The Confederate Union War
Page 26
Greeley noted that both sides had added men to their armies. The Confederates had drawn one of their armies up into Missouri to thwart the raids by Abolitionists operating out of Iowa and Kansas. The Free States had activated an army to oppose Confederate advances into interior New England. W.T. Sherman had contained the Confederates with his fortified “Sherman Line” that covered the resettlement area for loyal Free Staters.
The fronts around New York and Philadelphia remained quiet, as they had since the abortive Confederate attack toward Harrisburg and Philadelphia in late July.
On this map Greeley noted the augmentation of British forces in East and West Canada. Was this augmentation the beginning of a buildup for intervention?
Afterword
I had originally intended that this book should tell the entire story of the Confederate Union War. However, writing credible alternate history requires that events and personalities must be considered and explained in the most realistic ways that they most probably would have developed. The book was intended to span two years, but when finished it covered only the period from August 1 to December 31, 1861.
A number of stories had to be told within this timeframe. One is Cump Sherman’s conversion from “I don’t give a fig” neutrality to becoming Lincoln’s chief military advisor and “travelling fireman” sent to firm up the crumbling fronts in Indiana and New England. Sherman is one of many people who didn’t vote for Mr. Lincoln, but who is eventually brought around to Mr. Lincoln’s view that the United States of Free America is the inheritor of America’s founding principles.
Then there is the story of the rise to prominence of Lincoln’s other generals U.S. “Sam” Grant, John Fremont, John Schofield, Sam Curtis, and Ormsby Mitchel. Their rise happens earlier than it did in the actual Civil War because the United States of Free America, being a smaller country, has more room in its chain of command for early promotions. Its survival depends upon the rapid promotion of its successful commanders at the outset.
Within the Confederate Union the story had to be told of why the Confederates, so committed to state sovereignty, would choose to fight a long debilitating war to recover the breakaway Free States. It turns out that the men in the Confederate Union’s high command have a dual nature. Although they talk about the theory of states rights, they are also Democratic Party Nationalists in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson who regard the Union as a sacred inheritance that must be handed down to the following generations inviolate. They do not believe that the Confederate Union will ever be secure if the Free States go off into a separate nation and ally themselves with Great Britain.
In this scenario George McClellan, who had been a protégé of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis in the 1850s, regards President Davis to be a trusted mentor. He does not display that strange combination of arrogance, paranoia, and defeatism that crippled his effectiveness as Lincoln’s general during the real Civil War. In the Confederate Union the political and military leaders are his colleagues, and his entire energy is devoted to the mobilization of military and economic power and their maximum application to win the war quickly. He sets a much more rapid pace for the Confederate Union War than his plodding half-hearted advances in the actual Civil War.
The backstory of economics also needed to be told, because armies can’t fight in the field unless their economic needs for food and equipment are supplied. The Free States have printed paper currency to replace their lost gold reserves, and they have persuaded the British to give them free transit across the Canadian “back door” now that the Confederates have taken their ports.
The British seem to be looking for opportunities to intervene on behalf of the Free States. They see the Free States as an ally in putting down slavery and as a buffer state that will block any designs the expansionist Confederate Union may have on the Canadas or other parts of the British Empire. Were the Confederate Union to be reunited and then go on to fulfill its most ardent expansionists’ desire to establish sovereignty over the entirety of the American Continents the British would have to look upon it as a potentially hostile military and commercial rival.
The Confederate Union also has its own domestic dissidents. Will the tension between the States Rights faction, led by William Yancey and Robert Barnwell Rhett, and the nationalist faction, led by Edwin Stanton, shatter its internal unity and force it out of the war? The States Rights men have not surrendered their dream of creating a Southern Confederacy of “sovereign” states and then expanding it into a great slaveholding empire in the lands south of the Rio Grande. In their view the Confederate Union is just another name for the “Yankeefied” government of the old United States that they were bucking to get out from under.
Which side has the upper hand in the war now?
In the Northwest, the Confederates, after taking forty thousand causalities, have gained only a small portion of ground along the Ohio River from Cincinnati westward. The 500-mile front across the Northwest has now been hardened with fortifications by the Free Staters. The Free Staters have learned to fight in large armies that are as capable as the Confederate Union’s.
Likewise in New England, the Confederates have taken the ports of Boston, Portsmouth, and Portland, and have neutralized Providence by siege, but are unable to make any further progress against the fortified “Sherman Line” along the Connecticut River.
The Free Staters have fought brilliantly, but they are only just beginning to feel the effects of McClellan and Stanton’s massive mobilization that has given the Confederates an army of more than half a million men and will soon provide them with formidable ocean-going and inland-waters navies.
The high commands of both sides are only now meshing their gears. For the Confederates it is the team of Jefferson Davis, George McClellan, Robert E. Lee, and Edwin Stanton. For the Free States it is Abraham Lincoln, Sam Grant, Cump Sherman, John Fremont, John Schofield, and Ormsby Mitchel. In the 1862 campaigns they will collide head-on with their full strength. Will the Confederate Union’s high command be able to mastermind a strategy to bring the United States of Free America back into the fold before it grows too strong to contend with and before the British intervene on its behalf?
The outcome of the war will be decided in the final volume of the series, The War of Free America, coming in December 2014.
About the Author
Alan Sewell has intensively studied the Civil War for more than thirty years, especially its politics and political dissent. Alan has written two articles for the December 1981 Civil War Times Illustrated Special issue: DISSENT: FIRE IN THE REAR. Alan has also reviewed books in CWTI on the Pennsylvania Antiwar Movement and the career of General John Logan in Illinois.
I have previously published the first volume in this series Confederate Union
www.amazon.com/dp/B00AKG0LZI/
Before that Alan published the stand-alone Civil War Novel Fire in the Heartland that describes the personal and political intrigues within the Lincoln Administration as seen by a family living in Kentucky, Alabama, and Illinois:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00514WNYG
Alan and his family live in Melrose, Florida and Manistee, Michigan.
Copyright
The Confederate Union War is a work of fiction. All characters other than historical figures are fictional. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
Copyright 2013 by Alan Sewell
Pictures are courtesy of the Library of Congress and other sources in the public domain.
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