Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
Just that Steffie was killed, who else I hadn’t quite figured out, and Belgium blamed Germany, Austria was mad the Congress even occurred, and things quickly spiral from there. Sort of an alt-Sarajevo
There’s really no way to write a not-bleak CSA Victory TL if you aim to avoid Lost Cause revisionism
Nothing good! Northern/western MS is probably the most well-organized freedman stronghold, though.
Sandhills is an extreme example simply due to the depravity on display by Morrison. But there’ll be tons of smaller events, random lynchings and slayings, that barely register.
It’s dark stuff in a dark time, in a very dark part of the world.
How strong are the freedmen in lowcountry South Carolina?
Decently, I’d say. Pershing burned pretty much everything between Columbia and the sea, though, so they’re more or less ruling the ashes.
Major US presence in Savannah, Atlanta and Augusta; not as much (if any) elsewhere
As I said elsewhere, I expect the freedman “warlord” states along the Mississippi will functionally never be brought to heel by the Confederate government until desegregation and reconciliation occur.
By the 50’s-60’s they probably could do so but it’d take something closely akin to genocide, by which I don’t mean the prosecution of a war resulting in a few tens of thousands of deaths but one that has the aim of wiping those quasi-states out entirely. And by then the US will not be prepared to tolerate it, nor would Long particularly want to spend the lives of good young (white) boys to accomplish the task.
So they’ll lumber into the Carter era able to negotiate terms.
So, to summarize what I expect most of the CS states to look like:
Virginia: War-devastated and lost quite a bit of its state territory. Probably has a heavier US presence now, and will for quite a while. I expect whatever politicians from here are left to fall in line with the government in NC soon enough, at least officially.
North Carolina: De-facto, the single most powerful state in the CSA. I wonder if any incoming governors will have just as much power, if not more, than whoeer the CSA chooses to elect in 1921, if they even manage to get a real election going.
Tennessee: As quite possibly the state with the most devastation across it, is probably likely to be the most of a mess once the US army leaves. Will be tough to see who ends up leading it; could see much of it being a near-ungovernable mess of devastation with no real central government well into the next decade.
Arkansas: IIRC this was not as damaged as most of the rest. As a border state it does probably fit in with the heavier US presence category for now. I wonder if after the occupation ends a state government could align with Long when he takes over Louisiana, I would think they would have more reason to side with the neighboring Long than the devastated eastern states.
Louisiana: Seems to have been able to restore order to some extent. Of course I expect we will be hearing how Huey rises to the top here soon enough.
Mississippi: I think the war damage was a bit less here than elsewhere, but at the same time you do have the freedmen communities which probably are not going to go away, and there will be people north of the border who keep supplying them. I suspect you might see a stable government take over here eventually, but be forced to effectively acknowledge it cannot control the whole state.
Alabama: This is one that is probably more on its own, and as said nothing good will happen. I expect whatever freedman-ruled areas here will probably have a harder time holding out, unfortunately...
Georgia: another heavily devastated state. Outside of the main cities, the people will be left on their own for a while. I expect this will be one of the harder places to get a functioning state government in charge.
South Carolina: Again heavily devastated, and it happened right before the CSA authority collapsed in 1916. I do expect as some mentioned upthread a decent freedman settlement in parts of the coastal area, that might again be able to stay a bit, though its closeness to the center of power may mean that it is seen as more of a threat than the one in Mississippi...
Florida: I expect this one to join the list of states that have a functional state government soon if they have not already. Probably not enough of a population base to be a major power, but I expect it to be more functional than a lot of the others on this list.
Virginia: War-devastated and lost quite a bit of its state territory. Probably has a heavier US presence now, and will for quite a while. I expect whatever politicians from here are left to fall in line with the government in NC soon enough, at least officially.
North Carolina: De-facto, the single most powerful state in the CSA. I wonder if any incoming governors will have just as much power, if not more, than whoeer the CSA chooses to elect in 1921, if they even manage to get a real election going.
Tennessee: As quite possibly the state with the most devastation across it, is probably likely to be the most of a mess once the US army leaves. Will be tough to see who ends up leading it; could see much of it being a near-ungovernable mess of devastation with no real central government well into the next decade.
Arkansas: IIRC this was not as damaged as most of the rest. As a border state it does probably fit in with the heavier US presence category for now. I wonder if after the occupation ends a state government could align with Long when he takes over Louisiana, I would think they would have more reason to side with the neighboring Long than the devastated eastern states.
Louisiana: Seems to have been able to restore order to some extent. Of course I expect we will be hearing how Huey rises to the top here soon enough.
Mississippi: I think the war damage was a bit less here than elsewhere, but at the same time you do have the freedmen communities which probably are not going to go away, and there will be people north of the border who keep supplying them. I suspect you might see a stable government take over here eventually, but be forced to effectively acknowledge it cannot control the whole state.
Alabama: This is one that is probably more on its own, and as said nothing good will happen. I expect whatever freedman-ruled areas here will probably have a harder time holding out, unfortunately...
Georgia: another heavily devastated state. Outside of the main cities, the people will be left on their own for a while. I expect this will be one of the harder places to get a functioning state government in charge.
South Carolina: Again heavily devastated, and it happened right before the CSA authority collapsed in 1916. I do expect as some mentioned upthread a decent freedman settlement in parts of the coastal area, that might again be able to stay a bit, though its closeness to the center of power may mean that it is seen as more of a threat than the one in Mississippi...
Florida: I expect this one to join the list of states that have a functional state government soon if they have not already. Probably not enough of a population base to be a major power, but I expect it to be more functional than a lot of the others on this list.
I see several of the freedman warlord states (especially if they are powerful enough to cause lots of headaches in the Confederacy but not powerful enough to defeat them, and if they are in territories the Confederates particularly don't care about) cutting deals with the Confederacy, with both sides essentially accepting that they would not bother each other (and with the Freedman states promising to not harbor any Freedman organizations plotting against the Confederacy and perhaps even delivering them to the sheriffs themselves), and with those Freedman states perhaps even gaining some representatives (probably in a massive gerrymandered blob of one representative, who will be made clear by the Congress members that he should shut up, do everything that they want him to do, and enjoy the meals and occasional bones thrown at his community without creating any kind of fuss.)
That's the Maroon colony model, and there's plenty of precedent for it in the Caribbean and Latin America; OTOH, there's much less precedent in the USA/CSA.
I especially see South Carolina going this way, given how the Gullah people have been able to carve out a space for themselves IOTL.
I would agree. Though probably only the Yazoo League in MS/AR could hold out effectively in the way you mention, or remote corners of Florida; other areas in the Black Belt are too easily reconquered though it would take a fair bit of force
I’d say that’s broadly pretty correct
God imagine being the one Black Congressman from that one part of Mississippi 😬
Good examples! I’ll have to research how those worked
Another good local example. Correct me if I’m wrong, but both Jim Brown and Clarence Thomas grew up in Gullah communities?
Yup. Clarence Thomas's first language wasn't English. The longer you can delay the spread of tropical medicine to the CSA, the better their chance of holding out - several of the lowcountry counties were >80% Black in 1860, and a couple of them >90%, due to the disease environment.
My guess is that in 1980 you have one Freedman quasi-state in the Mississippi River valley, largely in MS, holding some of AR, having subsumed refugees from LA and TN, one in central AL, having (barely) held a transport corridor to the one in MS since the post-war period and received huge refugee populations from upland GA, and one in coastal SC-GA.
This is based on four assumptions:
1. The Americans own the Mississippi River lock, stock, and barrel and prevent the CSA from putting so much as a customs dinghy on the water.
2. They turn a blind eye towards basically any amount of arms smuggling to the Mississippi River statelet short of the NBC triad, and maybe even allow a dash of C.
3. Kentucky rebounds no later than 1930 to be an important industrial node with direct access to the Ohio and Mississippi, and sees enough inbound black refugees and outbound white ones that it ends up majority-black no later than 1925. IOTL in 1910 Kentucky had about 260k black residents and 2 million white; I expect that at the opening of the GAW that balance is more like 400k-1.8 million given the continued existence and expansion of slavery, and over a million ex-slaves refugeed in just during the war.
4. At no point are the Confederates allowed a navy or coast guard which can command US-flagged ships to haul to within their coastal waters.
The other freedmen statelets will be crushed in a sea of blood, which will strengthen those three as basically everyone who can flees to them and more forward-looking statelet leaders pack up the whole dang state to pull a Long March.
Would any of these states gain full statehood rights following the 1990s desegregation? I could maybe see some of them wanting to push for it to guarantee more influence in national politics. Though the CSA government may not necessarily want to do that.
I wonder what William H. Seward Jr. is getting up to now, considering per OTL he should still be alive. As the son of Lincoln's (I assume) infamous Secretary of State as well as a veteran of the War of Southern Secession, it would be interesting to see how he is reacting to this rapidly developing world around him.