1817: Mississippi gains statehood, although Alabama Territory is split away from it at the demand of its settlers four months prior.
President X4 capitalizes on Spain's losing efforts to control its old colonies to reach the Drummond-Onis Treaty, snapping up Florida in exchange for $5 million - thereby satisfying even the most hawkish Democratic-Republicans while simultaneously kicking one of the major planks in their foreign policy platform since the American defeat in 1812 out from underneath them with this bloodless victory. This latest acquisition was to prove difficult to handle; aside from the Spanish settlers along the coasts and the Americans living up on the northern and western border areas, Florida's inner marshes were home to the tenacious Seminoles and a large group of freedmen & runaway slaves, some of them former soldiers in the British or Spanish armies, who lived with their families in and around the so-called 'Negro Fort'.
Once more, instead of turning to violence the Federalists would seek a negotiated solution; thus in an effort to secure peace in Florida while balancing the concerns of both Northern abolitionists, Southern slaveholders and all-American expansionist settlers, President X4 would first reach the Treaty of Moultrie Creek with the Seminole in August 1819, trading 24 million acres of Seminole land and recognition of the US federal government as the only legitimate government of Florida in exchange for a 4,000,000-acre reservation spanning from Kissimmee in deep central Florida to the southern Everglades and a steady stream of supplies and annual payments, and the Peace of Pensacola with the freedmen of the Negro Fort in December, recognizing them all as freedmen with exclusive settling rights to the Negro Fort and its immediate environs, as well as the right to elect their own Mayor (though they were still locked out of all other territorial elections and in time, state & national elections) issuing more annual cash compensations in exchange for their recognition of US authority and a cession to aid for new runaways from Georgia and Louisiana. An uneasy peace thus dawned over Florida as the Seminoles kept to themselves, the Negro Fort grew out into the community of 'Freetown' and white settlers quickly became a majority as more & more of them settled in the ceded Seminole lands - but the question on everyone's minds was, 'how long could this arrangement last'?
| Depiction of a black militiaman at the 'Negro Fort', 1821 |  |
President X4 signs the Rogers-Bagot Treaty, partially demilitarizing the Great Lakes in an effort to cool tensions - and American tempers, as many Westerners and especially Southerners were still sore about losing the War of 1812.
1818: Illinois gains statehood.
1819: Alabama becomes a state.
The continued existence of the Bank of the United States is found to be constitutional by the Supreme Court in McCulloch v. Maryland.
The Panic of 1819 hits as the Bank of the United States attempts to rein in reckless speculation and forcing state-chartered banks to start backing their paper money with metals to curb the dramatic levels of inflation, which combined with the recovery of European agriculture since the Napoleonic Wars (and thus a decrease in their demand for American grain) resulted in widespread bankruptcies and fast-growing unemployment. Needless to say, the Democratic-Republicans just gained a ton of ammunition while the Federalists' domestic positions - high tariffs, a focus on internal improvements and the use of the Bank - took a hit, forcing them to rely on their largely solid foreign policy credentials as they geared up for next year's presidential election.
The issue of whether to admit Missouri as a free or slave state crops up when in response to the Democratic-Republican-held House passing the acceptance of Missouri as a slave state, the nearly eighty-year-old Senator George Saker of Massachusetts - a known abolitionist - proposes the Saker Amendment in the Senate, which would have extinguished slavery in the new state within a generation by forbidding the import of new slaves to the region and declaring that any child born to slaves on Missourian soil would in truth be born free. The Senate promptly exploded into a round of fierce debates over the 'Peculiar Institution', in which men such as senior Georgia Senator Edmund Wilson (one of Saker's bitterest rivals since their sons' less than pleasant working relationship with each other in the War of 1812 finally went down in flames) dared utter words such as 'disunion' in their protest. However, the boldest of Saker's enemies would prove to not even be Wilson but rather his almost-as-elderly counterpart and occasional Governor of South Carolina then-Senator Roland Rutledge, who proclaimed:
 Originally Posted by Senator R. Rutledge, SC
Sir, you have kindled a fire that all the waters in the world's oceans cannot hope to put out, that only seas of blood can extinguish! Truly I must tell you, if you insist on pursuing this destructive course of action - if you and your fellow Yankees would insist on making war on this greatest and most peculiar of Southern institutions - then the Union shall, not can but shall, surely be dissolved, and rightly so for its government will have exceeded itself. ... The Negro whom you evidently love more than I, your brother in the white race, is not and will never be ready for freedom. He needs our chains to guide him down the right path, and our whips to keep him from harming himself or others. ... Must I remind you of the Ides of March, and the fate that befell Caesar when he sought to exceed his prerogative and behave in a most tyrannical manner? I caution you to not make such mistakes, Sir.
Saker clearly did not take these less-than-subtle threats well, if his equally inflammatory response is anything to go by:
Originally Posted by Senator G. Saker, MA
Sir, if dissolution of the Union must take place, let it be so! If civil war, which you gentlemen of the South have threatened so gravely must come, I can only say, let it come! I am already old, and so my hold on life is frailer than that of any man who now hears me; but while the hold lasts, it shall be devoted to the principles on which this great nation was founded - to the freedom of man. If blood is necessary to extinguish any fire which I have assisted to kindle, I can assure you gentlemen that I have no intention of spilling even one drop of mine own - but I have every intention to spill every drop belonging to those who would stand against me instead. ... The lowest Negro slave is more a brother to me than any of the men who hold him in bondage, in direct contravention to all laws natural and spiritual. ... You say I should cease from persisting in my current course, that I should bend the knee to the gentlemen of the South and seal my lips whenever the question of slavery arises? Then it is with extreme pleasure that I utter these words now, where all of you may hear: I declare, I proclaim, I define your Peculiar Institution to be a vile blight upon this fair nation, one that strips the Negro of his birthright to freedom and falsely declares him an infantile brute in need of your civilizing whips where in truth he already possesses the intelligence to know his rights, and will always have the spirit to maintain them no matter how often you scourge his back - and that I intend to oppose said Institution unto my dying breath, and beyond!
Saker's motion eventually failed when even a number of other Federalists broke ranks with him to appease the Southern Senators and thereby preserve the Union, and though he angrily cursed them all as 'Cowards and traitors to the very notion of decency and the common human race' his efforts obviously didn't change their minds, if anything it got him dismissed as a crazy old man by even more of them.
| Senators Rutledge of South Carolina and Saker of Massachusetts |   |
At the same time, Southern Senators also lobbied for Maine's entry into the Union as a slave state, which is received about as well as one would expect by the Northern Senators (for one thing, Senator Saker actually rose from his seat to throttle Senator Wilson of GA and had to be forced back down by his fellow Northern statesmen, exhibiting surprising strength for a man of his age all the while).
1820: Congress finally reaches the Missouri Compromise over objections from both extreme ends of the abolitionist-slavocratic spectrum, admitting Maine as a free state while guaranteeing Missouri's entry as a slave state next year and prohibiting slavery in all other territories north of the 36°30′ parallel.
| The Missouri Compromise Line |  |
The Federalist X7 is elected to succeed outgoing President X4 this year by a much narrower margin than his party had previously enjoyed, having barely eked out a majority of both electoral and popular votes after banking on the Missouri Compromise at home and foreign policy successes such as the Drummond-Onis Treaty. The Democratic-Republicans continued to hold the House while the Federalists majority in the Senate was weakened. Up North, this is notably the first election in which African-Americans participated on a large scale; the descendants of Maroons who could prove their ancestors had previously fought in the American Revolution or the War of 1812 were allowed the franchise in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont. By 1824, this limited enfranchisement of Maroon descendants would be extended in Maine and New Hampshire as well.
Believing that the Coalition Powers would have no issue with them finishing off a Bonapartist-built state, the Ottoman Empire declares war on Greece. King Eugenios (Eugene de Beauharnais) rallies his subjects to defend their independence, and finds them willing to support him; though he had never converted away from Catholicism, he respected the Greeks' Orthodox beliefs and had worked with local elites to the point of permitting them to draft the national Constitution that he signed the year prior (though this did produce the odd side effect of making Greek Orthodoxy the state religion of a kingdom with a Catholic king).
Ferdinand VII of Spain is ousted in a coup sponsored by liberals and junior military officers, who were disgusted at his authoritarian and incompetent leadership and his reinstitution of the Jesuits. The King is kept under heavy guard by his captors and the Constitution of 1812 restored, to the great consternation of the Winter King ruling just across the border.
Taking advantage of the weakness of the Caribbean planter lobby (which still had to recover fully from the Americans' liberation of the entire slave population of the island nearly fifty years prior), Britain's powerful abolitionist lobby manages to ram through the total abolition of slavery across the Empire, albeit with monetary compensation for slaveholders.
1821: Missouri attains statehood.
Mexico gains its independence from Spain, and is proclaimed an Empire by Generalissimo Agustin de Iturbide, a Criollo and career soldier of wealthy origins with conservative leanings. Needless to say, he was immediately opposed by committed republicans Guadalupe Victoria and Vicente Guerrero.
1822: Ferdinand VII finally escapes his gaolers and appealed to the Congress of Vienna for help against the revolutionary cabal in control of Spain. Louis XVII practically jumps at this chance, and with the approval of the other Great Powers began to mobilize a mighty army on his side of the Pyrenees to obliterate the Spanish Liberal Junta.
Brazil declares its independence from Portugal and names Pedro, Crown Prince of Portugal its Emperor. A war between father and son erupts as King John VI of Portugal sent his armies across the Atlantic to bring the rebellious prince & his colony to heel. While Louis XVII was busy mapping out his campaign against the Spanish liberals, Napoleon Francois Bonaparte (AKA L'Aiglon or 'Napoleon II') and his younger brother Charles-Napoleon were able to flee their admittedly comfortable prison on Madeira; however, instead of going to France, where Napoleon II rightly reasoned that Louis XVII's position was still too powerful to overcome, they instead sailed to Brazil, where they found refuge at the court of Pedro I and Napoleon II in particular joined the newborn Imperial Brazilian Army as an artillery officer - just like his old man.
The twenty-two-year-old heir to the British throne, Prince George of Wales (b. 16 February 1800) marries Sophie Wilhelmine, Princess of Sweden. The Prince of Wales utterly loathed his father, who mistreated him and his mother all his life, and had by this time cultivated the persona of a stoic, prim and religiously devout gentleman in direct contrast to the elder George's womanizing, hard-drinking and obnoxious manners; no doubt this was why he picked the Swedish princess, a haughty and imperious aristocrat who, as befitting the daughter of the restored Gustav IV Adolf, was similarly firmly conservative.
1823: At home, a high tariff promoted by the Federalists (who had just gained a majority in the House) is shot down - not just by Southern and Western-based Democratic-Republicans, but also by many of the newly elected Federalists, who hailed from the western ends of Pennsylvania and New York or Western states such as Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.
France launches its expedition into Spain in support of Ferdinand VII, called the 'Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis': exactly one hundred thousand soldiers marching under the fleur-de-lys and the supreme command of Marshal de la Rochejacquelein, with orders to annihilate the liberal Cortes & all who supported it. Harassed by conservative guerrillas in the less liberal countryside, fraught with infighting between partisans of different strains of liberalism and strapped for resources, the Liberal army was unable to put up much resistance until the French had already taken Madrid and were marching on the gates of Cadiz, where they were utterly defeated anyway. Ferdinand VII was returned to full power and promptly unleashed his terrible vengeance upon the defeated Liberals, executing thousands without trial. Although De la Rochejacquelein was reportedly disturbed by these developments, and especially angered at the slaughter of prisoners whose safety he had personally guaranteed in exchange for their surrender, Louis XVII publicly declared his support of 'our Spanish cousins' righteous efforts to extirpate the taint of liberalism entirely from their kingdom'. Ferdinand's atrocities were a sign of what was to come - the next 10 years of his rule would not be called the Ominous Decade for no reason, to be sure.
| The French Army at Trocadero, 1823 |  |
Agustin I of Mexico finds his position threatened when Victoria, Guerrero and the republicans joined forces with Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, another career officer with high ambitions and whose sole concern was for #1. Santa Anna's reasons for joining the republicans are unclear; knowing what kind of man he was, he may have desired to overthrow Agustin and take the throne for himself, or set up a conservative republic with himself as President for life in an attempt to satisfy everyone (but especially himself). However, Santa Anna turned on the republicans at the last second and sold them all out to Agustin, who promptly squashed their undermanned and chaotic revolt before executing Guerrero (Victoria having fled into the countryside) & naming Santa Anna Governor of Veracruz as a reward for his timely shift of allegiance.
1824: This year's election is fraught with infighting in the ranks of both the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, particularly over the issues of slavery and tariffs. The ruling Federalists were the first to crack: at their party convention in February, the meeting hall in Manhattan was fraught with heated discussions and at least two major brawls before the staunchly abolitionist and protectionist 'High Federalist' faction narrowly won out, ensuring that the party would nominate an abolitionist candidate with a platform of total (though financially compensated) abolition, the institution of high tariffs, an expansion of the Bank's scope and powers, and continued national improvements that year. The 'Low Federalists' walked out en masse; Southerners such as the Simonses and Drummonds wanted nothing to do with an abolitionist party, and Westerners/Northerners detested the centralizing policies of the High Federalists. The Democratic-Republicans too fractured in May, as the dominant Southern faction's insistence on making the preservation of slavery and an immediate war of expansion against Mexico simply to snap up new slave states was unpopular with the party's western wing: when the Southerners prevailed anyway and nominated X, a supporter of their ideals, said Westerners and Northerners walked out as well.
In this new vacuum, several ex-Democratic-Republicans would join the Federalists and vice-versa, but the majority of the defecting moderates joined forces to found their own party - the Whigs. Running on a moderate platform that abstained from discussing slavery and proposed medium tariff levels to support modest internal improvements, the Whigs proved their strength especially out West but still came in third, behind the Federalists. They did, however, damage the Federalist Party badly enough to sink President X7's bid for reelection, resulting in a Democratic victory. For the first time in 12 years, America would have a non-Federalist President.
The last Spanish army in the New World is decisively beaten at Ayacucho, ending Madrid's rule over their colonies forever. |
Re: WEF 3.0 19th-Century Iteration Planning Thread
But simply being a hardcore racist ideologue in no way precludes agrarianism, support for states' rights up to & including Nullification, etc. which would fall under 'the interests of the proper Southern gentleman'. So how's this for a career trajectory - House Speaker 1793-1801, Senator 1801-1816, and Governor of Virginia 1816-1819, then back to the Senate with a possibility of becoming the Democratic VP or POTUS who won the 1824 election and is still sitting as of an 1828 start?
