Canada had a fairly large Irish population around this time OTL. In Toronto there was a group of about 400-500 Fenians who drilled and organized in expectation of the invasion OTL, though they also fizzled when many of their members were arrested or simply didn't answer the call. In WiF most of them signed on with an American Volunteer unit (the equivalent of the "Canadian" Volunteer units raised in 1776 and 1812 by the US) and suffered very badly at the hands of the Canadian guerillas, becoming irrelevant by 1865. Their absence means that while people will still have fears of an Irish fifth column, but functionally it does not even exist even compared to OTL.
Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond
- Thread starter EnglishCanuck
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Canada had a fairly large Irish population around this time OTL. In Toronto there was a group of about 400-500 Fenians who drilled and organized in expectation of the invasion OTL, though they also fizzled when many of their members were arrested or simply didn't answer the call. In WiF most of them signed on with an American Volunteer unit (the equivalent of the "Canadian" Volunteer units raised in 1776 and 1812 by the US) and suffered very badly at the hands of the Canadian guerillas, becoming irrelevant by 1865. Their absence means that while people will still have fears of an Irish fifth column, but functionally it does not even exist even compared to OTL.
Breckinridge really would be the best - even if he did not have quite as many opportunities to shine in *this* timeline's war as he did in ours - he had, after all, been vice president of the US, but also had won more votes in the South in the 1860 US presidential election than Jefferson Davis had gotten in the 1861 CS presidential election! He was genuinely well-liked and admired across almost all of the Southern leadership; the only enemy he ever seems to have made was Braxton Bragg, and Braxton Bragg was the sort of man who could make an enemy even out of himself.
But more to the point, he was simply a much better politician than Davis, or indeed any of the Deep South fire eaters. Well....when he was sober, at any rate.
But I can't help the feeling that the Confederacy used up all its good luck squeaking out a win over the Union here.
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Well not all of its luck, we do have the "Three Good Presidents" for the South yet to come, but I imagine afterwards the decline really kicks in until the inevitable Social Democratic Revolution
The Three Good Presidents can mean a couple things, 1 that they were so good, they basically formed the basis of what the Confederacy actually is outside of the civil war, solidifying its identity, essentially being three Ataturks for the Confederates. Or the CSA is in for a really bad time.
It could easily be both too, we could see an increase in economic fortunes and a more solid Southern identity formed from these three, but slavery is going to remain a stone tied around the South's neck for as long as it's around and I suspect will be a key factor in their decline and possible downfall
I remember EC said that Breckenridge is one of the Three Good Presidents although not when. I figured he is the first of them but I'm not sure who are the other two. Would Longstreet be one of them?
Some of the Confederacy's best men, including Dick Taylor and Henry Allen, will probably be content superintending their modernized, management-dependent Louisiana sugar-plantations and sitting in the Baton Rouge legislature as before. Braxton Bragg is another, but he'd be well-suited for the post of Inspector-General upon Samuel Cooper's retirement, if a bugbear for Confederate officers everywhere. Taylor, an arch-conservative if there ever was one in America, considering his postbellum career IOTL, would make for a most colorful C.S. ambassador in Washington, especially one caught in the malaise of "Hard Feelings" north of the Potomac. He was a massive observer of people and events and was adept in attempting "backroom-bargaining" as a Louisiana State senator, delegate to the 1861 Charleston, S.C., convention for the Democratic nomination, in parleying with Andrew Johnson on behalf of Jeff. Davis (his brother-in-law) and other Confederate prisoners, and as a Democratic Party "insider" throughout the whole trauma of Reconstruction. He was especially close with the Manhattan Club, including Samuel L. M. Barlow, whom I understand is a veritable Martin Bormann in the McClellan White House. Later on, he impressed considerable, if brief, influence upon disillusioned Henry Adams, another colonial scion, as an elite guest in the latter's Washington salon. I'm pretty sure it was Taylor, through his spleen-venting conversations and memoir, who inspired Adams to write the anonymous novel Democracy, at least partly.
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And so would KingSweden24, I guess. His AH story, Cinco de Mayo, has Longstreet as one of the CS Presidents.
Speaking of, I highly recommend readers of WiF to read it for another unique CS victory TL on this site.
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Not as many notable combat commands, with the Battle of Elizabethtown his most notable TTL, otherwise he was a competent but unremarkable commander. He was picked up for political reasons in Richmond, but he's managed to entrench himself in the political vipers nest there. There are those who will end up disliking him because he was in Davis's cabinet, but that's just the sheer petty politics of the Davis administration being followed through to their logical conclusion!
You've highlighted his fine attributes (and his one other flaw besides supporting the Confederacy) here. He's a man who, unlike almost anyone else in 1867, can make a claim to have a national platform to stand on with real national recognition and not just a state machine behind him. Whether he can become president and make things stick is a real open question. The 6 year single term limit makes building legacy programs a real problem.
The watchword for the Confederacy though we must remember is, the higher it rises, the harder it falls...
I concur. I distinctly remember that Sheridan killed Forrest in Kentucky.
Good guesses! I think that the Ataturk comparison is good for why these men will be seen, retrospectively, as the best of the lot when it comes to running the Confederacy. Their immediate successors will basically be running with a ideological ball and taking it to the extreme. It might be fair to say that after these blokes, its all downhill from there...
Alas, capitalism doesn't tend to care about pesky little moral problems, and the engines that drove commerce will drive on regardless how well the machinery is oiled by the blood of the enslaved in the South. For a time at least. However, the Confederacy has very much the ability to fall into a comfortable position in the global economy, but it is one that is almost entirely extraction and resource based, little in the way of manufacturing or other more technical jobs. The reasons for this will become more obvious as time goes on, but it's going to have aspects of 'worse than you think' with it.
Time travel my friends, time travel...
But no, I was distinctly thinking of Stuart's 1864 fate OTL! Silly me! Yes, the Knight of the Golden Spurs is still alive and kicking. Thanks for catching my goof! That's what you get when you post before coffee!
As bigger fish in a smaller pond, maybe. Dick Taylor is one who I think has merit in going farther in this Confederacy, and there's plenty of men who couldn't take their careers up further thanks to Reconstruction who would probably be willing to try climbing higher. Taylor seems like a man who could go far, if not as president than effectively as an eternal minister without portfolio for his backroom dealing. Didn't realize he was close to Barlow, who is effectively McClellan's 'fixer' in Washington, which means he does all the political wheeling and dealing McClellan finds beneath him. That might make him a very, very interesting character as the ambassador to Washington indeed!
If he meets Henry Adams this time, well, he's going to alter his trajectory in a slightly different way!
Agreed! I'd put off reading it for a long time because I was very leery of letting it influence my own work in the post-war world, but I think that inevitably some similarities will crop up. Though in the reading I'm thrilled that not too, too many will be there.
A story well deserving of deeper reads.