by Alan Sewell
Table of Contents
Foreword
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Afterword
Foreword
The Civil War is the favorite subject of alternate history discussions because it was such a close-run struggle that any number of minor deviations from actual events might have changed its outcome. The Confederate Union series addresses a question even larger than the war itself. What if the South had not seceded?
The pivotal event that enabled the South’s secession was the disruption of the Democratic Party during its convention in Charleston, South Carolina in March 1860. After its disruption in Charleston, the Democrats split into three factions --- a Northern faction headed by Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, a Southern Rights faction headed by John Breckinridge of Kentucky, and a “Constitutional Union” faction headed by John Bell of Tennessee.
In the general election that followed, the fragmented Democrats were beaten by Abraham Lincoln’s united Republicans, who received an electoral vote majority while winning less than 40% of the popular vote. The vote was especially close in several Free States. In the four-way contest Lincoln won California with only 32% of the popular vote and Oregon with 36%. He barely prevailed in Illinois with 50.7% and in Indiana with 51.1%. If the Democrats had not discredited themselves by dividing into three competing factions, could they have prevailed in those four states, giving Stephen Douglas the electoral vote majority?
Confederate Union begins its departure into alternate history in March 1860 when Stephen Douglas persuades Jefferson Davis to enter into a Compact to keep the Democrats united at their Charleston Convention. The Democrats, united behind the Douglas / Davis ticket, defeat attempts by Southern Secessionists to disrupt the party as their first step in preparing to leave the Union. This story is told in the first volume of this series:
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Douglas and Davis campaign against Abraham Lincoln’s Republicans on the slogan “Confederate Union, United Expansion!” They pledge that the United States, now styled “The Confederate Union,” will continue to expand southward into Mexico and the Caribbean and northward into the Canadas. Douglas believes that the promise of adding more Slave States to the South and Free States to the North will save the Union by uniting Americans of pro-slavery and anti-slavery views around the common goal of national expansion.
The united Democrats duly elect their Douglas / Davis ticket by picking up the states of Indiana, Illinois, California, and Oregon, in addition to carrying all the slave states plus New Jersey that they actually carried with the three-way split ticket, giving them an electoral vote majority of 156 to Lincoln’s Republican ticket of 147. After the Douglas / Davis victory events begin to rapidly diverge from history as we know it:
Southern slave catchers enter the Northern Free States to recover runaway slaves. Armed conflict erupts between slave raiders and Abolitionists at Delphi, Indiana.
The fighting spreads to other parts of the North that are closely divided in their loyalties between President Douglas and the upstart Republican Party. The fighting becomes known as “The Partisan War” as paramilitaries from both parties battle for control of closely-contested areas of the North.
The Republicans hold a convention in Cleveland, Ohio, declaring the Free States to be federated under a new national government. Abraham Lincoln becomes President of The United States of Free America.
Confederate Union President Stephen Douglas issues an ultimatum declaring that the Free States will be reclaimed by force if they do not give up the rebellion and return to the Confederate Union. The ultimatum is refused.
The Confederate Union opens a hurried ad-hoc offensive to overwhelm the Free States in one blow but is thwarted at Gettysburg by the unexpected arrival of Free States forces commanded by John C. Fremont.
Stephen Douglas dies of typhoid. Vice President Jefferson Davis becomes President of the Confederate Union. George McClellan devises a comprehensive strategic plan for recovering the Free States.
The Confederate Union War is on!
Will Jefferson Davis, the Nationalist President of The Confederate Union, triumph over Secessionist President Abraham Lincoln, who comes to believe that the founding principles of the old United States must be preserved in the new United States of Free America?
1
New York City, August 1, 1861
The military frontier on August 1, 1861
New York Tribune Editor Horace Greeley paced his office on the upper floor of his newspaper’s building. Hazy sunshine filtered into the room through layers of high clouds. The curtains in the window flapped in the desultory breeze. From this perch Greeley could see most of the archipelago of Metropolitan New York. Looking out the far window he had an unobstructed view across the rooftops and over the East River to the City of Brooklyn. The view from the west window looked out on the suburban towns across the Hudson spreading inland into New Jersey.
Greeley observed two flags flying over the city.
The old “Stars and Stripes” was flown by New Yorkers who sought neutrality from the civil war out there beyond the fortified lines ringing the suburbs, and by those too old or too provincial to care much about what went on in the hinterlands beyond the Hudson. The new Confederate Union flag, with its broad white and red vertical bars, was also visible above the cityscape. It had been designed by West Point Commandant Pierre Beauregard as his battle flag while fighting the Free Staters besieging the U.S. Military Academy up the Hudson. It had been taken up by citizens of Democratic Party affiliation who sought to recast the nation in their party’s image as a confederation of sovereign states.
Off beyond the horizon, along the military frontier encircling the metropolis, flew the “Gold Star” flag of The United States of Free America. Greeley, a Republican Party man of anti-slavery sentiment, had considered relocating his paper to the territory held by his friends in “Free America.” But he had finally decided that he could better serve the cause by staying put and continuing to publish his paper here, hoping it would balance the views of the unabashedly pro-Confederate newspapers in town.
The mental effort required to present the war objectively to his Republican-voting readers made Greeley’s head throb. They asked many questions, but they all boiled down to: “Which side is going to win, and how should we position ourselves to gain the most advantage when the shooting stops?” Was that big-city cynicism or simply a matter of pragmatism? After all, many of Greeley’s readers were businesspeople. They did not care much about slavery one way or another. Their desire would naturally be to sit out a war they cared little about until peace returned and they could get back to their business of trading with both sides.
Of course it was impossible for anybody to be entirely neutral during a civil war. By not joining the Free States, Metro New York had severely diminished their chances of success.
Our adherence to the Confederate Union has denied the Free States near a million and a half people as well as their centers of finance and commerce. The loss of the ports and railroad terminals has them bottled up. Without their European tra
de they receive no foreign exchange. Their loss of prestige in failing to take Metropolitan New York with them into a new country has hurt them even more. England and France will not recognize the independence of a “United States of Free America” that does not include New York.
Some two hundred thousand Metropolitan New Yorkers had evacuated to Free State lines. These included the most ardent Abolitionists as well as most of the city’s Negroes who feared that their rights as free men and women would not be maintained under the Confederate Union government. A few businesses and banks had relocated to Free State territory or at least had moved their financial papers there, but most were staying put and trying to do business as usual, and hoping that the war would soon be over. Nevertheless, the movement of people and businesses out of the city had been very much less than Greeley had expected. For now most New Yorkers were calculating that their fortunes were best served by remaining loyal to the Confederate Union, or at least being unobtrusively neutral, as Greeley himself was doing.
Greeley reminded himself that his readers were the one-third of New Yorkers who voted Republican. The two-thirds who voted Democratic were enthusiastically loyal to President Davis and his Confederate Union government. Davis had often spoken to the Democrats here in the late 1850’s, being well-received as a moderate Unionist. He had increased his popularity by joining with Stephen Douglas to cut the ground out from under the Southern Secessionists who might have destroyed the Union before the Free Staters beat them to the punch. New York’s Democrats were bent on making this city the beating heart of the Confederate Union.
The Democrats have economics working for them. Our businesses earn the lion’s share of their profits by lending, factoring, shipping, and speculating on the value of Slave State cotton. And our working classes, especially the recently arrived Irish immigrants, don’t want to compete with Negroes for work. The Democrats keep telling them that if the Republicans have their way, they’ll set the Southern Blacks free to swarm up here and take their jobs. That’s all Mayor Fernando Wood ever talks about.
And, of course, no New Yorker, Republican or Democrat, wanted to back the losing side.
Even most of our Republican voters will not cast their lot with the Free States until they are assured that they will win, and that is far from certain. Things might have been different if the Free States had won the Partisan War. They prevailed against the Democrats in Ohio and Pennsylvania but failed to break the Confederate Union’s hold on Illinois, Indiana, and this metropolis. We now have a stalemate. Until it is broken New Yorkers are going to support the status quo, which as of now is the Confederate Union.
Greeley estimated that the same calculation was going on out in the Pacific Coast. Out there the territorial governments of California and Oregon had been organized by the Democratic administrations of Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. Those presidents had packed the territorial legislatures and executive offices with Southern Democrats who had remained in office when the territories were admitted as states. California and Oregon had voted for the Democratic ticket of Stephen Douglas and Jefferson Davis by two-to-one. The one-third who voted Republican included a fair share of Abolitionists. But like their counterparts here in New York they were unlikely to rise up against the Confederate Union so long as Free State Independence was in doubt.
Greeley decided that the best way to explain all of this to his readers would be to show it on a map. To show his plate engraver what he wanted printed, he overlaid his map of the former United States with architectural tracing paper. On the tracing paper he drew with blue grease pencil the military frontier. He pasted lithographed miniatures of the Confederate Union and United States of Free America flags to the tracing paper to show areas where the forces were concentrating their militias.
Greeley knew that both sides were building their forces up around New York and Philadelphia in the East. In the Northwest each side was assembling armies in Indiana and Illinois. Greeley sensed that both sides were thinking that whichever one succeeding in occupying the whole of Indiana and Illinois would be destined to win the war.
Greeley did not estimate that The United States of Free America could survive the loss of these two states, which though free of slavery, were politically more closely aligned with the Democratic Confederate Union than with the Republican Abolitionist Northeast. He expected that if the Confederates gained complete over these two states then Ohio and Pennsylvania, also closely divided in sentiment, would be the next to fold. But if the Free States succeeded in pushing the Confederates south of the Ohio River, the Confederates would have to recognize that the re-conquest of the Free States was beyond their means.
Greeley marked the points of military concentration in the East and Northwest with lithographs of the Free State and Confederate Union flags. He also had reports that the Confederates were reinforcing their forts on the Pacific Coast in order to make certain of their hold on that region. He marked the Pacific Coast with Confederate Union lithographs. He placed a Free State lithograph over Kansas out on the frontier to show that the Free Staters were bolstering their forces there to prevent the Confederates from picking it off with incursions from Missouri and Texas.
Greeley considered showing the military buildup beyond the national borders. In Mexico the French had moved their army inland from Veracruz and into siege lines around Mexico City. In other circumstances this affront to the Monroe Doctrine would have meant war with the United States, but of course the Americans were too busy making war on each other at the moment to concern themselves with anybody else.
Up in the Canadas the British were augmenting their squadron at Halifax and reinforcing their border forts that had deteriorated into crumbling piles of brick during decades of peace with the United States. Greeley thought that the British would want to steer clear of any direct involvement in the American War, but they were wise to take precautions to prevent it from spilling across their borders. Greeley decided not to display the French and British forces as that would distract his readers from the main conflict between the Confederate Union and the Free States.
Now he needed to decide on a name for the war. The Free Staters were calling it The War of Free State Independence. The Confederates were calling it The Civil War, given their view that it was an insurrection by the Republican Party rather than a war with the Free States as a nation. Greeley thought for a while then decided that the best name for the conflict would be the Confederate Union War. People on both sides could read what ever they want to into that name.
Greeley felt the tension in his head easing. He lay down and stretched out on his office couch. A fresh breeze stirred the curtains, bringing a touch of cooler air from the sea. He closed his eyes and dozed, satisfied that he had done enough editorial work for this day.
2
Baltimore, August 5, 1861
Confederate Union Secretary of War George McClellan and Assistant Secretary of War Edwin Stanton looked out over the northern outskirts of Baltimore and into the fields where the Confederate Union militiamen returning from Gettysburg were camped. A drizzle mist blew in off the Chesapeake, washing the sweat off the men who sauntered briskly about on their errands.
McClellan smelled hot rations cooking in the commissary wagons. He saw sacks of mail being taken to company headquarters for distribution. That took care of two of the most important things necessary to restore the morale of a defeated army.
The other important thing was to keep the men busy. Most were at work building fortifications around the front of the camp and digging sanitary trenches on its far side. Lee was a military engineer. The fortifications showed his expert eye for terrain. Entrenchments were being dug at the base of ridges of high ground. Firing pits and artillery were being mounted on the high ground. Beyond the entrenchments alert sentries stood watch.
“These men don’t look beaten, do they?” McClellan asked rhetorically.
“I was thinking the same,” Stanton answered. “Lee isn’t allowing his men id
le time to brood over their defeat. He’s getting them ready to fight the next battle.”
McClellan nodded. “That’s our ‘Bobby Lee.’ Any other general would be busy writing letters blaming others for the defeat. Lee doesn’t waste his time on that prattle. If anybody asks he will say, ‘It was all my fault. My men weren’t beaten. They were out-generalled.’ That’s the mark of a true leader.”
McClellan and Stanton walked toward the encampment. McClellan asked a lieutenant directions to Lee’s headquarters. They were directed to the guest house of a planation about a mile behind the camp.
“It is evident that you’ve restored order here!” said McClellan to Lee after greetings were exchanged.
“Yes,” replied Lee, “We must instill proper military discipline in these men before committing them again to battle. I’ve sent Colonel Jackson on to Wilmington to get those men organized as well.”
Lee’s expression stiffened. “I must also inform you that I’m recalling Beauregard’s command from West Point. I hate to give it up, but we won’t be able to hold it with the enemy bringing up heavy artillery in preparation for another assault. I’d rather abandon the institution intact than see it wrecked by fighting. In any case it makes no sense to sacrifice men in holding a position merely for prestige. I’m reassigning the men and equipment to New York City.”
“Giving up the post will give the Rebels another point to crow about,” McClellan acknowledged. “But it is strategically sterile. As you say it makes no sense to sacrifice its garrison. My only regret is that the press will see this as another defeat whose blame rests on you.”
“I’m pleased to receive all the blame they allocate to me. I am better able to bear it than are some others.”
McClellan nodded. Few generals in any army accepted blame graciously. Lee’s willingness to accept it, including the share that rightfully belonged to others, was a pillar of his greatness.
