I don't normally do this, but I've had an idea for a story, and I would like some feedback. This is way outside my comfort zone. It's too long to be a short story, so it will at least need to be a novella. With the concepts in mind, it needs to be character driven, and I will need to do a lot of research on the ACW, which I know very little about. I do write historical fiction, but not in this setting. I mostly write fantasy and horror so character-driven American historical fiction is... well, going to be a challenge. But hopefully an interesting one. So: The American Civil War has ended in a stalemate. With neither side able to make any significant gains, an uneasy compromise is reached. The Confederacy and the Union agree to a nominal federal union, with both sides having their own Presidents, Vice-Presidents and governments, which together form the new United States. The Confederacy (now known as the Southern United States) retains slavery. In 1867, Northern President Andrew Johnson is impeached and convicted, but refuses to hand over power with the support of (by now) unpopular Southern President Jefferson Davis, who had won a second term due to the "victory" of the Confederacy. War hero Ulysses S. Grant, backed by a number of state governors, takes matters into his own hands and forcibly deposes Johnson. Jefferson Davis is assassinated in 1868, propelling Alexander Stephens to the Southern Presidency. The ambitious Stephens looks to take advantage of the turmoil in the North to reunite the United States under a single presidency. Fearful of a military threat from the North under Grant, people in the South begin demanding immediate elections with Robert E. Lee as candidate. Stephens appoints him Vice-President to appease the voters. The two men do not get on, and their fractious relationship threatens to undermine the South. Somewhere along the line, all this leads to a reunification of the USA - how, I don't know yet. Any feedback, especially from American members, would be greatly appreciated.
It looks like a good backdrop for a story. Think of the movie 'Titanic'. The backdrop is the ship sailing across the Atlantic, hitting the iceberg and sinking. The story is about two young people trying to overcome a class divide. What characters will you have in your story? What will they be doing and how will the major events influence what happens? If you just give newspaper type accounts of the major events, I doubt it will be all that engaging.
The characters will be the politicians, generals and statesmen at the heart of the drama - so people like Lee, Stephens (who I see as the villain of the piece), Grant etc. This isn't just the backdrop - it's the actual story.
It might be worthwhile to consider the foreign dimensions as they could have quite an impact. Britain was poised to recognize the Confederacy if it looked like they might become viable. The British navy was mighty and could have been a serious weapon of political and economic pressure. France was waging a war to install the Hapsburg emperor Maximilian I in Mexico- after the war American pressure forced the French to withdraw leading to Maximilian's overthrow by Mexico's republicans, but if the US had remained divided it's possible France could have made it stick for a while. A stable French client state in Mexico could have exercised influence over the US.
That's been suggested to me too - with French garrisons in Texas and Louisiana providing support to the militarily weaker South. In this scenario, the US is still nominally united, which is why both Presidents have a claim to the sole leadership of the country - and that leads to both political and military conflict. I'm toying with the idea of making Robert E. Lee a Paul von Hindenburg type figure who keeps Stephens in check until he dies of a stroke in 1870.
I would double in on the above statements, although from a vastly different perspective. You shouldn't forget that Europe was - at the time - in the middle of a rather chaotic ripple of change in power. Precisely, these were the years of German & Italian unifications, the birth of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. I am pretty sure that had the Civil War been prolonged into a lengthy stalemate and conflict it would have overlapped with the other conflicts and there would have been a two-ways interaction. Germany/Bismarck would have looked at the US as a potential underling to exploit, and not as a potential participant in the Concert of Europe. I could easily see a 2nd war or a political crisis triggered by the revelation that one or both sides are courting external European support for a potential reunification. Or that Britain, France or Germany (Prussia if pre-1871) infiltrated USA internal affairs.
If Britain and France were the natural allies of the south here, then I suppose that would make Germany the best geopolitical allies of the north. I suppose I have to include a nefarious British ambassador as one of the characters.
Russia might also be a lesser factor- they supported the union and sent a few warships to New York, though I think there is disagreement as to the significance of this. They had recently been at war with France and England who had supported the Ottomans in the Crimean war.
I'm not sure about including Russian interference in American affairs. Napoleon III is deposed in the same year as Lee dies. I might have to rewrite some of those events, otherwise the military position of the South deteriorates too much. Perhaps President Stephens comes to an agreement with the President of the Third Republic for support. That's the problem with speculative history. Once you change one major event, the rest of the dominos start falling. This could end up being a world-spanning political novel if I let it.
Another wrinkle that springs to mind- as far as civil wars go, the American one was remarkably low in civilian casualties. Compare, for instance, to the Taiping rebellion happening at the same time in China (the bloodiest war of the 19th century). However, I think this may well have changed in the situation you imagine. Of course the terrorism of ex-confederates during and after Reconstruction is well known but I think the political deadlock would have seen a surge of very nasty irregular warfare from all factions, whether truly independent of the governments or used by them for committing brutal acts with plausible deniability. Demobilized soldiers might get into all kinds of antics, and not just with local causes. The Fenian Raids are seen as a curiosity nowadays but maybe something more serious could have developed. Demobilized black union soldiers might feel compelled to carve out some autonomous enclave to protect their communities- which may entail ethnic cleansing.
The only thing that I have a little trouble with is your basic premise--the South agreeing to a federal union with the North. The whole war was fought on the basis of them leaving the federal union already subsisting, so I think that some very persuading reasons for them to essentially rejoin it would be needed. The South fighting the North to a stalemate would have been just as good as a victory for them.
This looks like an interesting concept with quite a bit of potential. The only thing which feels off is: Given Stephens' views on secession, slavery, and race--outlined in stuff like the Cornerstone Speech--it seems doubtful he'd want to effectively restore the status quo antebellum. After all, reunification under one government leaves the country with the same or worse tensions it originally had: slaves fleeing to free states, free states chafing under the Fugitive Slave Act, congressional squabbling over the admission of new states, mass voter fraud in territorial elections, political violence between pro- and anti-slavery paramilitaries, etc. The desire to avoid these things and secure a permanent future for slavery is part of why the South opted for secession instead of a more traditional power grab, and why the Constitution of the CSA mandated slavery be legal in every state and territory. So I think it's much more likely Stephens would see the turmoil up north as an opportunity to achieve the South's original goals: complete independence. Russia might actually be a bigger factor, since Tsarist Russia was probably the closest European ally the US had during this period due to American diplomatic support during the Crimean War. In addition to the Crimean War, you've got the British and Russians playing the "Great Game" across the Middle East and Central Asia and Anglo-French meddling in the January Uprising. Russia would be on bad terms with the South's closest allies around this time. Alternatively, perhaps Napoleon III manages to avoid getting deposed. At least for a little longer than in real life. A weakened United States basically involved in a cold war with itself probably wouldn't have been able to exert enough pressure to force the French out of Mexico or otherwise enforce the Monroe Doctrine. Maybe his imperialist ambitions work out well enough in this timeline that he manages to remain in power...but they also leave other European powers wary of France. You're absolutely right about the potential for a world-spanning scope. Tug on the right threads and you could easily end up with WW1 a couple generations early.
That's why I think I might have to twist things a little bit and make Stephens want to place the entire USA under the same laws as the South, and re-enslave the blacks in the North. I didn't want to make it a story about race, but I suppose there's no avoiding it to a greater or lesser degree.
You might be able to make this work, but keep in mind the strong sectionalism of the 1800s United States. People often identified more closely with their state or regional identity than their national one. It's not hard to see why, given the vast differences between the industrialized Northeast, yeoman farmers of the Midwest and Great Plains, and plantation economy of the South. Like, when Stephens talks about the cornerstone of "our" society resting on white supremacy, he's not talking about the United States as a whole. He's talking about the South. In the minds of many Southerners at the time, they were fundamentally different from the "Yankees". So the sectionalism might cause some issues: 1) Already touched on this: you'll need a strong motive to push Stephens and other Southerners from "Secession and independence to protect our way of life (slavery)" to "Conquer the North and force it to adopt our way of life." A big shift to make in five or six years. 2) You'll need a reason for them to believe such a thing would be feasible in the long-term, or at least a reason for them to ignore the potential long-term consequences. After a bloody war over slavery, I'd expect the North to be more radically abolitionist. Revanchist. Maybe even a little more egalitarian than during the same era in our timeline. Even if the South ultimately won a second war and conquered the North, there's going to be ferocious resistance to any attempt at remaking them in the South's image. There'd probably be question of "Is conquest really worth it?" 3) Economics. Even more than abolitionism, economics killed slavery in the North. The crops plantation economies are built on don't grow too well north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and small farms growing crops which grow better in those climates don't need as much labor. This is part of why the CSA's plans for post-war expansion focused on the Carribean and Latin America. So you'll need to articulate why and how the Stephens faction thinks implementing slavery nationwide would work. One thing that might be help the broader discussion is if we knew what the exact point of divergence from our timeline was. Why did this version of the American Civil War end in a stalemate and compromise instead of a Union victory?
My current plan is - Maximilian I takes the Mexican throne in 1864. French and Mexican troops invade the US in support of the Confederacy, and in the following 12 months, Confederate losses are reversed, and Lincoln is assassinated in April 1865 as he was in real life. With regards the economy, British and French money flows into the south, allowing the economy to flourish, with government subsidies to rebuild the railways. It's also been suggested that Stephens could take a Hamiltonian approach to a national bank and paying off war debt, against Democratic opposition, thus giving him an even bigger incentive to keep Lee (who has huge political influence) sweet.
@Naomasa298 What is your take on North-west Virginia during the armistice? It could be a DMZ or alternatively, it could be a point of tension and military build-up.
I think the latter - an area occupied by the North but with a population demanding to join the South (if I understood the history correctly).
The population of West Virginia voted pretty heavily against secession in the first place and later in favor of statehood, so I don't know how much clamor there would be for rejoining the South. The main bone of contention, it seems to me, would be the Confederacy's refusal to acknowledge its separate statehood as legitimate. I doubt if the Union would be ok with treating one of its own states as a DMZ, and I doubt it West Virginia itself would like it either. That could be a major diplomatic stumbling block.
For clarity's sake, I was thinking what specific event caused the divergence. What caused France to intervene in this timeline when they didn't in ours? Like how the CSA wins in Timeline-191 because Lee's plans weren't recovered by the Union before Antietam. On that note, the border states and the territories claimed by the CSA also present an issue. Delaware barely even counted as a border state, Kentuckians favored the Union 2-1, but Missouri and Maryland strongly supported the Confederacy. Missouri bushwhackers remained a problem even after the war. Maybe you'd see a compromise, with a band of border states from both sides--Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri--serving as a DMZ. The territories are a bit trickier. Confederate agents promised the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole) of Indian Territory statehood in exchange for their support, and these tribal governments generally backed them. They did experience civil wars of their own, though. With the CSA having a bit of leverage in peace negotiations, you might see Indian Territory admitted as a Southern state. Sequoyah, maybe? Confederate Arizona is a more complicated matter, and outside my area of expertise. Much of this thread has focused on the potential role of European powers, but we can't ignore the impact Native Americans might have out West and down into Mexico. Comancheria covered about a third of Texas, almost half of Indian Territory, and parts of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. Although the Comanche had suffered from devastating smallpox and cholera outbreaks during the 1840s and 1850s and lost influential chieftains like Iron Jacket and Peta Nocona fighting the Texas Rangers, they experienced something of a renaissance during the Civil War. American troops were no longer stationed along the Rio Grande, so they were free to resume their lucrative deep-penetration raids into Mexico. During your "cold war" period, it's not hard to imagine American agents supplying them--plus their Kiowa and Naishan Apache allies--with repeating rifles and medicine in exchange for conducting raids on French Mexico and Confederate Texas. Same story with Apache bands in Confederate Arizona and Mexico. Meanwhile, the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho would make useful proxies for the South. After all, they managed to win Red Cloud's War in our timeline and (temporarily) force the US out of the Powder River Country without any outside help. Imagine the threat they could pose with Southern and/or French aid.
I'm afraid I know to little about American history so I can't comment on the details of it. But it sounds interesting to me. What I could mention is that there are essentially two ways to go about this, as far as I see. Either the Tetrachy eventually collapses into a single guy holding all the power and uniting the US, kind of what happened in the Roman Empire in regards to the Tetrarchy. Or it alls falls apart into dysfunctional infighting and someone from outside of the Tetrarchy comes in to solve the problems that the entrenched Tetrarchy can't find a solution to.
