Corps left Sainte Genevieve on July 20th heading for Saint Louis, the Union Army of Missouri crossed the river near Kaskaskia, Illinois using converted steamers provided by Cornelius Vanderbilt at the beginning of the war. The Army of Missouri cut off the supply lines to the Ozark Corps and began march toward Saint Louis following the Ozark Corps. Claiborne Jackson pushed the Ozark Corps north, and through a series of exceptionally hot days starting two days after leaving Sainte Genevieve. The corps was weakened through a wave of hyperthermia, and when the Army of the Missouri caught up with the Ozark Corps just south of Herculaneum, the Army of the Missouri easily routed the Ozark Corps. The ships that were sent with the Ozark Corps ran into trouble when the ironclad CSS Pensacola wrecked and ran aground on a sandbar in the middle of the river. The remainder of the naval contingent was forced back downriver by the Army of Missouri and Vanderbilt's steamers, and the CSS Pensacola was captured by Union forces.

In the east, Bragg and the remainder of the Army of the Mississippi reached Paducah, Kentucky by July 15th and found support there from the local population, who were sympathetic to the Confederate cause and had joined Chickasaw in its secession. Bragg attempted to push on from Paducah but were frequently stopped by the series of forts the Union had built on the edges of the Tennessee and Ohio rivers. Bragg finally managed to force the Army of the Mississippi across the Tennessee River fifteen miles upriver from Paducah on the 24th of July. Two days later the Army of the Mississippi took Cadiz, Kentucky and set up fortresses on the left bank of the Tennessee River. Afterward, Bragg focused his offensives on smaller raids further east and north. The higher scale raids took place on Hopkinsville and Smithland in Kentucky, and Cairo and Metropolis in Illinois. Cairo and Smithland were held for a few months by the Confederates, and one long-term raid in October reached Evansville, Indiana, over hundred miles into the Union. These may seem like great victories for Bragg and the Army of the Mississippi but the overall goal of reaching Lousiville, Kentucky shows how poor the offensive turned out to be from a strategic perspective.

The year of 1864 can be seen as the turning point of the war in military terms. The Union achieved their first major tactical victory capturing Richmond and bringing all of Virginia back to the United States, and the Confederacy became desperate in their offensives to the north. The failure to capture either Saint Louis or Louisville shows that the United States began adapting to southern war strategies and showed how cautious General Bragg was during the war. In addition, the inability of the Confederacy to push far up the Mississippi River or hold the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers for long exemplified the end of the naval advantage that the Confederacy had at the start of the war.

[1] There's a subtle reference here. See if you can figure out what it is. [2] We know him by the name P. G. T. Beauregard, but he didn't use Pierre in his correspondences in the OTL Civil War.

Part Thirty-Seven: The Elections of 1864

For Union: The year 1864 was an election year for both sides of the War Between the States. In the Union, Andrew Johnson stood for reelection alongside New York senator Walt Whitman [1]. Johnson's platform involved the continuation of the war until the Confederacy surrendered. Johnson also stated that while he did oppose slavery on a personal level, he would not support bringing up the question of abolition until the Confederate rebellion had been put down and the Union was preserved. His appointment of New York senator Walt Whitman, a moderate abolitionist and eloquent speaker, gained Johnson approval among many citizens in the north. Johnson and Whitman also supported a quick transition of the Confederate states back into the Union should they surrender, which garnered support from the Texas region and the Appalachian states.

The Republicans renominated John C. Fremont and continued their staunch abolitionist platform and renominated John C. Fremont for president. Along with Fremont, the Republicans put David Wilmot of Pennsylvania as their vice presidential candidate. Wilmot had made a name for himself in the 1830s when he was elected to the House of Representatives and spoke out against president Calhoun's admittance of Tejas and Houston into the Union as slave states. Over the next decades, Wilmot had gained support from many abolitionists in Philadelphia and served over a decade as a Senator before the War Between the States broke out. Fremont and Wilmot called for harsh punishment of the Confederate states for their secession and the immediate emancipation of all slaves in the United States and the Confederacy.

A small splinter group of both Republicans and Democrats formed the Perfect Union Party, which advocated for reconciliation with the Confederacy and a cessation of hostilities between the two sides. Led by Charles P. Bush of Michigan and Oren Cheney of Maine, the Perfect Union Party did not gain much traction but served as a reminder that support for the war was not completely universal in the north. The general election in November of 1864 was heated, with both major parties struggling for the position to decide not just the fate of the Union, but the fate of the Confederacy and the people within.

For Liberty: In the Confederacy, fully fledged parties had not been formed yet in the first two years in the country's existence. However, separate factions of the Liberty Party vied for control over the state legislatures and the Confederate Congress. The incumbent president, Howell Cobb, led the movement to continue the war and fight for the country's right to be independent. While the military offensives by the Confederacy were not seeing much success, Cobb felt that the Confederacy was slowly gaining ground on the Union and that with enough pushing, they could capture and hold a few important Union cities and force the Union to come to the negotiation table.

In opposition to Cobb in the Liberty Party was Judah P. Benjamin. Benjamin argued that the Confederacy was slowly losing its edge against the Union and that if the state and its ideals wished to survive, it should seek a peaceful solution to the war as soon as possible. Benjamin could see the fractious nature of the structure of the Confederacy with the great autonomy given to the individual states and was concerned that once the Union began gaining major victories, the individual states would attempt to break away and reconcile on their own. With the Confederacy choosing its president in March of 1864, the Union victory in Virginia later that year would serve as a strong vindication for Benjamin's warnings.

[1] Walt Whitman is only 9 at the time of the POD. ITTL, he goes into politics instead of becoming a writer and poet. Part Thirty-Eight: Meanwhile in Southeast Asia

Britain: By the mid-19th century, the United Kingdom already had a strong presence in Southeast Asia. In the years after the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain established control over the Johor Straits and much of the southern end of the Malay Peninsula. In the Anglo-Burmese War in the 1820s, the British took the Tenasserim region from Burma. These possessions satisfied the United Kingdom for the next half century and the British established peaceful relations with the kingdoms of Burma and Siam. However, in the 1850s, the British East India Company began to support a local insurgency in the Pattani kingdom which London had recognized as under the influence of the king of Siam. The Siamese discovered this and sent a letter of protest to the East India Company and cracked down on the insurgents. By the time the dispute reached Parliament, the East India Company officials had turned the Siamese protest into a casus belli for the United Kingdom and Parliament declared war on Siam in 1854.

The Anglo-Siamese War lasted for just over one year. While Bangkok was repeatedly blockaded by Great Britain, the capture of smaller towns in southern Siam was difficult due to the lack of infrastructure and the lush forested terrain. Finally, in autumn of 1855, king Rama IV signed a ceasefire with representatives from the British crown and a peace was signed. In the peace treaty, Siam lost much territory to the United Kingdom. Rama IV ceded much of the Siamese land on the Malay Peninsula including the Kra Isthmus. The loss of this land would influence the development of Siam over the next few decades. With the frequent shelling of Bangkok over the course of the war, Rama IV moved the Siamese court back to the inland city of Ayutthaya in 1859, almost one hundred years after it had been moved to Bangkok. It also turned Siam's focus north rather than south when the country began to industrialize.

The Anglo-Siamese War also influenced the British colonial administration in the region. The newly gained land was incorporated into British Malaya, along with the Tenasserim region and the peninsula was unified under one colonial government after the British East India Company gave control of the region to the crown. British Malaya quickly began to develop along several port towns on both sides of the peninsula including Phuket, Singapore and Banton[1]. A railroad built in the 1910s connecting Phuket and Banton on either side of the Malay Peninsula would greatly reduce the time needed for goods to go from British India to east Asia and siphoned some of the development from Singapore and the Johor region to the Phuket region further north.

Belgium, and the Netherlands: Besides the United Kingdom, the other two countries most involved in colonialism in the East Indies in the 19th century were Belgium and the Netherlands. The Dutch had already created a presence in the larger islands of Sumatra and Java, and in the 1840s they began to extend their control over the Moluccas islands of Sulawesi and New Guinea. Dutch trading ports were founded on the coasts of the islands and treaties were created with the local communities establishing protectorates in the region. In 1857, the Second Anglo-Dutch Naval Treaty between the governments of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom that granted the Dutch full rights over all territory on the island of New Guinea. However, the Dutch would not extend their holdings in New Guinea beyond a few colonial forts and towns until the 1880s. Similarly, the Aceh tribes and a few islands east of Java would remain independent well into the 19th century.

Belgium, on the other hand, was a latecomer in the colonial game. The country's first colonial possession in Borneo came from a treaty with the Netherlands in 1839. From this small series of outposts on the southern end of the island of Borneo, Belgium fostered relations with the local kingdoms over the next twenty years. These efforts culminated in the Sabah War in the late 1850s during which Belgium brought the Sultanate of Brunei under its jurisdiction as a protectorate and gained a base of operations on the island of Labuan. In the 1860s under King Ludwig I[2], Belgium expanded their colonial base in the East Indies from Borneo to Indochina. Ludwig's colonial policy led to the country's conquest of much of the lands south of China and east of the Mekong River. In the 1870s, Belgian Indochina was divided into six colonial administrative units led by a local chief and a representative from Brussels.

The Other Colonizers: Along with these three major players, there were a number of minor colonial players in southeast Asia during the 19th century. The Portuguese kept their small holding on the eastern half of the island of Timor. In 1864, the Portuguese settled the border between Portuguese and Dutch Timor and exchanged a post that was a Portuguese exclave for a couple minor islands north of Timor. The Danish, with economic assistance from Great Britain after the cession of Tranquebar to the British East India Company, expanded their colonial control of the Frederiksoerne[3].

France, with their minor possessions in Pondicherry and Korea, attempted to obtain further small bases in the East Indies and the Pacific to secure their trade with Korea. After failing to establish a lasting presence in New Guinea and Formosa, France finally had success in taking the island of Palau. France's presence in the East Indies grew as the century ended when France took the island of Hainan from China as part of their assistance in the Sino-Korean War. Also during the latter half of the 19th century, Spain consolidated her holdings in the Pacific under the administration of Manila as part of the reforms of King Alfonso XII.

[1] OTL Surat Thani. [2] Sort of Leopold II, probably a different personality though. [3] Nicobar Islands. Part Thirty-Nine: Finding the Path to the White House

Election Analysis: The United States 1864 presidential election displayed an important change in the attitudes and political views of the national population. After the death of president Houston put Johnson into office, he was extremely popular among the states that remained in the Union, and his popularity remained fairly high over the first year of his presidency. However, by 1863 it was clear that the war was not going to be a quick affair and this fact polarized the nation. With many of the slave states gone from the Union, support for abolitionism spread and more people turned to the Republican Party. The offensive that Johnson led after the Greeneville Massacre bolstered his popularity initially, as the war dragged on public opinion turned against Johnson taking personal command of a Union army. All these combined to have Johnson ousted by Fremont after only three years in office. Today, however, Andrew Johnson is viewed relatively positively in the United States for his handling of the war and has often been dubbed 'the dictator president'[1] by historians for his decisive actions during the emergency following the assassination of Houston.

In contrast to the increasingly hawkish opinion of the Union, the Confederacy was turning its eye toward a peace gambit. The war had already cost the lives of tens of thousands of young Confederate soldiers and the Confederacy had failed to score any large hits against the Union. Meanwhile, it was becoming clear that the more industrialized Union economy was outclassing the Confederacy's. The Union was also generating far more trade with Europe as British trade for Confederate cotton declined after the war began[2]. Successful Union offensives in Virginia and Arkansaw did not help matters and the Calhoun legislature was almost unable to send in its vote due to the Union occupation of Little Rock. Judah P. Benjamin gained support with his plan to attempt a peaceful negotiation in the war, especially among the states that were being affected by ongoing combat and where armies were being stationed. Cobb had support from the more committed and pro-slavery states in the south such as Georgia and South Carolina. Legislators dismissed questions on Benjamin's Jewish ancestry with an overwhelming response that he had proved himself as Secretary of State and in March of 1864, Benjamin won almost three quarter of the Confederate electoral votes.

Fremont's First Days: After the election of John C. Fremont to the presidency in November of 1864, a peaceful resolution to the War Between the States seemed to slip away. Unprecedented attempts by Andrew Johnson in his final days in office to arrange a diplomatic meeting with Confederate President Judah P. Benjamin were blocked by Congress, which had turned sharply Republican in 1864. As Johnson left the White House in March of 1865, his farewell address warned the nation of going too radical too quickly and reminded Congress that the citizens of the Confederacy were still Americans at heart and that they should be treated as such. Fremont began his term in office by strengthening the United States navy. He commissioned two ironclad ships to be built in New England and with the support of a newly Republican Congress, purchased another two ships from France. Outfitted with steel plating and the ability to plant torpedoes[3], these ships gave the Union a clear naval superiority over the Confederacy on the Atlantic coast and not just in the Mississippi-Ohio river system. Later in the year, torpedoes were planted at points along the mouth of Chesapeake Bay while Union soldiers pursued Longstreet and took back much of Kentucky.

Fremont's election also caused some setbacks for the Union. Upon hearing of his inauguration, the population of Chickasaw formally seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. His election also created unrest across northern Tejas that March, much larger than the one uprising in Dallas a year before. Seguin had to diver a corps to quell the revolt. In April, Fremont created the new Colorado Territory out of the northern half of New Mexico Territory. Ferroplano became the territorial capital and Colorado abolished slavery.

[1] In TTL, dictator does not gain the negative connotation that it has in OTL. ITTL a dictator is someone who takes charge in an emergency, and usually is positive and commenting on a person's quick thinking and leadership. [2] This is due to British protectionist policies and the growing of cotton in India [3] Torpedoes are OTL naval mines. Also, a little tidbit that I couldn't fit into the update: The major manufacturer of torpedoes in the Union is Nobel Torpedo Works, founded by Alfred and Ludwig Nobel in Castleton, Staten Island, New Jersey.

Part Forty: The Ozark Offensive

Ozark Offensive: The Ozark Offensive began early in 1865 when the Union sent the Army of the Missouri moved south to recapture Cape Girardeau after the majority of the Ozark Corps had surrendered. The Army of the Missouri entered Cape Girardeau on April 14th. While the Union River Squadron kept the Confederate navy busy, the Army of the Missouri under Winfield Scott Hancock skirted the southern edge of the Ozark Plateau as they swerved away from the Mississippi River. Hancock moved his men slowly along the edge of the plateau and took the city of Poplar Bluff, Missouri on April 26th. After following the south edge of the Ozarks for another thirty miles, Hancock turned south. By the time word of Hancock's move into Arkansaw reached Memphis, the Union forces had already taken the city of Jonesboro and secured a rail link between Saint Louis and Little Rock.

Bragg began moving most of the Army of the Mississippi south from Paducah in early May, but left a small garrison in northern Chickasaw to stall a Union advance. Because of the movement of the Army of Mississippi, the Union River Squadron was able to win the Second Battle of the Confluence and a corps took back Cairo. Bragg's men reached Memphis and crossed the Mississippi on May 17th. By then, Hancock had reached Clarendon Arkansaw and turned east toward the Mississippi. After a few days of skirmishing and maneuvering, Bragg and Hancock met at the river approximately ten miles north of the town of Helena on May 22nd. Hancock had the initial advantage as Union forces occupied the town and the outlying Saint Francis Hills[1] while Bragg advanced from the north.

On the first day of fighting Hancock made the first move in an attempt to gain an early victory and push Bragg back to the Mississippi River. The artillery of the Army of the Missouri were positioned on the southern edge of the hills by the river while a cavalry corps circled around from the northwest. Bragg had put most of his infantry at the Army of Mississippi's right flank and was able to push back the cavalry charge. The next day saw the advantage flip to the Confederates. The Army of Mississippi was able to advance on the right flank and capture the town of Marianna on the north end of the Saint Francis Hills. However, this push by the Confederates did not ensure them a victory in the battle. On the fourth day of fighting, Hancock's men achieved a large breakthrough in the center of the Bragg's forces. Hancock was able to isolate the bulk of the Army of Mississippi in Marianna from the smaller force by the river. The southern force was routed on May 27th, and Bragg ordered a general retreat a day later. Bragg's men retreated across the Mississippi River to regroup while Hancock sent the Army of the Missouri south toward Vicksburg.

Five days before the Battle of Helena, Seguín had finished mopping up the Northern Tejas Rebellion and moved the First Texas Corps back into Arkansaw. With help from a corps form the Army of the Missouri, Seguín capture Little Rock once again on June 12th. The fall of Little Rock to the Union meant that all of Calhoun and the majority of Arkansaw were now cut off from the Confederacy. The area held out for another two months while Seguín gradually moved up the Arkansaw River, but on August 4th, Calhoun surrendered to the Union at Harlem. Calhoun and the portion of Arkansaw that the Union controlled were set up like Virginia as military districts.

[1] Not sure what to call these hills but they are in the Saint Francis National Forest according to Google Maps.

Part Forty-One: Gaining Ground, the 1865 Campaigns

June Movements: While Seguin and Hancock chased after the Army of the Mississippi, the Union gained a slew of major successes in the east. Carlos Buell leading the Army of the Ohio and Joseph Hooker leading the Army of the Wabash recovered the remaining land in Kentucky that had been lost to the Confederacy in the previous years and quickly crossed into Tennessee. On the 11th of June, Buell entered into Greeneville and was accompanied by former president Andrew Johnson. Johnson's entrance into Greeneville was similar to a military parade and he received a warm welcome. They stayed in Greeneville for four days while the army rested and let Hooker's men catch up to them. Hooker and the Army of the Ohio[1] entered Tennessee on June 12th and defeated the Confederate Army of Georgia at Oneida just south of the border of Kentucky and Tennessee. As the Army of Georgia retreated east, it combined efforts with the Army of the Carolinas and in the Third Siege of Knoxville, finally had success in taking the city. The Confederates held Knoxville for only two weeks as the Army of the Wabash and the Army of the Ohio advanced from the north and southwest. From the 18th to the 26th the four armies fought around the city until the Confederates had been routed. The Final Battle of Knoxville is considered the decisive battle in the eastern theatre and Buell achieved great success for this and later campaigns in the war.

While Buell and Hooker were gaining ground in Tennessee, McClellan was mopping up the resistance in Virginia. McClellan and the Army of the Potomac went to Charlottesville on June 14th and Lynchburg on the 20th. While McClellan was handling a minor Confederate encampment in the Appalachians, the Confederate Atlantic squadron under James D. Bulloch[2] launched an attack on Fort Monroe and tried to break into Chesapeake Bay. The Union flotilla stationed at Norfolk, Virginia sallied out into the mouth of the bay but stayed back enough so that the Confederate ships would have to get in range of Fort Monroe as well as Fort Charles on the tip of the Delmarva Peninsula. Bulloch brought the Confederate squadron into the bay where the Union forces fired on the ships from both land and sea. After hours of bombardment, Bulloch retreated his now battered squadron back down the coast. Using this opportunity, the Army of the Potomac crossed into North Carolina.

July Movements: From Knoxville, Buell and Hooker split up as they drove further into Confederate territory. Buell was set to go east from Knoxville and his Army of the Wabash entered North Carolina on July 5th and marched into Asheville four days later after a battle with the Army of the Carolinas in the outskirts of the town. The Army of the Wabash continued east into North Carolina for two weeks chasing the Army of the Carolinas and fighting two more battles with them in July. With the string of losses, the Army of the Carolinas was greatly demoralized and retreated east and north to Charlotte. Meanwhile, Joseph Hooker and the Army of the Ohio marched south from Knoxville toward Chattanooga. Hooker was set back at Sweetwater, Tennessee when the Army of Georgia briefly rallied against the Union but Hooker soon swung the Army of the Ohio south past Forrest, now commanding the Army of Georgia.

McClellan, meanwhile, continued into North Carolina. McClellan had learned that the Army of the Carolinas was headed northeast toward him, but he did not receive accurate information on the army's current location and its haggard condition. The Army of the Potomac set up fortifications on the north bank of the Roanoke River and waited for two weeks while no Confederate army showed up. Finally on July 19th, McClellan moved south and crossed the Roanoke River at Scotland Neck. The Army of the Potomac continued west toward the state capital of Raleigh.

August Movements: After the battle of Sweetwater, Joseph Hooker swung the Army of the Ohio around the Army of Georgia as Forrest led a cavalry corps ahead to warn the garrison in Chattanooga. Forrest readied the forts outside of the city in preparation for the attack. Hooker's army set up a camp a few miles east of Chattanooga on August 10th. As the siege drew on, the rest of the Army of Georgia reached Chattanooga and joined Forrest's defenses. After a drawn out battle, Forrest retreated beyond the Tennessee border and Hooker tooker Chattanooga where he remained for the rest of the month, fending off a counterattack by Forrest.

North Carolina was now only defended by Longstreet and the Army of the Carolinas, while both the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the Wabash were invading. On August 6th, McClellan at last realized that the Army of the Carolinas was nowhere in sight and crossed the Roanoke River. The army reached just east of Raleigh on the 18th of August when the Army of the Carolinas intercepted the Army of the Potomac. McClellan retreated somewhat to set up a defensive row of artillery, and as a result Longstreet gained a minor terrain advantage. However, when the fighting actually started, Longstreet made a major tactical mistake. He ordered a direct cavalry charge and his men were decimated by the Union cannons. The following attacks by the Army of the Carolinas and they were soon routed. In anger, Longstreet order his men to plunder Raleigh as they were retreating through the city. His men refused and were close to instigating a mutiny and were only stopped when Longstreet backed down. The Army of the Potomac entered Raleigh and Longstreet escorted the legislature out of the city. Buell, meanwhile took Charlotte and the Union Atlantic Squadron blockaded much of the coast, effectively neutralizing North Carolina's effectiveness for the Confederacy.

[1] General Grant is now Commanding General of the United States Army. [2] James D. Bulloch, uncle of one Theodore Roosevelt.

Part Forty-Two: Taking the Mississippi

After Vicksburg: With Calhoun and Arkansaw part of the Union once again, Seguín and Hancock were able to focus on the rest of the Mississippi River and gaining ground in what was considered the heart of the Confederacy. The thee prime ports on the lower Mississippi that remained in Confederate control were Memphis, Vicksburg, and New Orleans. Hancock and the Army of the Missouri focused on sieging Vicksburg first. Once Seguín and the First Texas Corps were free, Seguín joined in in the siege. Hancock had set up on the east bank of the Mississippi blocking the major rail and road routes to the east, while he First Texas Corps took up camp on the west bank of the river. Amazingly, the city lasted for almost another month after the arrival of Seguín before it fell. However, because it held out so long, the city took extensive damage from artillery during the siege and after the end of the war lost much of its economic and strategic importance.

From Vicksburg, Hancock went south along the Mississippi while Seguín want north. Seguín and the First Texas Corps marched upriver on the left bank for the next month and crossed the river once they neared Memphis. Memphis with its meager garrison was captured on September 27th. Seguín spent most of October securing the fortresses built along the east bank of the Mississippi in Tennessee and defending Memphis from raids by what was left of Bragg's army. As Hancock was moving south, the Union Gulf Squadron began a blockade off the coast of Louisiana, specifically focusing on the mouth of the Mississippi. Hancock reached Baton Rouge in early October and fought the remaining forces being led by Forrest that had not been sent north to garrison Chickasaw. Forrest's men quickly lost the battle and the remains of the Army of Mississippi ran to New Orleans to warn the city of Hancock's imminent arrival. Federal officials stopped production at the New Orleans Mint and moved all the processed gold and silver coinage into Mississippi via rail. Forrest and the Army of the Mississippi were determined to hold up Hancock as long as possible before he reached New Orleans, but he didn't foresee the move made by the Gulf Squadron on October 5th.

The Battle of Lake Pontchartrain: By October, with the success of the Jackson Rebellion, the only major Gulf ports that had not fallen to the Union were New Orleans and Mobile, and the members of the Jackson Rebellion were soon to take the latter. Admiral David Farragut, who was in charge of the Union Gulf Squadron for the majority of the war, decided to force the squadron into Lake Pontchartrain and speed up the taking of the city after Forrest's plans became known. Farragut ordered the squadron past Smugglers' Cove and entered Lake Borgne. The two natural waterways into Lake Pontchartrain, Chef Menteur Pass and the Rigolets. Farragut opted for the Gulf Squadron to go through the Rigolets because, while better protected, the strait was also deeper on average. The squadron sailed into Lake Pontchartrain despite being bombarded by cannons at Fort Pike, and encountered Gustavus T. Beauregard and the Confederate Mississippi Squadron.

The Battle of Lake Pontchartrain began on the 5th of October. Beauregard had positioned the Mississippi Squadron in a position ideal to intercept Farragut's ships as they entered from the Rigolets and had also set a field of torpedos on the north side of the lake. Beauregard's squadron had been deeply hurt since the Confluence Campaign and in the Battle of Lake Pontchartrain contained only one ironclad, the CSS Chickasaw. Farragut, meanwhile, had three ironclads; the USS Tecumseh, the USS Manhattan, and the USS Tennessee. The USS Tecumseh led the way into the lake with the USS Brooklyn, the flagship of the squadron and the sihp that Farragut was on during the battle. As the Tecumseh entered the lake, it was forced to run close to the right edge of the lake by the Mississippi Squadron, and while turning left toward the Chickasaw, struck one of the torpedos and soon sank. At this, the Brooklyn slowed as its captain had been given orders to avoid the torpedos. The captain went to consult Farragut, who responded with his now famous utterance, "Damn the torpedos! Full speed ahead!"[1]. Miraculously, the Brooklyn did not strike any torpedos as the Tecumseh had. The Battle of Lake Pontchartrain lasted for two weeks and ended with a decisive victory for Farragut, and the capture of New Orleans with the arrival of the Army of Missouri.

[1]The incident leading to Farragut's famous quote is taken from the incident that occurred during the Battle of Mobile Bay in OTL that made Farragut say it.

Part Forty-Three: A Crumbling Confederacy

Jackson Revolts: With the Union army steadily moving south and President Fremont refusing to enter into peace negotiations with Confederate President Benjamin, the individual southern states started to lose their loyalty to the Confederate government. In the state of Jackson, which had not originally declared itself part of the Confederate States of America but was invaded very early in the war, a popular uprising in support of the United States began in September of 1865. The uprising started in Pensacola as the citizens occupied several government buildings. With aid from the Union Gulf Squadron, the state capitol building in Pensacola fell to the rebels on September 17th. From Pensacola the rebels spread out along the roads around the city using guerrilla tactics. By the end of September, the uprising had spread to other cities in Jackson. In the first month, the fight against the Confederacy was concentrated in the major population centers where slavery was least popular. A separate group of rebels captured the city of Marianna on September 30th. With more assistance from the Gulf Squadron after the fall of New Orleans, the newly created Jackson militia overran the garrison in the harbor at San Andrés[1] on October 8th. An attempt by rebels to overthrow the Confederates stationed at Tallahassee was put down by the Confederates and the participants in that uprising were hanged. The Jackson militia in San Andrés met up with the Marianna rebels on the 15th as the Second Texas Corps was brought into Pensacola to secure the remainder of western Jackson. Some members of the Second Texas Corps assisted the rebels with setting up defenses along the west side of the Seguin River and by the end of October much of the state west of the river had fallen under Union control. After the remainder of the Gulf Coast was captured by the Union over the next month, Francis Richard Lubbock and the Second Texas Corps would head east toward Tallahassee and the remainder of Jackson.

Veracruz Quits: After the capture of New Orleans, Jefferson Davis realized that the Confederacy was going to fall and that its reabsorption in to the Union was only a matter of time. Having no desire to give up his power and let the Union capture Veracruz, Davis and Veracruz declared independence from the Confederate States of America. After sending a diplomatic letter to Washington, the independence of Veracruz was recognized by the United States government in exchange for being able to use the port as a naval base.[2]

As the Confederacy continued losing land to the Union forces, Jefferson Davis invited Confederates to leave their homes in the CSA and migrate to Veracruz. Davis encouraged mostly former dockworkers from New Orleans, Mobile, and Havana to enter Veracruz. Over twenty thousand people with an equal distribution in Cuba and the mainland came to Veracruz in the years after the fall of the Confederacy. These immigrants greatly contributed to the economic prosperity of Veracruz around the turn of the 20th century. Through the next thirty years, the city-state became a busy entry port for goods entering the unstable Mexican states as it was one of the only continuously stable countries in the region.

[1] OTL Panama City, Florida. It was originally called Saint Andrew, which I have Hispanicized [2] The reasoning for Davis' secession from the CSA comes from Jefferson Davis's memoirs in TTL.

Part Forty-Four: Ending Slavery in the United States

Let These People Go: Confident of a Union victory in the National War, President Fremont and the Republican Congress began implementing their policies in the United States. Along with the goal of winning the war, the Republcans began pushing for the abolition of slavery across the nation. Some states had already enacted laws to abolish slavery locally. As part of the reaction to the assassination of Samuel Houston and the secession of the states forming the Confederacy, Tejas had emancipated its slaves in 1862. Likewise, Maryland had emancipated its slaves during in early 1865 after Fremont was elected. In the new military districts that were created as more Confederate states fell to the Union, many slaves took the advantage of the Union occupation to run away to free states further north or free territories in the west. As suport for the Republican Party grew, the impetus for the United States to abolish slavery altogether was formed.

The issue of slavery was brought to the forefront of United States policy after the capture of New Orleans. In mid-October of 1865, President Fremont gave a speech in Louisville, Kentucky aimed at slaveholders in the Union, as well as the Confederate government. In the speech, Fremont called for support for the emancipation of all slaves in the United States, evoking the passage in the Declaration of Independence that 'all men are created equal' and the passage in the preamble to the Constitution that refers to securing the blessings of liberty in the United States. Fremont also appealed to Confederate President Judah P. Benjamin's Jewish heritage. In the speech, Fremont related the history of the Jews as slaves in Egypt and suggested that Benjamin do as Moses did and free the slaves in the Confederacy. One of the memorable quotes by Fremont during this speech is his statement to Benjamin to "let these people go". That statement is now one of the quotes most widely associated with the fight for emancipation. After Fremont returned to Washington in November, he and Congress passed legislation to outlaw slavery in the United States by 1870. Over the next five years, all states would free their slaves.

Defection of Cuba: With Union troops advancing toward Mobile and Jackson rising up in revolt, similar pro-Union movements began welling up in Cuba. Some plantation owners began freeing their slaves in a protest to the continuation of the war by the Confederacy. By late November, several of the more liberal Cuban plantation owners rose up against the Confederacy with the support of the middle classes. The plantation owners all met in secret and selected Carlos Manuel de Céspedes[1] as the overall commander of the small band of rebelsm known as the Demajagueros[2]. Céspedes had been a prominent landowner in eastern Cuba prior to the National War and became disillusioned with the Confederacy after the state legislature in Havana appropriated his sugar mill to fund the war effort. During the weeks of guerrilla warfare against the Confederate forces on the island, the rebels gathered strength as other Cubans tired of the perceived neglect of Cuba by the Confederate government joined with the plantation owners. By December, the rebels had captured many major towns and ports in eastern Cuba including Camaguey, Manzanillo, and Santiago de Cuba.

In late November as news of the rebellion arrived at Augusta and Washington, the United Staes started planning an invasion of Cuba in order to hasten the fall of the Confederacy. The Union coordinated with Céspedes and the Demajagueros in where the invading forces would land, and the army was soon sent to land in the Bahia de Cárdenas. The three corps sent by the Union under the command of Major General George Lucas[3] landed on December 9th while Céspedes and his men were attacking the city of Santa Clara. While the Union soliders moved over land to capture the port city of Matanzas, the Demajagueros pushed the Confederate loyalists out of Santa Clara. Matanzas fell to the Union corps on December 12th, and the Union soldiers began moving inland and west through the valley. In Matanzas the Union gained the assistance of many free and slave Africans, which sped up the Union advance. The Union corps quickly moved west through the mountains, routing a Confederate corps at Aguacate, and arrived at the town of Nazareno on the 16th of December to plan the final assault on Habana. Céspedes and some of the Demajagueros were sent to Nazareno to coordinate the attack with Lucas.

Céspedes arrived in Nazareno on the 19th of December and a plan of attack on Habana was hammered out. Three Union ships from the Gulf Squadron, including the USS Pensacola, blockaded the port in Habana so no Confederate supplies or reinforcements would be able to enter the state capital. Céspedes and the Demajagueros he had brought with him moved north with Lucas and his soldiers toward Habana. After a four day long siege and assault, the capital was taken in the early hours of Christmas day. While the siege was a success, George Lucas did not live through it. During an attack on one of the forts in Habana, a Confederate explosive shell struck Lucas in the face and exploded. With Habana in Union hands, the state of Cuba had officially fallen, but fighting continued throughout the island for weeks later.

[1] Céspedes is an OTL figure considered the father of Cuba. He wrote the Cuban declaration of independence that began the Ten Years' War [2] Named after La Demajagua, Céspedes's estate [3] OTL George Lucas Hartsuff

Part Forty-Five: The Bell Tolls for Benjamin

The Walls Close In: The turn of the new year brought a new vigor into the offensives by the Union against the remnants of the Confederacy. Joseph Hooker led the Army of the Wabash out of Chattanooga and into Georgia on January 10th. Almost constantly fighting roadside raids by local militias, the Army of the Wabash was only able to move ten miles a day in the march. Several bands of untrained militiamen loyal to the Confederacy had set up camps in the mountains on both sides of the path the army was traveling on. On the 22nd of January, the Army of the Wabash neared Atlanta. Not wanting to allow the Union to capture Atlanta, Forrest and the Army of Georgia stood their ground in the hill near Cartersville northwest of Atlanta. Luring the army in between two sets of hills just east of Cartersville, Forrest and his men fought for five days in a last stand agaubst the Union army, using the hills to support artillery positions and the area in between to block Hooker from advancing. While Forrest ultimately lost the Battle of Cartersville, the battle took a large toll on the Army of the Wabash and forced Hooker to delay in the final capture of Atlanta.

Seguin and Hancock advancing from the Mississippi River had much better luck in their movements in the autumn of 1865 than Hooker did. Seguin and the First Texas Corps began marching east from Memphis along the border of Chickasaw and Mississippi in mid-December. Seguin reached Corinth, Mississippi on December 30th and stayed in the town for a week while sending out scouting parties to search for bands of Confederate militiamen. Having cleared much of the surrounding area by January 9th, the First Texas Corps headed north to Savannah on the Tennessee River. Reaching the river on the 14th of January, the First Texas Corps split into smaller divisions and patrolled the line Seguin had carved for the next month to cut Chickasaw off from the rest of the Confederacy.

Hancock, meanwhile, began to move in on southern Mississippi. One by one during the remainder of December and the beginning days of January, Hancock and the Army of Missouri captured the Confederate forts along the east bank of the Mississippi River. Notable among these was the capture of the fort and city of Natchez, Mississippi. The Roman Catholic bishop of Natchez, George Aloysius Carrell[1], convinced the citizens of Natchez as well as the soldiers at the fort to lay down their arms and surrender to Hancock. The town of Natchez was spared from fighting and the fort commander was not imprisoned by the Union. Hancock continued on in Mississippi and entered the capital of Jackson on January 20th, 1866.

"Last Chance" Jackson and the Miracle of Montgomery: Further east along the Gulf of Mexico, Francis Lubbock and the Second Texas Corps went on an offensive in Alabama. Satisfied with the ability of the Jackson militia to defend itself on the eastern border of the state, Lubbock struck northward into Alabama in early January. Lubbock had not received any information on the whereabouts of the Confederate Army of Mississippi in a month, and assumed that it had been disbanded or that many of the soldiers had deserted after the loss at New Orleans. Charging the army north, Lubbock and the Second Texas Corps reached Fort Deposit in two weeks. After setting up camp in Fort Deposit for three days to ensure the capture of the fort, the Second Texas Corps resumed its path north toward Montgomery.

Shortly after leaving the fort, the Second Texas Corps found the Army of Mississippi, now led by Thomas "Last Chance" Jackson[2], who was quick to assume leadership of the Army of Mississippi after Forrest left for the Army of Georgia. Jackson turned out to be a very gifted commander and under his lead, the Army of Mississippi managed to continually hold off the Second Texas Corps in the hills near Fort Deposit for the remainder of the war. At one point, Jackson was even able to coordinate a sneak attack around the Corps and captured Fort Deposit for a few days. Because of "Last Chance" Jackson, the city of Montgomery was never captured during the war and remained one of the few cities in the former Confederacy untouched by fighting.

The March on Augusta: Buell and McClellan remained in North Carolina for the remainder of 1865, cleaning up the rebel fighters in the rural areas of the state. The Union navy blockaded further down the Atlantic coast making patrols all the way to Charleston and Savannah. After the new year, the Union armies in North Carolina began preparations to move south further into Confederate territory. McClellan and the Army of the Potomac went to Fayetteville and down to the coast at which point they entered South Carolina. McClellan reached Myrtle Beach on January 16th, 1866. As McClellan kept pushing toward Charleston, the Union Atlantic Squadron attempted to enter the port. They were rebuffed by the cannons at Fort Sumter, but the Army of the Potomac set up camp at Mount Pleasant across the harbor from Charleston on the 27th of January. McClellan set up a patrol and a palisade to try and cut the peninsula of Charleston off from supplies.

While McClellan was driving down the South Carolina coast, Buell was advancing further inland toward the Confederate capital. After leaving Charlotte, North Carolina in early January, the Army of the Ohio crossed the border into South Carolina near the eastern bank of Wylie Lake. On January 7th, the Army of the Ohio encountered the demoralized remnants of the Army of the Carolinas at the small town of Lancaster, South Carolina. The battle began in the valley to the north of the town with scattered Confederates in the hills causing minor casualties to the Union army. Over the next few days, the fighting moved south through the town and west toward the Catawba River. As Buell continued to drive back the Army of the Carolinas, Longstreet organized a silent retreat to the hills in the north on the night of January 8th, and inflicted more damage on the Army of the Ohio through raids and ambushes. By the 11th, Longstreet snuck the Army of the Carolinas across the Catawba and retreated as fast as they could toward Columbia, the capital of South Carolina.

Buell chased after the Army of the Carolinas as it crossed the Catawba River and advanced south. With Longstreet's forces diminished and able to move at a faster pace, the Confederate force made it to Columbia while the Army of the Ohio was two days away. Buell's army continued south after Longstreet and after a week of skirmishing around Columbia, the capital of South Carolina fell to the Union on January 24th. Up until now, the Confederate legislature had been obstructing any attempts by Benjamin to organize a peaceful surrender to the Union. As the Army of the Carolinas fled Columbia, Longstreet sent a messenger to ride to Augusta and warn the Confederate government that the Union army was closing in.

[1] OTL Bishop of Covington, Kentucky [2] Ole' Stonewall's got a new nickname Part Forty-Six: The End of the Confederacy

End of the National War: The last gasp of the Confederacy in the National War came as Buell continued marching southwest toward the Confederate capital. While the message was being rushed to President Benjamin, McClellan continued blockading and shelling Charleston and Atlanta fell to Hooker. The message reached Augusta and Benjamin on January 27th and Benjamin called for an emergency meeting of the present members of the Confederate legislature. The legislature members held a heated debate over the next two days while Buell inched closer to Augusta and Forrest did as much as he could to delay the final attack on the capital. On the last day of January, the legislature finally voted after much urging from Benjamin to send a plea for an armistice to Fremont and Buell. After pushing the Army of Georgia back to the Savannah River just across the bridge from Augusta, Buell agreed to a ceasefire while the letter reached Fremont.

The letter reached the end of the Union telegraph lines in Columbia and was telegraphed to Washington, DC where Fremont received the message. After deliberation with his cabinet and both houses of Congress, an armistice was arranged between the United States and the Confederacy. Two weeks later om February 18th, 1866, Fremont and Benjamin met in Augusta and Benjamin officially signed the surrender of the Confederate States of America. A meeting later that day with the Confederate legislature officially dissolved the country and surrendered all territories within to the United States[1]. All the Confederate armies that had not yet submitted to the Union did so in the next few weeks.

Old States and New States: After the final surrender of the Confederacy, the states that had been part of the former Confederacy were turned into Union military districts until a plan for reincorporating them as states could be determined by Congress. Each district was given one observing member in Congress but what not allowed to vote on any bills. The discussion of how to handle the former Confederate states dominated much of Congress's proceedings in 1866. The more radical members of the Republican party including President Fremont wanted a strict policy to ensure the loyalty of the states and to punish them for seceding in the first place. Democrats and more moderate Republicans, taking a pragmatic approach, desired more leniency in order to readmit the states into the Union as soon as possible.

One thing that both sides could agree on was that the abolition of slavery was required for a state to be readmitted into the United States. For these former Confederate states, this meant drafting new state constitutions. The method of having Congress approve a new state constitution for each military district was eventually adopted by the United States government as the official policy for the Reconstruction era in mid-1866. In this way, the former states were treated like territories but with expedited rules for admission. New state constitutions were drafted in a few states as early as that year, with the states of Jackson, Cuba, and Calhoun being readmitted later in 1866. Two exceptions to the territorial rule were the Confederate states of Chickasaw and Virginia. The area of the state of Chickasaw was assigned as military districts of Kentucky and Tennessee, the states that Chickasaw had seceded from when it joined the Confederacy. The two states attempted to police the area and destroy any lingering rebel groups in the rural areas, but the local support for these groups was just too strong for Kentucky and Tennessee to want to deal with. While most of the guerrilla organizations were based in the hills in central Chickasaw, rebel sentiment was especially strong in cities on the Mississippi River such as Paducah and Memphis which had a large presence of the state militias. The groups and rebel sympathizers raided towns and wreaked havoc in the larger cities with guerrilla tactics. The occupation of Chickasaw took a big drain on the post-war economies of Kentucky and Tennessee, and with the Great Fire of Memphis breaking out in 1868 the two states finally petitioned Congress to take control over the area. Congress passed the Chickasaw District Act in early 1869 and the area became the state of Chickasaw in the spring of 1870.

The events that occurred in the Virginia military district were very much different from what happened in Chickasaw following the National War. Robert E. Lee, the man behind the secession of Vandalia during the war, encouraged ardent freesoilers to move into the area of Virginia to expedite the state's readmission to the Union[2]. Meanwhile, Thaddeus Stevens, a Pennsylvania Representative and one of the more radical members of the Republican party at the time, called for the punishment of the former Confederate states and proposed that the state of Virginia be divided into two states upon admission. Stevens was successful in attaining support for his bill in Congress and within northern Virginia where most settlers in Virginia from New England and the Mid-Atlantic states ended up. In 1868, a majority of citizens in the region voted on a constitution separate from that which was established in the southern part of the state. Later that year, the state of Winfield was carved out of northern Virginia and admitted to the United States while the rest of Virginia took until 1869 to be readmitted.

[1] The Confederate Constitution and the official surrender now form the principal documents of the Confederate History Museum in Augusta, Georgia. [2] Lee later becomes a representative for Winfield. Lee went along with the division because he was bitter about not being selected as Virginia's territorial observer in Congress.

Part Forty-Seven: The Aftermath of the National War

Economic Effects of National War: The National War had a great impact on both the economies of the northern and southern United States in the years following it. In the southern states, the largest impact by far was the conversion of former slaves working on plantations into free American citizens. Many newly freed blacks concentrated in cities such as New Orleans and Montgomery. Some fled north with their new found freedom to try and find a job there. Most freed blacks stayed on the plantations that they had lived on prior to the National War, but were now paid by their former owners. Railroad construction in the south helped stimulate its recovery, but overall the economy in the former Confederacy was still slow due to a reliance on single cash crops such as cotton. Cotton production and exports in the southern states especially declined due to foreign markets such as Britain and France turning to cotton from India and Egypt.

The slump in agricultural production in the southern United States also led to the first development of major urban and industrial centers in the region. Fueled by the influx of black laborers and the switch of production on some plantations from cash crops like cotton to food crops such as rice in the Lower Mississippi, cities such as New Orleans and Montgomery flourished in the late nineteenth century. With the development of textile industries in those two cities, railroads from the Carolinas and Georgia soon wound their way westward to support the movement of cotton. Other gulf port cities developed as well to support the growing economy in Cuba. Pensacola continued to grow and a new harbor sprung up in Tampa Bay[1], which soon had a railroad link to Jacksonville. But aside from the Mississippi valley, the Gulf coast, and exceptional areas such as Montgomery, the southern United States experienced a rather slow recovery in the decades following the National War.

The development of the northern states after the National War was rather different from that of the southern states. The fighting that Cincinnati endured during the war drove many factories and producers away from the city and to cities away from the Ohio River. The river lost much of its steamship traffic as railroads were built through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. Indianapolis became a major rail hub in the Old Northwest as rail lines replaced the old steamer routes toward the Mississippi River. The states in the Old Northwest were further assisted by Fremont's push to begin construction of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Three major cities, Indianapolis, Chicago, and Saint Louis quickly expanded as steel mills and other industries flocked to the cities and as people passed thorugh on their way to the plains states and the Pacific or up north to Minneapolis or Duluth. These three cities became what was known as the Northern Industrial Triangle for much of the later nineteenth century and into the twentieth. This development helped the northern states recover faster from the National War than their southern brethren and only increased the economic disparity between the two regions.

Demographic Effects of National War: The shift in the economic centers of the United States in the 1860s was brought about by major shifts in population, and also brought about some population movements of its own. At the end of the National War, several freed blacks from the southern states moved to the cities or migrated north. Some even headed out west to work on the railroads that began crisscrossing the Great Plains in the 1870s and 1880s. The settling of freed slaves in cities such as New Orleans and Memphis helped the cities and their states flourish in the latter half of the 19th century. The urbanization of the area along the Mississippi brought about some special challenges to city planners. A couple cities brought in Ildefons Cerda to plan the growth of the cities, who inspired the style of urban planning known as Cerdismo[2]. Cerda gained fame for designing a grand plan for the expansion of Barcelona in 1859[3], and was commissioned by several American cities including Ferroplano, Memphis, and Chicago to design plans for the cities in the aftermath of the National War. Cerda would return to Spain under the reign of Alfonso XII, but his mark on these American cities was permanent. After the Great Fire of 1871, Memphis took advantage of Cerda's planning expertise and redesigned itself as a premiere modern city.

The plantation owners of the former Confederate states did not fare well in the years following the National War. Many who wanted to maintain their life as slaveowners or simply could not keep financing their plantations left the United States, going to Veracruz, Costa Rica, Colombia, or Brazil, which still permitted slavery. Those plantation owners who stayed faced several economic problems with the transfer to wage labor. Some had to switch production from cotton to a less profitable crop. Others sold their plantations and moved to the major cities to try and get a better life in the economic downturn of the late 1870s.

The northern population also experienced a change following the economic shift. As mentioned previously, Saint Louis, Chicago, and Indianapolis flourished along with Cairo, Illinois due to transportation links and a general shift west in the population and economic centers of the country. Saint Louis and Chicago each recorded over 300,000 people in the 1870s census whereas they had just over 100,000 in 1860, and Indianapolis jumped to over 100,000 people from just 20,000 a decade before, replacing Cincinnati on the top ten most populous cities in the United States[4]. Meanwhile, the populations of the east coast cities began to shift as more immigrants from southern Europe came to the United States during the turmoil brought on by the Six Years' War and the Grand Unification War. The shift in population toward the Mississippi helped encourage westward expansion in the next few decades and fueled a number of new businesses and technological advancements.

[1] It needs a name. I was thinking Gadsden, or something more Spanish. Suggestions would be welcome. [2] Cerdismo incorporates a mostly grid system with wide boulevards optimized for pedestrian and urban railway traffic and includes large green areas. [3] Cerda published his Eixample or Enlargement in 1859 in OTL as well, which effectively planned Barcelona's growth for the next century. ITTL he gains more fame and work than he did in OTL. [4] I'm planning on making a list of top ten US cities at each census.

Part Forty-Eight: California Dreaming

Immigration Policy: The Republic of California enjoyed a prosperous history during the late nineteenth century. Or at least, the Iberos living in the coastal provinces and San Isidro did. With the Gold Rush and the National War bringing in many immigrants from the United States, native Californios became ever more protective of their identity as descendants of Mexicans and Spaniards. By the 1870s, Espejo was established as an officially English district by the government in Monterey. The San Xavier Purchase which gave a portion of eastern Espejo and the encouragement of American immigrants to live in the district angered the Mormon population that had already been living in Espejo. Between 1878 and 1882, the Mormons launched an uprising against Monterey and threatening to proclaim an independent state. Fearing the Mormons in Espejo might join the United States, Californio President Alonso Rivera sent a large portion of the country's army into Espejo and after a grueling four-year campaign, destroyed the Mormon uprising. In the late 1880s, restriction of American and English immigration was relaxed as the Mormon Rebellion sent the country deeply into debt.

In the late nineteenth century, the Republic of California also experienced a large amount of immigration from eastern Asia. With the development of San Diego and Yerba Buena as the major port cities in the country, many migrants primarily from China, Korea, and the Philippines arrived in the country during the 1860s and 1870s. While most Filipinos were welcomed as fellow Iberos, the Californio government initially put restrictive laws on the movement of other Asian peoples. Zhenbao Island[1] in San Francisco Bay was turned into an immigration facility where new migrants were processed before entering the country. The island also had a special town only for Asian immigrants, while the rest of Yerba Buena was off limits to most Asians. Similar neighborhoods were created in other cities. These policies persisted until the mid-1870s, when some of the restrictions were lifted for those immigrants who were employed by railroad companies.

A Political Pendulum: The late nineteenth century was a period of expansion for California in all areas, including the military. Part of the reason for this is because it received a large amount of competing aid from both Great Britain and the United States. This was part of a larger overall economic war in the petty North American states in the late 1800s between the two countries. Britain aided several nations in their ambitions, such as assisting Rio Bravo in annexing Chihuahua and developing the port of Victoria in Rio Bravo.

California was caught between the two nations, and received aid from both countries. California enlisted military advisors from Great Britain in the 1870s when Alonso Rivera launched a war against the sparsely populated Sonora. As the Mexican region was still in relative chaos, the war was bloody and the Road to Hermosillo cost several thousand Californio lives. The monetary and human cost of Rivera's military campaigns in Sonora and Espejo cast him out of favor in the populace, and in 1884 he was ousted from the Presidency and Joaquin Murrieta[2] was elected president. In the 1880s and early 1890s, California swung away from Great Britain and toward the United States.

California's relationship with the United States during this period was primarily focused around the waters surrounding the country. In exchange for once again granting the United States unlimited access to San Francisco Bay, a policy which Rivera had discontinued, the United States assisted California with building up its fleet as well as providing loans for the construction of ships. During these years, the prosperity of California boomed and the country even participated in colonial ventures in the Pacific. In 1888 several members of a California small arms company laid claim to Clipperton Island, which had remained nominally unclaimed since its discovery. Four years later, California, in a move supported by the United States, sent an expedition to the Hawaiian islands and established a fort on Hilo Bay to protect the rights of Californio sugar planters who had come to the islands. By 1900, California had acquired the entirety of the island of Hawaii and several other islands in the archipelago[3].

Ups and Downs: California prospered immensely from the gold rush in the early 1860s. Capital and investors from all over the Americas and parts of Europe came flowing in to mine and profit from the extraction of gold and silver in the Sierra Nevada, which made many new business spring up and cities grow. In the 1870s, railroads began expanding in the country and several areas experienced a massive railroad boom. The first major railroad in California connected Monterey and Yerba Buena, with and extension running down the San Fernando Valley to San Deigo. After the conquest of Sonora and Rio Bravo's annexation of Chihuahua, Great Britain financed a railroad across the continent from Tampico and Ciudad Victoria through Chihuahua and Hermosillo where it connected to the existing Californian railroads at Yuma.

However, California's prosperity was short-lived. It's numerous military adventures required many loans from both Great Britain and the United States. In the 1890s the Californio economy slumped during the general global recession and by the turn of the century the Republic of California found that it could not pay its debts to either the United States or Great Britain. The fear of war from debt collection was mitigated somewhat as Great Britain offered California debt forgiveness in exchange for a military alliance. However, this would prove to be the country's undoing as it brought war with the United States during the Great War. Juan Francisco Sepulveda, the final president of California and a nationalist blowhard, enthusiastically joined the war on the side of Great Britain against the United States. Sepulveda claimed that the San Xavier Purchase was illegally obtained by the United States and sent an army to claim the area of Colorado west of the Continental Divide. The Californio army was easily pushed back and at the end of the war, Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt authorized the annexation of all of California in exchange for outstanding debts, including the Californio possessions in the Hawaiian islands.

[1] Yerba Buena Island, translated into English roughly means Treasure Island IIRC. [2] The only real figure in this section, and in OTL a bandit who became the basis for Zorro. [3] The Hawaiian archipelago is being split between California, Japan, and possibly Britain. I'm not sure whether a war between California and Japan will be involved, but it might be. Science and Technology #1: The 1860s: A Decade at War

The National War in the United States and the two European wars that engulfed much of that continent in the 1860s brought about a relative revolution in military doctrine and saw the popularization of several new forms of technology. The three conflicts that gave the 1860s its nickname of the "Warring Sixties" exhibited many changes in military thinking that had taken place since the First Napoleonic Wars half a century earlier. In North America, the National War introduced new forms of communication and weaponry to military practice. The Spencer-Colt repeating rifle was one of the first lever- action repeating rifles and was the first of its kind to be adopted by any country's military. The Union Army began using the Spencer-Colt in 1863 during the beginning of the National War, and in 1865 also licensed production of the more updated Houston rifle[1]. The Union also used more innovations in the war.

The National War was the first to be luzographed. Famous images taken with early luceptors from the war include President Andrew Johnson at camp during his charge and the final surrender of the Confederacy in 1866[2]. Along with new inventions in recording images, transmitting communications also advanced. Telegraph systems developed by Samuel Morse and others were strung all around the country in the 1850s and proved vital for transmitting messages during the progress of the National War. Further advances were also made in medicine during the National War. New York Senator and vice presidential candidate Walt Whitman pushed in Congress for the foundation of permanent military hospitals in major conflict areas and the establishment of a permanent doctoral staff to serve in the field. Along with these advances, the National War saw the first use of anaesthetic treatment of wounded soldiers in a battlefield operation.

In Europe, the Grand Unification War and the Second Napoleonic War ravaged the continent in the years after the conclusion of the National War in the United States. The wars in Europe also brought advances in military fields, although these were more in the theoretical and logistical areas of warfare. After the First Napoleonic Wars, Austrian veteran Joseph Radetzky von Radetz retired from leading battles and began penning treatises on the conduct of war. Looking at the wars of Napoleon in hindsight, Radetzky wrote a series of works and formed the basis on the new style of warfare that bears his name. Radetzkian war theory espoused the more mobile warfare that was pioneered in the First Napoleonic Wars with the strength of cavalry and lighter field artillery. Radetzky combined these tactical innovations with strategic views of war and the interconnection of war with politics and economics[3]. Recently, some historians have discovered that Radetzky may have based his broader theories on an unpublished manuscript by a contemporary Prussian officer[4]. This discovery shows that the developments of warfare in the first half of the nineteenth century and the wars of the 1860s would change the way strategists planned for conflict in the next century. The 1860s did not just produce advances in military oriented technology. The decade was also host to a number of new inventions and developments in more constructive and scientific disciplines. Austrian physicist Johann Mendel first produced a color luzograph using various translucent colored filters in 1863. However, Italy at this time was producing more technological breakthroughs than Vienna. After first synthesizing and stabilizing the compound pyroglycerin[5] in the late 1840s, Ascanio Sobrero first applied its explosive properties twenty years later. Pyroglycerin was used to construct the first tunnel under the Alps, enabling a connection from France to Italy by rail in 1868. Meanwhile in Florence, Garibaldi supported a man named Antonio Meucci whom he had become acquainted to in Havana in the 1840s[6]. With the Italian government's assistance, Meucci developed the world's first telephone in 1866 and by the end of the Grand Unification War, the private telephone was widespread in Europe and would soon spread to North America, prompting further innovations.

[1] The Spencer-Colt is the OTL Spencer repeating rifle; the Houston is the OTL Henry rifle. [2] Luzography/luzograph = photography/photograph; luceptor = camera, meaning 'light capturing device'. [3] Basically Clausewitzian theory with a bit more emphasis on maneuver warfare. [4] Carl von Clausewitz's wife did not publish his unfinished manuscript ITTL. [5] Nitroglycerin [6] In OTL Meucci moved to Staten Island in 1850 where Garibaldi stayed in his apartment. I have them meeting in Havana and Garibaldi as head of a revolutionary Italy helps Meucci commercially. Meucci was probably the inventor of the first telephone, but he was unable to pay the $10 for a patent before Alexander Graham Bell did in 1876 in OTL.

Culture #1: The Advent of Realism and the Warring Sixties

The Warring Sixties: The 'Warring Sixties', as the decade of the 1860s has become known, was a time of a great shift in the culture of the United States. The National War brought an end to the optimistic views of Romanticism that had dominated the early nineteenth century and gave rise to the darker and more empirical artistic style of Realism. The bright colors and Classical themes that had pervaded Romanticist art and literature gave way to more utilitarian and commonplace subjects and a truer depiction of what life was like. The development of luzography also allowed for a more realistic vision of everyday life as luzographs were not affected by the artist's interpretation. The Warring Sixties had produced numerous luzographs and paintings of the ongoing wars at the time in both North America and Europe. One of the most famous military paintings during the war is Edgar Degas' "Aerial Shelling of Barcelona", depicting the French bombing of Barcelona in 1868. This was one of the first uses of aerial craft in a direct combat role and shows soldiers dropping small explosive shells from hot air balloons.

Along with painting, Realism became prominent in literature as well. The wars created many potential topics for stories of war and its aftermath, and many authors and playwrights used the realist style to depict every perspective of conflict situations. In the United States, hundred of novels were published during the decade about the National War and the events surrounding it. Two prime examples of realist war literature in the United States during the 1860s are the play "Death of a President" by actor and playwright John Wilkes Booth, and the memoirs of Samuel Clemens before he took over Cornelius Vanderbilt's steamship operations as the industrialist focused on building a railroad empire. Death of a President is a play concerning the events surrounding the death of President Houston and the leadup to the National War. Samuel Clemens' memoirs told stories of his time as the captain of the steamship Proud Mary which ran between Memphis and New Orleans during the years following the National War. Clemens' memoirs gave a jarring look at the state of the southern states after the National War as well as the recovery experienced by the states and cities along the Lower Mississippi River.

The growing popularity and publishing of literary works in the United States also led to further standardization of the English language in the country. While several languages were becoming prominent in different regions, English was pervasive throughout the United States. As more people went to school and became literate in the Untied States, it was felt that at least one language needed to be universal across the country in order to better integrate the nation. In 1886, Columbia University in New York began publication of the Columbiad dictionary, which listed and categorized every single word in use in the English language. It soon gained popularity among all regions of the country and by the twentieth century had surpassed the Webster publication as the standard for all words in use in the United States. Reasons for this include that the Columbiad was much more extensive and inclusive on loanwords from other languages used in different parts of the United States and so was more useful to a traveler or a businessman. By the mid- twentieth century, the Columbiad had become the authoritative dictionary on the English language in the United States, rivaling that of the Oxford English Dictionary and Webster's dictionary in Great Britain.

Along with the finer arts, realism also lent its name to a movement in the newly developed field of study of international relations. While the interactions and trends of various forces within and between countries had been studied before the nineteenth century by figures such as Machiavelli, the study of international relations was always in the realm of politicians and leaders, deciding on where to guide their state. In the nineteenth century, this field entered the realm of academics as universities in the major political centers of the great powers sought statesmen and diplomats after the Warring Sixties.

Realism as a school of international relations had its influences in philosophers and political theorists such as Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes, but it was German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and English economist and political theorist John Stuart Mill who pioneered the realist theory of international relations. From their examinations of the Napoleonic Wars, the 1860s European wars, and for Mill the diplomatic maneuvering of the great powers in the 1870s and 1880s, Schopenhauer and Mill theorized the basic tenets of international realism. The first was that the state is the main actor in international politics. Their definition of 'state' comes from the Westphalian concept that each state is entitled to its own sovereignty and will strive to protect that sovereignty. The second tenet is derived from this desire to protect itself; in an anarchic international system, the state will always act in its self-interest and in a way that it perceives will best protect its sovereignty. The third tenet of international realism is that the system of state interactions is inherently anarchic, and that there is no central authority that governs the actions of states. Following from this, international realists surmise, war and conflict are constants and will always be present in politics and war will always lead to more war as states seek to build upon or regain assets from previous conflicts. This theory held true for the end of the nineteenth century through the beginning of the twentieth, when even greater communications advances and the founding of the Weltkongress started to breakdown the idea of a state-oriented system only operating on self-interest.

Part Forty-Nine: The Road to Recovery

Lingering Rebels: Despite the end of the war and the surrender of most of the Confederate governments and armies, some pockets of resistance remained in the former Confederacy for years after the National War was over. The most ardent resistance rose up in the state of Chickasaw as previously mentioned. However, there were several other areas in the southern United States which faced organized partisans and guerrillas in the years following the National War. Most of the guerrilla activity in the latter half of the 1860s consisted of bushwhackers and was centered in the more rural parts of the former Confederacy.

The area of the southern Appalachians northeast of Birmingham, Alabama faced a number of attacks and violent occurrences after the National War after a small remnant of the Confederate army refused to surrender and managed to hole up in the hills. After the spirited defense by "Last Chance" Jackson in Montgomery, several soldiers in the Army of Mississippi refused to surrender to the Union and fled northward across Alabama. Settling in the hills near Birmingham, this rebel group went on a crime spree in Birmingham and the surrounding area for three years. Periodic attacks continued until 1870 when the last of the rebels led by former Confederate Brigadier General Herbert Fletcher[1] was found and rounded up by the Alabama military district.

Further remnants of the rebellion fled to the loosely settled marshes and forests of southern Florida. These bushwhacker forces were smaller and did not last as long in the dense tropical region of the Ever Glades[2]. Some small towns were founded on the coasts, but the majority of the former Confederates were killed fighting with the Seminole people who still inhabited southern Florida at the time. While the Confederate rebels managed to annoy the forts on the Florida Keys and pull off a minor shooting spree in Tampa, they mostly petered out by the middle of 1867. While some of the most intense fighting between the army and guerrillas was in northeastern Alabama, the most notorious and longest lasting outlaws that emerged from Confederate rebels in the Ozark Mountains in southern Missouri. While the actual rebel force broke up in 1869, brothers Frank and Jesse James formed a gang and for the next eight years, terrorized the Great Plains and even sometimes crossed over into eastern California when pulling off their crimes. The James gang robbed trains and banks and kidnapped people all along the Rockies and even hired themselves out at mercenaries to the Mormons in Espejo during their war with California. Eventually after Frank James was killed in a shootout in Coffeyville, Pembina in 1885, his younger brother Jesse decided to end the gang and fled northward across the border where he was given protection by Great Britain. A few of the other members traveled with Jesse, but the others were arrested in the following months.

Election of 1868: In the first election after the National War, the top issue was getting the southern states integrated into the Union once again. The Republicans kept Fremont and Wilmot as their candidates in the election and ran on a platform of both admitting the southern states as soon as possible while still promoting radical policies including giving constitutional rights to all blacks. The Democratic Party struggled to find a suitable candidate as Andrew Johnson declined to run for the presidency. The Democrats seemed more sympathetic to the southern states and wanted to readmit the states even if it meant sacrificing some of the freedoms that would be granted to the freed slaves. After a bitter convention in Saint Louis, the Democrats chose John Henninger Reagan of Houston[3] for president and Maryland governor William Pinkney Whyte for vice president.

In foreign policy, the wars in Europe was also a looming issue as the wars had been raging for two years. Like Russia and the Ottoman Empire, both parties in the United States advocated staying neutral in both conflicts as the Union clearly needed time to recover its economic and military situation before embarking on any foreign exploits. However, this did not stop the two parties from presenting different platforms. Reagan and the Democrats desired absolutely no part of the wars, while the Republicans wanted to provide some assistance to the French, primarily out of hatred for the British. This had a mixed reaction in the Ibero-dominated states in Cuba, Jackson, and Tejas as France was also at war with Spain. In the end, however, the Republicans won a large victory over the Democrats, continuing the Republican dominance of United States politics that would last the remainder of the century.

Fremont/Wilmot: 228 Reagan/Whyte: 48

[1] Another fictional person. [2] The Everglades was two words for a lot of the 19th century as it was a corruption of the original 'River Glades'. ITTL it never gets condensed. [3] A fine Texas Democrat who served as Postmaster General for the Confederacy. No relation to Ronald Reagan that I could find.

Part Fifty: Land of Liberty

Look to the West: After the National War, a second wave of western movement and settlement occurred in the United States as people tired of the slumping economy and the wartorn regions of the country looked toward the Rocky Mountains and the Oregon Trail for hope at a new start and a better life. However, this migration was different. First, most of the people who moved west most often settled in already existing towns instead of founding new ones. Because of this, town and territory populations in the Rockies and on the Pacific coast exploded, resulting in the Northwest Territories being divided further in the early 1870s. The population boom also brought new states with Champoeg becoming a state in 1871 and Colorado being admitted in 1876. The second difference from the first wave of migration, was that this time, the people moving west were followed by railroads.

There were three main railroads that wove their way across the United States in the late nineteenth century. The longest of these was the first ever transcontinental railway in the Americas. Begun by the Union Pacific Railroad in the east, the railroad started by connecting three branches of the railway to Decatur, Demoine. These branches met in Decatur from Minneapolis and Duluth in the north, Chicago and Waterloo in the center, and Saint Louis in the south. Following roughly the route that had been planned out by Robert E. Lee, the transcontinental railway took over four years to complete and eventually made its first connection with the Pacific Ocean at Astoria. However, the main Pacific terminus of the railway soon shifted to the more northerly city of Tacoma after the completion of the Olympic Canal in 1903[2].

The lesser two of these railways did not stretch all the way to the Pacific Ocean, but instead stopped at the Rocky Mountains or along the border with California. The Missouri and South Platte Railway snaked west from Saint Louis along the Missouri and Platte rivers before reaching its western terminus at Ferroplano at the foothills of the Rockies. The more southerly Red River Western connected New Orleans and Galveston in the east with Santa Fe in the west. These railroads prompted a secondary boom in the southern Rockies during the 1880s as more deposits of precious metals were discovered in Colorado and New Mexico.

The Rule of Law: The remainder of the 1860s also produced a number of developments in the way law was conducted in the country. In 1870, the Republican Congress and the states ratified the 13th amendment of the United States. This amendment achieved the goal that President Fremont had set out in the later years of the National War and officially banned slavery in all states in the United States. Several states which had joined the Confederacy or had not abolished slavery by the beginning of the National War had done so in the years following, but now it was ingrained in the nation's governing document. The first section of the amendment reads that "No person who is a citizen of these United States shall be subjected to any form of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.[1]" The following sections outline the United States government's ability to enforce the abolition of slavery.

Following the banning of slavery, several states in the former Confederacy tried to get around the amendment and cheat former slaves out of their freedom. One common method many plantation owners used during the 1870s was claiming that former slaves were not citizens of the United States and were thus eligible for slavery under the amendment. This rose to a national issue when a case was brought against the Supreme Court in 1873. The Lincoln court ruled that all former slaves are citizens of the United States as they were born in the country and are protected by the Constitution. Since then, this ruling has been expanded through interpretation to include all people born in the United States as citizens[3].

Elsewhere in the country, the territories had a rather different type of law. With the extent of the government involvement in the western territories being mostly limited to military outposts in many areas, the local and territorial governments became much more prominent in legal decisions. Local sheriffs like future Supreme Court justice Wyatt Earp attempted to maintain civility in the smaller towns while several gangs traveled around the western territories robbing and fighting with the local law enforcement as they went. Raids by native Americans were also troublesome, especially in the loosely settled Dakhota Territory. This status quo remained for the next few decades as the open range fostered cattle or bison drives similar to ones in the Pampas in Argentina and the Vaqueros in the Mexican countries. However, more western migration at the end of the century and parceling of the land in the territories caused the end of the frontier lifestyle[4].

[1] The part following the comma is copied from OTL's Thirteenth Amendment, the rest is my own. [2] Is this too early for a canal across the Olympic Peninsula? I'm not sure. [3] This was the sentiment of the Fourteenth Amendment in OTL, but here it's handled through a Supreme Court ruling. [4] An update on the Wild West in TTL will be posted later, but for now here's a taste.

Part Fifty-One: The Start of the European Wars

In order to understand the causes of the 1860s European Wars, it is necessary to examine them simultaneously rather than looking at each one separately. The reasons the Second Napoleonic War and the Grand Unification War came about and how they ended are so intertwined with each other in the general European politics of the era that some historians choose to combine them into one single war.

The French Resurgence: The Second Napoleonic War arose as a result of French resurgence under president Louis Napoleon and the continuing rivalry between France and the British Empire. In the early 19th century, the French people possessed a desire to retaliate against the United Kingdom for the victories in the First Napoleonic War. The rebuilding of France after the First Napoleonic Wars was shaky at the start, because of the instability in the country. The July Revolution that brought Louis Philippe to the throne in 1830 saw some improvement in the economy and industry, but it took until the Midcentury Revolutions and the rise of Louis Napoleon to see a true resurgence in France.

Under Louis Napoleon, political power in France was gradually concentrated in the president rather than the National Assembly and while the new Bonaparte did not declare himself emperor like his uncle, he eventually gained almost as much power. During the 1850s, the French economy was at a local peak and Louis Napoleon used the economic boom to rapidly build up the country's army and navy, investing in several ironclads, shipyards, and armaments factories. In the late 1850s, France unveiled its new navy in the conquest of the cities in the Bab el Mendeb and forcing Egypt to grant them some trade concessions[1].

In the early 1860s, Louis Napoleon's colonial ambitions made France turn against Belgium. In a series or letters and meetings with Prussian chancellor Bismarck, an agreement was formed where Prussia guaranteed neutrality in the event France invaded either the Netherlands or Belgium. In exchange, France would support future Prussian colonial acquisitions in Africa. In April of 1865, France declared war on Belgium, violating the Treaty of London in 1839. Aside from Prussia, the Netherlands and Austria declined to join in the war against France. Britain and Spain, however, did come to Belgium's aid and declared war on France three days later.

German and Italian Nationalism: In central Europe, the first half of the nineteenth century fostered a unifying force in both the German states and the Italian Peninsula. After the Midcentury Revolutions swept through Europe, Giuseppe Garibaldi took advantage of the nationalist feeling in many of the smaller central Italian states. Through several successful wars on the peninsula, Garibaldi united all the Italian countries except for the Papal States under the republican government he had established in the Midcentury Revolutions. In Germany, the Zollverein and the meetings of the German Confederation created stronger ties between the countries that succeeded the Holy Roman Empire. Leading the German Confederation were two rival powers; Austria and Prussia.

Since the Renaissance, Austria had been the leading German state in all aspects. However, Prussia was a rising great power in the early nineteenth century and its efforts to unseat Austria as leader of the German Confederation showed the tensions between the two. Prussia's initial attempts to gain a hold over the other German states had been through reforms of the Confederation. In 1840, Prussia attempted to bring the Dutch province of Liege into the Confederation, as it had already included the Dutch provinces of Limburg and Luxemburg. Austria and the states supporting it denied the inception of Liege as it would increase the power of the northern German states which supported Prussia. In the 1840s, Prussia also made attempts to have the executive position alternate between Austria and Prussia or implement a bicameral system with each power holding sway over a house, but both of these measured failed to pass.

The Midcentury Revolutions brought a great change in the Prussian vision of how to gain power over the German states. During the upheaval in Germany, an assembly in the Free City of Frankfurt made up of leaders from all the free cities in the German Confederation and some of the more reform-minded states wrote up a constitutional document that would have created a true parliamentary system of government in Germany with a hereditary king as figurehead[2]. The Frankfurt Convention offered the kingship to Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia but he refused as he did not want to give up any power over Prussia, even for a united Germany.

After the failure of the Frankfurt Convention, Prussia became more direct and forceful with its imperial machinations. A change in governance took place in the late 1850s when Friedrich Wilhelm IV was succeeded by his brother Wilhelm I who appointed Otto von Bismarck as Prime Minister. Soon, Bismarck began looking for ways to sway the smaller German states to Prussia's side and weaken the influence of Austria. To this aim, Bismarck began building support within Germany by supporting a revanchist and expansionist element in Bavaria that had brought king Maximilian II to power in a coup in 1850. Outside Germany, Bismarck also gave aid to Garibaldi as a counterweight to Austria's power elsewhere and sought an agreement with Russia for the latter to not intervene in affairs of the German Confederation. In 1865 with France and Britain distracted by war and Russian neutrality guaranteed, Prussia attacked Austria using debate over the succession of the Danish possessions of Schleswig and Holstein as excuse. Bavaria and Italy became the main supporters of Bismarck and Prussia, while Austria and Denmark had several of the smaller southern German states on their side against the Prussian onslaught.

[1] I'll do an update on Egypt sometime, but briefly France is building the Suez Canal and getting various tariff breaks and preference for investors. [2] Basically the Frankfurt Assembly

Part Fifty-Two: Mountains and Trenches

French Victories: The Second Napoleonic War started with several French offensives against its neighbors. The initial French invasion of Belgium was very successful. Within weeks, border towns in Belgium were captured and by July, French armies were only fifteen miles from Brussels and had occupied much of the French-speaking regions of Belgium. However, the French marshal Cannobert was hesitant in attacking the Belgian capital, and began preparing for an assault and siege of the city. Meanwhile, the British sent a large force into Belgium that landed at Oostende and pushed south toward the French city of Lille. The threat to the country's main textile manufacturing center and the main rail link between Paris and Belgium caused France to cease plans for an attack on Brussels and pull the front in that area back to the main divide between the Flemish and French speaking regions in Belgium. France was able to stop the British force from capturing Lille, but they could not push back into western Belgium. As the front settled for the winter months, both sides began to create trenches all along the front, from Nieuwpoort to Roubaix[1] to Waterloo.

In the Spanish front, France performed much better than in Belgium during the first year of the war. With only a few major accessible passes along the line of the Pyrenees, the fighting was much more concentrated than in Belgium. Here, France had a clear edge over Spain as the tight engagements favored France's use of field artillery. The French also had a greater advantage over Spain due to Louis Napoleon's reinstitution of conscription in the French armed forces. France managed to capture several border towns including San Sebastian on the Basque coast and Baztan further inland within a week of the start of the war. In a large basin in the Pyrenees near the city of Puigcerda, the Spanish launched a cavalry assault on the French forces moving through the basin, but the use of the French artillery rendered the cavalry useless and the Spanish army had to retreat out of the Pyrenees. By the end of 1865, France had reached as far as Girona in the east and Pamplona in the west.

France also scored many surprising initial victories at sea as well as on land. The French Navy had been strengthened with ironclads and oceangoing steamer ships while the British had been lagging behind. Despite the British taking to industrialization in their economy, the ruling Parliament had neglected the navy after the First Napoleonic Wars out of complacence and only began improving it after the National War in the United States showed the effects a modern navy could have. While the British still held sway over the Channel, the French succeeded elsewhere. The French Navy landed a force on the Belaeric Isle of Minorca which soon secured the whole island. Victories for France in the Red Sea and the Ionian Islands displayed the superiority of a navy driven by metal and steam.

Battle of the Po Valley: While the French were achieving great success in the beginning of the Second Napoleonic War, the Grand Unification War got off to a slow and sluggish start. The Prussian invasion of Denmark was halted by the wetlands and marshes that made up most of the Schleswig region. A combined army of Hanoverians and Danes defeated a Prussian attack at Eckemforde as the Prussians got stuck in the muddy terrain. While it was not much of a tactical victory for the Danes, it was a great national victory. The Dannevirke, used as a southern defensive position by Denmark since the age of the Vikings, had proven successful once again.

Prussia also had major difficulties crossing into Austria over the Sudeten Mountains. The traditional defensive position for Bohemia and then the Austrian Empire, the Habsburgs had set up a series of fortifications all along the mountain range. Prussian and Bavarian attempts to break through were thwarted by the Austrians in most places, but Prussia did manage to occupy Liberec and Ostrava before the winter set in. German general Steffen Osisek[2] led the attack through the Sudeten that captured Liberec in September of 1865. Bavarian attempts were less successful in the mountains and very little progress was made in the Alps or along the Sudeten range. The Austrians even launched an offensive into Bavaria following the Danube that took Passau and reached over fifty miles into the country before being defeated at Straubing.

By far, Italy had the most successful beginning campaign of any country in the Grand Unification War. Coming off of recent subjugation of the Two Sicilies, Garibaldi and the Italian army in Naples simply began moving up the coast into the Papal States. The Papal army had to retreat continuously in the face of the Italian cavalry but stopped the Italian advance in the pass at Ferentino. The Italians had more victories in the Po Valley as nationalist revolts in Milan and other cities aided Garibaldi's cause. While an army advanced on Milan from the west, Italian general Enrico Cialdini led an army up from Parma to capture Piacenza and then turned northeast. Cialdini pushed north and reached Lodi on the Adda River before being stopped by an Austrian army. The Second Battle of Lodi resulted in an Austrian victory that halted the Italian advance, but Milan had been captured and Italy had taken the Austrian lands west of the Adda.

[1] A town just north of Lille but still in France. [2] Fictional general, the surname originates from Silesia.

Part Fifty-Three: The French Advances Stalls

Pommers in the Trenches[1]: The Second Napoleonic War entered 1866 with both fronts largely stalled. The network of trenches that the French, British, and Belgians set up blocked any side from gaining ground very quickly. Assaults and gained ground were measured in yards as the rifles used in the war had become extremely accurate. The wide use of field artillery in the trenches also made any attacks slow. This was especially the case for the French as Charles Babbage's new analytical engine[2] allowed artillery positions and firing angles to be calculated to an increased degree of precision.

Along with an increased involvement of British strategists, The British commitment of soldiers in Belgium was intensified in 1866 as well. In the 1860s, Parliament was faced with the issue of the Great Famine in Ireland as almost all of the island's potato crop failed between 1864 and 1869. Many Irishmen moved across the Atlantic to British North America, but at the outset of the war, the British government offered young Irish men a place in the army as a way to alleviate the pressure of the famine[3]. Staunch nationalists in Ireland refused, but many were desperate and joined up, or sent their children off to enlist. By the summer of 1866, over 100,000 Irishmen had joined the British ranks either voluntarily or through conscription of the lower classes and were being shipped across the Channel.

This surge of men into the trenches allowed the Eighth Coalition forces, as the British and Belgians had taken to calling themselves, to gain at least some notable ground against the French. In the west of the front, the Eighth Coalition was able over most of 1866 to gradually push the French back into France up to the Aa River, where the front eventually stabilized. This included the capture of Dunkerque, where both sides lost over 20,000 men each in the battle for the city. While both sides had an approximately equal number of soldiers and field artillery during the battle, the support from the Royal Navy pushed the Coalition to capture the city. Further east, the front was moved miles south in some places, but the French were not budged from Waterloo and continued to threaten Brussels.

Raiding the Marches: Throughout 1866, France continued a steady advance into Spain. However, the speed at which the French troops gained ground greatly slowed after they were out of the Pyrenees. The Spanish cavalry tactics were of greater effectiveness in the flatter plains and plateaus of Catalonia and Aragon, while the Spanish were able to set up defenses in the mountains of the Basque Country. Eventually the fighting in Catalonia fell back to the trench warfare already in place in Belgium.

French forces in the Basque Country moved west from Pamplona in June in a campaign to take the remaining cities in the region. The French army moved northwest from Pamplona through a valley and near the town of Iturmendi, the Spanish forced the French south over the Sierra de Urbasa onto a forested plateau. In the ensuing battle in the heat of summer, Spanish forces had to eventually retreat across the plateau, managed to stop the French from reaching Vitoria. The French forces went north along the mountains and by September reached the Bay of Biscay across the river from the town of Guernica. As the Spanish set up defensive fortifications in Guernica, French forces determined that they could not take the town for a while. That winter, the French commander of the troops in the Basque country came up with the idea of dropping grenades from the reconnaissance balloons manned by the French Aerostatic Corps. While the attack was not very effective, the bombing of Guernica marks the first use of aerial bombing in modern warfare.

In the other areas of Spain, the French tried to go on a fast attack with the objective of capturing the cities of Zaragoza and Barcelona as quickly as possible. The French offensive was largely slowed, however, by the slow progress of the supply trains over the Pyrenees and as a result, the attack in 1866 did not get very far into Spain. In Catalonia, the French were able to secure the coast up to Sant Feilu de Guixois but did not reach far out of Girona in the land movement. A French attack on the town of Vidreres failed when a small Spanish cavalry force cut the telegraph lines behind the French and robbed a supply train. After the retreat from Vidreres, a smaller system of trenches was constructed in the area and the fighting slowed to a crawl. The Corps du Midi in the center of Spain doubled back when a Spanish detachment used the principality to liberate occupied Puigcerda. While the local authorities in Andorra claimed no knowledge of the Spanish incursion, Louis-Napoleon declared war on Andorra and the country was annexed into France after kicking the Spanish detachment out of the principality.

On the Mediterranean, the French navy defeated the Spanish ships that were in the harbor in La Palma on Mallorca in March and captured Mallorca and Ibiza by August. The Caribbean theatre brought further defeats for the French outside of Europe, however, as the Royal Navy landed men on Guadeloupe. In the Red Sea, the French shelled Aden repeatedly, but the landing force from Mocha was turned back before it reached the port city. France did have a few lucky engagements in the Channel and the Irish Sea, but these small victories did not break the Royal Navy's dominance over the Channel.

[1] "Pommers" ITTL is the colloquial term for Irishmen, coming from 'pomme' meaning potato. [2] This analytical engine is much less extensive than what Babbage envisioned. It mostly does trigonometry for calculating firing angles. [3] But also a way to get rid of Irishmen.

Part Fifty-Four: A Swelling Tide

The Modern Papal Schism: As the Italian Army of Naples was stalled in Ferentino, it instead moved north into the heart of the Appenines as a way to get around the Papal force. After passing through Alatri and Fiuggi, the Army of Naples arrived at the town of Subiaco, the source of the Aniene River which flows into the Tiber and thus to Rome. The Army of Naples reached Subiaco in May of 1866. After a month of camping in the town, the Army of Naples began its trek down the course of the Aniene.

The Army of Naples began their slow descent down the Appenines toward Rome without the help of a rail supply line. The nearest Italian rail depot to their position was in L'Aquila, approximately 50 miles away. Following the Aniene, the Army of Naples took a staggering two weeks to get to the opening of the mountains at Tivoli with small groups of Papal soldiers and combatants loyal to the Catholic Church harassing the army the entire way down the river. Even worse for the Army of Naples, when the Italian army finally arrived at Tivoli, the Papal forces were waiting for them. The Battle of Tivoli was a struggle for the Army of Naples as the Papal forces held the beleaguered Italians back for two months until another Italian detachment arrived from the north. The Papal army eventually succumbed to the Italian forces and Rome fell in September of 1866. During the months that the Papal army held of the Italians in the Battle of Tivoli, the College of Cardinals held a meeting about what to do if the Italians were to succeed in capturing Rome. The main point of contention was Garibaldi's insistence that he would not grant the Pope any temporal authority as Bishop of Rome. Through much debate in the College, it was decided that Pope Pius IX was to go into exile in an accepting Catholic country and wait until Garibaldi or a future Italian leader accepted maintaining the Pope's temporal authority. However, a large number of the cardinals including Pope Pius himself dissented and wanted to remain in Rome at the expense of any secular power the Pope had.

Thus began what would eventually be known as the Modern Papal Schism. As the Italians occpuied Rome, Pope Pius and the College of Cardinals fled to Spain in exile. After a few years, Garibaldi made concessions and let Pope Pius back into Rome if the Papacy agreed to give up its temporal authority, which the Pope and some of the cardinals did. However, the more conservative cardinals refused Garibaldi's demands and elected Archbishop of Toledo Cirilo de Alameda y Brea[1] as their own Pope Alexander IX.

Mountains Above: Throughout 1866, the Alps and Sudeten mountains remained a difficult battleground in the fight between Prussia and Austria over supremacy in the German Confederation. Prussia made many advances in the Sudeten in 1866, but all of them were rather minimal. The remainder of Saxony was occupied by Prussia and that army entered Austria-Hungary and reached as far Lubenec in July. The army was countered by the Austrians there, however, and was forced to retreat back to Karlovy Vary. Steffen Osisek led his Prussian force south from Liberec ten miles south to Turnov before turning southeast in order to catch any Austrian defensive fortifications on the Silesian border from behind. Osisek surrounded an Austrian fortress facing Waldenburg [2] and secured the lower hills there before moving back south to Hradec Karlove.

The Alps remained a much tougher obstacle to the Bavarian advance than the Sudeten Mountains had been to the Prussians. With only narrow passes into the Alps, the Austrians were able to put up a far more effective defense with a smaller number of soldiers than in the Sudeten or the Po Valley. In addition, the Bavarians had to spend much of the year repulsing the Austrian incursion up the Danube as well as completing the occupation of Wurttemberg to the west. Despite these drawbacks, Bavaria did manage a few significant border crossings in 1866. Maximilian II was able to occupy Salzburg after leading the army that captured the city himself, and triumphantly entered the city on August 9th, which is now celebrated in Salzburg as Reclamation Day. Bavaria also occupied the low-lying area surrounding Bergenz on the border with Switzerland.

Valleys Below: While the advances of Prussia and Bavaria in the mountains were going rather slowly, the progression of the fronts in the Po Valley and in northwestern Germany and Denmark were progressing quite well for the Unification powers. Prussia fended off a joint Hanoverian-Danish attack on Hamburg in May of 1866 and moved west and reached Brunsbuttel in late June splitting the two countries off from each other. A Prussian naval squadron took the island of Bornholm and landed an army at Store Heddinge after defeating the Danish navy in the Fakse Bay. The Prussians reached Copenhagen in August and with the help of the navy, took the city in a week. With Copenhagen captured, the remainder of Denmark fell quickly and the Danish government agreed to cede the portions of Denmark within the German Confederation.

The Kingdom of Hanover was equally quick to fall to Prussia. Osnabrück and Göttingen had already fallen the previous year, and after the Prussian army split the Danes off, Prussia could fully focus on Hanover in the north. Emsland was separated from the main portion of Hanover early in the summer and the city of Hanover itself was captured in late June. Prussia made further gains in July with the occupation of the city of Cuxhaven and Emsland, and in August the Prussians reached Bremen. After Bremen was captured, the Hanoverian government surrendered and the Kingdom of Hanover bowed out of the war allowing Prussia to focus all her attention on Austria.

South of the Alps, the Italians were advancing slower than the Germans but they were making steady progress. Starting in April, pro-Italian uprisings began scattered around cities in Lombardy and Venetia. The most significant of these were in Bergamo, Brescia, Verona, and Padua. While the uprisings in Brescia and Padua were put down by the Austrian military, Italian armies were able to support and advance up to Bergamo and Padua by late June and keep the cities in Italian hands. The remainder of the summer and fall was spent shoring up the defenses on both sides according to the new front line. While Austria was showing great resolve in the war thus far, its cracks began to appear. A Croatian nationalist group destroyed two Austrian naval vessels in an attack in Dubrovnik in November of 1866, a sign of the weakening control of Vienna over the country.

[1] A real life archbishop of Toledo and member of the College of Cardinals in OTL. Thank you Wikipedia for having a list of Spanish cardinals. [2] Now the city of Wałbrzych in southwestern Poland.

Part Fifty-Five: Opposing Forces

France Fumbles: France experienced even more setbacks in 1867 in Belgium. An invasion that the top military leaders proposed would take months if not weeks at the beginning of the war had been going on for over two years now. The Coalition forces had pushed France back from the height of her penetration into Belgium thus far and continued pushing back into France throughout the year. The Coalition was finally able to take Lille and dislodge the French from Waterloo after a grueling month long fight in the trenches. During the year, the Coalition forces also recaptured Mons and Charleroi and crossed the French border up to Valenciennes. Namur became France's only stronghold in Belgium as the winter months set in. The British, along with sending Irishmen to fight in Belgium, also created and sent the Irish Foreign Legion to assist the Spaniards in fending off the French attack. With the assistance of the Irish Foreign Legion, Spain was able to stop the French from advancing in the Basque country past seizing Guernica and Mondragón, thus saving Bilbao from falling to French forces. Further east, French armies left the Puigcerda Valley yet again and Vielha and Berga by September. This connected the soldiers in the Pyrenees with the soldiers in Catalonia and allowed pressure to be placed on the inland flank of the Spanish trenches. The Spanish were forced to retreat and conceded the seaside village of Lloret de Mar, bringing France one step closer toward reaching Barcelona.

Austria Rumbles: Up until mid-1867, Austria had been doing fairly well in the Unification War. It had kept Bavaria confined to the Alps, had prevented the Prussians from making significant gains in Bohemia, and had fought valiantly against Italy. However the amount of resources that were necessary to maintain Austria's position in the war up until this point had caused the Habsburgs to neglect Austria's domestic troubles. Small cracks appeared in Vienna's governance of its territories in 1866 with the Italian revolts and the sabotage of the two ships in Dubrovnik, but now many nationalist groups came out into the open. Their success in beginning uprisings in 1867 showed the undercurrent of discontent that plagued the Austrian Empire in the 19th century that would lead to its downfall.

The progress of the war turned gradually worse for the Austrians in 1867. In Bohemia, Austria was outnumbered by the Prussian attacking forces. The army in western Bohemia was joined by a small Bavarian expedition that reached Karlovy Vary in May and started its second attack south and east toward Prague. Combined with the now stronger army in eastern Bohemia under Steffen Osisek, the Prussian armies went south in a move to completely surround Prague and block it off from the rest of Austria. By the end of the year, the only rail link from Vienna to Prague was from the south via Tabor and Benesov.

The fighting in the Alps and the Po Valley also brought some significant defeats for the Austrian armies. In Italy, Enrico Cialdini led a quick drive north from Piacenza that inflicted a decisive defeat to an Austrian army near Cremona. Cialdini continued advancing into Lombardy reaching Brescia and Verona by July. However, Austrian armies in Venetia were able to coalesce around Verona and push Cialdini's men back across the Adige River. At the cost however, Italy was able to move the entire front up to the Adige and they reached the Lago di Gorda in the north. Bavaria, meanwhile, was stagnant along the Alpine border for much of the year.

Combined with these losses in the war, Austria also faced increased trouble with its domestic population. Nationalist movements which until now had operated mostly underground were gaining momentum and starting to launch protest or more violent attacks against Habsburg rule, particularly in Hungary, Galizien, and Dalmatia. Cities all along the Dalmatian coast were witness to protests and dockworkers striked to prevent the stationing of Austrian naval ships in Split and Fiume. In Budapest, a mob of Hungarian nationalists descended on the governor's building demanding that he release political prisoners. Faced with these protests, the prisoners were released. However, when Vienna got hold of this, several members of the Imperial Governing Council in Hungary were sacked and a crackdown on Hungarian nationalist was put in place.

The most prominent uprising that took place in 1867, however, was in the border region of Galizien. Populated by a large majority of Poles and Ukrainians, the region staged a national congress for both groups in the central city of Lvov in October. Austrian guardsmen broke up the meeting after a week when a couple leaders were calling for a demonstration for more regional autonomy for Galizien, and over the next months events spiraled out of control so that by 1868, the city and much of Galizien was in chaos as uprisings spread and anti-Habsburg or pro-independence riots broke out in several towns.

Part Fifty-Six: Tipping the Balance

France On the Rebound: After the setbacks in 1867, France redoubled its efforts in the Belgian front of the Second Napoleonic War. More Frenchmen poured into the trenches and forced the Coalition forces back inch by inch. The year of 1868 in the Belgium was dominated by the Battle of the Sambre[1], a campaign that lasted almost the entire summer and was a decisive struggle over southeastern Belgium. The fighting began in June when British and Belgian troops surged south from Charleroi and captured territory as far as Philippeville along with intense fighting in the trenches just north of Namur. The next months saw the French armies organize quickly to meet the attack and several assaults were launched by the French on Valenciennes, Mons, and recapturing Philippeville. After three grueling months, those three cities had fallen to France, and in November the Coalition forces in Charleroi were surrounded and surrendered. France would hold Charleroi and Namur, the two largest cities in Wallonia, for the rest of the Second Napoleonic War.

In Spain, the French armies were still on the attack as the Spanish forces grew weary of the constant defending. The Irish Foreign Legion was able to help Spain continue holding off any attacks on Bilbao or Vitoria, but France massed further forces in Catalonia and Aragon and moved the front further into Spain in those areas. A new army that had arrived in Pamplona moved south into Spanish territory, capturing the cities of Jaca, Estella, and Carcastillo before a Spanish counterattack was launched. Spain retook Carcastillo, but the capital of ancient Aragon and the city of the Carlist Court had fallen into French hands.

During 1868, the French armies were also continuing their advance on Barcelona. France massed a large offensive on the main road from the central Pyrenees toward the Catalan city that took the towns of Solsona and Manresa by the end of the year. In the trenches of eastern Catalonia, the French were able to overwhelm many of the Spanish positions with the aid of the French navy. By August, French forces had reached the coastal town of Mataro, within twenty miles of Barcelona. For much of the remainder of the year, the French Aerostatic Corps launched balloon raids on Barcelona using the larger capacity baskets and tapered explosives that had been developed since the shelling of Guernica two years earlier. This bombing was much more effective than at Guernica, but the bigger gasbags required for the larger payloads made the Aerostatic Corps an easier target for Spanish artillery and three balloons were lost that year in the skies over Barcelona.

The Fall of the House of Habsburg: By 1868, Austria was experiencing external attacks from two fronts as well as the beginnings of crippling domestic revolts. The Prussian army in Bohemia was able to close off Prague by May and after a week long bombardment of the city, Prague fell to the Prussian forces. After the fall of Prague, general Steffen Osisek split the armies in Bohemia into two groups. The first, smaller group marched east and captured Krakow in August and put down a Polish uprising. The larger group under Osisek's leadership headed south toward Austria itself and Vienna. They were accompanied by a Bavarian force following the Danube as it flowed east. With the threat of the Prussians and Bavarians on Vienna, Emperor Franz Karl I[2] and rest of the Habsburg royal family fled to Budapest.

In the Alps, the news of a march on Vienna and troubles in the rest of the Empire devastated the morale of many of the soldiers fighting for Austria. Taking advantage of this, Bavaria launched several ambitious offensives in that year, taking Vorarlberg, Gastein, and most of all, Innsbruck in 1868. Italy also did well in the Alpine front, making advances into southern Tirol and further into Venetia. While Italian armies did not reach Venice itself, Cialdini did lead the Italian armies to victory over the Austrians at Vicenza and Padua. Italy also won a battle against the Austrian navy in the Adriatic as many ships were tied up enforcing a quarantine of the island of Venice after a severe cholera outbreak in the city[3].

Further east, the Austrian Empire was beset by political struggles and rebellions. More areas of the Adriatic coast went into open revolt as Croatian, Dalmatian, and Slovenian nationalist groups encouraged their people to move for independence. The rebels in Galizien consolidated and continued to lessen the Austrian influence in the region. In the capital itself and other major cities in Austria and Hungary, socialists, republicans, and all other manner of political advocates held protests and riots against the government offices. The entire country was beginning to fall into a state of complete chaos, as the last remaining Habsburg rule came to its end.

[1] One of the few rivers in Belgium that run east-west, much to my annoyance when trying to name general campaigns. Also, apparently this was the name of an OTL WWI offensive. [2] Brother of OTL Emperor Ferdinand I. He died in the 1850s leaving no heir ITTL so his brother inherited the throne. Franz Karl in OTL was father to Emperor Franz Joseph and Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. [3] Approximately 75,000 people would die in Venice during the cholera outbreak of 1868-1869, almost half the city's total population.

Party Fifty-Seven: Out of Order Comes Chaos

Sambre Stalemate and Barcelona Blues: After the success of the Battle of the Sambre, France gained comparatively little ground on the eastern side of the Belgian front during the following year. While France did continue to extend its hold across the Sambre to Charleroi, the Coalition was able to move the majority of the front back to the river. In July and August, a large British offensive in the center line of the front recaptured Mons, but failed to reach the border between Belgium and France. Further west along the front, France worked most of the year to take Lille from the Coalition. France finally did manage to secure Lille in October after the British and Belgian garrison was sufficiently weakened by the redirection of Coalition forces toward the Mons offensive.

Meanwhile, the French continued to gain more and more ground in Spain as the Spanish forces were drawn further back into Spain. The Basque front was stagnant for much of the year with France making minimal gains only to secure Estella from a wide Spanish attack. However, the Spanish armies in Catalonia had to endure more retreats as France reached Sabadell in June and Badalona in August. A large network of trenches and artillery pieces were set up near Badalona on the coast up through the hills north of Barcelona to Montcada, where the Ripoll and Besos rivers met and cut a flat plain through the hills to the coast. In early September, a Spanish and British naval contingent was able to get the French navy away from Barcelona, but the French armies still bore down on the defenses. A difficult, slow campaign ensued, much like the previous battle near Girona, and lasted for months as France began to surround the city.

The Final Days: Up until now, the Habsburg rule over the Austrian Empire had been on the verge of complete collapse in the face of the German and Italian invasions and the rebellions in the south and east. In 1869, the final straw would break in Austria and the Habsburg dynasty would come to a violent, crashing end. In March, the Italian armies under Cialdini captured Venice, Treviso, and Udine, and began to force the Austrian armies into the Alps. Bavarian armies took several Alpine towns and turned their eyes east, marching through Linz in June. Steffen Osisek started to march his armies through the Moravian Plateau toward Vienna in April. The three countries were converging upon Vienna, even when the Habsburgs had already fled the city.

However, in July, a mass uprising in Hungary against Habsburg rule brought an abrupt and somewhat sensible end to the war. Emperor Franz Karl, with gunshots outside of the compound the Royal Family was staying at in Budapest[1], wrote a letter of surrender to Berlin. Within this letter Franz Karl requested two things. First, that the negotiation of peace terms be begun as quickly as possible so that the armies could work together to quell the rebellions that were growing every day. And second, the Habsburg royal family requested asylum in Bavaria on the basis that Franz Karl's wife, Archduchess Sophie, was the aunt of King Maximilian II of Bavaria. These terms were granted by the victorious powers, but only guaranteed for the duration of negotiations, and the Habsburg Royal Family was sped to Berlin on a train.

Emperor Franz Karl and his family arrived in Berlin on July 22nd, 1869 and met with the Prussian, Bavarian, and Italian leaders in the nearby town of Cottbus. The next three months were spent in negotiations over concessions in a territory that one side had increasingly little rule over. In November, the final minutiae of the proceedings had been finished and the Treaty of Cottbus was signed by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and King William I of Prussia, King Maximilian II of Bavaria, and President Giuseppe Garibaldi of Italy on the side of the victors, and Emperor Franz Karl and Archduke Maximilian[2] of Austria on the side of the defeated. The terms of the Treaty of Cottbus included the abolition of the German Confederation with Prussia formally acknowledged as the leader of the German states, the cession of Bohemia to Prussia, the cession of much of Tirol and the city of Salzburg to Bavaria, and the cession of Lombardy and Venetia to Italy. However, formal peace did not bring an end to the uprisings in Austria and the former Habsburg realms were now fast becoming a land of lawlessness and anarchy.

[1] The story of writing the message amid gunshots outside is apocryphal, mind you. [2] Eldest son of Franz Karl; also known in OTL as Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico

Part Fifty-Eight: Peace at Last

Homage to Catalonia: After many back and forth battles in the Mediterranean and France only achieving much success around Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, France finally got the upper hand in the Mediterranean in 1870. In late 1869, France launched a new naval fleet out of Nantes and sailed it toward the English Channel. With several British ships recalled to the Channel to prevent the French gaining superiority in the seas, France caught the naval bases at Malta and the Ionian Islands off guard and landed small forces in various British islands around the eastern Mediterranean. Malta and Corfu were captured by March of 1870, and Kefalonia fell to the French army in September.

On the Spanish mainland, France continued gaining momentum against the Coalition forces in both Catalonia and the Basque Country. Barcelona succumbed to the French siege and balloon bombings after six months as thousands of men lay dead in the streets of the city. The Spanish had resorted to urban fighting to hold off the French as long as they could, and as a result many of the city's buildings were reduced to rubble. After the capture of Barcelona, the French army began advancing northwest. The war ended before any more significant gains were made, however, and Barcelona stood a ravaged husk as French troops filed back to the city during the occupation of the city in the winter of 1870.

In the Basque Country, the Spanish troops and the Irish Foreign Legion were in dire straits. French artillery had been bombarding the Spanish defensive networks and now made extending or repairing the defenses almost impossible. Along with the direct combat, French generals had also enlisted Basques and Carlists in their cause as saboteurs. These saboteurs were disrupting the Spanish rail and telegraph networks and misinformation and dwindling supplies in some areas, causing discontent and several lowered morale among the Spanish infantrymen. The stalemate at the Guernica River that had held off the French for years at last shattered in May of 1870 and French soldiers surged through the widening cracks in the Spanish line like water breaking through a failing dam. By the time the General Armistice was agreed to in November of 1870, the French had seized both Bilbao and Vitoria. Bilbao was one of the cities with a French presence between the General Armistice and the Berlin Conference in March of 1871 finally restored peace to Western Europe.

In Flanders Fields: France also made many gains in the final year of the Second Napoleonic War in Belgium. The French kept the front in the eastern half of Belgium at the approximate line following the Sambre River and moved tens of thousands of men to the western section of the front. The increase in French troops punched a hole in the Coalition lines near Lille and Kortnijk across the Belgian border fell into French hands by April. The French advance widened to include Tournai and Ypres in the next two months as Belgian leaders began considering engaging in separate negotiations with the French.

As the French continued marching through Belgium, the French general Antoine Chanzy turned the army's advance not toward Brussels, but rather toward the coast of Belgium. President Louis-Napoleon had reasoned that Great Britain had become the main opponent to France in the war and advised his military staff to focus on injuring Great Britain as much as they could. Additionally, the British had made a landing of thirty thousand more soldiers, two thirds of whom were Irish, at Dunkerque at the beginning of 1870. French forces had been able to contain this new British force in the city until now, but it was growing ever more difficult as the Royal Navy was sending supplies through several Belgian ports and the French ships in that part of the English Channel were unable to stop enough supply shipments.

General Chanzy kept the pressure against the Coalition lines as the British and Belgians were pushed further back toward the Channel. The French army in the central push was divided into three sections. The Ypres Corps was tasked with taking Nieuwpoort, the Rosselare Corps was tasked with harassing Brugge and taking the city if possible, and the Krontijk Corps was tasked with advancing toward Ghent. The Ypres Corps took Nieuwpoort while the Rosselare Corps reached as far as Oostkamp just south of Brugge by July. The trap was set and the Ypres Corps turned west to accompany the other French armies surrounding Dunkerque. The Evacuation of Dunkerque and the General Armistice: As the hot summer months bore down on Europe in 1870, the French armies in Belgium were content to sit and hold their positions while the main force of the French northern front was turned toward Dunkerque. The British had unloaded an extra hundred thousand men in the French port city the previous winter, bringing the total number of Coalition soldiers in the Dunkerque area to a staggering 150,000 men. By the beginning of August, the French had almost a complete wall of people and field guns arranged in a tweny mile wide semicircle from Gravelines to Koksijde.

The first site of fighting in the Battle for Dunkeqrue came in Koksijde, where the British armies attempted to push back the French and recapture Nieuwpoort and another supply port. The British force, while concentrated in this circle, was also necessarily spread out all around the circle and the Ypres Corps easily repelled the British attack. Once London realized the situation in Dunkerque as the French started to close in on the city, the Royal Navy attempted landings and naval bombardments at Calais and Boulogne and create a wider field of play in the battle. These landings succeeded for a few days, but within two weeks the British were rebuffed and the small landing parties had to be sailed back across the Channel.

The final assault on Dunkerque took place between August 13th and October 21st of 1870. In mid-August, the French forces began to close in on the city, taking large losses from the British artillery and the Royal Navy. Naval attacks on Gravelines heavily damaged the army there, but the French continued inching forward. The British attempted to break out of the city and gain a wider front as French artillery began lobbing shells into the city, but no attempts in August or early September were successful. Heavy fighting continued until early October, when the French had taken Capelle-la-Grande and it was clear to the British that continuing to hold Dunkerque was an untenable position. The Royal Navy set up procedures for evacuating the troops in the city, but as there were so many it took over two weeks under fire to get the last of the soldiers out. Over 40,000 men died in total during the two months of the French assault on Dunkerque, and the losses by the British were so great that in November Parliament agreed to sign the General Armistice and participate in the Berlin Conference early the next year.

Part Fifty-Nine: The Berlin Conference

The Berlin Conference: The final combat of the European Wars ended when the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, and Spain signed the Great Armistice in November of 1870. All the European powers had suffered from the wars of the 1860s. The Habsburg domain of Austria had completely fallen apart, while Great Britain was experiencing a large amount of unrest from the underground Chartist Societies and pro-Irish organizations disgruntled by the treatment of the Irish during the Great Famine and the seeming use of Irishmen as cannon fodder in the European Wars. However, one power had clearly come out on top in the wars: Prussia. The fall of Austria guaranteed Prussia hegemony over the German states, and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck attempted to capitalize on Prussia's growing position in Europe by hosting the Berlin Conference in 1871 to solidify the new postwar borders in Europe.

The Berlin Conference envisioned by Bismarck was supposed to be a revival and continuation of the Congress system of geopolitics established after the First Napoleonic War with the Congress of Vienna. After the increased competition between European nations in the 1850s that led to the wars, Bismarck felt that peace could be maintained with the same system due to the increased use of the telegraph allowed faster communication between governments and leaders. Privately, however, Bismarck wanted to use the conference to affirm Prussia's consolidation over the German states in the eyes of Europe and entrench Germany as a great power on the European and indeed the world stage.

The conference, which lasted from March into April of 1871, covered three main topics of diplomacy between the attending powers. The first and foremost of these was negotiating the peace treaty and concessions resulting from the Second Napoleonic War. It was decided that the war ended in a French victory, and although the British greatly contested the focus of concessions from them rather than the Belgians at the conference, they reluctantly conceded. The results of the conference saw Britain and Spain cede the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Minorca to France and the return of the Ionian Islands to Greece. Britain's rule over the Mediterranean Sea was thus lessened, although they kept Gibraltar. In Belgium, France gained the department of Namur and the small French-speaking section of West Flanders.

The second major diplomatic session involved in the Berlin Conference was the recognition of parts of the former Austrian Empire that had now stabilized into some form of government. On the Adriatic, several cities had declared independence as free city-states and had formed a league to cooperate against the piracy that had sprung up during the lawlessness. At the Berlin Conference, this league was recognized as being under the supervision of Italy, and the Adriatic League[1] signed a treaty by which Italy had the right to veto any of the league's policies, and that plebiscites would be held at some point to join Italy or not. The independent state of Trent that had been created pending a vote to join Italy or Bavaria in the region ended with the region joining Italy in 1872. Additionally, the newly independent states of Galizien and Moravia were recognized as Russian and German puppets, respectively.

The other matter concerning the German states was the new organization of the German Confederation, now that Austria had collapsed and Prussia had become the most powerful country in Germany. Bismarck attempted to get the powers to agree on reforms which would make Prussia the clear leader of the German Confederation and centralize much of the power of the Confederation in Berlin. Russia and Great Britain initially refused Bismarck's aims on the grounds that it would disrupt the balance of power in Europe, but Russia was placated with a secret non-aggression pact between Germany and Russia. Great Britain still remained the sole dissenter now, but the continental powers agreed to the German goals after the British delegation realized that Germany would simply be replacing Austria as the dominant force in Central Europe. Prussian dominance over the German states was secured and in 1874, the states in the German Confederation were consolidated into a new German Empire. The Dutch provinces that had been part of the Confederation left in order to placate the Dutch and French upon the formation of the Empire. The new German Empire was led by Prussia, while Bavaria and Hanover received special privileges within the new federal government and the smaller German states largely kept their original borders while conceding several functions to the government in Berlin.

[1] The Adriatic League was founded by the cities of Trieste, Fiume, Zadar, Split, Dubrovnik, and Kotor.

Part Sixty: The Plight of the Irish

The Irish Diaspora: Throughout the 19th century, the Ulster Irish and Catholic Irish made up one of the primary sources of immigrants to the United States. The Ulster Irish came from northern Ireland and were usually Calvinist or Anglican, and often had more Scottish ancestry than Irish. The Ulster Irish mostly came to the United States in the 18th century and early 19th cenutry, settling primarily in the northern United States. In the 19th cenutry, many Ulster Irish contributed to the growth of the steel industry in the north and led to the prosperity of cities like Pittsburgh and Indianapolis.

After the National War, however, the majority of immigration to the United States from Ireland came from the Catholic communities in the rest of the island. The mass emigration of the Catholic Irish from Ireland largely began during the Great Famine and the European Wars, but the British government began to encourage Irish resettlement outside the British Isles in the following decades and gradually Anglicization of Ireland through epuration[1] and encouraging the movement of people from England and Scotland to Ireland. The squalid conditions in Ireland during and after the Great Famine and the encouragement of Catholics to leave Ireland created a large Irish diaspora in the late 19th century.

Besides the large urban center in the northern United States like New York and Chicago, the Catholic Irish immigration to the United States in the latter 19th century also centered around areas that already had a sizable Catholic community. For this reason, large Irish communities arose in Batlimore, Cuba, and New Orleans. From New Orleans, the Irish community spread up the Mississippi River and into Saint Louis. The large Irish communities would turn American politics further against the British as the turn of the century passed.

Aside from the United States, the exodus of Catholics from Ireland also led to Irish immigration in other areas. Irish immigration to Ontario and the majority Scottish areas in Acadia combined with a revival in Gaelic language and culture led to Gaelic becoming the largest language spoken in British North America by 1900. Outside of North America, many Irish Catholics migrated to Chile, Argentina, and the Cape Colony in southern Africa. Chile, with a history of encouraging Irish Catholic immigration extending from colonial times, welcomed Irish immigrants. Many of the Irish who went to Chile raised livestock and helped settle the far south of the country in Patagonia and along the Straits of Magellan.

A Natural Born Citizen: The rising levels of immigration to the United States in the 19th century led to some major questions in Congress and the Supreme Court regarding the status of the country's growing population. The 1873 ruling in the Supreme Court that all people born in the United States became American citizens set the stage for official rulings on when a person became a United States citizen. However, there was also another citizenship issue that came to prominence in the decade after the National War; eligibility for the Executive Office of the United States.

The first section of Article Two of the Constitution states that only "natural born citizens" are eligible for the Presidency of the United States, and the Twelfth Amendment extends this restriction to the Vice Presidency. With more and more first- generation immigrants getting into Congress, the question of what exactly was meant by "natural born citizen" and whether to allow naturalized citizens to be eligible for the Presidency or Vice Presidency increasingly became an issue in the House and Senate.

In 1871, senators Carl Shurz of Missouri[2] and Antonio Seguin from Tejas[3] introduced a constitutional amendment that would enable foreign-born citizens to hold an Executive Office. The amendment had some support within the Senate, but the general nativist sentiment among Congress at the time prevented the amendment's passage. Some senators also raised questions about the motives for the amendment, saying that Schurz was only proposing the amendment so he could be eligible for the presidency, since he was born in Germany. While the Schurz Amendment failed, it laid the groundwork for future attempts at passing similar amendments.

[1] From the French for 'purging', basically ethnic cleansing, although I'm unsure of the details of it in Ireland yet. I didn't think the OTL term should be used since it wasn't really in use until the 1990s. [2] OTL the first German-American senator [3] Grandson of Juan Seguin Part Sixty-One: The 1872 Election

Election of 1872: As Fremont's presidency began drawing to a close, the Republican Party had entrenched itself in the new system of American politics. The institution of slavery had been eradicated in the United States, and the former Confederate states were steadily being readmitted to the Union. By the time the election season started, all the former Confederate states had rejoined the Union except for Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina.

While many people at the time suspected that Fremont would run for a third term as president, Fremont announced that he would not be running in early 1872. In the 1872 Republican National Convention in Chicago, the party leaders struggled to find another man as popular as Fremont who had a good national standing. Vice President David Wilmot was considered, but in the end Wilmot lost the nomination as we was "not considered popular or well known enough in the public view"[1]. Also considered were Chief Justice Abraham Lincoln, Senator Salmon P. Chase, and Winfield Representative Robert E. Lee. After five rounds of voting, Lee was named the Republican presidential candidate, with former general Ambrose Burnside the Vice Presidential candidate. Lee had gained recognition throughout the country for his loyalty to the Union and his part in the creation of the state of Vandalia, while Burnside had a good military record from the National War.

On the other hand, the 1872 election highlighted the state of disarray that the Democratic Party had fallen into after the National War as several candidates sporting a wide variety of issues vied for the Democratic nomination. Some Democrats were concerned that some former Confederate states had not been fully admitted back into the Union yet and wanted to expedite the process. The main issue at the 1872 Democratic Convention, however, was the path the post-war economy should take. One wing believed that the country should pursue protectionist trade policies to help rebuild the southern states and promote industrial growth across the country, while the other wing advocated free trade policies in support of growing businesses and opposed the minting of silver. The free trade wing was known as the "Bourbon Democrats" and won out in the convention as Samuel Tilden of New York and Henry Hastings Sibley of Itasca won the Democratic nomination.

In the general campaign, Tilden ran the more vigorous campaign in an effort to unite the Democrats and regain the dominance the Democratic Party had held in the presidency from 1853 to the start of the National War. Tilden criticized what many southerners considered Lee's overbearing role in the creation of Winfield as a political power grab. The Democratic Party's southern campaigners issued pamphlets in North Carolina, Virginia, and Chickasaw claiming that the Republicans were out to overthrow the plantation society in the southern states, just as Lee encouraged free staters to move to Winfield. Tilden also campaigned intensively on promoting free trade and lowering tariffs, cementing the issue as part of the Democratic political platform. Lee, on the other hand, promoted the Republican triumph of outlawing slavery and praised the quick readmission of the Confederate states back into the Union. Lee also supported further settling and railroad expansion into the west. The Republican campaign slogan of "LEE Stands for Liberty, Equality, and Expansion" was popular in the cities and in the Old Northwest. When the electoral votes were counted, Lee won handily over Tilden, although the popular vote was much closer. Most of Tilden's victories in the electoral college came from the Democratic political machines like Tammany Hall in New York City and the continuing skepticism toward the Republicans in many states in the south. With Lee set to be inaugurated in March, President Fremont secured his legacy as the president who saved the Union when Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina were readmitted to the Union on January 14, 1873.

Lee/Burnside: 206 EV Tilden/Sibley: 98 EV

[1] In-universe quote from Republican Realignment: The Formation of the Third Party System.

Culture #2: Some Sporting Ideas

The Pan-Hellenic Games and the First Olympiad: The Olympic games embodies both the Classical ideals of the nineteenth century as well as the growing internationalism of the era. But the modern games actually had much of their origins in Greece itself, almost a decade before the first Olympic games of the modern era was held. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Greek Revolution in 1822, King Otto and the Greek Parliament funded a grand sporting exhibition for the Greek people. After the Conference of Berlin, the planners of the Pan- Hellenic Games invited any Europeans to celebrate the arrival of peace on the continent and participate in the games. Only a dozen foreign athletes participated in the Pan- Hellenic Games out of a total 137, but they represented six other nations. In total, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Great Britain, Russia, and Greece played in the Pan- Hellenic Games and laid the ground for a revival of the Olympics a decade later.

In 1877, the Greek philanthropist Evangelos Zappas offered his fortune to fund the creation of an international organization to revive the ancient Olympic games. Other interested European parties followed and the International Olympic Committee was formed and met later in 1877 in Rastatt in Baden[1]. William Penny Brookes, who had previously organized smaller Olympiads in Britain, was elected president of the committee and the IOC began developing the basics of the modern Olympiad. The first IOC meeting established that the games should be open to all nations and emphasized the amatuerism that should be in place in the competition. Later, in 1879, the committee met in Athens and convinced the Greek government to hold the first modern Olympiad in the Greek capital in 1882. The 1882 Olympic games took place from May 12 to May 19 of 1882 in Athens. While only 256 athletes competed in the 1882 Olympics and only 47 of those athletes were from outside Greece, this was double the number of athletes that the Pan-Hellenic Games had drawn and the games were a sensation in national newspapers around the world. Countries from Europe and both Americas were represented in the games, although there was a notable absence of the Ottoman Empire or its satellites in Serbia, Romania, and Egypt, which forbade its athletes to go. Some of the noted competitors were Dmitri and Grigori Rasputin, two peasant brothers from Siberia. The two brothers had been found by Russian officials and were funded by the Tsar personally to go to Athens. They took gold medals for Russia in the equestrian events and returned home heroes[2]. Also notable was Francis Duquesne, an American from Georgia who edged out Ioannis Xenakis of Greece to win the gold medal in the first international running of the marathon.

Early Baseball: The late 19th century saw the beginnings of many of the professional sports leagues in the United States today. With cheaper cross-country transportation and the spreading of instant communication networks with the telegraph and later the telephone, organizing larger sports leagues became economically feasible. One of the first sports to benefit from this was baseball. The first baseball league, the Union Base Ball Association, was established in 1863 during the National War. However, it was an amateur league and the teams were primarily situated in the northeastern United States. The first professional baseball league would not be founded until the 1870s.

The first professional baseball league in the United States was the American Professional Base Ball Association, which split off from the UBBA in 1873 after eight teams decided they want to play professionally. These original teams were New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Boston, Hartford, Columbus, Baltimore, and Miami[3]. The APBBA remained relatively static over the next decade, although the Hartford team folded in 1877 and was replaced by a team in Syracuse. While the APBBA was relatively successful, it only had a limited audience in the northeastern United States. Reluctance by the members of the APBBA to expand the association resulted in its stagnation, and the opportunity for other leagues to arise.

The lack of a professional baseball league in the Midwestern United States presented a grand opportunity to Albert Spalding of Rockford, Illinois. Spalding had been playing for Brooklyn since 1878, and tried to urge the APBBA to expand into the Midwest, having played amateur baseball in his youth and knowing how popular the sport had become in the region. The APBBA's foot-dragging caused Spalding to leave Brooklyn in 1884 and move to Chicago. After a year of gathering investment, Spalding founded the Midwestern Baseball League in 1885. The MBL originally had six teams in Chicago, Rockford, Indianapolis, Cairo, Saint Louis, and Milwaukee. The MBL only lasted twelve years with several difficulties with the teams before going bankrupt and being absorbed into the APBBA (by then renamed the American Baseball Association), but Spalding's efforts helped spread professional baseball in the United States and standardize the rules of the sport. Spalding would also later serve as president of the American Baseball Association from 1897 to 1904 as owner of Rockford.

Football Crosses the Atlantic: During the late 19th century, another new sport managed to catch on in various parts of the United States. This sport was football. Football had originated in Great Britain and was first formalized with its modern rules in 1863 when the Football Association was formed. With the large amount of Irish emigration from the British Isles in the 1860s and 1870s, many immigrants to the United States began playing the game and it became popular in many cities where many Irish settled. From those areas, the sport spread and grew in popularity, especially in urban areas.

Like Great Britain, the United States has more than one national football association that play internationally. This is the result of an interesting quirk of history and highlighted lingering regional identities in various parts of the country. Besides the Football Association of the United States, the country also has national associations representing New England (all states east of New York), and Texas (the states of Houston, Tejas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua)[4].

The New England Football Association, or NEFA, was the first national football association in the Americas, having been founded in 1890. NEFA began once football initially becoming popular with the Ivy League schools in the Northeast and the seven Ivy League schools started an intercollegiate football league. The league eventually dropped its exclusiveness to universities. In 1890, the Ivy League of Football reorganized itself along the regional identity of New England, adding city leagues and removing Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton. This new New England League created the NEFA as an overall way to organize the league and its scheduling, but soon established itself as a football association on the national level.

The Texas Football Association began once Irish immigrants to New Orleans started moving west and bringing their interest in the sport with them. Interest in football grew in Tejas and Houston, and many regional activists, Anglo and Ibero alike, promoted football as a way to revive the Texan regional identity. The Texan Football Association was eventually founded in 1918, two years after the United States Football Association, after several teams in the Texas region protested against longer travel times to the rest of the nation. The USFA met in Saint Louis in 1917 and allowed the formation of the Texas FA a year later.

[1] It's nice to have a small neutral country in Europe other than Switzerland and Belgium. [2] Aristocratic propaganda, gotta love it. Grigori is the famous OTL Rasputin, Dmitri is his younger brother who died as a child in OTL. [3] I haven't decided how the naming will work for teams yet, so right now I'm just listing the cities. [4] This isn't set it stone yet, as I'm still not sure if or how far the US will expand into Mexico. Part Sixty-Two: The Postwar Recessions

Colorado Silver Boom: The Colorado Gold Rush that had occurred in the early 1860s caused a boom in the territory's population, but after the National War that poulation increase was starting to die off as gold findings became less frequent. As people who had come to the territory for gold prospecting began to leave, some small mountain towns were abandoned. However, another mining boom that hit Colorado in the 1870s would bring another wave of immigration and lead to Colorado becoming a state in 1876.

One of the long term developments which aided the Colorado Silver Boom was better mining techniques such as the use of pyroglycerin in clearing mine shafts, which allowed for deeper mines in the later 19th century. However, the main cause of the boom in the short term was the Coinage Act of 1873. The Coinage Act of 1873 returned the country to primarily using gold and silver coins instead of the printed currency that was used during the National War. The increased demand for silver sparked a second rush on Colorado, although silver was already being mined in small qunatities near some cities in the mountains.

The Colorado Silver Boom was largely different from the previous gold rush because of the increased presence of railroads and larger mining companies. The Nederalnd Mining Company gained one of the largest grants for mineral rights during the Silver Boom on land in Clear Creek Canyon. Further south, railroads penetrated further into the Rocky Mountains and helped miners go further and further west. The city of South Park in the shadow of Mount Evans boomed during the 1870s because it served as a major trasnportation link on the Ferroplano, South Park, and Divide railroad which became a major connector from Ferroplano to silver mining towns like Leadville and Aspen.

The economic impact of the Colorado Silver Boom was felt all around the United States. During the 1870s, over 60 million dollars worth of silver was mined in Colorado mining districts. The increase in the supply of silver caused a rise in inflation as it was coined or brought into general circulation. In the short run, the Colorado Silver Boom contributed to the general recession in 1874 and 1875 as investment from banks leveled off from the post-National War economic boom.

Lee's Recession: The decades after the National War in the United States were a time of turbulence for the American economy. Having experienced a large state of expansion during the National War, the United States entered into a deep recession in March of 1866 as the former Confederacy began to reincorporate itself into the American economic system. This postwar recession lasted into late 1867, but picked up in time for Fremont to win reelection in 1868. Despite a slight recession in 1870, the United States economy had expanded for the remainder of Fremont's presidency and into the beginning of Lee's administration. However, this postwar expansion could not last forever. By 1874, the economic troubles that faced Europe during and after the wars in the 1860s had arrived in the United States. This downturn was exacerbated by the Coinage Act of 1873 and the readmission of the final three former Confederate States to the Union. The Coinage Act of 1873 resumed specie payments after they were suspended during the National War. The supply of silver increased, leading to a short period of inflation and decreased economic activity.

The recession lasted into the summer of 1875 and saw a number of smaller railroads go bankrupt and be bought up by larger, more successful companies. Several shortlines were bought up by the Union Pacific Railroad including the Oregon Railroad from Langley to Vancouver and the Itasca Northern connecting Duluth, the capial of Itasca, with Minneapolis in Demoine. Lee even made a personal statement praising the expansion of Union Pacific. Lee supported the railroad because of its use of his plan for the Transcontinental Railroad and attended the final connection to the western terminus in Astoria in 1874. The recession started a major period of consolidation in the railroad and other industries that would continue through the end of the 19th century.

Part Sixty-Two: Order From Chaos

The State of Illyria: After Galizien and Moravia were stabilized as independent states, the rest of the former Habsburg lands remained in a state of disorder for several years. However, by 1880, the region was finally coalescing into a small number of political entities. In Austria proper, two main polities that emerged as the dominant countries. The Slovene lands and southern Austria were merged into the Illyrian Republic as local cities formed together to stabilize the region. From 1876 to 1879, Illyria was ruled by a Cities' Council in Klagenfurt where each municipality sent a delegation and elected one of the delegates to be the Supreme Consul for that year. However, the Illyrian Republic descended into a tyranny within a year after president Hugo Poltermann[1] dissolved the Cities' Council that had originally formed the state.

The Viennese Commune: In Vienna, the exile of the Habsburgs brought a number of opportunist political groups out of the shadows. A new generation of liberal militants rose up in an attempt to ignite a second round of revolutions akin to the Midcentury Revolutions. While these liberals were somewhat successful, they were pushed back east of the Danube by the local military elements in three months of the uprising in 1872, where it soon dissipated. However, the liberal element lingered in the Viennese underground, and encouraged further revolts in later years. By 1876, another underground movement had been growing in Vienna: a new socialist movement. In March of 1877, the leading aristocrat in the Viennese socialist movement, Gustav von Hayek[1], had recruited a German follower of Hegel by the name of Karl Marx to help direct the planned uprising against the military law that had been largely established in the capital. Marx and von Hayek made their plans and the uprising began in the middle of May of 1877. The two main worker districts in the city were located in the northwestern edge of the city where many factories were located and in the south by the main railway station. Marx took command of the northern group while von Hayek took command of the southern group. On May 17th, a planned protest in Stephensplatz brought the military to put the protest down. While much of the local militia was distracted by this protest, Marx's group overran the nearby gun manufactory and the military hospital. Von Hayek's group seized the arsenal to the east of the railway station after hours of fighting. From this first day of the worker uprising, the fighting in the city lasted five months before the last of the military elements had been trapped in the city center. The worker uprising now had the support of most of the citizens of Vienna and after a ten day siege of the Innere Stadt with captured artillery placed in the surrounding glacis, the flag of the new Wiener Arbeiterstaat[2] was raised at the top of the Stephensdom. Over the next year, the Wiener Arbeiterstaat would absorb control over the surrounding towns and villages and come into control over all of Austria proper.

The Hungarian Republic: The nation of Hungary managed to stay relatively together, although Romanian, Serbian, Slovakian, and Croatian nationalist rebellions broke out with varying success soon after the exile of the Habsburgs. The Diet in Budapest continued to function as the supreme Hungarian political institution in the early 1870s, although powers were increasingly given to the new executive position of Chancellor, as the separatist uprisings in the more remote Hungarian lands grew worse. The first Hungarian Chancellor was Hungarian nationalist and poet Sándor Petőfi.

During Petőfi's time as Chancellor, the Romanian and Slovakian rebellions were largely crushed, and a number of nationalist reforms were enacted, such as requiring Hungarian instruction in all primary educational institutions and requiring that all electoral ballots be printed in Hungarian. Many policies were also implemented to crush localized rebellions and encouraged migration of citizens from central Hungary to the outer regions in a process of Magyarization. Many of these policies promoted the Magyarisation of the Hungarian hinterlands and were supported by Petőfi's economic and interior minister Kálmán Tisza.

Petofi was Chancellor of Hungary until 1885 and did much to stabilize the country. The Slovakian and Romanian revolts were quelled and many ethnic Romanians in Hungary fled across the Carpathians to Romania. While these two groups were appeased, the Croatians in the south sought most of Petofi's attention in the Magyarisation campaigns. Attempts to generate a Croatian national revival similar to the one that occurred in Illyria were stamped out and towns north of the Szava River were subject to large forced movements of Croatians south of the Szava River, which the Hungarian government claimed was the natural southern border of Hungary proper. Croats and other minorities were mainly encouraged to emigrate from the country through economics means, and by issuing regional passports. An agreement with the Adriatic League in 1878 was made to increase trading through the coastal cities, but also included an allowance of free passage in the cities for people holding the regional passports that were not from Hungary proper[4]. Many poorer Croatians began emigrating to other countries through this method to seek better economic conditions, and the 1880 Zagrab earthquake only accelerated the exodus as economic conditions in Slavonia worsened.

After the Zagrab earthquake, the railway connection between Budapest and the Adriatic Sea had been severed. The Hungarian National Railway, when rebuilding the connection, moved the railway further south and east, crossing the Szava River at Sziszek. After 1885, Kalman Tisza was elected by the Diet to succeed Petofi as Chancellor of Hungary. Tisza continued the persecution of the various minorities in Hungary and expanded the Magyarisation efforts in all regions. In 1889, the Hungarian Diet passed a law that enforced Hungarian as the sole language in primary schools and made Hungarian the official language of government transactions. Despite major rioting in Slovakia and Croatia in the 1890s that were put down by police and army regiments, the Magyarisation campaigns slowly increased the Hungarian population ratio in the outlying regions, spurred by poor economic conditions compared to opportunities in the cities in Hungary proper, as well as in other countries. By 1900, over 5 million ethnic Croatians had left Hungary, primarily to Italy, Canada, and the United States, and the provinces between the Drava and Szava rivers had become over 50 percent Hungarian.

[1] The Illyrian movement was an OTL Slovene/Croatian nationalist movement in the early 19th century. ITTL after the collapse of the Habsburgs, it got hijacked by Styria during the chaos in order to gain control over the Slovene lands. This is why the country is controlled by a German. [2] In OTL the grandfather of economist Freidrich Hayek [3] Viennese Workers' State. [4] This is similar to an effort at Magyarization in Hungary in OTL, where Hungary arranged a direct steamship route from Rijeka to New York with the Cunard Steamship Company, but the company didn't issue passports to ethnic Hungarians.

Part Sixty-Three: Red Sea Rising

A Newcomer to the Colonial Game: By the late 1870s, Germany had recovered from the effects of the Grand Unification War. Prussia had assured its dominance over a unified German state with Emperor Wilhelm I and chancellor Otto von Bismarck at the country's helm. Now that Bismarck had secured Germany's presence as a power in Europe, he started looking to proclaim Germany's presence among the world's foremost great powers. In the imperialist world on the late 19th century, this meant going overseas to Africa or Asia and gaining colonies. As most of Asia was already claimed by the Atlantic countries, Germany had to look to the uncolonized shores of Africa to find its place in the sun.

The first target of the German colonial regime was the Sultanate of Oman. Oman and its dependencies on the east coast of Africa had been embroiled in a decade-long succession war after the death of Sultan Sa'id bin Sultan. Thuwaini ibn Sa'id had taken control over the area around Muscat in Oman, while Mayid ibn Sa'id controlled the majority of the East African regions of Oman from Zanzibar. From 1877 to 1879, Germany sent governors to mediate the situation and gradually assume control over the region. In 1879, Germany overthrew Sultan Mayid ibn Sa'id and took direct colonial administration over the East African coast from Mogadishu to the Rufiji River. Germany established a colonial fortress on Zanzaibar and improved much of the island making it the administrative center of what would become German East Africa. Thuwaini ibn Sa'id was overthrown by Ibadi clerics in 1881 who moved the capital of the region to the city of Nizwa. While Oman was able to remain independent a few more years under Ibadi rule, Germany incorporated the provinces around Muscat into management from Zanzibar by 1885.

After building further fortresses in Mombasa, Mogadishu, and Mzizima[1], Germany began looking for elsewhere to stretch its colonial regime. While the German colonial ministry encouraged settlement of the German colonies in Africa and Muscat, they were primarily focused on resource extraction. Exploration of the East African interior via the river systems was done to penetrate German trade and claims further into the continent. German explorer Colonel Hans Kowalski discovered the Sachsensee after trekking up the Rufiji River past its source, and later discovered the Bismarcksee which later was found to be the source of the Nile[2]. Germany quickly extended its control of the coast north from Mogadishu as well, reaching the tip of the African Horn by 1890.

Egypt in Revolt: While Germany was expanding its influence in Africa, the Ottomans were slowly losing their hold on parts of the continent. On the death of Muhammad Ali Pasha in 1853, the Ottomans attempted to reassert their control over Egypt by making his first son Ibrahim Pasha governor of Egypt. However, a coup in 1854 by his brother Sa'id Pasha ousted Ibrahim and through a treaty with the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmecid, Sa'id Pasha was recognized as the governor of Egypt, Sudan, and Palestine, and the Hedjaz, all the lands which traditionally went to the governor of Egypt. Ibrahim was sent in exile to Istanbul where he lived for the remainder of his life.

Sa'id Pasha governed Egypt effectively and made many reforms to modernize the country just as Muhammad Ali had done. While Egypt was nominally under Ottoman control, it operated virtually independently as a state. Among other projects, Sa'id oversaw the construction of a new harbor in Alexandria and a modernization of the Egyptian navy, the establishment of the Bank of Egypt in 1862, and Sa'id made trading concessions to bring Egypt to a better relationship with France under Louis Napoleon. Through this relationship, Sa'id Pasha began plans to build the Suez Canal under French backing and moved to become more independent from the Ottoman state.

While France had attempted to finance a canal connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea earlier in the century, serious consideration only arose after the Second Napoleonic War when France achieved greater control over the Mediterranean in a time of peace. Looking to expand the abilities of French colonial and trading aspirations, Louis Napoleon and Sa'id Pasha agreed on concessions that Egypt would make toward France to allow the canal to be built through Egyptian territory. The Ottomans, influenced by British diplomats, attempted to stop the canal from going through and used it as an excuse to reassert their control over Egypt. Sa'id Pasha declared Egypt officially independent from the Ottoman Empire in 1877 and Louis Napoleon provided assistance to the Egyptians in the resulting war. The Egyptian Revolt lasted three years, but in 1880 the Ottomans signed a peace granting Egyptian independence with control over much of the lands that Sa'id Pasha had control over. Over the next decade, the Suez Canal completed construction in 1887 and Egypt gradually became a French protectorate as further concessions were granted to French advisors and the French government.

[1] Mzizima is the former name of Dar es-Salaam. [2] Sachsensee = Lake Nyasa, Bismarcksee = Lake Victoria

Part Sixty-Foure: Catholics and Indians

The Wandering Pope: After the Modern Papal Schism began and Pope Pius was welcomed back to Rome by Garibaldi in 1868, the faction of the cardinals that had dissented from the Papacy and elected the Anti-Pope Alexander IX were in exile in Spain. The Anti-Papists (or Temporal Catholics as the called themselves to differentiate between them and the Anti- Papists of the Medieval era) stayed in Spain for the remainder of the Second Napoleonic War. Meanwhile, they attempted to build support among the Spanish for returning the Temporal Catholics to Rome. The Anti-Papists said that Pope Pius was working with Garibaldi and the French in order to liberalize the Catholic Church. However, these claims did not create much sympathy for the Anti-Papacy in Spain. After Isabella II was forced to abdicate the Spanish throne in favor of her son Alfonso XII in 1872, King Alfonso began a series of liberal reforms and disallowed the Anti-Papists from remaining in Spain.

After they were removed from Spain, the cardinals and many followers of Anti-Pope Alexander IX went to Portugal where they asked the Portuguese government to grant them a small parcel of land to represent the Pope's true temporal rule while they were exiled from Rome. However, the Portuguese parliament and King Pedro V were in support of Pope Pius, and no land was granted. With this, Alexander IX and the Anti- Papist cardinals traveled from country to country around Europe, looking for someone to take them in. But with most of Europe recovering from the wars in the 1860s, no government was willing to support the Anti-Papists. Seeing no safe haven in Europe, the cardinals began to look elsewhere.

In 1875, Alexander IX received a diplomatic letter from the Bishop of Tlaxcala informing the Anti-Papists of the support for their cause in the New World. While the Anti-Papists had been looking for a home in Europe, in the Americas their support among Catholic clergy had been growing. Roman Catholicism in the Americas was generally more conservative than Catholicism in Europe, and the clergy in many regions took to the Temporal cause as a support for the Church's conservative views. Alexander IX accepted the Bishop of Tlaxcala's offer and set out to the Mexican states. The Temporal Catholics were given the city of Puebla[1] by the Bishop of Tlaxcala. The Temporal Catholics began to gather more support in the more conservative areas of Ibero-America, with their major supportive areas being clustered near the Caribbean in Tlaxcala, Ecuador, Saint- Domingue, and rural Colombia.

Indian Incursions: After the National War, the expansion of the railroads across the Mississippi and toward the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific coast encouraged further immigration to the western United States. As more and more Americans were enticed to migrate west for land, wealth, or precious metals, the expansion of settlements in the Great Plains began to conflict with the lands occupied by the natives and tensions between the American settlers backed by the United States army and the native Plains tribes increased.

In the southern Great Plains, the Kiowa Indians had already been pushed off their original lands. In the early 19th century, the Kiowa had been pushed out of Calhoun by incoming Dutch and southern immigrants, and had moved to eastern New Mexico and the interior of Tejas and Houston. But by the 1870s and 1880s, the growth of the railroads brought even more settlers and cattle ranching began to cut into the Kiowa lands. Chief White Bear of the Kiowa led a band to start raiding towns in western Houston in the 1870s, and the United States reacted in kind. After the Chisholm Raid by White Bear, a United States army regiment under the command of Colonel William Cody retaliated. The result was the Battle of Wichita River in 1874, which killed over 40 Kiowa. After two more clashes between the Union army and White Bear, the Kiowa finally gave up and agreed to vacate Tejas and Houston and were put in a reservation in eastern New Mexico.

In Colorado, many of the Ute tribes had been more at peace with the settlers because they had mostly relocated to the more sparsely settled areas of western Colorado beyond the first ridges of the Rockies. However, the Colorado Silver Boom brought more settlers deeper into the mountains and the railroads followed. After some confrontations between Ute tribesmen and the Mormons in Utah and against settlers in Shoshone Territory, Chief Ouray of one of the Ute clans urged peaceful action and negotiation with the settlers. Ouray's appeals to the Colorado territorial government led him to a meeting with Colorado governor John Evans and President Lee in 1876 during a celebration of Colorado's admittance to the Union. During this meeting, Lee expressed praise for Chief Ouray, and after discussion with governor Evans it was agreed that a reservation for the Ute would be set up in the southwestern corner of Colorado.

[1] In the early parts of the shift, the Anti-Papacy operated out of the Puebla Cathedral as its see. Part Sixty-Five: The Western Frontier

Cowboy Dutch: Life on the Great Plains during the 1870s was rough and rural. Most of the people who migrated wewst across the Mississippi went into farming or ranching, or worked in the smaller towns scattered across Calhoun, Houston, and other states in the Great Plains. Many of the largest ranches were owned by the early Dutch immigrants to Calhoun or Spanish vaqueros who lived in the region for decades, who had gained the land from various federal land grant acts in the 1840s. While most of the ranches were populated by cattle for livestock, a few like the Vanderhof Ranch in Calhoun kept herds of the native bison which roamed the Great Plains prior to the European colonization of North America. As more and more of the land in the Great Plains was parceled out into farms and ranches and the region became more populated, the natural habitat range of the bison dwindled, but these ranches helped to keep the bison alive as a species while they were nearly hunted to extinction in the wild.

The growth of cattle ranching in the Great Plains also spurred growth in cities on the Mississippi River as well as cities where the railroads snakes west across the plains. In the 1870s, Saint Louis, Cairo, Memphis, and New Orleans grew largely due to the development of the meat packing industry in those cities[1]. The invention of refrigerated railway cars allowed the beef cattle to be processed in large factories in those cities and then shipped north to the cities along the Great Lakes or east to the East Coast. Saint Louis became the prime location for the meat packing industry and developed into a major population center and transport hub. Several of the factories employed the unskilled Irish immigrants who came to the United States during the latter 19th century, and continued to attract immigrants well into the 1900s.

New Pioneers: The 1870s was also a time of greater exploration of the western United States and of a greater understanding of the area. Several expeditions were made into the Rocky Mountains by a new generation of exploers. Future president Theodore Roosevelt was part of a grand surveying expedition that sought to map out the entire country. The United States Topological Survey was authorized in 1874 by President Lee and lasted four years. Roosevelt, along with other explorers including William Cody and John Wesley Powell were sent on expeditions throughout the western United States. The various ranges of the Rockies and the Cascades were mapped out. Several peaks were summitted for the first time by Europeans, including the 1877 expedition by Cody and Powell to climb Mount Jefferson[2] in Colorado, the nation's highest peak.

Part of the reason for the rush to map the nation was the growth of mining claims throughout the remote mountain regions of the country. Along with the increase in mining of the Rocky Mountains, a number of people migrated and staked claims in the Cascades in Oregon and Columbia Territories after the discovery of gold despoits along the Fraser River. The city of Gilpin at the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson Rivers became a major mining town and boomed to a population of 25,000 by 1880. The region along the lower reaches of the Fraser River saw a large amount of growth as well and prompted the Union Pacific Railroad to extend its line on the Pacific coast up to Langley in Oregon Territory. The rush also prompted some migration in British North America as well as miners searched for gold in the upper Fraser. The influx of people to the regions helped revive the economy of Fort Simpson and Northcote[3] and led to the creation of the separate district of New Caledonia covering the British possessions west of the Rockies.

[1] Cow towns between the ranches and the major meat packing cities also grew during this period. Examples are Laramie, Pahsapa, Crockett, Houston, and Stuyvesant, Calhoun. [2] OTL Mount Elbert, Colorado. This should give you some clue about my plans for future territorial growth of the US. [3] Formerly Fort McLoughlin, named after HBC governor Sir Stafford Northcote.

Part Sixty-Six: The Grand Peace

Money Matters: After the European Wars, the late 19th century ushered in an unprecedented period of peace and extended cooperation between all countries in Europe and in North America. As Europe rebuilt from the war, most countries on the continent demonetized silver and adopted the gold standard. In an effort to keep up economic growth among the great powers, several attempts were made to coordinate international policy on gold reserves. The United States, meanwhile, kept to its own as one of the only countries to remain on a bimetallic standard for the dollar. The foremost cooperative effort in Europe was the creation of the European Monetary Standard[1].

The European Monetary Standard was developed after discussions between France and Germany over how to pursue the friendship between the two countries. In 1886, President Charles de Freycinet of France[2] and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Germany signed an agreement to set the standard weight of one unit of franc and the goldmark to one tenth of a troy ounce of gold. Moravia, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland joined the European Monetary Standard as they used the franc and goldmark as their currencies, and Baden put its thaler on the EMS in 1887. The Dutch guilder and the Belgian franc finalized the creation of the EMS and put their currencies on the Standard in 1890 and 1892 respectively.

The new coins of the European Monetary Standard were minted with the profile of a prominent figure of that country on the front and with the coat of arms of each country on the reverse. France's featured Louis Napoleon, who had served as the French president for over a quarter century. Germany's goldmark had Otto von Bismarck's profile on its front. The Belgian france featured King Ludwig I, while the Dutch guilder had King William III on the front. The Badener thaler had a portrait of Duke Frederick I. The Sleeping Bear: While most of the great powers of Europe had been posturing for dominance and squabbling amongst themselves, the Russian Empire had retreated into a policy of isolationism after the Napoleonic Wars. After the death of Czar Nicholas I in 1846, Alexader II focused on internal policy. As he possessed liberal-minded leanings, Alexander did much to reform the Russian political system. In 1861 he abolished serfdom throughout the Russian Empire. Alexander also supported the construction of railways for both military and economic purposes. The newly created Ministry of Railways and Communication oversaw a great expansion in the mileage of railways and telegraph lines to many cities in Russia proper.

Alexander I also encouraged development of the interior of the country and Siberia. During Czar Alexander's reign, cossack hosts were organized in the southern regions of the Russian expanse in Siberia, primarily around Lake Baikal and along the Amur River on the border between Russia and China. Along with the cossacks, migration eastward into Siberia increased greatly in the 19th century as mining facilities were constructed. The port cities of Magadan and Chumikan[3] developed into the primary Pacific shipping points for the Russian Empire. Further settlement in the farther reaches of Siberia was expedited by the discovery of gold in the mountains around Chumikan and in the Uda River.

Russian settlement of the Uda River region in the 1870s led to increased tensions with China when it was rediscovered that the Uda River had been intended as the boundary between Russia and China as defined by the Treaty of Nerchinsk. In 1885, an opportunity arose with the outbreak of the Sino-Korean War and France stepping in to aid Korea in their rebellion. The new Tsar, Nicholas II[4], was eager to expand Russian territory in Siberia and Central Asia and so Russia began pressuring the Chinese government to formalize a new treaty on the border of the two countries. Distracted by the Korean rebellion and the French invasion, China agreed to set up negotiations with Alexander Sibiryakov, Russian governor of the Far East. After weeks of negotiations in 1887, the Treaty of Chita formally marked the border with China giving numerous concessions. The new border in the Far East was generally established at the Amur River, then following the Ussuri and Khor Rivers up to where it reached the Pacific Ocean. This gave Russia full control of the Amur Delta while leaving parts of the Pacific coast of Manchuria in Chinese hands.

[1] Similar to OTL's Latin Monetary Union. [2] Louis Napoleon died at age 73 in 1881. [3] Chumikan is at the very western point of the Sea of Okhotsk. [4] OTL Tsesarevich Nicholas, Alexander II's first son who died at age 21 in 1865.

Part Sixty-Seven: The Election of 1876

Election of 1876: President Lee had enjoyed a fairly popular first term, despite the economic downturn in 1874 and 1875. The remainder of the former Confederate states had been readmitted to the Union, industry and railroads in the North and West were expanding at an ever faster rate, and Americans were enjoying a better standard of living than ever before. However, deep divisions were still present in some areas of the country. Many of the former Confederate States had been experiencing lackluster economic growth after the National War. Only Louisiana, Jackson, and Cuba seemed to recover quickly, and most of their recovery was due to the continued growth from immigration from Ibero- America. A new resurgence of Nativism in the rural regions of the South caused most of this wave of immigrants to remain in the coastal cities or the more welcoming cities along the Mississippi River. The Nativist sentiments permeated the Democratic Party and, along with the rising importance of their free trade platform in the Northeast, were the main issues facing the nomination for the 1876 Democratic Convention in New York City.

At the Convention in July of 1876, the Democrats once again nominated Samuel Tilden for their presidential candidate. Tilden's economic positions coincided with the party positions and with many of the wealthy industrialists in the Northeast. The Democrats also nominated Francis Blair, a senator from Missouri, as their Vice Presidential candidate. While Blair had been a member of the Republican Party prior to the National War, he had switched to the Democratic Party after the war. Blair had felt that the Republicans were taking their positions too far with furthering immigration and had opposed Fremont's support of the Lincoln Court's ruling on Fox v. Bennett[1]. The Democratic Party hoped the nomination of Blair would gain them votes in the more conservative Southern states and balance the industrial candidacy of Tilden with a rural Vice Presidential candidate.

The results of the 1876 election were a victory for Lee and the Republicans, however both the results in the presidential election and the Congressional elections showed that the Republican dominance of American politics was slipping. Lee's electoral margin over Tilden was much smaller than in 1872, with almost all of the former Confederate states voting Democratic. In the Congressional elections, the Democrats gained a number of seats. Hiram Bingham II, a Congregationalist minister[2], defeated two term Republican senator Henry B. Anthony of Rhode Island to gain a place in the Senate. In the South, the Lamar family continued to grow in influence. Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar won election to the House of Representatives while his first cousin Bonaparte Lamar[3] was elected as governor of Houston. The Democratic Lamar family continued to have influence in Southern politics throughout the remainder of the century and into the 1900s.

Lee/Burnside: 182 EV Tilden/Blair: 147 EV

[1] The court case on former slaves being citizens of the United States. [2] OTL Hiram Bingham II was a missionary in the Kingdom of Hawaii. [3] TTL son of Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar. Part Sixty-Eight: Capitalism Rising

The Fourteenth Amendment: When President Lee was reelected to a second term in 1876, several Congressmen voiced their concern about Lee's age. The issue of Lee's age was compounded by the fact that the issue of presidential succession and whether the Vice President took on the role of President or Acting President had still not been settled. With President Lee being inaugurated in 1877 months after his 70th birthday, the issue was brought up in Congress and Lee made it a priority.

The issue was brought before Congress and it was decided that a Constitutional Amendment would be required to ensure the viability of the law. Senator Charles H. Voorhis of New Jersey was one of the primary advocates for the amendment that ended up passing. The Fourteenth Amendment, which states that the Vice President succeeds the President in both official title and duties in case the President is incapacitated, was proposed in May of 1877 after both houses of Congress passed the amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified by the states over the next months and entered the Constitution in August of 1877.

The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment came at a very fortuitous moment. In November of 1877, President Lee suffered a stroke. Twenty-five days after Lee had the stroke, he died in the Walt Whitman National Hospital in Washington, DC, and Ambrose Burnside took the office of President of the United States on November 23, 1877.

Consolidating America: Much of Ambrose Burnside's presidency was a great period of economic progress for the United States. The recovery from the periodic recessions of the previous decade would be driven by a number of wealthy financiers and consolidation of several smaller companies into single national conglomerates. In addition, the popularization of the European inventions of the telephone and typewriter in the United States would revolutionize the ways companies would practice business.

The major corporations that formed during the 1870s and 1880s were dominated by just a few financiers, who became known as the "Big Four". These men were Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Pierpont Morgan, Leland Stanford, and Anthony Joseph Drexel[1]. Vanderbilt made his fortune in the steamship industry on the Mississippi River prior to the National War, but afterward moved into the railroads. Vanderbilt was most notably the chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad from 1867 until his death in 1879. Vanderbilt presided over the ceremonies of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1874 at Astoria and shook hands with President Lee at the event.

John Pierpont Morgan, meanwhile, conquered the banking and financial industry. Morgan's investment bank financed the creation of many of the country's largest corporations during the late 19th century, including Drexel's steel empire. Drexel began the Allegheny Steel Company in 1883 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh had developed into a major steel production city during the National War, and it only grew afterward. However, Drexel also helped to develop other cities along Lake Erie such as Cleveland and Sandusky in Ohio and Miami and Detroit in Michigan as the Allegheny Steel Company built mills in those cities. Drexel had also bought up several mines in northeastern Marquette after iron ore was discovered in the region in order to control the supply for the steel as well as the production.

Leland Stanford, like Cornelius Vanderbilt, was greatly involved in the railroad industry after the National War. Stanford managed a number of different railroads in the United States after the National War, but grew to national prominence after his successful rebuilding of the South Carolina Railroad from the ruins the former Confederacy had fallen into after the war. By the time Stanford moved on to chair the Missouri and South Platte Railroad in 1878, the South Carolina Railroad had even extended its coverage to the now bustling cities of Gadsden[2] on Tampa Bay and Birmingham in central Alabama.

The Barons of the South: In the 1870s and 1880s, most areas of the former Confederacy remained rooted to their agricultural ways and continued to lag behind the North economically. However, some areas managed to attract industrial and manufacturing businesses, primarily along the Mississippi River and the coal mining region in central Alabama. The buildup of these regions were often led by Northern industrialists such as Leland Stanford seeking profitable ventures in the dilapidated South.

However, there were some Southerners who rose to the ranks of the Northeastern magnates and helped redevelop parts of the former Confederate States during the latter half of the 19th century. Coal mining near Birmingham and Montgomery in Alabama spurred the growth of that state, but overall it still lagged behind the North. Samuel Clemens, a Missourian who took over operation of the Vanderbilt Steamship Company after Vanderbilt moved to the railroad industry, did much to revitalize the cities along the lower course of the Mississippi River. However, much of Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansaw, and Chickasaw that was further away from the river stayed agricultural and economically undeveloped.

In Cuba, the Villamar family[3] soared in political and economic influence and made Cuba the jewel of the Caribbean. In particular, Rodrigo de Villamar employed thousands of Cubans in cigar factories and modified the cigar production process to a series of precise movements that any worker could do. Through this method, the cigar factories under Rodrigo de Villamar employed many of the unskilled laborers in Cuba and greatly increased the efficiency of the entire production method[4].

[1] All four were big industrialists in OTL, but you'll note the lack of some other well- known names. [2] OTL Tampa, Florida. [3] A major aristocratic family in Cuba in the 18th and 19th century, and the ancestors of one of my friends. [4] While the meat packing industry is cited as the precursor to assembly line production, cigar factories also had similar aspects.

Part Sixty-Nine: Rolling Back the Rights

The Battle for Capitol Hill: While Lee was a fairly effective leader and handled the machinations of Congress well to get his legislative goals passed, Burnside was far less effective at dealing with Congress. Part of the difficulty that President Burnside had with Congress came from his antagonization of Speaker of the House James G. Blaine. Blaine wanted to repeal some of the more radical policies regarding the South and civil rights that had been passed by the Fremont and Lee administrations. Blaine was also a supporter of some of the proposals that the growing Nativist contingent in Congress made. This political antagonism developed into a personal dislike between the two men, which greatly hindered Burnside's influence in the House of Representatives.

President Burnside also had difficulties ensuring that the laws that the administration passed continued to be enforced. The best example of this was the struggle to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1877. Passed by Congress during Lee's term and signed by Burnside as one of his first acts as President, the Civil Rights Act of 1877 set out to enforce the implication of the Fox v. Bennett decision and uphold the rights of people who were American citizens by birth. However, Burnside also did not take much confidence in himself to his presidency, continuously doubting in private whether he was fir for the job. Because of this, he kept many of Lee's Cabinet appointments who were ineffective at their positions, such as Attorney General Edwards Pierpont. Pierpont and others failed to adequately enforce the federal legislation and it became the duty of the states to uphold the 1877 Civil Rights Act.

Lax Americana: Burnside was also ineffective at ensuring that the United States government's policies were upheld by the states. Under Burnside's administration, some Southern states found ways to go around the civil rights acts that had been proposed during the Fremont and Lee administrations. Burnside did not make maintaining these policies a priority during his time in office and the policies gradually fell by the wayside. In Georgia and Mississippi, laws were passed mandating literacy tests for a person to be able to vote. These laws impeded many free blacks as well as poor, rural whites from voting.

Burnside attempted to pass laws through Congress and through executive orders which would ban the practices of literacy tests, poll taxes, and other methods of disenfranchising poor Southern voters. But under Burnside's administration, the policies were not enforced in the Southern states and the orders would be reversed in the next decade. As the Democratic Party returned to political office in many Southern states after the initial Republican gains right after the National War, the more lax approach of these politicians to enforcing the civil rights acts passed in Washington led to a gradual disenfranchisement of thousands in those states.

Part Sixty-Nine: Our Nieghbors Up North

A Company Project: The latter half of the 19th century also was an important time for the area north of the United States, then united under the British crown as British North America. The period saw a great amount of development of the regional economy and a large influx of immigrants, just as in the United States, led to the settlement of the interior plains of British North America. A large part of the development of the western reaches of British North America came with the extensions of the railway from Hudson Bay and the eastern dominions out to the Pacific Ocean.

The Hudson Pacific Railway is for the most part the successor to other routes that had been used by trappers and settlers to cross the northern plains since the English and French arrived in North America. After the British defeat in the Oregon War, the Hudson Bay Company and Great Britain saw that maintaining a solid transportation link between Canada and the western coast of North America as well as the development of a naval base on the Pacific coast was a necessary goal to maintain British control of the northern Pacific. For this purpose, the only settlement suitable was Fort Simpson on the border with Russia.

There was also debate between the Hudson Bay Company and Great Britain over where the railroad itself was to connect at the eastern end. The HBC initially proposed that the railroad should follow the route of the York Factory Express and connect to the Hudson Bay port of York Factory, the colonial headquarters of the Hudson Bay Company[1]. The British government wanted to keep the railroad along the southern edge of British North America and connect the railroad with already existing rail in Canada. As Parliament had been granting more powers within the administration of British North America to the Hudson Bay Company, the HBC's plan was decided upon in 1875 under the auspices of HBC governor Stafford Henry Northcote. The railroad was completed in 1882, with extensions to the east being constructed in 1885.

The Mormon Revolution: With the growing powers of the Hudson Bay Company in western British North America, the policies in Prince Rupert's Land started to become rather harsh on the Mormons who had migrated there. The power of enforcement of the laws in Rupert's Land had been given to the Hudson Bay Company since 1821, but starting in the 1860s, the British government gradually granted legislative powers to the HBC as well[2]. As more immigrants came into the eastern plains and the western gold mining towns, HBC governor William Garnett decided it was necessary to enforce stricter, more conservative policies. These policies did not sit well with the Mormon community in Winnipeg and the surrounding area.

While the Mormon opposition to the HBC's conservative laws grew, the Hudson Bay Company continued to pass legislation in an attempt to curb some of the American immigration to British North America and increase the control that the HBC had over the territory, both economically and politically. In 1865, the Colonial Transit Act imposed a regulation that all goods being exported from Rupert's Land and New Caledonia had to pass through Hudson Bay Company office cities. The only HBC offices at the time were in York Factory on Hudson Bay and Fort Simpson on the Pacific Ocean. As most of the international exports from the Mormon populated areas was to the United States, the law was very inefficient for the economy of the Mormon towns, and an appeal to the colonial office in York Factory for the creation of an HBC office in Winnipeg was denied[3]. Regulations such as these continued to be passed, and the region exploded into open rebellion in 1880.

The Mormon Revolution was led by Lewis Farnsworth, a local leader from the Mormon community in Whitmer. As the region was sparsely populated and was surrounded by several large lakes, the rebellion was easily defensible against attacks by HBC or British soldiers. The successful defense of the small isthmus in the Battle of Cedar Lake by the Hudson Bay Company defined the northern extent of the Mormon raids during the rebellion. However, the rebellion also cut off much of the communication between the Hudson Bay Company and Winnipeg, and the rebellion is remembered as a period of lawlessness in the city. After 17 months of open rebellion against the Hudson Bay Company, the new governor of the HBC Lord Dufferin[4] called Farnsworth to a meeting in London. Farnsworth made his case to Lord Dufferin who took the issue in front of Parliament. In 1886, the British government agreed to establish the Dominion of Deseret in the lands in southeastern Rupert's Land with large Mormon populations, including Winnipeg. Whitmer, as the original Mormon settlement in the area, was made the capital of the new Dominion, and soon a railroad connected it with Winnipeg in the south.

The Yukon Purchase: With the Hudson Bay Company gaining more control over the lands in northwestern North America, the economic productivity of the territory began to decline with the decline of the fur trade. As more people in the region concentrated in the towns and began settling the Great Northern Prairie, the main driver of the economy and the Hudson Bay Copmany's profits from the region switched from fur trapping to grain exports and mining the northern Rockies. At the time, however, the far northwestern region of the Hudson Bay Company's jurisdiction was not very accessible to settlers coming from the east and was mostly settled by Russian fur trappers from Alyeska and Sitka.

As such, when the British government granted the Hudson Bay Company the authority to enter into treaties with foreign powers regarding their jurisdiction in 1890, governor Andrew Carnegie[5] went into negotiations with Alyeska governor Alexander Sibiryakov to formalize the border between Russian and British territory in North America. Over the next months, the border was hammered out and ended with the Treaty of Saint Petersburg, signed by Queen Victoria, Tsar Nicholas II, Carnegie, and Sibiyakov in 1895. Sibiryakov's priority was to make sure as much of the Yukon River watershed fell into Russian territory, and he almost succeeded at gaining all the land that drained into the Yukon.

The Treaty of Saint Petersburg set out the border as following the Portland Channel and Coast Mountains up to the northernmost point where it crosses the 130th meridian west, then along the 130th meridian to the continental divide, and following the continental divide to the Arctic Ocean. The far northern portion of the border remained undefined as the divide does not reach the Arctic Ocean, but the Mackenzie River and its tributaries were identified as being within British North America. In return for the territorial concessions made by Great Britain and the Hudson Bay Company, Russia paid the British Crown five million pounds and conceding Russian claims to any land south of the Hari River valley in Afghanistan.

[1] York Factory is the main port for goods and people going to and from Hudson Bay. [2] Found the 1821 info on Wiki in the Rupert's Land article, but not sure exactly what act it was or to what extent their initial powers were. [3] The Winnipeg office was abandoned after the Oregon War. [4] In OTL a governor-general of Canada and Viceroy of India. [5] The first Canadian to be governor of the Hudson Bay Company.

Part Seventy: Ibero-American Nationalism[1]

Fractious Nationalism in Mexico: The ideas of nationalism and the nation-state that arose in the 19th century have greatly affected the world in which we live in over the past two centuries. The rise of this abstract concept that an ethnic group deserves its own sovereign self-governing entity has inspired numerous wars and revolutions on all of the continents. There are various cultural differences in the effect that nationalism has had in different places in the world, however. In the United States, the idea of the American nation has meant embracing the multicultural society that assisted its rise and adapting itself with each wave of immigration. In the Austrian Empire, on the other hand, nationalism manifested itself as a force that tore the country apart and brought down the Habsburg dynasty. In Ibero-America, the ideals of nationalism have been used as both a unifying and a destructive factor for the collective states of the region.

The early spread of the nationalistic ideal in Ibero-America came during the Napoleonic Wars. With the occupation of much of the Iberian Peninsula by the French, revolutionary minded leaders in the Spanish colonies began the war to liberate their countries and gain independence. Over the next decade, these wars were successful and the provinces of the Spanish Empire broke free from their mother country. However, with no central authority over these vast regions, the countries soon declined into squabbling, both amongst each other and internally. Soon after, the larger countries began to break apart.

The best and most extreme example of this fractious nationalism in 1800s Ibero- America is the case of Mexico during the first half of the century. Soon after it gained its independence, Mexico was beset by conflict between the centralists who wanted a strong government in Mexico City and the federalists who wanted power to be spread through the provinces. The rash measures imposed by Santa Anna weakened the integrity of the national government and sparked numerous rebellions by federalist provinces in 1835. The Mexican-American War only fueled the rebellious sentiment of the federalists as the central government proved it could not govern its far-flung regions. As California, Texas, the Rio Bravo Republic, and Yucatan broke away, Mexico City continued to face problems among its remaining provinces. By the middle of the 1850s, the federalists in most of the provinces had gained control of the local offices, but the national government in Mexico City refused to submit to a federalist election.

By 1858, many Mexican politicians were calling for the dissolution of the United Mexican States, and when the major cities in Sonora ousted the Mexican officials, the country quickly collapsed as other states broke ties with Mexico City. The Mexican collapse is an interesting case of nationalism, because there is seemingly no inherent reason for each country to go its own separate way beyond the division after the Mexican-American War. However, the federalist officials had been promoting the uniqueness of the individual states for some time prior to the Final Collapse in 1858. For example, the state of Jalisco used the blue agave plant and the famed refinement of the agave into tequila to help forge the new country’s national identity, even putting the agave plant on the nation’s flag. Often, the newly independent states would appropriate pre-colonial tribes as a unifying factor among the people in order to craft the identity of the country. In this way, the collapse of the United Mexican States becomes clearer when the factors of emerging national identities and their use by political leaders are taken into account.

The Formation of Mokoguay: While fractious nationalistic ideals dominated Ibero-America during the beginning of the 19th century, the latter half saw these desires for smaller independent countries wane as the economic reality of the times made larger, more cohesive states more viable than smaller, more fractured states. This economic cooperation led to closer ties between the Meso-American countries, as well as contributing to the establishment of the Parana River basin as an international waterway in 1865. Further unionist feelings among the people of these regions allowed centralist regimes in Brazil and Argentina to take control of the national governments of those two countries, and also led to the creation of new political unions and new states in Ibero-America. The first country established by the unionistic nationalism of latter 19th century Ibero- America was the state of Mokoguay. As the economic ties between the Paraguay, the Republic of the Rio Grande, and Uruguay progressed, their policies became more and more tied. Seeing the opportunity, Paraguayan president Francisco Solano Lopez used the small stature of the three countries to engineer a union between them in 1873 to protect against aggression from Brazil and Argentina. Argentina had previously had designs on reintegrating Uruguay, and Rio Grande had broken off from Brazil only fifty years before, so the leaders of both countries agreed. While the countries were about equal in size and population, Paraguay was the dominant country of the three in industry and continued to dominate the union throughout the century. The name of the new country, Mokoguay, comes from the Guarani term for “two rivers”, representing the Parana and Uruguay Rivers as the central systems of the country.

In 1882, the new conservative government under Ignacio Martin de Aguirre enacted protectionist laws for trading along the Parana and Uruguay Rivers, violating the original 1865 agreement between Argentina, Paraguay, Rio Grande, and Uruguay, and now between Argentina and Mokoguay. Lopez protested the closing demanding that the rivers be reopened or that the countries be compensated, but Aguirre denied the requests. Lopez sought the assistance of Bolivia, which agreed as the Aguirre regime was also attempting to coerce the gauchos in the northwest of Argentina into moving money to Buenos Aires instead of the natural route toward Bolivia.

Brazil did not intervene in the Platinean War due to internal struggles between republicans and forces loyal to Emperor Pedro II. While Argentina had the upper hand initially, the use of ironclads purchased from the United States by Mokoguay helped Bolivia and Mokoguay gain control of the Parana River. Meanwhile, sporadic fighting in the high plains of western Argentina occurred while the Bolivian government supported insurrection by gauchos and federalist Argentines disloyal to the Aguirre government. Overall, the war lasted 4 years and over 300,000 soldiers died in the war, but in 1886, Argentina conceded defeat. Mokoguay gained the territory east of the Parana River while the river itself was confirmed by Aguirre as an international waterway. The rebellious federalists and gauchos in the southern Chaco also held the Second Congress of Túcuman in 1887, which established the new Federal Republic of Túcuman and was supported by Bolivia. This state soon became dependent on Bolivia for support as well as a source of contention between Bolivia and Argentina.

[1] Presented as excerpts taken from the English translation of "Unionistic and Fractious Nationalism in Ibero-America" by Enrique Sandoval, Universidad de Montevideo Editorial, 1987.

Part Seventy-One: Tipping the Scales

A Million Little Parties: As the Republican and Democratic parties settled into their respective positions in the Third Party System, regional parties and smaller national parties began gaining popularity. Tensions between the two parties and the dominance of the Republicans in the North and the Democrats in the South led to a level of dissatisfaction in the politics of both major parties. The first appearance of minor parties in Congress since the National War occurred after the midterm elections of 1878. The Redback Party, which promoted moving the dollar off of any metallic standard, was at first the most successful minor party, gaining 8 seats in the House of Representatives in 1878. The rise of minor parties in the elections of 1878 gave control of the House of Representatives to the Democratic Party as many of the minor parties were in the North.

The Redback Party gained much of its support in the Old Northwest. It's main leaders were James B. Weaver of Iowa and Edward Gilette of Indiana. The Redback Party gained a number of representatives in the following decade and reached its height in the early 1890s, when the party had 18 members of the House of Representatives and 2 senators. The Redback Party ran counter to the bimetallic platform of the Republican Party and the gold standard platform of the Democratic Party. The Redback Party achieved its voting base largely from rural agricultural voters, but lost its appeal once other minor parties began coopting moving off of a metal-backed currency on their platforms.

While the Redback Party was the most prominent party of the era, there were several other notable minor parties. The Temperance Party was the main political front of the growing moderation movement to ban alcohol and was popular mostly among religious revivalists. The Prohibition Party became the first party after the National War to nominate a candidate for executive office from a former Confederate state in 1892. This era also saw the beginning of the rise of far leftist parties in the United States. The American Socialist Party, the Union Labor Party, and the American Workers' Party were all formed during the 1880s. The leftist movement would continue to grow in urban areas in the early 20th century.

The Election of 1880: After the Democratic Party gained control of the House of Representatives in 1878, they blocked most efforts by Burnside or the Republican members in the Senate to enact any other important legislation. With the Republican Party's lawmaking ability curtailed, the election of 1880 proved to be a difficult one for them. Accopmanying these issues were the growing feud between President Burnside and Congressman Blaine over the reasons for the Republicans' losing ground.

The feud came to a head in the Republican National Convention when the nominations for the Vice Presidential candidate were being allocated. Blaine had been winning the ballot as he was a nationally known Republican, but Burnside made a statement that if Blaine were nominated, he would not accept the presidential nomination as he was unwilling to campaign with Blaine. After Burnside's statement at the convention, the ballot slowly shifted toward Benjamin Harrison of Ohio who was confirmed as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate on the ninth ballot. While the Republicans were miring over the conflict within the party, the Democrats were hitting their stride. The Democratc National Convention nominated former Union general Winfield Scott Hancock for president and Illinois senator John M. Palmer. Palmer was a noted advocate for liberal economic policies while Hancock was revered in the North for his successes in the National War. In an ironic twist, many Southern states still ended up voting for the Democratic Party even though Hancock was their presidential candidate because of poor campaigning by Burnside and the continued stigma of Fremont's policies in the South. Hancock defeat Burnside for the presidency and became the first president elected on the Democratic ticket since before the National War.

Hancock/Palmer: 175 EVs Burnside/Harrison: 154 EVs

Science and Technology #2

Elemental Discoveries: The nineteenth century was a time of great scientific advancement in the fields of chemistry. As such, during this era came the discovery of many new elements and ways to detect and organoize the list of elements. Using new methods to isolate and identify individual elements that had evolved with the Industrial Revolution, scientists in Europe were able to discover many new elements that gave further insight into the similarities between properties of certain elements and led to the first standard classification of all known elements.

The major elemental discoveries that occurred during this period were made largely by a few scientists using the new technique of spectral analysis. The main scientists to use this method were German chemist Robert Bunsen and English chemist William James Herschel[1] while Herschel was a doctoral student of Bunsen's at the University of Göttingen. Together, Herschel and Bunsen pioneered the method of examining the emission lines of compounds to determine their constituent elements, and thus discovered four new elements in the 1860s. They isolated the alkali metals bunsenium and herschelium[2] through their blue spectral lines in 1862. Thallium was discovered by Bunsen and Herschel in 1865. After the European Wars broke out in 1866, Herschel left Göttingen to continue his education in Great Britain. In 1867, Bunsen identified a fourth element which exhibited a dark blue spectral line. The element was named borussium[3] because of this dark blue color and the recent conquest of the city of Gottingen by Prussia.

Along with all the new elements being discovered, some scientists began noticing similar properties between certain groups of elements. Scientists such as Swedish chemist August Kekule started to try to come up with ways to categorize the known elements in a standard table that would easily display the similar elements and would provide an easy way to classify all the elements that had been discovered. Kekule published his version of what is now the periodic table of elements in 1870. It was organized by ordering the elements by their relative masses and putting elements with similar properties in the same column. With this method of organization, the discovered elements formed seven roughly neat columns and formed the basis for the table we use today.

The Viennese Scientific Exodus: For much of the 19th century, the city of Vienna and the University of Vienna had been the pinnacle of scientific thought in the Austrian Empire and one of the major locations of scientific discovery and advancement in Europe at the time. However, the fall of the Habsburg dynasty after the European Wars and the rise of the Viennese Workers' State led to several important scientists leaving Austria to other countries in Europe.

Most of the brilliant minds who left Vienna in the 1870s went to Germany where they continued their work at the larger universities in Berlin, Göttingen, Munich, and Heidelberg. Geologist Ferdinand Zirkel went to the University of Berlin where he later would travel on topographical surveys of the African Great Lakes and ascend Mount Kilimandscharo. Botanist Rudolf Schrödinger[4] and physicist Johann Mendel continued their work at the University of Munich.

The Communication Revolution: The most influential technological advancements in the 1870s and 1880s, however, were in the field of communication. The growth in use of the telephone in Italy and France during the 1860s inspired Nikola Tesla to work on communications technology. Tesla left for Rome in 1871 after only a year at the University of Vienna, and stayed in Italy for fifteen years before leaving for the United States. From 1888 to 1899, Tesla pioneered innovations in telephone communication and led Union Telegraph and Telephone, the United States' oldest telephone company. Tesla's chairing of UT&T helped to expand the lines owned by the company throughout the entire country from its original network in the Northeast of the country. By 1900, UT&T had become a communications giant within the United States.

Along with the telephone, the invention and innovations made related to the typewriter also led to the revolution in communication in the early 20th century. Much as the telephone allowed individuals to speak to each other over long distances, the typewriter allowed much easier and faster writing up and printing of documents. The typewriter standardized many of the grammatical conventions in the American language today, and gradually led to the informal adoption of American for most government and business transactions in the United States. Additionally, the typewriter allowed women to enter the workforce en masse for the first time as many women began their careers as typists transcribing dictated messages.

Around the turn of the century, several inventors combined the ideas behind the telephone and the typewriter to create machines that could receive messages from afar and immediately transcribe the message onto a sheet of paper. These became known as teletype machines, and were originally used primarily by news networks and stock exchanges to maintain updates of real time information from around the world. In the Great War, the militaries of the world adapted the teletype machine for general communication to relay tactical and strategic information from the front lines. After the Great War, companies took advantage of the communications infrastructure created during this time and began serving individual teletype machines that allowed two individuals to send typed messages instantly from one location to another.

[1] Grandson of William Herschel, discoverer of Uranus. In OTL William James Herschel did some pioneering work with fingerprinting. [2] Bunsenium = caesium, herschelium = rubidium [3] Borussium = indium [4] Rudolf is the father of Erwin Schrödinger

Part Seventy-Two: In Darkest Africa

The West African Dilemma: The 1870s and 1880s brought a large period of colonial expansion by all the powerful nations in Europe as technological advances allowed serious expeditions into the deep heart of the African continent. Medical advances against tropical diseases such as malaria made it possible for larger settlements by European countries while larger steamships and refrigeration allowed easier transportation of goods to and from the African outposts and made it possible for Europeans to advance further into the interior of the continent. As West Africa was the closest region of Africa south of the Sahara. it was the first to experience the new-found expansion by the colonial powers.

France, being the most powerful country on the Mediterranean Sea and already possessing several outposts in West Africa, benefited the most from the new round of imperialism. Starting in the 1860s, exploratory missions were sent from Algeria, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast. In the 1870s, France had affirmed its control over the African coast between Liberia and the British Gold Coast, and began expanding inland where they soon ran up against the Toucouleur Empire. In the next decades, the French colonial forces in Dakar and Grand Bassam waged a costly war against the Toucouleur, but finally captured the capital of Segou and established full colonial rule over the upper Niger River region in 1894.

Meanwhile, the port cities on the Gold Coast that belonged to the British and the Danes [1] were developed by those countries. Sekondi and Cape Coast served as valuable harbors for British ships traveling the long route to Cape Colony and India. The British Gold Coast expanded inward in the late 19th century as well after several wars with the Ashanti. After the European Wars, the Danes grew closer to the French and expanded the Danish Gold Coast eastward along the coast toward the French colony in Lagos. The renewed colonization efforts in the region also brought tensions between the colonizing empires. As the British colony in Camaroon expanded north, it came into contact with French colonies on the lower Niger River. During the Congo Conference, France cede to Britain control of the land east of the Benue River, but the remainder of the Benue watershed as well as the Niger Delta still remained disputed between the two empires.

The Congo Conference: While the colonial empires of Europe were expanding into the interior of West Africa, they were also commissioning explorations of the Congo River basin. As countries set up trading posts and made trade agreements with the native tribes along the river, contentions rose as to the official ownership of the region. By 1890, many of the great powers of Europe had established trading posts along the Congo River, and as the various colonies on the coast expanded inland, the jurisdiction of the colonial holdings prompted a minor crisis when some European countries claimed land overlapping with other powers' river ports. To solve the crisis, French Foreign Minister Napoleon Eugene Bonaparte[2] called for a general conference among the powers to solve the African colonial issues and especially focusing on the Congo. The Congo Conference was held in Paris in 1893.

The main focus of the Congo Conference was of course the territorial status of the Congo River Basin and of the river itself. Early on, the representatives of the several powers attending - France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the United States [3] - agreed that the Congo River would remain an international waterway and that countries would be allowed to navigate the river at will. Despite this, many countries with colonies in the area still demanded land that bordered the river in order to facilitate their trade along the river and extraction of the rubber and other resources that were present in the Congo Basin. France gained the upper hand in the conference and obtained the majority of the land around the river. Germany, which had mostly established colonies in east Africa, claimed land north of the Ulindi River and south of the latitude of Lake Albert, giving Germany the port of Neuwilhelmshafen[4] on the Congo. Great Britain came away from the conference with connections from both Cameroon and from the south, but the southern territory proved to be blocked from the remainder of the river downstream by a series of rapids.

While the area of the river upstream from Lake Bonaparte[5] was navigable, the mouth of the Congo was blocked from this portion of the river by a long series of rapids. However, this region could still serve as a valuable port for the surrounding area. After much deliberation, the members of the Conference decided to give control of the area to lesser important countries with holdings in the area to ensure the neutrality of the Congo mouth. The Belgian colony centered on the city of Cabinda slightly north of the Congo Mouth was expanded, while the north bank of the mouth was turned over to administration by the United States. Under American administration, the city of Banana directly on the mouth surpassed the more inland city of Boma as the area's main harbor city after a railroad was constructed from Boma to Banana. The south bank of the Congo estuary was affirmed as Portuguese territory and continued to be administered from Luanda. [1] The Danish Gold Coast is centered on the old Danish coastal forts, which in OTL were given to the Brits in the 1860s. These included Fort Cristianborg in what is now Accra and went east to about where the Ghana-Togo border is. [2] Louis-Napoleon's son. [3] Some American adventurers had established trading posts on the Congo, which is why they were invited. [4] OTL Kisingani, DRC. [5] OTL Pool Malebo, where Kinshasa and Brazzaville are.

Part Seventy-Three: The Kaiser's Place in the Sun

Madagaskar Run: Another point of contention between the colonial powers in the late nineteenth century was the ownership of the large island of Madagaskar off the coast of eastern Africa. The French had established Fort Dauphine as a presence on the southern tip of the island, but starting in the 19th century other European powers gained interest in Madagaskar. The monarchs of the island courted the powers and Great Britain, Germany, and Portugal all had settlements on the island by 1880. As Queen Ranavalona III and Prime Minister Rainilaiarivony[1] of Madagaskar continued to court the European powers and westernize the country, the competing claims of Europe kept them from establishing lasting sovereignty over the island.

Unfortunately for the natives, the Europeans were mostly kept at bay by Rainilaiarivony's success at playing the European countries off each other. With the death of the Prime Minister in 1884, European influence over the island steadily grew as the competing colonial powers began to resolve their differing claims. In 1887, Portugal rescinded its claim. The British were the next to give up their claim during the Congo Conference in exchange for support of British expansion into southern Africa. Two years later, German armies acted and moved from the German settlement of Rostenbucht[2] on the northwestern coast of Madagaskar and deposed Queen Ranavalona and established German control over the island. The native monarchy was soon replaced by German colonial administration under Hans Kowalski.

The sudden expansion of Germany into Madagaskar caused a dramatic reaction in France. Since the French had a presence on the island from the founding of Fort Dauphine in the 1600s, it had been assumed in many circles that Madagaskar would end up in the French colonial sphere. While several members of the French government initially raised an uproar over the German move, President Andre Clermont did not take any action to dispute the German invasion. Clermont's indecision regarding French colonial ambitions in Madagascar was a large contributor to the end of the long Bonapartist reign in the election of 1898 and the rise in Boulangism in France during the early 19th century.

United Ostafrika: Along with Madagaskar, Germany also looked north from its already established African colonies. The colonization of the region around Mogadischu and the need for easier contact with Oman led Germany to expand further into the Horn of Africa. The coastal cities of Puntland were conquered in the 1870s as Germany desired new coaling ports between Zanzibar and Muscat. In the ensuing decade, a German expedition to the Gulf of Aden brought German control to the cities of Berbera, Dschibutie, and Härar. The conquest of these cities which had held out against Ahmara and French influence from the Ethiopian Highlands meant an end to independence for much of the region and that German colonial interests in eastern Africa began pushing up against French interests.

While this created some contention between the two nations, they soon settled on a boundary between their East African colonies in the Treaty of Freiburg in 1891. France granted some concessions to Germany to give the latter access to the Congo River in the Congo Conference, which extended the German territories in East Africa. After these disputes were settled, the German government began consolidating its administration of the colonies. The Mogadischu governorate was made a subregion and placed under the administration of the governorate of Zanzibar in 1899. Four years later, the entire area of German colonization, including Madagaskar and Oman, were consolidated under the newly created Deutsche Ostafrika. Hans Kowalski, now well known in Germany for his explorations and efficient management of Rufiji and Madagaskar, was appointed the first Hauptgoverneur[3] of Ostafrika.

The development of German Ostafrika had already begun during the 1880s and 1890s as Germany used the agricultural land in Ostafrika for coffee and rubber plantations. To expedite the movement of the rubber and coffee to the main port cities in Ostafrika, railroads were built connecting the highlands of Tanganjika and Kerinja[4] to Mombasa, Pangani, and . The railroad was extended to Mogadischu, Neuwilhemshafen, and Rufijimund by 1900. After the creation of a unified Ostafrika administration, the core of Germany's African possessions further grew economically with the discovery of gold near Bismarcksee[5]. The discovery of gold and the creation of Germany's colonial governorates made Ostafrika the largest and most prosperous of the European colonies in Africa at the time.

[1] The OTL Prime Minister of Madagascar during the late 19th century leading up to France's invasion. [2] On the left bank of the Bombetoka Estuary, across from OTL Mahajanga. [3] Hauptgoverneur means "all-governor" or head governor. [4] Kerinja = Kenya [5] OTL Northwestern Tanzania, where the Sekenke and Kirondatal gold mines are.

Part Seventy-Four: Iberian Shifts

The Alfonsine Reforms in Spain: Spain's defeat in the Second Napoleonic War was an even larger defeat in prestige for the regime of Queen Isabella II. Spain had suffered many losses in the war for nothing and had been forced to cede Minorca, considered an integral part of the country as one of the Belaeric Islands, to France. Additionally, the balanced system in the Cortes Generales between the Partido Moderado and the Partido Progresivo that had endured for all of Isabella's reign had begun to break down. The Carlists had been experiencing a resurgence in the north as part of a resistance against French occupation while in other regions of the country, the monarchy and both old parties had lost much of their legitimacy after the Second Napoleonic War.

Dissatisfaction with the political status quo in Spain grew quickly and by 1871 many Carlists were openly calling for the abdication of Isabella. Along with the Carlists, many liberal politicians started calling for her abdication and in 1872 Leopoldo O'Donnell[1] of the Union Liberal was elected as Prime Minister. O'Donnell was an advocate for the Queen's abdication and brought much of the Cortes against the Queen. With this much weight behind the call, Queen Isabella relented and abdicated in favor of her son Alfonso, who was crowned Alfonso XII in July of 1872[2].

Upon Alfonso's coronation, he began collaborating with Prime Minister O'Donnell in embarking on liberal reforms. Alfonso granted further governing functions to the Cortes Generales and moved the role of the king further toward that of a figurehead. During the 1870s and 1880s, Alfonso also used the royal treasury to fund the construction of factories to improve the Spanish economy after the European Wars. These factories were accompanied by a nationalized royal railroad system spanning all of Spain. Alfonso also brought Spain back into the colonial game, expanding Spanish interests in Morocco, Camaroon[3], and consolidating Spanish control over the Philippines.

Morelian Collectivism: In Ibero-America, the struggle between the conservatives and liberals in many countries continued through much of the 19th century. However, in the latter half of the century a new ideology arose and was thrown into the mix. Based around the socialist ideals gaining popularity in Europe, the movement that would become Morelian collectivism started in the Mexican states with Benito Juarez.

Juarez had become the leader of the Mexican state of Oaxaca and crafted his presidency around the beliefs of Mexican Revolution leader Jose Maria Morelos. As the first mestizo leader in Oaxaca, Juarez enacted land reform legislation in Oaxaca that gave the many landless peasants a means to make a living. Juarez also incorporated Christian teachings into the basis for his reforms to appeal to the clergy, using references from the Bible as a justification for advancing socialist ideas. Juarez was a popular president in Oaxaca, but also became a popular leader abroad with his pushes for a united Mesoamerican country.

Beginning in the 1870s, the discovery of Mayan temples by explorers and the need for economic cooperation created a resurgence in a unifying nationalism in Mesoamaerica. With the recreation of Gran Colombia, several of the smaller nations became worried about imperial expansion of Gran Colombia to the north. Juarez, who dreamed of a united Mesoamerican state, brought the Central American countries together in the Conference of Tehuantepec in 1887. Most of the attendees of the conference agreed to the formation of a united federal republic. The Federal Union of Meso-American Republics, was formed in 1888 and consisted of the countries stretching from Oaxaca to Nicaragua. The only refusals to join came from Veracruz and Costa Rica; the more Anglo elite in Veracruz were worried about the Ibero influence on the port, while Costa Rica declined due to Nicaragua's refusal to give up territorial disputes and had already secured protection from the United States and felt the FUMAR would not serve its interests. Since Juarez declined the Mesoamerican presidency due to his age, Porfirio Diaz, also of Oaxaca, was elected to the position.

During the presidencies of Porfirio Diaz and his successor Justo Rufino Barrios[4], Morelian collectivism was spread to the constituent republics beginning with agrarian reforms in the other provinces of the country. Outside the FUMAR, Morelian collectivism became popular in other Ibero-American countries with large mestizo and indigenous populations such as Bolivia. Morelian political movements were formed in most Ibero countries and contributed to the spread of nascent socialism from Europe to the Americas.

[1] Leopoldo O'Donnell was actually a Prime Minister of Spain in OTL. Those Irish- Spaniards sure do get around. :O [2] After Alfonso was crowned, there was a brief Carlist War, but it was too minor to be mentioned. [3] The Rio Muni colony that became Equatorial Guinea. It's expanded a bit. [4] OTL President of Guatemala who had visions of reuniting Central America.

Part Seventy-Five: The American Worker Census of 1880: During the 1870s, the United States continued its recovery from the National War and experienced a period of growth in the country's population and industry unseen in previous decades. This time of expansion is greatly reflected in the 1880 census. For the first time, the United States reached a population of over 60 million. This was a result of the large amount of immigration to the United States from Europe after the wars on the continent in the late 1860s and the chaos afterward. Many American cities saw a large period of growth between 1870 and 1880. In particular, New York became the first city in the United states to surpass one million people.

One of the main reasons for the large population increase in the country in the 1870s was the continuing recovery of the former Confederate States during that decade. Increased manufacturing along the Gulf Coast and along the Mississippi River attracted freed slaves as well as European immigrants. In particular, the cities of Shreveport, Memphis, Mobile, and Gadsden saw a large jump in their populations during the 1870s. Cuba also experienced a large increase going from just over 1 million inhabitants to over 1.5 million people in the decade. The large Irish influx to Havana in the latter 19th century led to the city one of the largest Gaelic communities in North America outside of Laurentine countries[1].

The 1870s also continued the gradual movement of people to the west. The populations of cities along the northern Pacific coast, the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and the Rio Grande continued to rise as people trekked west. However, the 1870s saw more towns in the Great Plains booming as the railroads were laid across the country. Cattle towns such as Chisholm in Houston and Laramie in Pahsapa grew as ranchers were more easily able to deliver the cattle to the burgeoning meat packing districts in Saint Louis, Memphis, and Chicago. The Colorado Silver Boom also created boom towns in the Rockies in Colorado and New Mexico, but many of these were short-lived and became ghost towns after the minerals ran dry.

The Rise of Labor: As large-scale manufacturing began to develop in the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution, skilled laborers in various professions began organizing to push for better conditions in the factories. From this base, the labor movement was born. Early in the 1800s, smaller groups of workers focused on individual professions combined with similar groups in other cities or similar industries to create the first large-scale trade unions in the United States. After attempts at unified labor organizations in 1835 and 1842 failed due to economic troubles, the National Federation of Labor was created in the 1850s combining several northeastern trade unions. The NFL was primarily a loose coalition of craftsman unions, but developed quickly as many people gained employment during the National War. After the war, the NFL continued to become a force as it began politically pushing for labor reforms such as a shorter workday, guaranteed pay, and government enforcement of working conditions. Shortly after the National War, many former slaves and other African-Americans began working in factories in prominent Southern cities, particularly in Louisiana and Houston. In order to protect the rights of these workers, Norris Wright Cuney[2] founded the National Federation of Colored Labor in 1873 as an offshoot of the National Federation of Labor. The NFCL fought for the rights of employment and education for blacks and organized many black groups in factories in Southern cities. While the NFCL received some support at the outset from larger labor groups, the support dwindled soon after. The dominance of Democratic politicnas in the South during this era made bringing black labor issues to the attention of Congress very difficult and the NFCL struggled for much of its early history.

The unions had achieved some success in getting better factory conditions during the intial Republican presidencies in the 1860s and 1870s. However, the rise of the Bourbon Democrats as the dominant wing in the Democratic Party and the victory of Winfield Scott Hancock in 1880 led to a relaxation of these laws. The main sectors affected by Hancock's legislation were western mining companies, which had been imposing harsh working conditions on the miners to extract ore as quickly as possible. In retaliation, miners began organizing and holding strikes in the 1880s. The first major strikes, the 1883 Raton strike and the Carbondale Miners' Strike in 1886[3], were against poor and dangerous working conditions in the mines. These early strikes were put down by the companies and local police forces, but led to greater political activity by laborers and particularly miners around the country.

[1] The Laurentine countries refers to the countries north of the United States, so Canada, Acadia, etc. [2] Cuney was an OTL African-American activist and union leader in the 19th century. [3] In Raton, New Mexico and Carbondale, Illinois.

Part Seventy-Six: Money and Power

The Gold Standard: With the victory of the Democrats in the 1880 election, one of the new Democratic administration's priorities was to bring the United States onto the gold standard as almost all of Europe had done. In 1881, the House of Representatives passed the Cleveland-Gibson Act, which would demonetize silver and phase out silver currency in favor of gold currency and place the United States completely on the gold standard. However, the act faced much opposition from politicians in the western United States and from businesses such as mining and railroad companies with interests in the silver coming from the Rocky Mountains. The opposition was powerful enough in the Senate that the Cleveland-Gibson Act only received 36 votes for and was voted down with 48 votes against.

However, the Democratic Party would not be deterred and sought to restrict the use of silver currency once again two years later in 1883. A recession in 1882 had presented another opportunity to decry the bimetallic standard. Congressman Grover Cleveland, one of the authors of the failed act two years prior, brought another bill to the House of Representatives that was less harsh than the earlier bill but still made restrictions on the use of silver as a currency. The new Coinage Act of 1883 reduced the size of silver coinage and transferred much of the silver coin production to trade dollars. The news silver trade dollars were minted mainly in Ferroplano and Tacoma and were mostly used in trade with California, Mexico, and East Asia. While the Fifth Coinage Act did satisfy some in the gold standard movement, it angered miners in the Rockies and did little to shelter the country from the drastic fall in silver prices as the European Monetary Standard solidified that continent's movement to the gold standard. Immediately after the passage of the act, a slight recession hit the United States that lasted into early 1884 as bankers and monetary speculators reacted to the act.

Election of 1884: The 1884 election was a watershed election for the United States. The Democratic victory in 1880 had upset the long-running Republican dominance of the presidency and forced the Republicans to realign themselves. With the Democrats taking a solid hold of many former Confederate states and gaining popularity with business interests in the Northeast, the 1884 Republican National Convention had a slight air of desperation. James G. Blaine, a divisive figure in the 1880 convention, was quickly dismissed on the ballot as many in the party blamed him for the loss to Winfield Scott Hancock. After five ballots, Vermont senator George Edmunds won the nomination for the Republican presidential candidate. Edmunds was chosen for his reputation in Congress among industrial workers. John Sherman, former Treasury Secretary under President Burnside, won the nomination for the vice presidential candidacy[1].

In most of the country, the general campaign was centered around the debate over the gold standard. In the summer of 1884, Hancock made several speeches in the Northeast regarding the benefits of the gold standard and how the United States was one of the few countries to not adopt the practice. The Democrats blamed the 1883 recession on the bimetallic system as well as the economic uncertainty created by the attempts to block the legislation in Congress. However, Edmunds and the Republicans retorted that the recession was the result of anticipation of a move toward the gold standard and the potential reduction in the supply of currency. Edmunds also blamed the low tariffs were hurting the production of American goods. Edmunds especially mentioned the declining price of agricultural products in a speech in Decatur, Demoine to help gain the farmers' votes. The Republicans' targetting of Hancock's administration worked and the Republicans won decisively. Much of the South remained Democratic, however, and Hancock only lost Maryland and his home state of Pennsylvania by less than a percentage point. Had Hancock won those two states, the electoral vote would have been a tie and the election would have gone to the House.

[1] George Edmunds and John Sherman were in OTL the main authors of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Part Seventy-Seven: Crossing Rivers New Mexico and the Trans-Pecos: Since the Colorado gold rush, the population of New Mexico territory increased by the tens of thousands every decade. While there was an initial movement to create a state out of the territory in the early 1860s, the National War put a hold on any plans New Mexico had for statehood. After Colorado was admitted as a state in 1876, the movement for statehood for New Mexico was rekindled. However, the process stalled as Congress continually failed to act on any legislation regarding statehood for New Mexico.

As the debate over the gold standard came to a head, New Mexico grew more prominent in politics. Some Republican politicians began pushing for the admission of the territory as a state to give more support to the Republican bimetallist platform, but the Democratic victory in the 1880 elections pushed the admission of New Mexico back even further. During that time, the territorial legislature started wondering whether it was worth it to keep the southern area of the territory south of El Paso. The Trans-Pecos as the region was called was for the most part uninhabited with only a few small towns marking the land route between San Antonio and El Paso[1]. The New Mexico territorial legislature and members of Congress were unsure of what to do with the Trans-Pecos region when the possibility of statehood came up in 1885. The decision was finally made to have the Trans-Pecos revert to unorganized territory[2] while the remainder of New Mexico was granted statehood in February of 1886, bringing the forty-third state into the Union.

High Above the River: While there had been many developments in ground transportation up to the 1880s, bridging some of the wider rivers still proved a great difficulty to engineers. In many cities along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, for instance, ferries remained the most used way to cross the river up into the early 20th century. However, beginning in the 1870s, new innovations in bridge construction enabled bridges to span newer and longer spaces. Particularly, the greater use of suspension bridges and advances in their construction allowed for much longer single spans between supports.

While suspension bridges had been built previously, they were mostly over minor distances and smaller rivers. The first modern suspension bridges to be built across major rivers were the Brooklyn Bridge and the Eads Bridge in Saint Louis. The Brooklyn Bridge was the first bridge to connect the island of Manhattan with Brooklyn. It was built with a used new developments to sink the supports for the towers far into the ground below the East River. The bridge's span came to 1,587 feet[3] and was the longest suspension bridge span in the world at the time of its completion.

However, the Brooklyn Bridge's record span was surpassed only three months later upon the completion of the Lewis and Clark Bridge, the first bridge in Saint Louis to cross either the Missouri or Mississippi Rivers[4]. The bridge, designed by architect and engineer James Eads, was the first suspension bridge with a span of over 1,600 feet. While its supports were on land and so did not present any design challenges, the Lewis and Clark Bridge was the first major bridge to use primarily metal construction, rather than wood or stone. With ribbed steel towers 280 feet tall, the Lewis and Clark Bridge dominated the Saint Louis skyline and became a symbol of the city.

[1] This is true even now in OTL. The region has a total population of 830,000 and the El Paso metro area has a population of 775,000. [2] OTL precedent for this comes from the reversion of the eastern Dakotas to unorganized territory after the admission of Minnesota in 1858. [3] Slightly shorter than the OTL Brooklyn Bridge. [4] TTL's Lewis and Clark Bridge is at the location of OTL's Eads Bridge.

Culture #3: The World of Sports

The Olympics Leave Greece: After the first modern Olympics were held in 1882, the International Olympic Committee made the decision to move the games out of Greece. They hoped that having the games held in different countries would help to attract interest in the Olympiad. Because of influence by IOC president William Penny Brookes, it was decided that the Second Olympiad would be hosted in London in 1886. The 1886 were set to coincide with the International Colonial Exposition in London. Along with colonial pavilions by the British East India Company and other British colonies, athletes from several British colonies competed in the Olympics. Some of the new countries with athletes competing for the first time in the Olympics in 1886 included Argentina, Canada, the Netherlands, British India, and Australia.

Some of the highlights of the Second Olympiad came from the new events that premiered in 1886. One of the most popular new competitions of the London Olympics was in cricket, which had grown in popularity in Great Britain and her colonies. Teams representing Great Britain, France, and Australia held a round robin series of test matches[1]. It ended up that the final game between rivals Britain and Australia was the deciding match for the gold medal as they had both beaten the French team. Other new sports were added that were also of particular interest to the British attendees. These included archery, equestrian events, rowing, and football. In the rowing event, the Balliol eights team won the gold medal for Great Britain, beating out the Columbia team which won silver.

Football also saw its Olympic debut in London as Great Britain, Belgium, and the United States sent teams to compete. The matches were the first international matches played between teams representing the British Isles and the United States. Two teams from Great Britain, Sheffield FC from England and Queen's Park from Scotland, along with Harvard University from the United States and Klub Atletik Gent from Belgium competed in the games. Harvard University made it to the gold medal match by defeating Queen's Park 3-0, but lost to Sheffield FC 6-1 in the gold medal match. Queen's Park defeated K. A. Gent for the bronze medal. As both teams were from Britain, both the gold and the bronze were given to Great Britain while the United States brought back silver.

A Whole New Ball Game: After the formation of the Mesoamerican Union, interest in the pre-Columbian cultures of the isthmus spiked in the country. The government encourage this interest, as many leaders thought that the revival of Mayan elements would help to create a national unifying culture in Mesoamerica. At the time, several ballcourts had been discovered throughout Mesoamerica and the southern Mexican states. In 1890, Augusto Gamboa, a professor at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, adapted the discoveries made at the ballcourts to create a new more modern version. Gamboa devised a set of rules for what he called Poktapok after the closest Mayan term for the pre-Columbian version and played the game in a small court with a traditional rubber ball which players attempted to get through a ring mounted on either side of the court. The game was originally played with seven people on a side. While players were holding the ball, they were not allowed to move from their position and had to throw it to other players on their team[2].

The first game was played between two sides at the Universidad de San Carlos near the end of 1890. Over the next decade, the game spread throughout Mesoamerica. While there were few attempts to organize professional leagues across Mesoamerica, several teams were created and in 1901, the first successful professional league was formed. The Liga Nacional de Poktapok first had six teams, each representing the capitals of the country's six provinces. The first seasons were played in outdoor fields with temporarily set up end hoops, but starting in 1905 permanent courts were built. The league expanded to ten teams by 1910, and poktapok spread to Costa Rica and the southern Mexican states during the 1910s and 1920s. Poktapok became one of the most popular sports in Central America and today there is a minor following of the sport in Cuba and other areas with large Mesoamerican immigrant populations.

[1] The matches were held over a month, but back then they only played three matches per series. And yes, I've probably got some of the terminology wrong, so feel free to correct me. [2] This is similar to the original rules of basketball in OTL, which Naismith partly based on the findings of the Mayan game (according to what I read on Wiki). Poktapok will probably replace basketball in TTL.

Party Seventy-Eight: Silver

The Silver Depression: Beginning in 1885, the discovery of new deposits of silver and gold in northern Kootenay reinvigorated the gold rush in the northwestern United States. Combined with other major silver discoveries around the world such as at Castroveta in southern California [1], silver production increased drastically from the 1880s to the end of the century. Annual global extraction of silver had been at approximately 30 billion ounces for most of the century, but annual production jumped to 120 billion ounces in the later decades. The Castroveta mine alone produced over 6 million ounces of silver between 1883 and 1900. The rate of silver production increased so quickly during the 1880s and 1890s that it caused a sudden collapse in the value of silver. Silver had stayed at approximately the same value from the 1780s to the early 1880s, but between 1886 and 1888 it lost almost a quarter of its value[2].

The sudden drop of the value of silver had a ripple effect that traveled around the world in the following years. The first sign of what would become a cascade of bankruptcies in the United States was the collapse of the Wheeling and Allegheny Railroad in March of 1886. The following year saw the collapse of several other railroads which had overextended themselves in the previous decade, and precipitated numerous bank runs as the value of the dollar continued to fall due to its connection with the price of silver. In early 1887, Secretary of the Treasury Morgan Comstock advised that the United States increase the amount of silver it purchased in order to increase the price of the metal. While a bill was passed by Congress to buy an addition million ounces of silver per month, it was not enough to counteract the fall of silver prices. Additionally, the effects of the Silver Depression in the United States had begun to spread abroad.

The first countries to be affected were those in east Asia and some of the Mexican states that were still on a silver standard. Japan and China were the worst affected countries in the late 1880s. Korea was quick to adopt the gold standard after it secured reparations from China after the Sino-Korean War and was less affected. When the depression hit Europe, most countries were only somewhat affected at first. Russia's economy barely fell during this period because of concurrent gold rushes in Siberia and Alyeska. But despite the depression ending in the United States in 1891, American and global economic growth remained sluggish for the next two decades. It would not be until the outbreak of the Great War that the global economy would completely recover from the effects of the Silver Depression[3].

Party of the People: The end of the 19th century also saw a rise in the newly formed People's Party. Founded in 1886, the party sought to appeal to the many agricultural workers in the Great Plains and Old Northwest states. Like the Redback Party, the People's Party advocated for the removal of any metallic standard and the adoption of a paper currency. Other issues that the People's Party took up as part of their platform were the direct election of senators as opposed to state legislatures and women's suffrage.

Like many minor parties in the United States, the People's Party found much of its success through running for elections on fusion tickets. During its formative years, the People's Party co-opted the platform of the more established Redback Party in many states in order to gain at least some representation in the state and national legislatures [4]. In the 1888 and 1892 elections, the People's Party nominated James B. Weaver of Iowa for president together with the Redback Party. The success of the Redback Party in the Old Northwest and the People's Party in the Great Plains helped both parties nationally even though they were extremely small compared to the Democrats and Republicans. During the 1890s and 1900s, however, the People's Party began to absorb the Redback Party as the two parties' platforms became almost identical.

The People's Party gained traction during the Silver Depression as voters flocked to its populist platform. Like the Republican Party at the time, the People's Party pushed for better conditions for workers and business regulations. However, while the Republicans mainly tried to pass legislation for the betterment of industrial working conditions, the People's Party emphasized miners and farmers. Throughout the Panic of 1886 and the following recession, unemployment in the United States rose to over 12 percent. The People's Party benefited from the hard economic times, and by 1900 the People's Party had become a force on the national stage. In 1901, the People's Party changed its name to the name it holds to this day; the Progressive Party.

[1] The OTL Silver King Mine in Arizona [2] This is what happened to the OTL price of silver. I don't have specific dollar values because the data I found was in OTL 1998 dollars, and I'm not sure how much inflation will happen before modern day. [3] The Silver Depression has elements of the Long Depression and the Panic of 1893 in its cause and effects. My reasoning is that since the Long Depression was averted earlier, it has greater effects now. [4] Fusion tickets will be popular among smaller parties, either with other minor parties or with the bigger ones.