Until Every Drop of Blood Is Paid: A More Radical American Civil War

[Ryan lozano]

Say would there be a second wave of socialism because we still have the president before Teddy Roosevelt to worry about since he came in by corruption

 

[Simeon]

I am envisioning something violent indeed, but I don't know enough about the Indian Partition to draw any direct parallels or inspiration from it.

Perhaps, this can help in envisioning it:

or you can help yourself through a shorter anecdote at that:

There's also the matter of states themselves being divided into two or more pieces, with persisting de facto authorities on each side even without the Federal government recognising and legitimising the secession with their own partition plans - or at least some of them.

 

[Name123]

Eh, author notes can be sometimes distracting as a reader, and annoying to implement as a writer. Major things I tend to clarify in later posts, and I'm not really concerned by small things like this one.

Personally, I have not found AN to be distracting. I actually think that people are not using the enough.
I guess it would be a problem if there were like hundreds of them or something, but otherwise not. Yes this was a detail, but one deserving a clarification I think. As for it being annoying to implement, I cannot comment on that, I'm not a writer. You are clearly investing a lot of your time into this, so I'm not going to demand more. You are doing a good job as it is, after all.

At this point I can say with some confidence that there will be a lot of love for "Comrade Lincoln" within some circles ITTL. Similarly to how the popular conception of Lincoln is the "man who freed the slaves" IOTL, the popular conception here would be "the man who freed the slaves, destroyed the planters, and remade the South." Nuances and blemishes would be lost and leftist would just look at a guy who destroyed a parasitic ruling class through a revolutionary process that radically redistributed the means of production.

Yeah, as said after the "too ahead" post, it does actually make sense for Lincoln to be a leftist icon to some degree. I'm cautious, and sometimes it is too much.

 

[DTF955Baseballfan]

I'm doing a lot better, thanks.

Roads and hospitals are good things but the perception - or maybe just the excuse - is that only the super rich can afford to build them without government infrastructure being needed to really get things started. Sure, in the Annie universe you might have Little Orphan Annie, and Molly if she is also adopted as having bonded as her sister, inheriting Daddy Warbucks fortune and using it all for philanthropic purposes, many overseas. (Warbucks had gotten a call from Gandhi among others upon his return in his first scene with him so obviously there was some connection.) But that doesn't usually happen in real life. The most you would get is a Carnegie who builds a bunch of libraries and things in America.

But is it really that hard? My sister and a few friends of hers have a 501c3 which has built a Christian school and some other basic infrastructure in Tamagalie, a small village in Sierra Leone, and that certainly hasn't required a huge amount of money. Sure, that's just one small village but when you take the number of people who could give to a charitable cause, and the number of doctors who might be willing to go somewhere where help is really needed and then teach the locals to run it themselves, and the number of people who are willing to give so that Wells can be dug and clean drinking water can be provided to the many villages of the less developed world, you might be able to uplift someplace with wells, hospitals, etc. without any imperialism, simply with common people going and helping to build the infrastructure so the natives can run it themselves.

I forget what the stat was, but about a decade ago when our church sponsored the construction of a well in a few different places in africa, I was really shocked at the number of places in the world that still do not have clean drinking water. ( edit, I looked it up and 28% lack access to safe drinking water and over 40% lack access to basic sanitation. And that's a 2023 stat. The problem with imperialism is that it only did what was good for the rich countries and not for the actual natives, otherwise we would not have a statistic like that in 2023!)

But is there really a chance that a Peace Corps could be developed 80 years early? Or that some philanthropist might decide that they want to spend money to provide clean drinking water to 1,000 villages in Latin America? (Perhaps the reason Warbucks was working with Gandhi in India.) I guess, as Paul Harvey used to say, if that's not the way to bet, it's the way to pray.

 

[Mildtryth]

Forget about being minor, it wouldn't even exist in the first place because the original plan of the Argentinians and Brazilians was to simply carve up the two between them... Which would've led into more frontier for them to argue about which would lead into another war where, if we're being honest, would see Brazil trounce them given they were the ones with the experienced armies who had chased after Solano Lopez for 4 years, meaning Brazil would get all the former territory that was Paraguay as well as other territories from Argentina.

I find the original plan would quite unlikely to implement, all things considered - OTL, Brazil settled with Paraguay earlier and got the borders they already claimed before the war (before that, Paraguay claimed the Branco and Ivinhema rivers as its northern borders while Brazil claimed its present border) - the real problem came with Argentina, where neither side could agree on where their border in the Chaco should be (Argentina wanted the Rio Verde and Paraguay wanted the Bermejo) and that was the one that went to Hayes' mediation:

In such circumstances, if American mediation does not happen, I could see Argentina pressing its claims on its part of the Chaco by force and maybe making common cause with Bolivia for that (which might have consequences if a Pacific War still happens), but not Brazil or Argentina taking anything within the yellow part on that map.

 

[Kurd Gossemer]

I find the original plan would quite unlikely to implement, all things considered - OTL, Brazil settled with Paraguay earlier and got the borders they already claimed before the war (before that, Paraguay claimed the Branco and Ivinhema rivers as its northern borders while Brazil claimed its present border) - the real problem came with Argentina, where neither side could agree on where their border in the Chaco should be (Argentina wanted the Rio Verde and Paraguay wanted the Bermejo) and that was the one that went to Hayes' mediation:

In such circumstances, if American mediation does not happen, I could see Argentina pressing its claims on its part of the Chaco by force and maybe making common cause with Bolivia for that (which might have consequences if a Pacific War still happens), but not Brazil or Argentina taking anything within the yellow part on that map.

I'm just saying that if war actually does come and Brazil goes to actual war against Argentina (and maybe Bolivia) they could decide that Paraguay simply should be annexed already since there's no guarantee the Argentinians wouldn't try again in the future, something that would be quite easy to do given just how depopulated Paraguay had become.

It's also good because it avoids the usual "Nothing Happens in South America" trope and actually have a twist at the Paraguayan war where the victors come to blows over the corpse of a nation.

 

[Red_Galiray]

Well, Paraguay could still be around in a truncated form, even if it very much would be a shadow of its OTL form and stripped of 60% of its OTL territory, but yeah, the unexpected reprecussions of this TL outside the US like what we've discussed about Paraguay are interesting to ponder.

On that note, what would be a good equivalent to how the Volkssturm were often equipped with captured foreign weapons or WW1 rifles (or their Japanese equivalent using bamboo spears) could be how the last Confederate troops were often armed with smoothbore muskets or even pikes (this was an actual OTL Confederate proposal)

That of course assumes he doesn't flee to Mexico like what he did IOTL, with exile very much a common fate for dead-enders who nonetheless recognize the war as lost but still refuse to submit to the Union

On that note, the idea could be around ITTL as a popular myth, even if that won't really happen here.

Yeah, but I think Lincoln or Grant or other American president would be likely to still try and intervene. Still, you're right, we could see a smaller Paraguay.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned somewhere that some Confederates are indeed breaking out the museum pieces already.

Yeah, a lot of people are going to flee to Cuba, Mexico or Europe as soon as they realize they have truly lost.

A scene which I imagine will be more common as the war drags on will be white, poor Southerners who deserted or refused conscription, hanged besides runaway slaves, and both families mourning right next to each other.

Great idea! Definitely using this somewhere.

On this - it's my personal belief, with I think some historical grounding, that some of the tailspin, fragmentation and infighting that plagued the revolutionary left between Napoleon and 1917 was in no small part due to the sheer lack of successful models to point to even as symbolic inspiration after the fall of the Jacobins (and even then their success is a very very qualified success). With Lincoln's administration being both unquestionably revolutionary in nature - if accidentally so - and unquestionably successful under the most strenuous of examinations, I expect "Lincolnism" to be a powerful if conveniently ill-defined force that could well dominate radical left circles in the coming generations. If nothing else I expect the idea that revolutionary progress is waged through the electoral capture of existing regimes and imposed from above by government law, rather than from below by popular uprising, to be very popular.

You're right. While Lincoln is defined more by practicability than by rigid ideology, we could see his example inspiring revolutionaries who think they can, too, win an election, beat back reaction, and then dismantle the ruling class that opposed them. My preferred term would be something like "revolutionary democracy", which, as you describe, believes revolutionary progress can be achieved by capturing governments by wide support movements and then waiting until reaction sets in. The danger would be losing the resulting war - but losing the revolution was a problem too, right? And, in any case, that's exactly what the Radicals did ITTL - through decades of effort and activism they managed to carry their cause to electoral victory, and even if it wasn't the uncompromised, pure radical program, this was still enough to invoke secession. So it also would encourage future radicals to ally with moderates, in the firm belief that any change, no matter how small, will be too much - pushing the moderates to ally themselves with the radicals, radicalizing in the process, to beat back the conservatives.

Confederate Congress created the Junior Reserves, a formation of 17-18 year old boys meant to take over rear-area duties. However, towards the end, they were put up to front-line duty as seen in North Carolina. It should be noted that the Junior Reserves seemed to suffer a higher attrition rate than normal, with historian Wade Sokolosky noting that a careful examination showed greater % of sickness and desertion. It is unclear as to why they suffered more from ill health than their older comrades (I'm not a doctor) but it could be a mixture of poor administration and leadership or a lack of nutrition from limited rations.

There was also a more prolific case of boys being used in combat - namely the VMI at New Market as Red_Galiray mentioned and the Georgia militia at Griswoldville. Sherman's troops shot the charging militiamen down en masse and it was not until the fight was over that they found that they had killed old men and young boys, with one wishing they would never fight again.

One of the most WTF quotes I found in the Collapse of the Confederacy was a quote by a newspaper, the Richmond Dispatch, urging Confederate parents to send their boys to the army: "If a Confederate parent now wishes to teach his son the way to live, and the way to die, let him send him... to the bronzed and battle-scarred veterans in the front." This was written without irony.


I mean, Rutherford B. Hayes could still be a major politician, maybe rising to Secretary of State? He did serve as a general, like in the Valley now, and was prone to waving the bloody shirt, which should be more effective ITTL.

Good grief, that quote... how did they not realize the evilness of their cause?

Hm. I must confess I find the fact that Hayes is more beloved in Paraguay deeply amusing.

Say would there be a second wave of socialism because we still have the president before Teddy Roosevelt to worry about since he came in by corruption

Again, getting a little ahead of ourselves. Even if Teddy becomes president it would be under very different circumstances. But, we can look forward to Populism sweeping the South in the 1890's, much stronger due to a stronger Reconstruction. And they could ally with Socialists.

Perhaps, this can help in envisioning it:

or you can help yourself through a shorter anecdote at that:

There's also the matter of states themselves being divided into two or more pieces, with persisting de facto authorities on each side even without the Federal government recognising and legitimising the secession with their own partition plans - or at least some of them.

Thank you!

Personally, I have not found AN to be distracting. I actually think that people are not using the enough.
I guess it would be a problem if there were like hundreds of them or something, but otherwise not. Yes this was a detail, but one deserving a clarification I think. As for it being annoying to implement, I cannot comment on that, I'm not a writer. You are clearly investing a lot of your time into this, so I'm not going to demand more. You are doing a good job as it is, after all.

Yeah, as said after the "too ahead" post, it does actually make sense for Lincoln to be a leftist icon to some degree. I'm cautious, and sometimes it is too much.

Thank you And yes, at the end of the day it's because I find it annoying to implement the notes, but also because this is a forum so anything that needs clarification can easily be asked here.

I'm doing a lot better, thanks.

Roads and hospitals are good things but the perception - or maybe just the excuse - is that only the super rich can afford to build them without government infrastructure being needed to really get things started. Sure, in the Annie universe you might have Little Orphan Annie, and Molly if she is also adopted as having bonded as her sister, inheriting Daddy Warbucks fortune and using it all for philanthropic purposes, many overseas. (Warbucks had gotten a call from Gandhi among others upon his return in his first scene with him so obviously there was some connection.) But that doesn't usually happen in real life. The most you would get is a Carnegie who builds a bunch of libraries and things in America.

But is it really that hard? My sister and a few friends of hers have a 501c3 which has built a Christian school and some other basic infrastructure in Tamagalie, a small village in Sierra Leone, and that certainly hasn't required a huge amount of money. Sure, that's just one small village but when you take the number of people who could give to a charitable cause, and the number of doctors who might be willing to go somewhere where help is really needed and then teach the locals to run it themselves, and the number of people who are willing to give so that Wells can be dug and clean drinking water can be provided to the many villages of the less developed world, you might be able to uplift someplace with wells, hospitals, etc. without any imperialism, simply with common people going and helping to build the infrastructure so the natives can run it themselves.

I forget what the stat was, but about a decade ago when our church sponsored the construction of a well in a few different places in africa, I was really shocked at the number of places in the world that still do not have clean drinking water. ( edit, I looked it up and 28% lack access to safe drinking water and over 40% lack access to basic sanitation. And that's a 2023 stat. The problem with imperialism is that it only did what was good for the rich countries and not for the actual natives, otherwise we would not have a statistic like that in 2023!)

But is there really a chance that a Peace Corps could be developed 80 years early? Or that some philanthropist might decide that they want to spend money to provide clean drinking water to 1,000 villages in Latin America? (Perhaps the reason Warbucks was working with Gandhi in India.) I guess, as Paul Harvey used to say, if that's not the way to bet, it's the way to pray.

Hm, this is interesting because a lot of Civil War era social projects started in private initiative by philantropists and reformers. The US Sanitary and the Bureaus all have their origins in private organizations that were then adopted, so to speak, by the national State. We could see something like this - with American private organizations meant to "uplift" the people becoming the heralds of future intervention by the American government.

I find the original plan would quite unlikely to implement, all things considered - OTL, Brazil settled with Paraguay earlier and got the borders they already claimed before the war (before that, Paraguay claimed the Branco and Ivinhema rivers as its northern borders while Brazil claimed its present border) - the real problem came with Argentina, where neither side could agree on where their border in the Chaco should be (Argentina wanted the Rio Verde and Paraguay wanted the Bermejo) and that was the one that went to Hayes' mediation:

In such circumstances, if American mediation does not happen, I could see Argentina pressing its claims on its part of the Chaco by force and maybe making common cause with Bolivia for that (which might have consequences if a Pacific War still happens), but not Brazil or Argentina taking anything within the yellow part on that map.

This deserves some looking into, certainly.

I'm just saying that if war actually does come and Brazil goes to actual war against Argentina (and maybe Bolivia) they could decide that Paraguay simply should be annexed already since there's no guarantee the Argentinians wouldn't try again in the future, something that would be quite easy to do given just how depopulated Paraguay had become.

It's also good because it avoids the usual "Nothing Happens in South America" trope and actually have a twist at the Paraguayan war where the victors come to blows over the corpse of a nation.

Being South American and all I'm quite decided to have something happen here, but at the same time I don't want to get bogged in any major event, focusing instead on the US.

 

[Ryan lozano]

So anyone want to say that USA of here is the USSR of this world

 

[Red_Galiray]

So anyone want to say that USA of here is the USSR of this world

Certainly not I, the author.

 

[Ryan lozano]

Certainly not I, the author.

Because you just did as in many other revolutionary will follow their example because they are going to get very radical

 

[Whiteshore]

You're right. While Lincoln is defined more by practicability than by rigid ideology, we could see his example inspiring revolutionaries who think they can, too, win an election, beat back reaction, and then dismantle the ruling class that opposed them. My preferred term would be something like "revolutionary democracy", which, as you describe, believes revolutionary progress can be achieved by capturing governments by wide support movements and then waiting until reaction sets in. The danger would be losing the resulting war - but losing the revolution was a problem too, right? And, in any case, that's exactly what the Radicals did ITTL - through decades of effort and activism they managed to carry their cause to electoral victory, and even if it wasn't the uncompromised, pure radical program, this was still enough to invoke secession. So it also would encourage future radicals to ally with moderates, in the firm belief that any change, no matter how small, will be too much - pushing the moderates to ally themselves with the radicals, radicalizing in the process, to beat back the conservatives.

On that note, social democratic thought ITTL could be based on the idea of "what do we do if the changes our coalition brings in alliance with the moderates doesn't trigger a reactionary backlash".

 

[SenatorChickpea]

Because you just did as in many other revolutionary will follow their example because they are going to get very radical

Yes, but that's like saying that because the US was an inspiration to liberal revolutions from 1776 until at least 1848, the USA was the USSR then. Or that that means the USSR was the USA of our timeline. Or that both were the Republican France.

The metaphor is so vague as to be useless.

 

[Red_Galiray]

Because you just did as in many other revolutionary will follow their example because they are going to get very radical

Yes, but calling this communism is too far, and I only said that it may inspire future socialists. Moreover, it's too early, even for me, to extrapolate what will happen next.

On that note, social democratic thought ITTL could be based on the idea of "what do we do if the changes our coalition brings in alliance with the moderates doesn't trigger a reactionary backlash".

Yes, a certain variant of accelerationism that thinks that they necessarily need a reactionary counterrevolution to institute their own revolution.

Yes, but that's like saying that because the US was an inspiration to liberal revolutions from 1776 until at least 1848, the USA was the USSR then. Or that that means the USSR was the USA of our timeline. Or that both were the Republican France.

The metaphor is so vague as to be useless.

Exactly.

 

[Ryan lozano]

I mean how influential this USA will be as like the USSR would spread their ideology to others it will not like the ussr but they similar but very different from each other

 

[VaultJumper]

I mean how influential this USA will be as like the USSR would spread their ideology to others it will not like the ussr but they similar but very different from each other

The US was one the first successes of the Liberal revolution it is nice rhyme it is one first of the socialist.

 

[Whiteshore]

Even if Teddy becomes president it would be under very different circumstances.

Especially with how he was actually born four years after the POD (though before the TL really diverges from OTL) meaning he’d be a different person ITTL.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned somewhere that some Confederates are indeed breaking out the museum pieces already.

What would be a fitting coda for the Civil War ITTL could be the Confederate equivalent to the Volkssturm charging Union lines equipped with gatling guns with pikes and smoothbore muskets with them being as if they came from a battle in the 16th or 17th century with that in mind.

 

[Workable Goblin]

Good grief, that quote... how did they not realize the evilness of their cause?

I mean, from the point of view of the 19th century it doesn't seem evil at all...

 

[Ranger Ridiculous]

Had a thought, its been more or less established that the African American community in this TL is going to find more room socially and politically in the 19th century and achieve earlier equality, and we've similarly established that the "White" immigrants (usually Catholics) will similarly find their place in this TL's America. Finally, the status of Native Americans still seems to be in the air and has been discussed more fully elsewhere.

But I'm curious about what will happen with other minority groups. The two that leap to mind are Hispanic Americans and Chinese immigrants. I'll admit I'm not well read on this topic so I'm curious what will happen. I feel like the Tejano community might find space in reconstruction Texas and possibly space to reclaim some of what was taken from them after the Texas Revolution, does anyone know how the Tejanos reacted to the civil war?

Finally, I feel like there's room for Chinese Immigrants on the west coast to get earlier recognition. The main thing that springs to mind is that the Chinese Exclusion Act might go to the supreme court and be found unconstitutional on the same grounds that things like black codes and similar were. I could see perhaps the San Francisco Chinese community approaching a lawyer associated with Reconstruction and ask him to take their case. Even if the Chinese Exclusion Act (or TTL equivalent) stands, the fact that it gets fought harder would still be something.

Sorry, this was a bit of a ramble, but I hope it was somewhat coherent.

 

[Name123]

But I'm curious about what will happen with other minority groups. The two that leap to mind are Hispanic Americans and Chinese immigrants. I'll admit I'm not well read on this topic so I'm curious what will happen. I feel like the Tejano community might find space in reconstruction Texas and possibly space to reclaim some of what was taken from them after the Texas Revolution, does anyone know how the Tejanos reacted to the civil war?

Finally, I feel like there's room for Chinese Immigrants on the west coast to get earlier recognition. The main thing that springs to mind is that the Chinese Exclusion Act might go to the supreme court and be found unconstitutional on the same grounds that things like black codes and similar were. I could see perhaps the San Francisco Chinese community approaching a lawyer associated with Reconstruction and ask him to take their case. Even if the Chinese Exclusion Act (or TTL equivalent) stands, the fact that it gets fought harder would still be something.

I'm afraid that anti-Chinese sentiment is still going to be a thing. For example Charles Sumner was criticized for being pro-Chinese. The sole dissenter in Civil Rights cases, John Marshall Harlan, was anti-Chinese. What I mean here is not being prejudiced against one group does not mean you are generally tolerant. In this case it seems that they saw African Americans as Americans . Xenophobia is fear of the unknown, after all. They were familiar with African Americans, but not the Chinese.

 

[Workable Goblin]

I'm afraid that anti-Chinese sentiment is still going to be a thing. For example Charles Sumner was criticized for being pro-Chinese. The sole dissenter in Civil Rights cases, John Marshall Harlan, was anti-Chinese. What I mean here is not being prejudiced against one group does not mean you are generally tolerant. In this case it seems that they saw African Americans as Americans . Xenophobia is fear of the unknown, after all. They were familiar with African Americans, but not the Chinese.

That being said, some aspects of the stronger civil rights laws will probably still percolate down; it was, after all, the 14th Amendment that was behind the Wong Kim Ark case.