Nah, I want Woodrow Wilson on a soap box in Philadelphia arguing for a ceasefire and treaty with the Confederqacy with a Status Quo Ante result and him to be buried in so much rotten fruit that his name becomes a synonym for Fruit Salad iTTL.
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
Find someone who loves you the way Dan loves Robert LaFollette.Oh, don't forget me always going off about the Upper Midwest being the most important part of the timeline and demanding to see more of Wisconsin and LaFolletteAnd cursing New York every presidential election!
The Law of Free Birth went into effect more or less on schedule, the Lei Aurea did not
It’s definitely hard writing about Confederate points of view because it’s hard to think of a society with a more morally repugnant foundation until the 20th century (when there’s a murderers row from Hitler to Pol Pot to choose from)
Agreed
my pleasure! Thanks for the (very dark) Wikipedia rabbit hole!
May we all be so lucky lolFind someone who loves you the way Dan loves Robert LaFollette.
Find someone who loves you the way Dan loves Robert LaFollette.
Hey, as my Father once said; when do something well ...
Having only recently stumbled upon Fitzhugh in the last few years myself and been wondering on how to focus him into my own TL, seeing him pop up in two equally interesting TL's so close together is quite fascinating! Looking forward to seeing how it's handled.
I'm also glad my own TL is more of a North America centered one because damn, the depths of the work you've done is impressive, but also feels like it must be slightly exhausting to distill to a readable form! Keep up the good work!
Well, centuries of racial anxiety bubbling up from a traumatic defeat has never caused problems before...right?
Hmm. Has the Author given any information on whether we get a round 2 of USA vs. CSA?
It does lead to the question of how many powers would have to be on the side of the CSA in order for them to have *any* hope in Round II).
Thanks! It can be a fair deal to juggle (and it's easy to forget to cover certain parts of the world outside of the Americas, sadly) but the bite-sized updates do help.
Whether that does or does not happen, and to what extent (Full GAW II or something smaller/limited) I have done my best to keep very close to the chest, as with most post-1922ish events of the TL
Maximilian of Mexico
"...that the Mexican Navy had not been there, too, but Maximilian cringed at the realization that two of the three dreadnoughts assigned to Mexico's east coast were exposed in squadrons at the Florida and Yucatan Straits to potential attack from the Atlantic or central Caribbean; just as Mexico had developed the fleet he and his adoptive son Prince Salvador de Iturbide had spent their whole lives trying to bring to fruition, it was at high risk of ending up at the bottom of the Gulf. [1]
Maximilian's background a lifetime earlier in the Austrian Navy and the immediate exposure of his prized armada made Hilton Head hit much harder for home for him, but it was not the only bit of bad news that weighed on the Chapultepec over the course of May 1915. The Confederate position around the industrial city of Nashville had collapsed as well after a ten-month siege that had seen tens of thousands of men killed or wounded, badly kneecapping their army, and as Chile tottered on the edge of civil war they had struck an armistice, thus fully granting the United States supremacy over the Pacific at last and allowing them to concentrate their attention to a much closer neighbor - Mexico. With the peasant uprisings that were starting to reach the size of the Revolt of the Caudillos now burning in the North and South, in both directions threatening supply lines to Los Pasos or Ciudad Guatemala and potentially posing a major risk to the ability of Mexican forces in both theaters to sustain the campaigns.
This was the context of the Mayo Negro, or "Black May," in which Mexican leadership were forced to contemplate difficult choices in the wake of the Red Battalions and then the massive strategic setbacks for the Bloc Sud. The immediate consequence was the effective and permanent isolation of the most aggressive hawks, who only had the fact that spies in Pancho Villa's camps suggested that the dogged American General Pershing had been recalled to the United States to point to as any kind of optimistic development. Admiral Prince Salvador remained at sea where he belonged but his half-brother Agustin was essentially sidelined from then on, disinvited from most of Maximilian's family councils at the Chapultepec. This was repeated within the civilian administration as well; Enrique Creel's influence within the Cabinet evaporated overnight, and his hatchet man Olegaria Molina was put out to pasture and asked to go resolve the growing insurgency in his home department of the Yucatan before it could link up with Zapata's rebellion.
Louis Maximilian, always the staunchest skeptic of the war within the royal family, wanted to go further than that. He urged his father to make an example of the "chickenhawks" in Cabinet by sacking the entire government and replacing it with a caretaker Cabinet to negotiate an immediate armistice and exit from the war. In front of his stunned teenage sons Carlos (the future Charles I) and Agustin, he dove into an angry, red-faced tirade, for the first time in Maximilian's presence losing his temper. His only surviving son and heir roared that his father's desire to appear apolitical at the hour "in which Mexico needed the stern hand of the Padre de Patria rather than the empty lies of Creel and his charlatans" had given the Confederophile faction of the Cabinet enough strength to bully the moderates and soft-skeptics into going to war immediately after the Sack of Washington rather than waiting and assessing Mexico's best option, especially as war was declared a mere six months after the shocking collapse of Madero's government when the Empire's foundation had seemed unsteadier than it had in three decades. According to Louis Maximilian, the Zapatista and Villista rebellions and the Red Battalions were only the beginning, and if the Empire collapsed it would end with the whole family in exile or "shown the same grace as Louis XVI", and could be traced back to the Emperor's indecisiveness. Maximilian was taken aback; in forty-seven years of life, his son had never dared speak to him that way. At first, he was unsure what even to say, completely at a loss for words, but Louis Maximilian gave him a straightforward opening. After venting his anger at his octogenarian father, the crown prince calmed down and continued by suggesting that one mistake did not need to beget another, and that there was still a difficult but feasible way out: sack the Cabinet, and do it soon, to make it absolutely abundantly clear that the Emperor was fulfilling his role as the guarantor of the Empire.
What Louis Maximilian was proposing was, on paper, entirely within the parameters of the Century Constitution. As discussed in Chapter 24, the organizing document of the Second Empire outlined clear powers for the sovereign, considerably more than in many European constitutional monarchies. On paper, the decision to appoint or dismiss a government was not just a formality reserved to the Emperor, but his (and it was indeed his) prerogative entirely and exclusively. [2] In practice, Maximilian had intentionally created the precedent that the Prime Minister should at least in some capacity rely upon the confidence of the Assembly to sustain its ability to promulgate laws, or at the very minimum not waste all its time fighting with an oppositional and intransigent parliament. So while the proposal was legally and constitutionally airtight, politically it went against the spirit of what Maximilian had hoped to achieve with his granting of a more liberal and democratic constitution at the turn of the century, and his dithering started up again. It was not only the act itself that was dangerous but who it was directed against. The government of Leon de la Barra, while not as aggressively reactionary as Creel's, was nonetheless one of the traditional, agrarian, Catholic conservative strain of Mexican political life that was responsible for the existence of the Empire in the first place. Maximilian had stuck to his principles in anointing Madero as the Assembly's choice, angering the Right, and upon the self-immolation of Maderismo had threatened to radicalize the Left further by appointing the caretaker cabinet of Leon de la Barra that was now dominated by its conservatives and had led the country into war. What would throwing out El Puro's government do to Mexican politics? Could the Empire survive it?
At the same time, upon careful consideration, Maximilian had to acknowledge that much as his son had offended him, he had a point, it was just a question of how to thread an exquisitely difficult and dangerous needle. Madero had left into a self-imposed exile out of the country and, at any rate, had shown in even less difficult circumstances he had little credibility with the public or with parliamentarians. That was essentially the only statesman available on the Left, for after the Red Battalions the Bloc Democratico had eaten itself alive, its hardliners dead or in exile and its moderates dissipated into various new factions. The movement that had once seen likely to supplant the Mexican establishment and usher in a revolutionary new era - perhaps even a republican one! - had gambled entirely wrong. But the Right behind Creel had been the most aggressive advocates of the war and it was plain their credibility was gone as well, and Leon de la Barra's with it.
Who then was left? To Louis Maximilian, the answer seemed obvious - Bernardo Reyes, long a close personal friend and confidant who had very carefully built up a considerable amount of influence behind the scenes with the heir and his wife politically and socially. The choice was not entirely unconventional, either. Politically-minded generals loyal to the Emperor had made able Prime Ministers in the past, as Maximilian's long friendship and partnership with Miguel Miramon attested to. Above and beyond that, unlike Miramon who had been a creature of the pre-Imperial conservatism largely kept afloat in politics by his own infamy, longevity and the Emperor's patronage [3], Reyes had found an important niche for himself as a muscular representative of the urban bourgeoisie and middle classes his main base rather than the landed aristocracy, but still had populist credibility with laborers in farms and factories, though the violent response to the Red Battalions had damaged that a bit.
Maximilian was less sure. Reyes brought with him his own political bloc that was represented in Cabinet and had never been a stranger to ambition, and having him dominating both the military and the civilian sides of government worried Maximilian about what Reyes would ponder doing once he had passed on, which at his age could happen at any time. That being said, Reyes did represent the only bloc of Mexican politics with any remaining popular legitimacy, the quieter and more brittle but broad center that was starting to turn on the war but had been militantly opposed to the Red Battalions and their abortive national strike. From the Bloc Independiente could come somebody else to lead the charge moving forward, and one man from the Bloc Independiente sat in Leon de la Barra's Cabinet already and could be easily asked to slide over into the biggest seat: the competent and capable Industry Minister Francisco Carbajal.
The choice was not without some controversy, not least in how it was handled. Carbajal was an otherwise non-entity politically chosen almost entirely because he got on well with Reyes and had not angered any major faction, but until May 21, 1915, when he was called to the Chapultepec he had been nobody's idea of a Prime Minister, not even to himself. Leon de la Barra had not been surprised that he was given the sack after two years in charge with the way the war was going but he was genuinely shocked that Carbajal of all people was his choice, and the Mexican public largely shared the reaction of "Who?" upon the choice. But the choice was made, and Carbajal did not significantly reshuffle the Cabinet, keeping both Reyes and Lascurain in their current positions. Mexico had at least some new leadership at the helm; the question was now simply what direction the obscure new Prime Minister would sail the ship of state..."
- Maximilian of Mexico
[1] Seeing as the Battle of Puebla in 1862 was just another victory in Lorencez's ongoing march to Mexico City and it occurred before the crown was even offered to him, Max is not pondering, as we all here on Earth-1 are, the irony of all this happening on the same day that secured him his Empire on Earth-5 (Earth-Cinco?)
[2] Obviously this is in theory how every constitutional monarchy back then worked.
[3] And weird maybe-cuckolding love triangle with Carlota - throwback to early in the last thread!
Maximilian's background a lifetime earlier in the Austrian Navy and the immediate exposure of his prized armada made Hilton Head hit much harder for home for him, but it was not the only bit of bad news that weighed on the Chapultepec over the course of May 1915. The Confederate position around the industrial city of Nashville had collapsed as well after a ten-month siege that had seen tens of thousands of men killed or wounded, badly kneecapping their army, and as Chile tottered on the edge of civil war they had struck an armistice, thus fully granting the United States supremacy over the Pacific at last and allowing them to concentrate their attention to a much closer neighbor - Mexico. With the peasant uprisings that were starting to reach the size of the Revolt of the Caudillos now burning in the North and South, in both directions threatening supply lines to Los Pasos or Ciudad Guatemala and potentially posing a major risk to the ability of Mexican forces in both theaters to sustain the campaigns.
This was the context of the Mayo Negro, or "Black May," in which Mexican leadership were forced to contemplate difficult choices in the wake of the Red Battalions and then the massive strategic setbacks for the Bloc Sud. The immediate consequence was the effective and permanent isolation of the most aggressive hawks, who only had the fact that spies in Pancho Villa's camps suggested that the dogged American General Pershing had been recalled to the United States to point to as any kind of optimistic development. Admiral Prince Salvador remained at sea where he belonged but his half-brother Agustin was essentially sidelined from then on, disinvited from most of Maximilian's family councils at the Chapultepec. This was repeated within the civilian administration as well; Enrique Creel's influence within the Cabinet evaporated overnight, and his hatchet man Olegaria Molina was put out to pasture and asked to go resolve the growing insurgency in his home department of the Yucatan before it could link up with Zapata's rebellion.
Louis Maximilian, always the staunchest skeptic of the war within the royal family, wanted to go further than that. He urged his father to make an example of the "chickenhawks" in Cabinet by sacking the entire government and replacing it with a caretaker Cabinet to negotiate an immediate armistice and exit from the war. In front of his stunned teenage sons Carlos (the future Charles I) and Agustin, he dove into an angry, red-faced tirade, for the first time in Maximilian's presence losing his temper. His only surviving son and heir roared that his father's desire to appear apolitical at the hour "in which Mexico needed the stern hand of the Padre de Patria rather than the empty lies of Creel and his charlatans" had given the Confederophile faction of the Cabinet enough strength to bully the moderates and soft-skeptics into going to war immediately after the Sack of Washington rather than waiting and assessing Mexico's best option, especially as war was declared a mere six months after the shocking collapse of Madero's government when the Empire's foundation had seemed unsteadier than it had in three decades. According to Louis Maximilian, the Zapatista and Villista rebellions and the Red Battalions were only the beginning, and if the Empire collapsed it would end with the whole family in exile or "shown the same grace as Louis XVI", and could be traced back to the Emperor's indecisiveness. Maximilian was taken aback; in forty-seven years of life, his son had never dared speak to him that way. At first, he was unsure what even to say, completely at a loss for words, but Louis Maximilian gave him a straightforward opening. After venting his anger at his octogenarian father, the crown prince calmed down and continued by suggesting that one mistake did not need to beget another, and that there was still a difficult but feasible way out: sack the Cabinet, and do it soon, to make it absolutely abundantly clear that the Emperor was fulfilling his role as the guarantor of the Empire.
What Louis Maximilian was proposing was, on paper, entirely within the parameters of the Century Constitution. As discussed in Chapter 24, the organizing document of the Second Empire outlined clear powers for the sovereign, considerably more than in many European constitutional monarchies. On paper, the decision to appoint or dismiss a government was not just a formality reserved to the Emperor, but his (and it was indeed his) prerogative entirely and exclusively. [2] In practice, Maximilian had intentionally created the precedent that the Prime Minister should at least in some capacity rely upon the confidence of the Assembly to sustain its ability to promulgate laws, or at the very minimum not waste all its time fighting with an oppositional and intransigent parliament. So while the proposal was legally and constitutionally airtight, politically it went against the spirit of what Maximilian had hoped to achieve with his granting of a more liberal and democratic constitution at the turn of the century, and his dithering started up again. It was not only the act itself that was dangerous but who it was directed against. The government of Leon de la Barra, while not as aggressively reactionary as Creel's, was nonetheless one of the traditional, agrarian, Catholic conservative strain of Mexican political life that was responsible for the existence of the Empire in the first place. Maximilian had stuck to his principles in anointing Madero as the Assembly's choice, angering the Right, and upon the self-immolation of Maderismo had threatened to radicalize the Left further by appointing the caretaker cabinet of Leon de la Barra that was now dominated by its conservatives and had led the country into war. What would throwing out El Puro's government do to Mexican politics? Could the Empire survive it?
At the same time, upon careful consideration, Maximilian had to acknowledge that much as his son had offended him, he had a point, it was just a question of how to thread an exquisitely difficult and dangerous needle. Madero had left into a self-imposed exile out of the country and, at any rate, had shown in even less difficult circumstances he had little credibility with the public or with parliamentarians. That was essentially the only statesman available on the Left, for after the Red Battalions the Bloc Democratico had eaten itself alive, its hardliners dead or in exile and its moderates dissipated into various new factions. The movement that had once seen likely to supplant the Mexican establishment and usher in a revolutionary new era - perhaps even a republican one! - had gambled entirely wrong. But the Right behind Creel had been the most aggressive advocates of the war and it was plain their credibility was gone as well, and Leon de la Barra's with it.
Who then was left? To Louis Maximilian, the answer seemed obvious - Bernardo Reyes, long a close personal friend and confidant who had very carefully built up a considerable amount of influence behind the scenes with the heir and his wife politically and socially. The choice was not entirely unconventional, either. Politically-minded generals loyal to the Emperor had made able Prime Ministers in the past, as Maximilian's long friendship and partnership with Miguel Miramon attested to. Above and beyond that, unlike Miramon who had been a creature of the pre-Imperial conservatism largely kept afloat in politics by his own infamy, longevity and the Emperor's patronage [3], Reyes had found an important niche for himself as a muscular representative of the urban bourgeoisie and middle classes his main base rather than the landed aristocracy, but still had populist credibility with laborers in farms and factories, though the violent response to the Red Battalions had damaged that a bit.
Maximilian was less sure. Reyes brought with him his own political bloc that was represented in Cabinet and had never been a stranger to ambition, and having him dominating both the military and the civilian sides of government worried Maximilian about what Reyes would ponder doing once he had passed on, which at his age could happen at any time. That being said, Reyes did represent the only bloc of Mexican politics with any remaining popular legitimacy, the quieter and more brittle but broad center that was starting to turn on the war but had been militantly opposed to the Red Battalions and their abortive national strike. From the Bloc Independiente could come somebody else to lead the charge moving forward, and one man from the Bloc Independiente sat in Leon de la Barra's Cabinet already and could be easily asked to slide over into the biggest seat: the competent and capable Industry Minister Francisco Carbajal.
The choice was not without some controversy, not least in how it was handled. Carbajal was an otherwise non-entity politically chosen almost entirely because he got on well with Reyes and had not angered any major faction, but until May 21, 1915, when he was called to the Chapultepec he had been nobody's idea of a Prime Minister, not even to himself. Leon de la Barra had not been surprised that he was given the sack after two years in charge with the way the war was going but he was genuinely shocked that Carbajal of all people was his choice, and the Mexican public largely shared the reaction of "Who?" upon the choice. But the choice was made, and Carbajal did not significantly reshuffle the Cabinet, keeping both Reyes and Lascurain in their current positions. Mexico had at least some new leadership at the helm; the question was now simply what direction the obscure new Prime Minister would sail the ship of state..."
- Maximilian of Mexico
[1] Seeing as the Battle of Puebla in 1862 was just another victory in Lorencez's ongoing march to Mexico City and it occurred before the crown was even offered to him, Max is not pondering, as we all here on Earth-1 are, the irony of all this happening on the same day that secured him his Empire on Earth-5 (Earth-Cinco?
)[2] Obviously this is in theory how every constitutional monarchy back then worked.
[3] And weird maybe-cuckolding love triangle with Carlota - throwback to early in the last thread!
If only he had taken a stronger stance earlier. At least now, he might have saved his family from certain death or exile.
I’ve tried to make Louis Maximilian a decent guy (well, besides taking after dad’s extracurricular activities) who, while flawed, is generally smarter than given credit for but tragically ignored and left to be a powerless heir for most of his life. Hopefully that’s come across
Oh, no, it did. Louis Maximilian proved smarter than his father when it came to the alliance with the CSA. In fact, I wonder how things would have played out differently had Louis been more vocal with his contempt for the Bloc Sud alliance. Nothing about the alliance has paid its dividends for Mexico. The Canal has not been destroyed, which was, and still is, Mexico's primary reason for even joining the alliance since it would render them economically rudderless.
It would have allowed the US to concentrate on Chile faster, probably, without needing to sweat what’s going on in Centro. And save lots of time and blood at Los Pasos if they only need to capture the Texan side (even then, without the rail link to the rest of Mexico a concern, the strategic imperative of taking El Paso TX falls dramatically)
Just trying to delineate personal vs. English name regnal name, nothing to really read in to
Ha that’s pretty good
I'm really curious about the post-war Confederacy. Is the USA going to reshape the country to make it an imperfect but functional democracy with the bare minimum regarding racial equality or just occupy it until is no longer a threat? Since the story teased Huey Long's rise in power, I think the mainstream on the new Confederate establishment imposed by the USA is going to be "I don't see race, bro. We are all Southerners." Meanwhile, there are probably White supremacist guerrilla groups running around the country killing Black people and minorities and attacking American soldiers, while pretending they are the resistance or something.
The outcome is going to be something more akin to the considerably darker latter option you presented. What I'd just add is that with all the societal and economic collapse and a whole army's worth of firearms floating around, White supremacists won't be the only people running around committing random acts of violence or organized episodes of stochastic terrorism, Black freedmen who believe strongly that the defeat of the CSA makes the South just as much rightfully theirs will get a piece of the action, too.
Making Sense of the Senseless: The Great American War at 100
"...apparent. Dreadnoughts were expensive to build and expensive to maintain, the shiny fast new battlecruisers becoming increasingly popular in European admiralties even more so. Late 1915 and early 1916 was when many countries were due to budget for another round of naval construction, and the speed with which Chile and the Confederacy had seen their mighty dreadnoughts sent off to the deep but still forced to carry the debt on them left countries like Italy, sandwiched between the not-insubstantial French and Austrian navies, aghast.
Beyond the financial implications of the nature of dreadnought warfare, though, the Battle of Hilton Head and to a lesser extent the collapse at Nashville essentially ended for the Confederacy any hope of increased European support. Britain, despite professing her neutrality and continuing to supply the Confederacy with trade, had begun to be seen as clearly favoring the United States, in no small part because of British dependency on American and Argentinean agricultural imports [1] but also because the raw goods which they imported from the Confederacy had, other than increasingly inexpensive cotton that could be sourced from Egypt, India or elsewhere instead, effectively dried up as they were hurried instead to Dixie's factories across its emerging industrial belt stretching from Birmingham to Atlanta and through the South Carolina Upcountry. [2] It was also simply the fact that while a right-wing government had taken power in Britain the spring before, it was an extraordinarily weak one, and occupied with an ongoing insurgency in Ireland and one that had just erupted that February in India; sympathetic to the interests of a landed class as the government of Hugh Cecil may have been, they were more sympathetic to the idea of everybody in the war hashing out their differences and bringing the calamity that was starting to be felt in European banks and brokerages to an end.
Britain's rule of the seas meant that her opinion mattered more than the rest of Europe's collectively, but even there the Confederacy was out of luck. Russia was utterly disinterested in a war that had zero effect on her spheres of interest and despite her autocratic Tsarist government had always taken pride in good relations with the United States dating back to before the Treaty of Havana. Germany's minority interest in the Nicaragua Canal had always made the idea of the Kaiser siding with the Confederacy and, more importantly, her Mexican-Brazilian allies a nonstarter, and her support for the United States had become more and more overt over the last six months as German fears of Confederate interference in the Caribbean with her interests had led to a dramatic expansion of German submarine and frigate patrols out of Aruba. Even France, long a good friend to Richmond, was starting to distance herself diplomatically, choosing instead to focus on expanding her position at Martinique and Panama.
The destruction of the Confederate fleet now also meant that the United States Navy, once it had returned to combat duty after post-Hilton Head repairs, could essentially attack Confederate ports at will and shut them down. In the justifications of Root's otherwise Anglophile State Department, was not in explicit violation of the terms Britain had spelled out in 1913 in its Crewe Note; it was not a "blockade" to destroy dock facilities or put Marines ashore to seize strategic harbors, it simply made it profoundly difficult for the "neutral trade" Britain was sworn to protect to actually reach Confederate markets. Suffice to say that London did not see it that way, but a Confederacy unable to defend its own shores and a United States Navy still unwilling to board or seize neutral shipping was enough of a compromise position that there was no appetite for pressing the matter.
After Black May, the Confederacy was essentially and definitively on her own..."
- Making Sense of the Senseless: The Great American War at 100
[1] More on this later
[2] There's of course the Virginia Belt of Richmond-Lynchburg-Petersburg-Hampton Roads, but Charlotte was not particularly industrial at this point in time and the Durham area was still mostly tobacco and textiles. Nashville was an extremely important industrial center, as well as transportation node, but the siege forced a lot of its production to be moved South, so the defeat there is less about all its kit falling into Union hands and more about the time, blood and treasure spent defending it and the initiative and maneuverability its position affords the US that can now choose her next offensives carefully.
Beyond the financial implications of the nature of dreadnought warfare, though, the Battle of Hilton Head and to a lesser extent the collapse at Nashville essentially ended for the Confederacy any hope of increased European support. Britain, despite professing her neutrality and continuing to supply the Confederacy with trade, had begun to be seen as clearly favoring the United States, in no small part because of British dependency on American and Argentinean agricultural imports [1] but also because the raw goods which they imported from the Confederacy had, other than increasingly inexpensive cotton that could be sourced from Egypt, India or elsewhere instead, effectively dried up as they were hurried instead to Dixie's factories across its emerging industrial belt stretching from Birmingham to Atlanta and through the South Carolina Upcountry. [2] It was also simply the fact that while a right-wing government had taken power in Britain the spring before, it was an extraordinarily weak one, and occupied with an ongoing insurgency in Ireland and one that had just erupted that February in India; sympathetic to the interests of a landed class as the government of Hugh Cecil may have been, they were more sympathetic to the idea of everybody in the war hashing out their differences and bringing the calamity that was starting to be felt in European banks and brokerages to an end.
Britain's rule of the seas meant that her opinion mattered more than the rest of Europe's collectively, but even there the Confederacy was out of luck. Russia was utterly disinterested in a war that had zero effect on her spheres of interest and despite her autocratic Tsarist government had always taken pride in good relations with the United States dating back to before the Treaty of Havana. Germany's minority interest in the Nicaragua Canal had always made the idea of the Kaiser siding with the Confederacy and, more importantly, her Mexican-Brazilian allies a nonstarter, and her support for the United States had become more and more overt over the last six months as German fears of Confederate interference in the Caribbean with her interests had led to a dramatic expansion of German submarine and frigate patrols out of Aruba. Even France, long a good friend to Richmond, was starting to distance herself diplomatically, choosing instead to focus on expanding her position at Martinique and Panama.
The destruction of the Confederate fleet now also meant that the United States Navy, once it had returned to combat duty after post-Hilton Head repairs, could essentially attack Confederate ports at will and shut them down. In the justifications of Root's otherwise Anglophile State Department, was not in explicit violation of the terms Britain had spelled out in 1913 in its Crewe Note; it was not a "blockade" to destroy dock facilities or put Marines ashore to seize strategic harbors, it simply made it profoundly difficult for the "neutral trade" Britain was sworn to protect to actually reach Confederate markets. Suffice to say that London did not see it that way, but a Confederacy unable to defend its own shores and a United States Navy still unwilling to board or seize neutral shipping was enough of a compromise position that there was no appetite for pressing the matter.
After Black May, the Confederacy was essentially and definitively on her own..."
- Making Sense of the Senseless: The Great American War at 100
[1] More on this later
[2] There's of course the Virginia Belt of Richmond-Lynchburg-Petersburg-Hampton Roads, but Charlotte was not particularly industrial at this point in time and the Durham area was still mostly tobacco and textiles. Nashville was an extremely important industrial center, as well as transportation node, but the siege forced a lot of its production to be moved South, so the defeat there is less about all its kit falling into Union hands and more about the time, blood and treasure spent defending it and the initiative and maneuverability its position affords the US that can now choose her next offensives carefully.