NaWiPoMo: The Great Depression

Governor-General John McDowell

The Great Depression was an economic crisis that struck the Confederation of North America in 1880 and lasted for two and a half years. The effects of the Great Depression were far worse than those of the Panic of 1836, since the economy was so much more complex.

The Great Depression resulted from the outbreak of the Franco-German War in the late autumn of 1878. The war took Europe's bankers by surprise, and a panic struck the money markets of Paris and Berlin, and spread from there to London and New York City. However, markets in both London and New York recovered within a week, and the monetary crisis eased soon afterwards.

Although the immediate financial crisis had passed, there would soon be a second shock. British Prime Minister Geoffrey Cadogan reacted to the outbreak of war by ordering a mobilization of the British army and doubling the naval appropriation for 1879. The higher taxes that resulted, combined with rising interest rates and fears that the war would spread to the British Empire, caused investment in the C.N.A. to drop off. Beginning in early 1879, British bankers began to call in their loans to the C.N.A., and by the end of the year the money being withdrawn from North America surpassed new investments.

North American banks attempted to cover British withdrawals for the first three months of 1880. Then, in April, the North American Trust closed its doors and announced its insolvency. The following week, North American Steel announced that it was closing down two mills due to lack of capital. Thomas Edison's National Electric declared bankruptcy in May, and this set off a panic that struck every confederation. Although Sobel does not explicitly say so, the effects of the Great Depression were undoubtedly increased by the collapse of international trade resulting from the wave of insurrection and chaos that struck Europe during the Bloody Eighties.

Governor-General John McDowell responded to the withdrawal of British investment by ordering the Treasury to make deposits in key financial institutions throughout the C.N.A., assuring their liquidity. When the National Electric declared bankruptcy, McDowell arranged for an emergency loan fund to be administered by the newly-created National Financial Administration. Under Administrator Howard Carson, the N.F.A. made 354 loans totalling more than N.A. £3.5 million from 1880 to 1884. Carson was able to revive the Northern Confederation Trust, prevent the bankruptcy of North American Steel, and prevent a wave of foreclosures from striking Michigan City.McDowell also helped farmers by establishing the Rural Credit Association, which was empowered to grant loans of up to N.A. £400 to farmers whose holdings were endangered by foreclosures.

In response to McDowell's measures, the C.N.A. Businessmen's Association called him "the strongest and wisest leader our nation has ever had." Carl Bok, the president of the Mechanics National Union, ended his labor union's traditional political neutrality by offering McDowell "the support of our members throughout our land, and this definitely extends to the political campaign of 1883."

In spite of McDowell's efforts, the C.N.A. was plagued by looters, rioters, and an upsurge of radicalism in the early 1880s. The Confederation Bureau of Investigation, originally established to expose government corruption, was repurposed to combat radicalism and subversion. The C.N.A. was also the recipient of a wave of immigration from Europe, as some 1.5 million people fled the economic and social chaos there until McDowell closed the C.N.A.'s borders in 1882.

In his Age of Renewal speech on 11 October 1882, McDowell promised more widespread reforms to be undertaken in his second term, and his Liberal Party went on to win a majority of 82 seats in a Grant Council that was split between his party, the Conservative Party, and the radical new People's Coalition. The growing radicalism of the North American voters allowed the P.C. to replace the Conservatives as the official opposition, and left them poised to take advantage of any mistakes McDowell might make.

Sobel's sources for the Great Depression are Arthur Watkins' The Great Depression of 1880-1883 (London, 1915); Hector Welles' The People's Coalition During the Great Depression (London, 1967); Abner LeFevre's The Age of Renewal: The First McDowell Administration (New York, 1968); and Sir Monte Barkins' Long-Term Dislocations in the C.N.A Economy in the Great Depression (London, 1970).

NaWiPoMo: Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster (1782 - 1840) was one of the founding members of the Liberal Party in the Northern Confederation, and served two noncontiguous terms as Governor of the Northern Confederation. He was the first major political leader in the Confederation of North America to be assassinated.

Webster was first elevated to the governorship of the N.C. in 1821 by the nascent Liberal Party. The Liberals at the time represented big business in the N.C., and supported high tariffs, aid to manufacturers in the form of subsidies, and laws making it easier to create private banks. Webster himself was a skillful politician and master manipulator who was able to gain passage of the Tariff of 1822, the Bank Bill of 1822, the Internal Improvements Bill of 1823, and the Harbors Act of 1823. Webster's crowning achievement during his first term was the creation of the Bank of the Northern Confederation, which was modeled on the Bank of England, with the power to manipulate the currency, usually to the advantage of the industrial class.

Webster's success led to the formation of a rival political party, the Conservative Party, representing the interests of farmers, urban workers, and small businessmen. They gained control of the Northern Confederation Council in 1825, and Webster was replaced as governor by Conservative leader Martin van Buren. The Conservatives' manipulation of the banking system was a major cause of the Depression of 1829, which brought the Liberals, and webster, back to power in 1831.

A financial crisis in London in late 1835 brought about the Panic of 1836, when a series of bank failures in New York City brought an end to the prosperity of the N.C. Unemployment rose in Massachusetts manufacturing centers, Pennsylvania foundries and mines, and the port cities of New York and Philadelphia. The growing hardship, combined with Webster's inability to instill confidence in the N.C., led to the rapid growth of a labor union called the Grand Consolidated Union. Franz Freund, the founder of the Consolidated, created a political party called the Laborers' Alliance which contested the 1839 N.C. elections. Although the Liberals suffered several defeats, Webster was able to win a new vote of confidence and remained in office.

Webster's victory was followed in August 1839 by the victory of Senator Miguel Huddleston's supporters in the 1839 Mexican elections. The Viceroy of the C.N.A., Sir Alexander Haven, persuaded Webster to represent the C.N.A. at Huddleston's inauguration as President of the United States of Mexico the following month. Webster's visit to the U.S.M. outraged abolitionists in the N.C., including the labor activist Matthew Hale.

The political deadlock in the N.C. Council and continued high unemployment led to a massive general strike in the N.C. in the summer of 1840. Several of the confederation's cities were dominated by mobs, as Webster lacked sufficient military strength to put them down. On 4 September 1840, Webster was stabbed by Hale as he walked home from the Hall of Justice. Webster died of his wounds three days later.

Sobel's sources for the political career of Daniel Webster are Webster's own The Program for Progress (New York, 1838); Andrew Shepard's The Northern Confederation in the Violent Years, 1835-1839 (New York, 1945); Sylvia Spinner's "Matthew Hale and the Assassination of Daniel Webster: A Contrast in Character" from Essays in Radical History' III (1954); James Ripley's The Webster Legacy: The Creation of an Industrial Commonwealth (New York, 1967); and Thomas Rivers' Daniel Webster and His Confederation (New York, 1970).

NaWiPoMo: Michael

Michael Alexanandrovich Romanov (1878 - ?) was the last Tsar of the Russian Empire. He succeeded to the Imperial throne after the abdication of his brother Nicholas II on 17 July 1900. Michael reigned for just seven weeks before abdicating in his turn on 4 September and fleeing to Sweden.

Michael was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on 4 December 1878, during the reign of his paternal grandfather, Alexander II. Within ten years, both Michael's grandfather and father were dead, leaving his twenty-year-old brother Nicholas as Tsar during the uprisings of 1888. Nicholas ordered the uprisings crushed by the secret police and army, and over the next five years over 2 million Russians were killed, and another 80,000 were exiled to prison camps on the Kamchatka peninsula.

The Great Northern War with the United States of Mexico broke out on 21 May 1898, and over the next year the Russian armed forces suffered a series of defeats. The Mexicans conquered Alaska in the summer of 1898 and made a series of amphibious landings in Siberia a year later. The political prisoners in Kamchatka were freed by the Mexicans, and 7,000 of them formed the Free Russian Brigade to fight alongside the Mexicans against the Russian army. Mexican Admiral Ephraim Small went further in November 1899, forming the freed prisoners into a "Provisional Free Russian Government" which was recognized by the Mexican government on 23 November.

The loss of Alaska and the ongoing losses in Siberia caused an economic and financial crisis in Russia, and a new uprising broke out in St. Petersburg on 2 February 1900. The uprising quickly spread throughout European Russia, and the revolutionaries joined forces with nationalists among the various subject peoples to defeat the Tsarists throughout the Empire. Nicholas II abdicated on 17 July in Michael's favor, before fleeing Russia along with most of the Imperial family.

Michael spent the next seven weeks attempting to regain control of the Empire before finally abandoning hope. On the evening of 5 September, he left for exile in Sweden, taking with him the remaining members of the Imperial family. With Michael's abdication, the last vestige of central authority in Russia was gone, and the country fragmented into a series of successor states, including the Ukraine, the Mexican client state in Siberia, and the Russian Confederation.

Sobel's sources for the reign of Tsar Michael are Feodor Kluchansky's Russia in Exile (London, 1911); and Zoë Montgomery's The Russian Revolution (New York, 1967).

NaWiPoMo: Schuyler Stanley

Schuyler Stanley was a member of the Mexican Senate from the state of Durango. Stanley was elected to the Senate on the Liberty Party ticket in the 1875 Mexican elections (although he may have first won his seat earlier).

Following the death of President George Vining on 12 September 1881, the Cabinet chose to suspend the upcoming 1881 Mexican elections, created the office of Chief of State, and appointed Constabulary Commandant Benito Hermión to fill it. When Hermión appeared before the Senate on 16 September to seek confirmation for the Cabinet's decisions, the Libertarian caucus loudly denounced them.

A vote on the Cabinet's decisions was postponed until the next day. That night, Constabulary agents seized and imprisoned five Libertarian senators, including Stanley. Stanley's family fled Mexico City, accompanied by Senate Minority Leader Thomas Rogers. By morning, every major Libertarian leader was either in jail, a fugitive, or had defected to the Continentalist Party. On the afternoon of the 17th, the fourteen remaining members of the Senate unanimously ratified the Cabinet's decisions.

Sobel makes no further mention of Schuyler Stanley after his arrest.

Sobel's source for Schuyler Stanley's arrest is Bernard Mix's The Night of the Caballeros: The Hermión Seizure (London, 1964).

NaWiPoMo: The Battle of Williams Pass

The Battle of Williams Pass was the major battle of the Rocky Mountain War of 1845 - 1855. The battle consisted of a months-long stalemate within Williams Pass in the Sierra Nevadas between four armies of the Confederation of North America and the United States of Mexico between November 1850 and April 1851.

The battle was a response to events taking place in Burgoyne and Mexico City. In April 1849, North American Governor-General Henry Gilpin, fresh from having ousted his predecessor, Winfield Scott, had ordered a North American army under General David Homer to take San Francisco, the capital of the state of California. While Homer's army was wintering in Mendoza, Arizona in March 1850, Mexican President Pedro Hermión sent a newly-raised army under General Michael Doheny north from Mexico City to cut off Homer's line of retreat. Gilpin learned of the dispatch of Doheny's army that spring, and ordered the Southern Confederation militia under General FitzJohn Smithers to march west to intercept Doheny.

Gilpin's message to Smithers was lost in transmission, and by the time the S.C. militia began to move, it was too late to intercept Doheny. Meanwhile, Homer led his army through Williams Pass in June 1850, moving slowly to avoid ambush. After emerging from the pass, he was met by the California Brigades under General Francisco Hernandez. At the Battle of San Fernando on 5-7 July, Hernandez lost 4,500 men, while Homer lost over 5,400. Both armies retreated, the Mexicans falling back to San Francisco, and the North Americans to Williams Pass.

Doheny's army was successful in blocking Homer's army within Williams Pass, and Hernandez was able to advance to the western end of the pass. By mid-November 1850, the two Mexican armies had Homer's men trapped. Smithers' army, after making a frantic march west through Mexico del Norte and Arizona, leveled the Arizonan town of Bald Eagle, and attacked Doheny's army from behind. Smithers' attempt to crush Doheny's army failed, as Doheny's Indian regiments withstood three frantic North American attacks.

Smithers and Hernandez both refused to withdraw from Williams Pass, and when the winter snows began to fall, all four armies were trapped. During the next five months, 140,000 North American soldiers and 97,000 Mexicans attempted to survive while battling each other and the elements. Survivors of the four armies began to emerge from the pass in late March 1850. By the end of April, the 31,000 surviving Mexican troops had made their way to San Francisco, while the 27,000 surviving North Americans were making the long retreat back to their outpost at Mendoza. All four commanding generals were dead, Homer by suicide, and the others of exposure.

General Sir Wesley McDougall wrote afterwards, "It was the most senseless battle in the history of warfare. Never before or since have so many brave men died for so foolish an objective. Pride, and nothing else, dictated the retention of the Rockies."

News of the catastrophe reached both capitals in mid-summer, and the people of both nations reacted by turning against the war. However, neither Governor-General Gilpin nor President Hermión were prepared to seek peace, and the war continued until both had been removed from office.

Sobel's sources for the Battle of Williams Pass are volume 10 of the C.N.A. Ministry of War's official history, The Rocky Mountain War (Burgoyne, 1890); and McDougall's The Lessons of the Rocky Mountain War (London, 1914).

NaWiPoMo: The 1908 Grand Council Elections

The 1908 Grand Council elections took place on 15 February 1908, for the purpose of choosing the Fourteenth Grand Council of the Confederation of North America. The elections returned a majority for the People's Coalition for the fourth time running, resulting in the elevation of Councilman Albert Merriman to the office of Governor-General.

Incumbent Governor-General Christopher Hemingway chose not to run for a second term, announcing on 6 September 1907 that he intended to retire to the Grand Council "and the company of my friend and mentor Ezra Gallivan" at the end of his term. Hemingway was the most popular governor-general in North American history, and he and Gallivan were able to persuade their party to choose Councilman Merriman of Indiana as its nominee for the office. Merriman was much like Hemingway (Sobel refers to him as a "carbon copy"), having no desire to innovate and a great love of crowds and travel.

The opposition Liberal Party, which had not won a majority in the Grand Council since 1883, nominated Councilman Guy St. Just of the Northern Confederation. On election day, the P.C. was able to increase its majority in the Council from 83 seats to 90, improving its standing in every confederation except St. Just's N.C.

Election Results
Confederation . . . . . . . . Liberal Party . . . . People's Coalition
Indiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9. . . . . . . . . . . .25
Manitoba . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10. . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Northern Confederation . . . . . . 20. . . . . . . . . . . .22
Northern Vandalia. . . . . . . . . . . 6. . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Southern Confederation . . . . . . .4. . . . . . . . . . . .24
Southern Vandalia . . . . . . . . . .11. . . . . . . . . . . . 3
TOTAL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60. . . . . . . . . . . .90

Following the P.C. victory and Merriman's elevation to governor-general, Gallivan's rival Thomas Kronmiller bitterly remarked, "In this way we enter the fifth term of King Ezra Gallivan."

Sobel's sources for the 1908 Grand Council elections are Hemingway's The Way of the World (New York, 1911); and the 17 February 1908 issue of the New York Herald. Election results are from the New York Herald, 16 February 1908.

NaWiPoMo: Felicio Montoya

Felicio Montoya was Secretary of State under Mexican Chief of State Benito Hermión during the Great Northern War of 1898 - 1901.

Montoya met with Japanese ambassador Ono Yamashira on 5 January 1899 to discuss peace terms with the Russian Empire. However, Hermión was eager to continue the war, and he directed Montoya to reply to Yamashira that the Mexican government would only discuss peace if the Russians admitted that they had violated California territory, agreed to cede Alaska to Mexico, and agreed to pay an indemnity of $2.5 million. The Russian government refused these terms, and the war continued.

Sobel's source for Felicio Montoya's negotiations with Ambassador Yamashira is Andrew Stirling's The Secret History of the Great Northern War (London, 1923).

NaWiPoMo: The Great Northern War

The Great Northern War was a war fought between the United States of Mexico and the Russian Empire. The war began on 21 May 1898, and effectively ended on 5 September 1900 when Michael, the last Tsar of Russia, abdicated, although fighting continued until October 1901. The war resulted in the breakup of the Russian Empire, and the establishment of Mexican client states in Alaska and Siberia.

Causes of the War

The origins of the Great Northern War go back to 1894, when Diego Cortez y Catalán, the President of Kramer Associates, negotiated an agreement with the Russian government granting K.A. a concession in the Yukon region of Alaska to prospect for copper "and whatever other minerals might be found." In July 1896, a K.A. prospecting party led by Winston Carew struck a vein of gold.

News of the discovery soon reached the Russian government, and Tsar Nicholas II sent his personal congratulations to Cortez and Carew. By October 1897, however, the Russian government claimed that K.A.'s concession had covered copper only, and that all the gold recovered from the Yukon fields were Russian property.

When Cortez received a telegram from Russian Foreign Minister Prince Pyotr Sviatopolk-Mirsky on 21 October informing him of this interpretation of the agreement, he ran shouting from his office in San Francisco. Cortez immediately telephoned Mexican Chief of State Benito Hermión and arranged for a meeting in Mexico City on 25 October. The two men met twice that day, and although no record exists of their discussions, Hermión evidently refused to confront the Russians over the matter.

Cortez than began plotting to provoke a war between Mexico and Russia, sending his private secretary Russell Smith to meet with Alberto Puente, the Governor of California, on 7 November to arrange matters. Four months later, on 27 February 1898, Puente notified Hermión of "repeated violations of the border by Russian Imperial forces." Hermión sent a team (presumably of Constabulary agents, although Sobel does not say so) to the area to investigate the situation. However, suspecting that Cortez might be behind Puente's message, Hermión telephoned him and informed him that "under no conditions will you involve Mexico in a squabble with the Russians. If you start trouble with the Russians, you will have to end it, and not I."

The investigative team reported its findings on 15 March, noting that violations of the border had in fact taken place, and that the Russian officer in charge of the border, Captain Boris Tschakev, had been "most uncooperative throughout." As a matter of form, Hermión sent a mild note of protest to St. Petersburg. When the Russian response was received, Henry Wilson, the chief Russian translator at the State Department, apparently mistranslated it to make it sound more belligerent. Sobel notes that Wilson was a former K.A. employee, and admits that it was "entirely possible he exaggerated the tone of the Mirsky telegram."

Over the next six weeks, a series of ten telegrams were exchanged between Mexico City and St. Petersburg, each presumably mistranslated by Wilson, and each harsher and more belligerent than the one before. On 4 May, Hermión ordered extensive summer maneuvers by the Mexican army, and ordered Admiral Ephraim Small to prepare the Pacific Fleet for a cruise to Hawaii. Prince Sviatopolk-Mirsky responded by ordering General Andrei Mishikov of the Alaska command to be on guard "against the possibility of sudden attack." There was a major incident on the Alaska-California border on 17 May, and four days later a Russian brigade entered California and began driving south for San Francisco. Diego Cortez had his war.

The Alaska Campaign

The California Guard, under the nominal command of Governor Puente, fell back before the Russian force for ten days, then made a stand twenty miles north of San Francisco while Puente sent a message to Hermión requesting "immediate and large-scale help." Admiral Small entered San Francisco Bay on 30 May, and landed a force of 20,000 marines, which joined the Californian and defeated the Russian brigade. The combined force then followed the fleeing Russian troops north, entering Alaska on 11 June. The marines and Californians were met there by an additional 40,000 Mexican soldiers under the command of General Richard Stockton.

Admiral Small's fleet landed an additional force of marines at the Russian port of Nikolaevsk on 5 July, which then advanced south towards the retreating Russians. The Russians were trapped, and General Mikhail Kornilov surrendered to General Stockton in August. Stockton sent troops to the Yukon gold fields along with engineering teams from K.A., in order to prepare for the establishment of mining camps the following spring. Meanwhile, Small landed more marines along the Alaskan coast, along with elements of the Caribbean Fleet under the command of Captain Nicholas Seger. By early October 1898, all of Alaska except the Aleutian Islands was under Mexican control.

Without consulting Hermión, Cortez contacted government officials in Japan, requesting their assistance in negotiating a peace treaty between Mexico and Russia. The Japanese Premier, Count Masayoshi Matsukata, was eager to do so, fearing the growing Mexican influence in the Pacific that the conquest of Alaska and the earlier annexation of Hawaii demonstrated. On 5 January 1899 the Japanese ambassador to Mexico, Ono Yamashira, met with Secretary of State Felicio Montoya and asked whether Hermión was prepared to set down his terms for peace. At the same time, ambassador to St. Petersburg Baron Kiyouri spoke with Prince Sviatopolk-Mirsky about possible Japanese mediation. Sviatopolk-Mirsky suggested Tokyo as a suitable site for negotiations, but Montoya, under orders from Hermión, told Yamashira that Mexico would discuss peace only if the Russians admitted that they had violated Californian territory, would cede Alaska to Mexico, and would pay an indemnity of $2.5 million. The Russians refused Hermión's terms, and the war continued.

The Siberia Campaign

On 28 May 1899 a Mexican naval force began the occupation of the Aleutian Islands. While the occupation was still going on, the Pacific Fleet left Hawaii and began steaming west to Siberia. The Pacific Fleet landed a force of marines at Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka on 28 June, followed by landings at Okhotsk on 15 July and at Nikolaevsk-on-Amur on 26 July. The Russians attempted to halt the Nikolaevsk landings by engaging the Pacific Fleet at the Battle of the Okhotsk Sea on 23 July. The battle was a complete Mexican victory, with the Russians losing two battleships and fourteen other ships sunk, and the loss of 20,000 men. The Mexicans lost only nine dead and fourteen wounded when a boiler on the battleship Andrew Jackson exploded. By 10 August the three Mexican beachheads were joined, and Mexican troops had marched inland to secure all Siberian territory within 200 miles of the Pacific coast.

By early October 1899 all the major population centers up to the Kolyma River were in Mexican hands, while in the south the Mexican marines ruled the region as far inland as Kharbarevsk. The Mexicans freed 80,000 Russian political prisoners being held in prison camps in Kamchatka, and some 7,000 organized the Free Russian Brigade, which fought alongside the Mexicans and rendered invaluable assistance during the campaign. Admiral Small was named Administrator of Siberia, establishing his headquarters at Udsk. In November, Small received permission from Hermión to organize the freed political prisoners into a "Provisional Free Russian Government", which was recognized by the U.S.M. as the legitimate authority in Siberia under Premier George Tsukansky on 23 November 1899.

The Russian Revolution

News of the loss of Alaska and Siberia to the Mexicans brought about an economic and financial crisis in Russia. This led to an uprising in St. Petersburg on 2 February 1900 which spread from there to the rest of European Russia. The most important revolutionary leaders were Count Serge Witte, Paul Miliukov, and General Vladimir Malenkov.

In the Ukraine, General Malko Hrishchiev formed his own provisional government, with power being exercised behind the scenes by a cabal of young officers led by Major Simon Petlura. This was followed by Poland and the Baltic States breaking away from the Russian Empire. By early July, the new national armies and the revolutionaries had united to defeat the forces loyal to Tsar Nicholas II. Nicholas was obliged to abdicate on 17 July in favor of his brother Michael, and he and his family fled to Great Britain. Two months later, Tsar Michael gave up hope of remaining in power, and on 5 September he and the remainder of the Russian royal family fled to Sweden.

The ease with which the Mexican military had defeated the Russians and conquered Alaska and Siberia caused Hermión to begin to dream of greater things. By 1901 the U.S.M. with its dependant states was the second-largest nation in the world. Alaska and Siberia combined were three times the size the U.S.M. had been in 1881. Hermión revealed the scope of his new ambitions on 2 April 1901, when he declared the transformation of the U.S.M. into the Mexican Empire, and had himself crowned Emperor Benito I. Privately, the new emperor predicted that his dynasty would one day "rule not only continents, but the great globe itself."

The Cortez Coup

President Cortez had been satisfied with the occupation of Alaska, and strongly opposed the invasion of Siberia. In November 1899 Cortez met with Hermión in San Francisco and warned him that "Siberia has nothing we need. Alaska was another matter entirely. Unless we can extract ourselves with honor and dignity, we will either be expelled by the European powers or sink into the icy morass of a useless land."

Cortez was dismayed by the outbreak of the Russian Revolution and the signing of the Yamagata-Macmillan Treaty by Japan and Great Britain in 1901. He decided that it would be necessary to depose Hermión, and he began contacting various opponents of the government. At a meeting on 1 August 1901, Cortez and fourteen opposition leaders discussed Hermión's removal. After the others had spoken, Cortez revealed his plan to send 2,000 Kramer Guards to surround the newly-rechristened Imperial Palace, cut it off from the outside, and maneuver Hermión into fleeing into exile.

On the night of 15 October, Cortez' men, led by Guard Commandant Martin Cole, carried out the plan. Hermión fled the following morning, closely followed by over three hundred K.A. agents, while Cole proclaimed a provisional government. Under orders from Cortez, Cole had Admiral Small end offensive operations in Siberia and prepare to hand over control of Siberia to the Free Russian Government, by now under the rule of Tschakev. The last Mexican marines withdrew from Siberia in 1903, leaving Tschakev in charge politically while Cortez controlled the economy.

Sources

Sobel's sources for the Great Northern War are Michael Suzanov's Siberia Under Mexican Domination: the First Year (London, 1910); Feodor Kluchansky's Russia in Exile (London, 1911); Andrew Stirling's The Secret History of the Great Northern War (London, 1923); Felix Noland's A Military History of the Great Northern War (London, 1925); William Reilly's "Henry Wilson's Role in Initiating the Great Northern War" from The Journal of Russian Studies, XXVII (June, 1934); Isadore Klineburg's Count Matsukata and the Emergence of Japan (Melbourne, 1960); Carl Needham's The Great Northern War (New York, 1963); C. Hadley McCoy's The Beginning of Modern Times (London, 1965); Knute Neuberger's The Background of the Great Northern War (London, 1965); Zoë Montgomery's The Russian Revolution (New York, 1967); Miguel Señada's Cortez and Hermión: Bitter Friendship (Mexico City, 1968); and Stanley Tulin's The Kramer Associates: The Cortez Years (London, 1970).

NaWiPoMo: The Battle of Chapultepec

The Battle of Chapultepec was the decisive engagement of the Hundred Day War between France and the United States of Mexico. The battle resulted in a complete Mexican victory, and made General Emiliano Calles the most popular man in Mexico.

Operating from its beachhead in the city of Tampico, Durango, the French Expeditionary Force under General Jacques Beauchamp began its drive on Mexico City in mid-July 1914. The Mexican army under General Vincent Collins had been prepared for the advance, but fell back steadily in response to the determined French assault. On 13 August Mexican President Victoriano Consalus removed Collins from command of the Mexican defense and replaced him with Calles.

Calles was forty years old, the youngest general in the Mexican army, and its only Mexicano general officer. Prior to his appointment in command of the army facing Beauchamp, Calles had been commander of the Durango district. Consalus' primary motive in choosing Calles was that he was available at the capital, but Sobel suggests that his choice was also meant to counter French efforts to suborn the Mexicano population of Durango.

Calles marched fresh regiments to the front, and met the main body of the French force on the outskirts of Chapultepec. There, on 28 August Calles engaged the French in the war's only important land battle. As Beauchamp sent his cavalry to scout the flanks of the Calles' army, a squadron of Mexican airmobiles began bombing the French artillery. While the artillery were thus engaged, two Mexican infantry regiments attacked the French lines from two directions, blowing up French machine gun emplacements as they went. Two more Mexican regiments followed, throwing down coils of barbed wire as they went. Within two hours, the Mexicans had succeeded in completely encircling the French in barbed wire.

Beauchamp led three charges against the barbed wire barrier, and each time his troops were thrown back by a combination of Mexican mortars, machine guns, and airmobiles. Beauchamp was killed during the third charge, along with 2,000 other members of the F.E.F. At dawn on 29 August, Beauchamp's successor, General Pierre Bordagary, surrendered unconditionally to Calles.

After his victory at Chapultepec, Calles led the Mexican army to Tampico, which he placed under siege. The French troops occupying Tampico surrendered on 29 September, and French President Henri Fanchon sued for peace four days later.

Sobel's sources for the Battle of Chapultepec are Calles' Wars to Come (Mexico City, 1918); and Field Marshall Sir Wesley Gabor's Emiliano Calles and the Art of War (London, 1955).

NaWiPoMo: Winthrop Sharp

Winthrop Sharp was a member of the Mexican Senate from the state of Arizona. Sheridan was elected to the Senate on the Liberty Party ticket in the 1875 Mexican elections (although he may have first won his seat earlier).

Following the death of President George Vining on 12 September 1881, the Cabinet chose to suspend the upcoming 1881 Mexican elections, created the office of Chief of State, and appointed Constabulary Commandant Benito Hermión to fill it. When Hermión appeared before the Senate on 16 September to seek confirmation for the Cabinet's decisions, the Libertarian caucus loudly denounced them.

A vote on the Cabinet's decisions was postponed until the next day. That night, Constabulary agents seized and imprisoned five Libertarian senators, including Sharp. Sharp's family fled Mexico City, accompanied by Senate Minority Leader Thomas Rogers. By morning, every major Libertarian leader was either in jail, a fugitive, or had defected to the Continentalist Party. On the afternoon of the 17th, the fourteen remaining members of the Senate unanimously ratified the Cabinet's decision.

Sobel makes no further mention of Sharp after his arrest. Winthrop Sharp does not have an entry in Sobel's index.

Sobel's source for Winthrop Sharp's arrest is Bernard Mix's The Night of the Caballeros: The Hermión Seizure (London, 1964).

NaWiPoMo: Homer Sheridan

Homer Sheridan was a member of the Mexican Senate from the state of Arizona. Sheridan was elected to the Senate on the Liberty Party ticket in the 1875 Mexican elections (although he may have first won his seat earlier).

Following the death of President George Vining on 12 September 1881, the Cabinet chose to suspend the upcoming 1881 Mexican elections, created the office of Chief of State, and appointed Constabulary Commandant Benito Hermión to fill it. When Hermión appeared before the Senate on 16 September to seek confirmation for the Cabinet's decisions, the Libertarian caucus loudly denounced them. Sheridan called the move "cynical and contrary to law", while Minority Leader Thomas Rogers referred to Hermión as "a man of great ambition but little character."

A vote on the Cabinet's decisions was postponed until the next day. That night, Constabulary agents seized and imprisoned five Libertarian senators, though Sobel does not say whether Sheridan was among them. Sheridan may have been one of three Libertarian leaders who were mysteriously "dead by accident," or he may have fled the United States of Mexico, or remained imprisoned for an indefinite period.

Sobel's source for Homer Sheridan's opposition to Hermión is Bernard Mix's The Night of the Caballeros: The Hermión Seizure (London, 1964).

NaWiPoMo: The Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution was an uprising that occurred in the Russian Empire in 1900 following a series of Russian defeats during the Great Northern War.

Russian elites in St. Petersburg had lived in fear of revolution since the European uprisings of the Bloody Eighties. In order to maintain itself in power, the nobility had come to rely on the secret police, the army, and informers within the various revolutionary movements. The successive losses of Alaska in 1898 and Siberia in 1899 to the armies of the United States of Mexico, followed by an economic and financial crisis, led to an uprising in St. Petersburg on 2 February 1900 which spread from there to the rest of European Russia. The most important revolutionary leaders were Count Serge Witte, Paul Miliukov, and General Vladimir Malenkov.

In the Ukraine, General Malko Hrishchiev formed his own provisional government, with power being exercised behind the scenes by a cabal of young officers led by Major Simon Petlura. This was followed by Poland and the Baltic States breaking away from the Russian Empire. By early July, the new national armies and the revolutionaries had united to defeat the forces loyal to Tsar Nicholas II. Nicholas was obliged to abdicate on 17 July in favor of his brother Michael, and he and his family fled to Great Britain. Two months later, Tsar Michael gave up hope of remaining in power, and on 5 September he and the remainder of the Russian royal family fled to Sweden.

Fighting continued among the various Russian successor states for five years, and was only brought to an end by the intervention of Britain, France, the Germanic Confederation, and Austria.

Sobel's sources for the Russian Revolution are Michael Suzanov's Siberia Under Mexican Domination: the First Year (London, 1910); Feodor Kluchansky's Russia in Exile (London, 1911); Felix Noland's A Military History of the Great Northern War (London, 1925); C. Hadley McCoy's The Beginning of Modern Times (London, 1965); and Zoë Montgomery's The Russian Revolution (New York, 1967).

NaWiPoMo: Quentin Ritchie

Quentin Ritchie was the British ambassador to the Confederation of North America at the time of the outbreak of the Global War in 1939. Unlike German Chancellor Karl Bruning, Prime Minister George Bolingbroke did not make a public appeal for support from the C.N.A. Instead he had Ambassador Ritchie meet in private with Governor-General Bruce Hogg, instructing Ritchie "to stress the implications of a German victory in the Atlantic ... have Mr. Hogg consider the nature of the German-Mexican pact ... a strong neighbor to the west is hardly in North America's interests ..." Hogg, an isolationist, was unmoved by the entreaties of both Bruning and Ritchie.

Ritchie is the only British ambassador to the C.N.A. mentioned by Sobel. Given that the C.N.A. was originally a British colony, it is significant that the two countries were exchanging diplomats by the 1930s. Sobel does not indicate at which point the C.N.A. had become sufficiently independent of Great Britain to require an ambassador; it may have been as early as the drafting of the Second Britannic Design in 1842, and almost certainly had happened by the founding of the United British Commonwealth in 1906.

Sobel's source for Quentin Ritchie's appeal to Bruce Hogg is James Radamaker's Secret Files of the Global War: Correspondences With North America, 1939-1941 (Melbourne, 1959).

NaWiPoMo: Amisdad Treaty

The Amisdad Treaty was a mutual defense pact reached by the governments of the United States of Mexico and the Germanic Confederation in September 1886. The signing of the treaty marked the culmination of Mexican Chief of State Benito Hermión's policy of ending the U.S.M.'s traditional close ties with France and aligning the country with Germany instead.

Two weeks before the signing of the treaty, Hermión gave a speech in which he denounced the revolutionary republic in France. "Paris is not content to support the Moralistas and encourage the Indians to revolt against their own government, but is even now planning to attack us more directly. We must be watchful, for the French invasion will come, and when it does, we shall be ready for it."

Following the signing of the treaty, Hermión was able to negotiate a large loan from the Germanic Confederation, though Sobel does not say whether the loan came from private sources or from the German government. Hermión was able to use the German loan to help fund his Free Society programs.

A more immediate result of the Amisdad Treaty was Hermión's new belligerence towards Guatemala. Beginning on 4 October, Hermión began pressuring Guatemalan President Vicente Martinez to increase the width of the Kinkaid Canal Zone. Although Martinez eventually acceded to the demand, Hermión declared war anyway on 18 October.

By 1913, French President Henri Fanchon had come to believe that the Amisdad Treaty was a dead letter, and that the Germanic Confederation would not aid the U.S.M. if he seized the Mexican port city of Tampico. Fanchon's prediction proved accurate: Germany remained neutral in the subsequent Hundred Day War between the two nations.

NaWiPoMo: Pedro Sanchez

Pedro Sanchez was a Mexican newspaper editor and presidential candidate.

Sanchez was the editor of the Mexico City Times at the time of Benito Hermión's seizure of power in Mexico City on 17 September 1881. Sanchez opposed Hermión, and as a result was either exiled or forced to flee the United States of Mexico.

On 1 October 1901, Sanchez was secretly returned to Mexico by Diego Cortez y Catalán, the President of Kramer Associates. Cortez had decided to organize Hermión's overthrow, and he brought Sanchez to a meeting at his hacienda outside Sacramento, along with thirteen other opponents of the Hermión regime. At the meeting, Sanchez suggested a surprise coup, followed by a public trial of Hermión and his closest associates. Cortez spoke out against a trial, predicting that "while it would be taking place, pro-Hermión forces might stage a revolution of their own." Cortez then proposed his own plan to seize the Imperial Palace and maneuver Hermión into fleeing Mexico.

Cortez' plan succeeded, and Hermión did indeed flee Mexico City on the morning of 16 October, while Martin Cole, the commandant of the Kramer Guard, proclaimed a provisional government that would rule until elections were held. The elections took place on 14 June 1902, with Sanchez one of fourteen presidential candidates. After Sanchez won a plurality of 12% of the votes cast, Cole, speaking for Cortez, ordered a runoff election among the top three candidates. Cortez threw his support behind former Senator Anthony Flores, who received a plurality of 45% of the votes, while Sanchez finished third with 18%.

Sobel makes no further mention of Sanchez after his presidential candidacy.

Sobel's sources for Pedro Sanchez are editor Miguel Señada's Cortez and Hermión: Bitter Friendship (Mexico City, 1968); and Stanley Tulin's The Kramer Associates: The Cortez Years (London, 1970).

Dressed up to the eyes

Time to break up the Sobel Wiki tedium with another embedded music video. Today it's The Cure with their 1992 hit "Friday I'm in Love".

NaWiPoMo: British Empire

The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, and other territories ruled by England, and after 1707 by Great Britain.

The Empire began as a series of settlements in the early 17th on the coast of North America and among the islands of the Caribbean. A series of wars with the Netherlands and France in the 17th and 18th centuries gave the British control over eastern North America. The North American colonies attempted to break away from the Empire during the North American Rebellion of 1775 - 1778, but were unsuccessful. Instead, the North American colonies were reorganized into the Confederation of North America, the first area of the Empire to be granted local autonomy under the Britannic Design.

The 18th century also saw the beginnings of British rule in India, which would continue in the 19th century until all of India was under British control. The British also established settlements in Australia and New Zealand in the early 19th century, followed later in the century by the establishment of colonies in Africa such as Kenya, Uganda, and the Congo. The building of the Victoria Canal brought British rule to Egypt, as well as a British alliance with the Ottoman Empire.

The high-water mark of the Empire came in 1881, when British Prime Minister Geoffrey Cadogan and North American Governor-General John McDowell arranged to hold the First Imperial Conference in London, a meeting in which representatives from throughout the Empire worked together to lay the foundations for a federal union of British dominions. Although the C.N.A. retreated into isolationism in 1888 with the electoral victory of the People's Coalition under Ezra Gallivan, the remaining components of the Empire continued the work that began at the First Conference, culminating in the foundation of the United British Commonwealth of Nations in 1906.

NaWiPoMo: The 1913 Grand Council Elections

The 1913 Grand Council elections took place in February 1913, for the purpose of choosing the Fifteenth Grand Council of the Confederation of North America. The elections returned a majority for the People's Coalition for the fifth time running.

Incumbent Governor-General Albert Merriman had enjoyed an uneventful first term, during which the C.N.A.'s gross national product increased a minimum of six percent each year. A victory by the People's Coalition in the 1913 elections was so certain that Sobel literally never mentions them. Thus, there is no information concerning the partisan makeup of the incoming Grand Council or even who the Liberal Party nominee was.

NaWiPoMo: Prime Minister

The Prime Minister is the head of government in Great Britain, first minister of the Cabinet, and leader of the majority party in the House of Commons.

Origins of the Premiership

Unlike the Governor-General of the Confederation of North America, the position of Prime Minister was not created by statute. Instead, it evolved over the course of the century following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when King James II was forced to abdicate and the English Parliament chose his nephew William of Orange to replace him on the English throne.

Sir Robert Walpole became the first Prime Minister in 1721 when he combined the office of First Lord of the Treasury with the positions of first minister of the Cabinet and leader of the majority party in Parliament. Since the position of Prime Minister had no statutory authority at the time, Walpole's successors often declined to use the name. As late as the 1770s Lord North would not allow himself to be referred to as the Prime Minister, since it was not a constitutional office.

King George III and the American Crisis

After coming to the throne in 1760, King George III was determined to recover the powers of the monarchy which had been allowed to lapse by his grandfather and great-grandfather. In 1762 he used his powers of patronage to gain the Premiership for his former tutor, Lord Bute. Although King George was unable to maintain Bute in power, he continued his efforts to install a Prime Minister who would defer to his wishes in governing the country and the British Empire. He finally settled on Lord North, who became Prime Minister in 1770.

The King's attempt to take control of the goverment was paralleled by the growing American Crisis. The outbreak of the North American Rebellion in 1775 led to a decisive change in the balance of power between the Prime Minister and the King. After Lord North succeeded in ending the Rebellion in 1778 it was generally admitted that the King had acted irrationally during the war. Lord North's efforts to affect a reconciliation with the Americans, known as the Brotherhood Policy, were strongly opposed by the King. However, there was sufficient sentiment in Parliament in support of North that he was able to ignore the King's opposition.

The fight over the Britannic Design was a decisive event in the shaping of the modern British government. King George opposed the Design, and through his friends in Parliament, waged a struggle against it. However, Lord North believed that the Design was necessary to secure peace in North America, and he succeeded in winning passage of it. The Design was sent to King George on 23 January 1781, and despite his opposition, he capitulated to North and gave his assent on 26 January.

The death in September 1783 of General John Burgoyne, the first Viceroy of the C.N.A. under the Design, gave North another opportunity to assert his government's independence. Rather than choosing Lieutenant-Viceroy Sir Charles Cornwallis, North selected John Dickinson of Pennsylvania to succeed Burgoyne. By the time North resigned in 1785, the ministerial government was more independent of royal authority than at any time since the Commonwealth.

Sir Charles Jenkinson, who succeeded North, continued the policy of ministerial independence. Upon the outbreak of the Trans-Oceanic War in April 1795, Jenkinson added new men such as Charles James Fox and William Pitt the Younger to his Cabinet. Jenkinson's successful prosecution of the war, along with the King's increasingly frequent bouts of madness, further served to encourage the government's independence from royal authority.

Abolition and the Second Britannic Design

Early in the 19th century, the traditional names of the Whig Party and Tory Party fell into disuse. In parallel with the C.N.A., the parties in Great Britain went under the names Liberal and Conservative, pershaps in response to the rise of economic issues. When a wave of bank failures struck Britain in October 1835, the Liberal government of Lord Thomas Tillotson fell, and in a general election, Lewis Watson became the head of a Conservative-Reform coalition. Within four years, however, the old names had been revived, possibly due to a merger of the Conservatives and their Reform Party allies. This merger may have brought Duncan Amory to power as leader of the rechristened Tory Party in 1839.

The Tories included a growing faction of abolitionists, who chose in 1839 to use their power within the party to hold up the passage of important banking and tariff legislation unless the party as a whole came out in favor of ending slavery throughout the Empire. The remaining Tories agreed, and Amory made a speech in which he promised financial as well as administrative aid for bringing slavery to an end in the British Empire.

Amory was still in power late in 1841 when word reached him from C.N.A. Viceroy Sir Alexander Haven that the North Americans sought to make a major revision of the Britannic Design. Both Amory and Queen Victoria were agreeable, and the House of Commons began discussions on the topic in January 1842. Parliament approved the proposal, and from June to September 1842 the Burgoyne Conference, a special session of the Grand Council, met to draft a series of amendments that came to be known as the Second Britannic Design. The Queen and Amory raised few objections to the Second Design, which was put into effect with the 1843 Grand Council elections.

The Great Depression and the Bloody Eighties

With the end of active hostilities between the C.N.A. and the United States of Mexico in the Rocky Mountain War in August 1853, Governor-General William Johnson sent his Minister of State, Montgomery Harcourt, to London to meet with Prime Minister John Temple. Johnson recognized that the C.N.A. was rich in raw materials, but in need of capital to develop them, and Harcourt wished to discuss increased British investment with Temple. Temple was intrigued by the idea, and used his connections in the City to persuade several leading bankers to make a survey of North American investment opportunities. As result, British investment in North America increased every year from 1855 to the start of the Great Depression in 1880, except for the period from 1861 to 1863, when Britain suffered from recession.

The Great Depression itself was a reaction to the outbreak of the Franco-German War in 1878. After the outbreak of the war in the late autumn of 1878, Prime Minister Geoffrey Cadogan responded by ordering a mobilization of the British army, and doubled the naval appropriation for 1879. The increased taxes and interest rates that resulted, along with fears of being drawn into the war, led to falling investment in the C.N.A. Beginning in early 1879, British bankers began to call in their loans in the C.N.A., and new investment fell sharply. This touched off the Great Depression, a major economic slump that soon spread from North America to Europe, and combined with the wave of revolutionary fervor from the French Revolution to bring about the social upheavals of the Bloody Eighties.

In response to the growing economic and social crises, Cadogan joined with North American Governor-General John McDowell to hold the First Imperial Conference in London in 1881 to discuss common problems among the nations of the Empire. The participants at the conference agreed to maintain free trade between the member nations; affirmed their loyalty to Queen Victoria; establish the Imperial Monetary Fund; and initiated discussions on the creation of a common defense force. A Second Imperial Conference was later held in New York City which increased the lending power of the I.M.F.

Much of the revolutionary activity that brought down governments in Europe in the Bloody Eighties was absorbed into the conventional political process in Britain. British reformers joined the Whigs, and the party's reform program allowed it to gain power in the 1885 Parliamentary elections. Under Prime Minister Richard Cross, the Whigs sponsored and passed the Great Reform Bill of 1886, which enlarged the franchise, redistributed seats in Commons, established a social insurance program, and set into motion plans for a redistribution of equity in large corporations. These reforms were grudgingly accepted by most British business leaders, but J.P. Morgan and Shawcross Finlay led a determined opposition to the nationalization of the banks that delayed that reform until 1893.

The rise to power of Marshall Henri Fanchon in France in 1909 marked the end of a period of civil war and instability in that nation. After Fanchon promulgated a new constitution and was elected President of France in the resulting elections in September 1911, Prime Minister Stanley Martin quipped, "France is now at peace. The republicans have their republic, and the royalists their king."

The Global War

In April 1933, North American Governor-General Douglas Watson embarked on a European tour, which included visits to Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, and ended in London. Introducing Watson's address to Parliament, Tory Prime Minister George Bolingbroke called him "the leader of a great nation, a man of extraordinary vision, and a most welcome visitor to our shores." Bolingbroke called the close relations between Britain and the C.N.A. "a model for all mankind," and said, "We are brothers because men wiser than we saw the need for self-government in North America, and we shall stand united no matter what the foe, no matter what the problem." Watson responded with, "Our loyalty to the Crown remains undiminished, and our relations with the Empire continue to be that of brothers."

Bolingbroke was in East Anglia attending his daughter's wedding on Saturday, 22 February 1936, like other world leaders unaware of the impending global economic crisis. The crisis began two days later, when Kramer Associates President John Jackson announced that the company was moving its headquarters from San Francisco, California to Luzon in the Philippines. Soon after, it was learned that K.A. had been selling securities in the world stock exchanges for weeks, converting its funds to gold. The price of gold began to rise rapidly in London, until trading was halted at noon. There was panic on all the world's securities markets that day, and one by one they closed their doors, in fear of helping create a liquidity crisis. The C.N.A.'s National Financial Administration branches were all overextended at that point, and between 15 and 17 March all six were forced into bankruptcy.

The North American financial panic spread to western Europe by early autumn, and to Japan by November. Despite the worsening financial situation, in the November 1937 Parliamentary elections, Bolingbroke's Tories were able retain their majority in the Commons on the strength of Bolingbroke's reputation as a "Great Englander" who would defend British interests against German encroachment.

The outbreak of the Arab Revolt in the Ottoman Empire in August 1939 proved to be the catalyst for war. After being defeated by the Ottoman army at the Battle of el Khibir on 10 September, Abdul el Sallah, the leader of the revolt, appealed to the Germans for military aid, and Chancellor Karl Bruning agreed, beginning an airlift of German troops to Arabia on 19 September. The Ottoman Shah contacted Bolingbroke to warn that he could not withstand a combined Arab-German assault, and to request aid from the British marines stationed at the Victoria Canal. Bolingbroke met with the Cabinet on 20 September, and it was agreed that 10,000 Royal Marines stationed at the canal would be dispatched to Constantinople. That afternoon, Bolingbroke addressed the Commons to inform them of the decision. "This may mean war. If so, then so be it. We cannot allow Mr. Bruning to destroy a century and more of progress in that part of the world."

British and German troops clashed near Damascus on 30 September. Bruning declared war on Britain on 1 October, and Bolingbroke's government responded in like fashion the next day. Both Bolingbroke and Bruning attempted to win the support of the C.N.A. Bruning offered the North Americans "a share in a new world order, a partnership of equals after the aggressors are destroyed." Bolingbroke was less direct, instructing his ambassador to Burgoyne, Quentin Ritchie, "to stress the implications of a German victory in the Atlantic ... have Mr. Hogg consider the nature of the German-Mexican pact ... a strong neighbor to the west is hardly in North America's interests." However, Governor-General Bruce Hogg, who had defeated Watson the year before, was unmoved by either appeal. An isolationist, Hogg had run against Watson's active foreign policy, and he was determined to keep the C.N.A. neutral.

The War Without War

The detonation of an atomic bomb by Kramer Associates in June 1962 led Mexican dictator Vincent Mercator to declare his Offensive of the Dove, calling on all nations of the world to sign a non-aggression pact, and asking for a world conference of the participants in the Global War, who were still technically at war with each other, to meet in Geneva the following summer to sign treaties legally ending the war. Prime Minister Philip Halliwell responded on 29 January 1963 by saying, "The President would not be so anxious to have us in Geneva had he a bomb in Mexico City." Halliwell and German Chancellor Adolph Markstein refused to attend the Geneva conference, because no agenda had been agreed upon.

Halliwell's successor, Harold Fuller, signed a non-aggression pact with North American Governor-General Perry Jay in April 1964, establishing an alliance between the two nations. Thus, when British scientists successfully tested their own atomic bomb on 14 February 1965, the C.N.A. was effectively under British protection until North American scientists were able to detonate their own bomb on 1 September 1966.

Sources

 Sobel's sources for the development of the position of Prime Minister are Rodney Brown's Parliament and the Cabinet in the Age of North (London, 1911); Henry Collins' Lord North and the Rise of Parliament (New York, 1956); Paul Mitchell's The Jenkinson Cabinet and the Five Years' War (London, 1958); and Luther Koskins' Parliament in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1965).

NaWiPoMo: First Imperial Conference

The First Imperial Conference was a meeting of representatives of the various governments of the British Empire held in London in 1881. The conference was arranged by Prime Minister Geoffrey Cadogan of Great Britain and Governor-General John McDowell of the Confederation of North America in response to the economic disruption of the Great Depression and the wave of revolutionary activity unleashed in Europe by the French Revolution.

Although Sobel does not mention which nations other than Britain and the C.N.A. participated in the conference, it presumably included the British colonies of Australia and New Zealand, and may also have included India, Egypt, and Victoria.

The delegates to the conference agreed to maintain free trade between the member nations; affirmed their loyalty to Queen Victoria; established the Imperial Monetary Fund, which had the power to make low-interest loans to member governments; and initiated discussions on the creation of a common defense force.

The success of the conference led to a Second Imperial Conference in New York City.

NaWiPoMo: Civil Rights Act of 1879

The Civil Rights Act of 1879 was an act passed by the Grand Council of the Confederation of North America and signed into law by Governor-General John McDowell in 1879. As with all the legislation passed by the Grand Council during McDowell's first term, the act was passed by a bipartisan coalition of McDowell's Liberal Party, which held a plurality of 62 seats in the Eighth Grand Council, and the People's Coalition, a recently-founded reform party with 39 seats.

The act guaranteed for all citizens of the C.N.A. "the full protection of the law in their public pursuits." However, as was the case with most of the reforms passed during McDowell's first term, the Civil Rights Act had no enforcement provisions. Thus, McDowell achieved a reputation as a reformer without having to pay the price of opposition from entrenched interests.

NaWiPoMo: Meta

A pop culture wiki is usually a straightforward thing. If you're creating, say, a Simpsons wiki, you have pages on the show's characters, celebrity guest stars, individual episodes, and a few locations like the Springfield Elementary School, the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, and Moe's Tavern. Even a typical work of alternate history such as Harry Turtledove's 191 Timeline is much the same: characters, events, locations, and some other pages for, say organizations that don't exist in our timeline. That's because Turtledove's books, like the Simpsons, or Star Trek, are works of fiction, and all wikis based on a work of fiction are going to have certain basic similarities.

On the other hand, even though Robert Sobel's For Want of a Nail is technically a work of fiction, it doesn't present as a work of fiction. It presents as a work of scholarship, with all the attendant apparatus of a scholarly work: footnotes, appendices, a bibliography, and an index. A wiki of FWoaN can't treat it like a simple work of fiction without losing that aspect of the book.

So what I've done in the Sobel Wiki is approach FWoaN as the work of nonfiction it appears to be. By chance, we have this one book describing what we might call the Sobel Timeline, a history that diverged from ours in the fall of 1777. Apart from events that predate that divergence, everything we know about the Sobel Timeline is what we can learn, or infer, from this one book.

The task of describing the Sobel Timeline is complicated by the fact that, as Frank Dana notes in his critique, the author of FWoaN (an alternate version of Sobel) has a set of ideological biases that color his perceptions, and in some intances his descriptions, of events in the book. Thus, it is necessary to distinguish between Sobel recording the historical consensus on some person or event and Sobel expressing his own biases.

So that's what the Sobel Wiki is: a picture of an alternate timeline as seen through the lens of a single, admittedly flawed, product of that timeline.

NaWiPoMo: Port Superior

Port Superior is a city in the Confederation of Manitoba. Although Sobel does not give its exact location, its name suggests that it is located on the north shore of Lake Superior. The completion of a railroad line from Port Superior to the Manitoban capital of North City in 1855 brought the confederation's hitherto isolated farms into the market economy of the rest of the Confederation of North America, resulting in a dramatic change in the lives of the inhabitants.

NaWiPoMo: Transportation Control Act

The Transportation Control Act was a major legislative act sponsored by Liberal Governor-General Henderson Dewey during his first term in office as part of what he called his "dismantling operation". As with much of Dewey's legislation, the bill was introduced simply, with little prologue, by an undistinguished Liberal back-bencher. The bill created the Confederation Transportation Authority to consolidate the various government agencies regulating railroads, airmobile lines, and interconfederation trucking.

As was the case with other major legislation sponsored by Dewey, the Transportation Control Act passed with little difficulty after being praised by Dewey and his fellow Liberals as "liberating." Members of the opposition People's Coalition pointed out that the bill was popular in rural and underdeveloped areas of the Confederation of North America, particularly in the Confederation of Manitoba. The one mode of transportation not covered by the Act was the locomobile, which was likely a deliberate omission made by the Dewey administration as a gesture to locomobile magnate Owen Galloway, or possibly at Galloway's direction.

Some sweet company

I think we could all use a little break from the Sobel Wiki articles, so here's an embedded music video of Anna Kendrick singing "Cups".

NaWiPoMo: The 1928 Grand Council Elections

The 1928 Grand Council elections were held on 15 February 1928 for the purpose of choosing the Eighteenth Grand Council of the Confederation of North America. The elections returned a Liberal Party majority of 94 seats, the largest the Liberals had enjoyed up to that time.

The elections served as a referendum on incumbent Governor-General Henderson Dewey's policy of transferring power from the national government to those of the confederations, which he referred to as his "dismantling operation." The Liberals also benefitted from the Dewey administration's policy of cooperating whenever possible with the Galloway Trust, the private foundation organized by Owen Galloway of North American Motors to assist North Americans who wished to emigrate within or from the C.N.A. Dewey was able to make it appear that Galloway favored his administration, even though the locomobile magnate remained scrupulously neutral politically.

The Dewey administration included a number of able and attractive young men, such as Douglas Watson, Emery Collins, John Hopkins, and Dennis Mitchell. Dewey had also succeeded in building up the Liberal organizations at the confederation level, led by Governors Foster McCabe of Manitoba and David Heald of Indiana.

The opposition People's Coalition, by contrast, seemed a party of old men. As Franklin Drew later put it, former Governor-General Calvin Wagner was "a decent and fairly intelligent man who unfortunately has the appearance of a contented hog; Governor Elbert Childs of the Northern Confederation has the faint aura of a circus-master; while N.C. Councilman Frank Evans, the party's most attractive candidate, manages to alienate potential supporters by his automatic opposition to every Dewey program."

Evans was able to gain the Coalition's nomination for governor-general at their convention in December 1927, while the Liberals renominated Dewey.

Sobel describes the election results as a foregone conclusion, with the Liberals winning a smashing victory over the P.C. in the Grand Council, as well as winning five of the six governorships and control of four confederation legislatures. Dewey was hailed as the most brilliant politician since Ezra Gallivan.

Sobel's source for the 1928 Grand Council elections is Drew's The Guard is Confirmed: The Elections of 1928 (New York, 1933). Election results are from the New York Herald, 16 February 1928.

NaWiPoMo: Indiana Northern Railroad

The Indiana Northern Railroad was a railroad line established in the Confederation of Indiana before or during the Rocky Mountain War.

Patrick Gallivan became president of the Indiana Northern in 1861. Gallivan was an Irish immigrant who came to the Confederation of North America soon after the war, and found work in Michigan City as a yardman at the railroad. Gallivan proved to have a talent for and interest in railroads, as well as a fine native intelligence. These, along with a good deal of luck, allowed him to rise quickly at the railroad.

With the help of two lawyers, Martin Kelsony and Abraham Lincoln, Gallivan was able to extend the Indiana Northern into Manitoba to the northwest, and to Southern Vandalia after that confederation was created in 1877. The Indiana Northern was the first North American railroad to join with the Mexican lines when the Southern Vandalia line was extended south to join with the Jefferson & California Railroad. By the end of his life, Gallivan was as much the king of the C.N.A.'s western railroads as Thomas Scott and Andrew Carnegie were in the east.

NaWiPoMo: Northern Confederation Central Railroad

The Northern Confederation Central Railroad was an early railroad line established in the Northern Confederation by Cornelius Vanderbilt in the 1820s. The N.C.C.R.R. had rail lines running west to Michigan City, Indiana; south to Norfolk, Virginia; and north to Portland, Massachusetts. Vanderbilt also controlled a fleet of trans-oceanic cargo vessels which, together with the N.C.C.R.R., allowed him to dominate the trans-Atlantic shipping field. Although Sobel does not say so, it is likely that the N.C.C.R.R. formed part of the New York, Michigan City, and Pitt Railroad established in 1843 by Governor-General Winfield Scott.

NaWiPoMo: Railroad

A railroad is a transportation system in which a train of cars is pulled along a set of rails by an engine, initially one powered by steam.

Railroads in the C.N.A.

The first railroads in the Confederation of North America appeared in the Northern Confederation in the early 1820s, and are credited with boosting the N.C.'s economy. Railroads in the N.C. were initially financed from London, but soon banks in New York City were also investing in them. Entrepreneurs built lines throughout the N.C., and by 1831 railroad branches were extending into the Southern Confederation and Indiana, with Michigan City serving as a railroad terminus in 1836. Most notable of the early railroad tycoons was Cornelius Vanderbilt, head of the Northern Confederation Central Railroad, which had lines going to Michigan City in the west, Portland, Massachusetts in the north, and Norfolk, Virginia to the south.

During his first year as Governor-General in 1843, Winfield Scott helped bring about the formation of the New York, Michigan City, and Pitt Railroad, which was designed to connect the major cities of the C.N.A. through a system of feeders. A railroad line connected the Manitoban capital of North City with Port Superior in 1855. In 1852, the C.N.A. surpassed Great Britain in railroad production.

A second wave of railroad building took place in the C.N.A. after the Rocky Mountain War. By 1880, Thomas Scott's Grand National Railroad controlled some 18,000 miles of track, while his rival Andrew Carnegie's North American United line controlled another 22,000 miles. Carnegie was the first to introduce sleeping and eating cars, air brakes, and carriage feeders; Scott, meanwhile, was responsible for refrigerated cars, automatic switches, and the rationalization of gauges in 1878. At the same time, an Irish immigrant named Patrick Gallivan became the president of the Indiana Northern Railroad in 1861, and began extending its lines into Manitoba to the northwest, and later to Southern Vandalia and the United States of Mexico.

The C.N.A.'s railroads gave rise to the great labor unions of the 1860s, with railroad engineers forming the Consolidated Engineering Fraternity in 1857. This was followed by unions of switchmen, yardmen, and dispatchers. These unions came together with unions from the steel industry and dockworkers to form the Mechanics National Union in 1874 under the leadership of Michael Harter of the Yardmen.

One of the founding principles of the People's Coalition in their 1869 Norfolk Resolves was that the C.N.A.'s railroads, turnpikes and canals should be placed under the control of a state agency that would determine rates. During his first term as Governor-General, John McDowell of the Liberal Party sought to co-opt the reform movement by passing the Railroad Control Commission Act in 1878. The Act created the Railroad Control Commission, which had the power to investigate complaints and make recommendations for rate adjustments. McDowell also passed the Williamson Anti-Monopoly Act, which gave the Minister for Home Affairs the right to prosecute any large corporation or railroad "engaged in unfair or unethical practices." Later, Governor-General Henderson Dewey, as part of what he called his "dismantling operation" in the 1920s, passed the Transportation Control Act, which placed railroads, airmobile lines, and interconfederation truckers under the authority of the Confederation Transportation Authority.

The C.N.A.'s railroad network continued to expand into the 20th century. By 1910, every population center of more than 10,000 inhabitants was within fifteen miles of a railroad, and sleeping cars were available for all who could afford them.

Railroads in the U.S.M.

The U.S.M. did not initially take part in the railroad boom, since President Andrew Jackson hated the "iron monsters", and opposed their construction. However, with the discovery of gold in California in 1838, Jackson was finally forced to concede the need for a railroad.

A group of French and Jeffersonian businessmen organized the Jefferson & California Railroad soon after the discovery of gold, and received government support in the form of land grants and subsidies. The first rails were laid in Henrytown, Jefferson on 4 February 1839, while a second crew began construction from San Francsico, California on 11 April. French engineers supervised construction at both ends, and French iron and steel was imported to build the rails and steam locomotives of the railroad.

The building of the J & C Railroad sparked a transportation boom in Mexico, leading to the formation of other railroad and steamship firms. However, this boom seems to have been aborted by the coming of the Rocky Mountain War with the C.N.A. in 1845. The completion of the J & C Railroad in 1848 provided California's only rail link with the rest of the U.S.M. This proved inadequate as California's agricultural sector surpassed mining as its primary economic activity after the end of the war in 1855. In 1865, twenty-six wealthy businessmen in San Francisco formed a consortium called Kramer Associates in order to "explore means by which the system of transportation within California, and between California and the rest of the world, might be bettered." K.A. initially invested in railroads, dry goods, and canning, and the consortium seems to have been the primary factor in creating a postwar railroad boom. Within ten years of its formation, the U.S.M. had the highest number of railroad miles per capita in the world.

Following his re-election in the 1875 Mexican elections, President Omar Kinkaid began a program to bring Mexico's large corporations, including its railroads, under greater government control. In 1876 Kinkaid was able to gain passage of the Thomas Railroad Reform Act, which placed the lines under a government commission which set rates and determined future expansion.

K.A. was able to gain control of the J & C Railroad through the law firm of Bigham & Wilkes, which served as general counsel for the railroad. The firm's senior partner, Egbert Wilkes, was able to place his protege Benito Hermión on the railroad's Board of Directors in 1879, and by the following year Hermión had become President of the J & C Railroad. In 1880 Hermión was placed in command of the U.S.M.'s newly-formed national police force, the Constabulary, and in September 1881 he was able to make himself dictator of Mexico.

One of Mexican President Vincent Mercator's social reforms of the 1950s and 1960s was the lowering of railroad charges on a sliding scale. By 1968, passage on Mexican railroads was free.

Sobel's sources for the railroad include David Gould's Gold and Railroads, Profits and Losses (Mexico City, 1948); Robert Small's The Role of the Railroad in the History of the Northern Confederation (Mexico City, 1960); and John Flaherty's Builders of North America (London, 1967).

NaWiPoMo: Confederation Transportation Authority

The Confederation Transportation Authority is a government agency created by the Transportation Control Act during Governor-General Henderson Dewey's first term in office. The C.T.A. has wide powers to control railroads, airmobile lines, and interconfederation truckers. Although this seems to contradict the general tenor of Dewey's programs, which involve devolving power from the national government to the confederations, it seems likely that the C.T.A. either reduced regulations, delegated authority to confederation-level agencies, or both. As part of Dewey's "dismantling operation," the C.T.A. presumably superceded and consolidated several previous national transportation agencies such as the Railroad Control Commission.

NaWiPoMo: Wilton Harmaker

Wilton Harmaker is a contemporary North American writer. He is the author of The Genesis of Twentieth Century North America, which was published in Burgoyne in 1970.

Sobel quotes a passage from Harmaker on the state of race relations in the C.N.A. at the time of the Chapultepec Incident and the rise of the Friends of Black Mexico and the League for Brotherhood: "North America resolved its racial problems by denying contact between the races. If the Wilkins area of Michigan City was the Negro section of that industrial complex, then Southern Vandalia was the Negro section of the nation."

It seems likely that Harmaker is a faculty member at Burgoyne University, though Sobel describes him simply as a writer.

NaWiPoMo: The Simmons Toll Road Bill

The Simmons Toll Road Bill was a major legislative act sponsored by Liberal Governor-General Henderson Dewey during his first term in office as part of what he called his "dismantling operation". As with much of Dewey's legislation, the bill was introduced simply, with little prologue, by an undistinguished Liberal back-bencher. The bill provided for the construction of confederation-sponsored toll roads, which would be self-liquidating financially in fifty years.

As was the case with other major legislation sponsored by Dewey, the Simmons Toll Road Bill passed with little difficulty after being praised by Dewey and his fellow Liberals as "liberating." Members of the opposition People's Coalition pointed out that the bill was popular in rural and underdeveloped areas of the Confederation of North America, particularly in the Confederation of Manitoba. These were areas which were rapidly gaining in population and political power through the Galloway Plan's subsidized relocation program, and which tended to support the Liberals. Although Sobel does not specifically say so, the Simmons Bill would also benefit Owen Galloway's locomobile business, which would also attract P.C. criticism.

NaWiPoMo: The 1923 Grand Council Elections

The 1923 Grand Council elections took place on 16 February 1923, for the purpose of choosing the Seventeenth Grand Council of the Confederation of North America.

The 1923 election campaign took place against the backdrop of the malaise of 1916 - 1924, which Sobel describes as a rebellion against the idea of progress that dominated the western world, and a desire among its opponents for "a more simple life." The rebellion against progress centered around the League for Brotherhood, which had been founded in May 1920 by Howard Washburne of Southern Vandalia.

Washburne had originally intended for the League to serve as a nationwide organization that would, through capitalist and republican paths, obtain a greater share of jobs and power for the C.N.A.'s Negroes. The League attracted other radicals and reformers who had their own agendas, and who saw it as a vehicle for achieving them. These were men and women who rejected capitalism and republicanism, and in some cases even found the traditional radical followers of Neiderhofferism to be irrelevant. The new radicals rejected urbanization and industrialization, which they called "the suffocation of the cities and the horrors of the factory," and called for a return to "a more natural way of life." Through sheer weight of numbers, these radicals were able to take control of the League in late 1920. By the summer of 1921, the League numbered seven million members, most of them dissatisfied middle-class whites and intellectuals.

The political leaders of the C.N.A. did not know what to make of this great reformist wave. Governor-General Calvin Wagner, the leader of the People's Coalition, once said that "This is a business century, and we are a business country." However, the new radicals had come to reject the values of that business civilization.

There were major riots across the C.N.A. in the summer of 1922, the worst since the economic and social chaos of the Bloody Eighties. Wagner attempted to rally the nation behind him, but only succeeded in antagonizing the new radicals and making his own supporters more militant. James Kilroy of the New York Herald said, "The faint aroma of Starkism has made its appearance, and both the opponents of our civilization and its supporters seem pleased by the possibility of its return." Although the C.N.A. continued to prosper, the feeling of moral decay that had first appeared in the wake of the Chapultepec Incident of 1916 was becoming dangerous.

There was a large minority within the opposition Liberal Party that sought to gain the support of the new radicals, and who were willing to nominate Washburne as their candidate for governor-general in the upcoming elections. They were opposed by Chester Phipps, the Governor of the Southern Confederation, and the Liberal nominee for governor-general in the 1918 elections. Phipps stated in August 1922 that "Mr. Washburne is a saint. But saints are notoriously poor politicians." At the Liberals' nominating convention in December 1922, Phipps and his supporters were able to deny the nomination to Washburne, nominating instead Councilman Henderson Dewey of Indiana. The P.C., in their own convention that month, renominated Governor-General Wagner. Thus, both major parties rejected the new radicalism, leaving it with no political means to accomplish its objectives.

The political situation in the C.N.A. changed literally overnight, following the Galloway Speech of 25 December. Owen Galloway the President of North American Motors, proposed a plan to defuse the growing antagonism within the country by subsidizing emigration within, and from, the C.N.A. "We are a nation of two societies, each with different values, ideals, and goals.... If two peoples cannot live together, they may better live apart."

At a press conference, Washburne himself called Galloway's proposal "worthy of study, and the child of a man of unquestionable sincerity." As Galloway and his siblings established the Galloway Trust to carry out his program, thousands of would-be emigrants flocked to its headquarters, and their sub-stations in every large city in the C.N.A., asking to be placed on the rolls. The new radicals welcomed the opportunity to "denude the nation of its most precious possession, it's people," and declared that "Galloway has done more to destroy this corrupt society than any man in history."

Although both major parties had already nominated candidates for governor-general, a group of Councilmen in Indiana suggested in mid-January the formation of a "Galloway Coalition" of politicians pledging themselves to select Galloway as governor-general after the elections. Galloway himself firmly rejected the possibility, insisting, "Even if selected for the post, I will not serve in it." This ended the movement, but not Galloway's influence. Governor-General Wagner endorsed the Galloway Plan "and all it entails," while Councilman Dewey went further, promising to bring Galloway into the government if elected. Wagner responded by claiming support for "Mr. Galloway's future plans, of which I have been informed by none other than that gentleman himself." However, Galloway denied talking to Wagner in anything other than vague generalities.

Both candidates appeared regularly on vitavision, and Dewey cleverly took advantage of the new medium by speaking in generalities in the Galloway manner, consciously imitating Galloway's prose, his speaking style, and even his appearance. Without saying so, Dewey was able to give the impression that he was closer to Galloway than his opponent.

Dewey's plan was successful, and on 16 February 1923 the Liberals won a majority in the Grand Council for the first time since 1883.

Sobel's sources for the 1923 Grand Council elections are Winslow McGregor's A Child Shall Lead Them: The Idiocy of Our Times (New York, 1921); Farley Shaw's Voices of the Great Protest (New York, 1930); Franklin Drew's The Guard Changeth: The Elections of 1923 (New York, 1931); Fritz Webern's The Dilemma of Our Times (New York, 1933); and the 23 June, 5 August, and 15 October 1922 issues of the New York Herald. Election results are from the New York Herald, 17 February 1923.

NaWiPoMo: General Education Bill

The General Education Bill was a major reform of national education policy in the Confederation of North America introduced by Liberal Governor-General Henderson Dewey during his first term as part of what he called his "dismantling operation". The bill replaced older legislation dating back to the time of Governor-General John McDowell.

Under the General Education Bill, education through professional schools would be guaranteed to all intellectually qualified citizens. The program would be paid for by the individual confederations, which would be reimbursed by the national government.

As was the case with other major legislation sponsored by Dewey, the General Education Bill passed with little difficulty after being praised by Dewey and his fellow Liberals as "liberating." Members of the opposition People's Coalition pointed out that the bill was popular in rural and underdeveloped areas of the C.N.A., particularly in the Confederation of Manitoba. These were areas which were rapidly gaining in population and political power through the Galloway Plan's subsidized relocation program, and which tended to support the Liberals.

No NaWiPoMo

Well, it looks like I've been blocked from the NaBloPoMo site and my first Sobel Wiki article taken down. I've been given no explanation.

Despite this, I am determined to continue the project of writing and posting at least one Sobel Wiki article a day during the month of November. If I don't have an outlet at NaBloPoMo, at least I have this blog, and I mean to use it.

NaWiPoMo: Chester Phipps

Chester Phipps was the Governor of the Southern Confederation and a leading figure in the Liberal Party of the Confederation of North America in the 1910s and 1920s.

After the formation of the Friends of Black Mexico under Howard Washburne of Southern Vandalia, some Liberal members of the Grand Council supported nominating Washburne for Governor-General in the upcoming 1918 Grand Council elections. However, the F.B.M.'s involvement in the Chapultepec Incident of January 1916, which nearly led to war between the C.N.A. and the United States of Mexico, apparently caused second thoughts among the Liberal leadership. Governor Phipps was among those who opposed allying the Liberal Party with the F.B.M., and at the Liberals' national convention prior to the elections, Phipps was able to gain the party's nomination for himself.

During the campaign, Phipps argued that the election of a People's Coalition majority would mean "more of the same," presumably hoping that the North American electorate had grown tired of the Coalition's policies of government-subsidized businesses and isolationism. However, the P.C. candidate, Councilman Calvin Wagner of Indiana, accepted Phipps' accusation. "If by more of the same, Governor Phipps means still greater prosperity and continued peace and tranquillity, then I plead guilty to that desire."

The P.C. under Wagner had no trouble defeating the Liberals under Phipps, and Wagner became Governor-General in February 1918. However, what neither Wagner nor Phipps realized at the time was that prosperity brought its own problems, and those problems would soon lead to a national wave of discontent. Washburne inadvertantly contributed to the national discontent by transforming the F.B.M. into the League for Brotherhood in May 1920, creating a vehicle for those who sought to reject the values of modern civilization.

By 1922, there remained a large minority within the Liberal Party who wished for Washburne to lead the party in the upcoming Grand Council elections. Phipps remained opposed to Washburne, saying on 4 August 1922, "Mr. Washburne is a saint. But saints are notoriously poor politicians." Phipps was again able to prevent Washburne from gaining the nomination, which went to Councilman Henderson Dewey of Indiana. Unlike Phipps five years before, Dewey was able to defeat Wagner in the 1923 Grand Council elections.

NaWiPoMo: The 1918 Grand Council Elections

The 1918 Grand Council elections took place in February 1918, for the purpose of choosing the Sixteenth Grand Council of the Confederation of North America.

Incumbent Governor-General Albert Merriman chose not to run for a third term. Instead, he threw his support behind Councilman Calvin Wagner of Indiana, and his popularity within the People's Coalition was sufficient to gain Wagner the party's nomination for governor-general.

In the early months of 1915, there was considerable support within the Liberal Party for Howard Washburne, the former Governor of Southern Vandalia and head of the Friends of Black Mexico. It may be that the F.B.M.'s role in the Chapultepec Incident of January 1916 caused second thoughts among the Liberal leadership, because the Liberal candidate for governor-general was Chester Phipps, the Governor of the Southern Confederation.

During the campaign, Phipps argued that the election of a Coalition majority would mean "more of the same," presumably hoping that the North American electorate had grown tired of the Coalition's policies of government-subsidized businesses and isolationism. Rather than attempting to refute Phipps' accusation, Wagner embraced it, saying, "If by more of the same, Governor Phipps means still greater prosperity and continued peace and tranquility, then I plead guilty to that desire."

On election day, the Wagner-led P.C. had no trouble defeating the Liberals. However, Sobel does not provide confederation-level election results, or even indicate the relative sizes of the party caucuses in the Grand Council.

(This post has been revised to reflect recent changes in the Sobel Wiki article.)

NaWiPoMo

Four years ago, in November 2009, I took part in National Blog Posting Month, and managed to keep posting long enough to earn the badge you see over on the right. I even got caught up writing my Tolkien/Chandler mashup "Deuce Baggins: Private Eye" to the point of carrying on writing it halfway through December.

The following year, I took part again, but since I was busy at the time laying the groundwork for the Sobel Wiki, I settled for writing at least one wiki article a day throughout November. However, though I posted the results in my NaBloPoMo blog, I did not do so here at the Johnny Pez blog.

This time, I think I will. Thirty days, thirty Sobel Wiki articles, right here at the Johnny Pez blog. Catch the action!

For All Nails #315: If This Be Treason

The For All Nails may be moving a bit slowly these days, but it hasn't stopped. Now up at the Sobel Wiki is the third vignette featuring Abigail Burgoyne, Dowager Duchess of Albany:

For All Nails #315: If This Be Treason

by Johnny Pez


Springfield, Massachusetts, N.C., CNA
22 February 1817

Abigail Burgoyne, Dowager Duchess of Albany, shivered in spite of the fire that burned before her. Her host had made his apologies when business called him away, leaving her alone in the lushly appointed sitting room, with only the blazing fire in the hearth to keep her company.

It had taken all her powers of persuasion to get her son to agree to allow her to visit Springfield. He had finally relented when she pointed out that she was the ideal person to infiltrate the conspiracy centered at the Springfield Armory. She was prominent enough to gain access, but above suspicion of espionage due to her age and sex. Above all, in a situation where the loyalty of all was suspect, she was the only person he could absolutely trust.

In two weeks, building on what Johnny had already learned or deduced from other sources, she had been able to pierce to the heart of the conspiracy. Now she was an honored guest of the ringleader, the man whose avarice and treachery had cost the lives of so many people, and corrupted one of the centers of the Northern Confederation’s military power.

In her bedroom, not far away, was a copy of Jay’s Notes on the Perfidy of Our Former Friends. If her host had her room searched (and she had no doubt that if he hadn’t already, he soon would), it would help to convince him that her reputation as a sympathizer with the rebels of ’75 still held true. The book also served as the key to the cipher she had been using to report her discoveries to her son.

Much of the time, her visit to Springfield was nothing more than the social call it appeared to be. She had been genuinely pleased to renew the acquaintance of the many friends she had made during her long tenure as the ruler of the Burgoyne social scene. Being in Springfield, of course she would call upon Sally Dale, the wife of the armory’s superintendant, whom she knew from Colonel Dale’s days as the Southern Confederation’s delegate to the Grand Council.

She was soon able to establish that Dale knew nothing of the secret sale of weapons from the armory to the members of Tecumseh’s army. However, conversations with Sally’s circle of friends had allowed her to piece together enough information to lead her to the head of the conspiracy, and secured an invitation to spend the night here in his home.

Her musings were interrupted by the sound of the sitting room door opening. Turning from the fireplace, she saw her host enter.

Major Stephen Decatur, the Inspector of Ordinance at the Springfield Armory, was a man in his late 30s, with the solid build and dark, aquiline features of his French grandfather and namesake. His wide mouth grew wider as he smiled at Abigail and said, “My apologies again, my lady, for deserting you. I unfortunately had business to attend to that would brook no delay.” His voice was deep, and he spoke with the broad accent of his Philadelphia youth.

“No apology is necessary, Major,” Abigail answered. “I understand. You are a man of consequence, with much to occupy your attention. My late husband was the same way.”

Major Decatur seated himself near the fire, and she took a chair near him. “I would have liked to meet your husband,” he continued. “Of course, I was born after his great victory at Saratoga, and only a child when he was Viceroy. But I learned of his deeds at school, and I may admit to you that it was his example that led me to seek a soldier’s life, much to the dismay of my mother.”

“Was your father more accommodating of your wishes?” Abigail asked.

“I never knew my father,” said Decatur, as his wide mouth turned down. “During the Rebellion, he sided with the rebels, and captained a privateer. That proved to be his undoing. When the Congress agreed to return to British rule, my father and the other privateer captains were arrested and charged with piracy. My father was hanged in the same month as the rebel leaders in London.”

Abigail closed her eyes. “I am sorry, Major. That should not have been. Your father was a patriot, and deserved better of his country.”

“Many men who deserved better failed to receive it after the Rebellion,” she heard him say. “I say nothing against your husband, you understand. He sought to reconcile the two sides, and there was many a rebel who would have shared my father’s fate had it not been for General Burgoyne’s clemency.”

Abigail opened her eyes again, and saw that the Major’s frown had deepened. “Still,” she said, “there were too many who did, and more who fled for fear of their lives. I came close to doing so myself.”

Now the Major’s expressive face showed surprise. “You, my lady?”

Abigail found her mind going back to the days after the Rebellion, as it had done so many times before. “Lord Albany was my second husband. My first was Dick Conrad, a soldier in General Washington’s army. He died in the winter of ’78, at the encampment at Valley Forge. And there I was, a traitor’s widow in New-York City with no friends and no prospects. When I heard of General Arnold’s plan to build a Patriot settlement in Spanish Louisiana, I planned to join him. It was only Johnny’s proposal of marriage that persuaded me to stay.”

“And just as well for you that you did,” Major Decatur said. There was no need for him to enlarge on his comment; General Arnold’s party had crossed the Mississippi in June of 1780, and never been heard from again. “I confess I find it odd to hear the Dowager Duchess of Albany speak of going on the Wilderness Walk with General Arnold. I wonder now that you remained in Burgoyne after the Duke’s passing, my lady; to hear you tell it, you would have been content to leave for Jefferson.”

Abigail’s eyes drifted toward the fire as she spoke. “I might well have, had it been a matter of myself alone. However, by then I had the boys to think of. In spite of his lofty title, Little Johnny was the son of an American mother, and I meant to bring him up in the land of his birth.”

“American?” said Major Decatur. “That’s not a word one hears often these days. One might think you were still a rebel at heart.”

“One would be correct,” Abigail answered as she continued to stare into the flames. “Parliament does nothing for us that we might not do for ourselves. It was the Georgians who took Florida from Spain. It was we who took Louisiana, not the British.”

“Are we not British, then?” said Decatur softly.

“We are Americans,” Abigail said, equally softly. “Or, if you must, North Americans. The British keep us weak and divided, but the day will come when we are united, as we were under the Congress. And on that day, we will live, and breathe, and even die if need be, as North Americans. And the whole world will know that we are our own people, and not merely an inferior sort of British.”

There was a long silence, which the Major finally broke. “Would it surprise you to learn, my lady, that there are others who believe as you do?”

Now Abigail turned her gaze from the fire, to look into Decatur’s eyes. “Belief is a simple matter. It means nothing if there are no deeds to match the words.”

Decatur laughed. “Deeds enough! There have been blows in plenty struck against the creatures of King George the Mad and his debauched Regent. Blows that have shaken this rotten Confederation of theirs to its foundations! I tell you, my lady, that it was the weapons of this very arsenal that allowed Tecumseh’s warriors and John Howard’s enslaved brothers to rise up and fight for their liberty!”

“You seek to jest with me, surely,” said Abigail. “How could these weapons find their way into the hands of Indians and slaves?”

“It is no jest, my lady,” said Decatur earnestly. “All across this wilderness of North America there are men who believe as you and I do. They have confederates among the Indians, and among the slaves, and among the Free Quebec Party as well. Tecumseh’s war and Howard’s rebellion are only the beginning. We will not rest until the Tory Confederation has been brought down, and the United States of America raised up in its place.”

Abigail rose from her seat now, went to a window, and drew aside the blind. There was nothing to see but darkness beyond. She raised her hand to her cheek, then let it rest upon the windowsill.

Still staring out the window into the night, she said, “I was in Burgoyne, you know, when Tecumseh’s army took Allegheny City. I saw them burn it. I saw the people there fleeing for their lives.”

“A regrettable necessity, my lady,” she heard Decatur’s voice from behind her. “Are you familiar with Jefferson’s Apologia?”

“I am,” said Abigail. “I know the lines you refer to. ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.’ Jefferson wrote them knowing that his own blood would shortly be shed by the tyrants of London. And yet, I wonder. How will your new United States of America be raised up when the people of the country lie dead, slain by the weapons you have distributed? Will it be raised up by Tecumseh’s warriors? By Howard’s slaves? By Monsieur Ribot’s dissidents?”

A note of fear was creeping into Decatur’s voice. “My lady? I do not understand.”

Abigail remained by the window. She thought she could make out shapes in the darkness, but she might be mistaken. “Where is the United States of America, Major? It is already here. It will not replace the Confederation; it will be the Confederation. Its capital will be the city I live in, the city you tried to destroy, the city that bears the name of my husband, and my sons, and myself.”

Finally, she let the blind drop. There was no longer any question about what she had seen in the darkness. Turning, she saw that Major Decatur had risen from his seat. “What are you saying?” he demanded. “What have you done?”

“I am here on behalf of my son, the Duke of Albany,” Abigail responded. “He knew that weapons from the armory had found their way into the hands of Tecumseh’s army. I came here to learn who was responsible, and I have.”

There was a smashing sound in another part of the house. Abigail fancied that it was the sound of a door being forced open. Major Decatur began turning his head abruptly, as though seeking a means of escape. Then he turned his attention on her, and his hands clenched into fists. “Traitor,” he hissed.

There was a rush of footsteps, and the door to the sitting room was flung open. Men in the red uniforms of the Massachusetts Provincial Militia poured into the room, led by a man in civilian clothing. “Mother!” he exclaimed. “Are you –“

“I am unharmed, Johnny,” said Abigail. “Allow me to introduce Major Stephen Decatur, the man you’ve been seeking. Major, my son, John Burgoyne, Duke of Albany.”

As the militiamen bound Major Decatur, Johnny placed a gentle arm around her shoulders and led her from the room. She did not spare Decatur a glance as she murmured, “If this be treason, then make the most of it.”