tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82379173397307929162024-03-13T16:35:33.539-04:00Johnny PezBark more, wag less.Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.comBlogger1386125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-29117174453120692382016-11-14T15:05:00.000-05:002016-11-14T15:52:10.532-05:00Scorpions in a Bottle: The Mexican Civil War (revised)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyZkevhMKRfdapTZEbn9x22OSnIWleyFl_oPcsssGdri7Nr0AGfFa82VSL3RsZ6h3PC-hQHdfQOgDCcc-9VA_zEorAr9e9jB7eO46cCc8IN_DdPIO19JMOH4vb4uVJSGWGnQ_3ApgQyh0/s1600/Jose+Maria+Morelos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyZkevhMKRfdapTZEbn9x22OSnIWleyFl_oPcsssGdri7Nr0AGfFa82VSL3RsZ6h3PC-hQHdfQOgDCcc-9VA_zEorAr9e9jB7eO46cCc8IN_DdPIO19JMOH4vb4uVJSGWGnQ_3ApgQyh0/s320/Jose+Maria+Morelos.jpg" width="205" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">José María Morelos</td></tr>
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<em><a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html">Scorpions in a Bottle</a></em> resumes with the second half of Chapter 8, in which the state of Jefferson becomes drawn into the Mexican Civil War. (Now revised to reflect Noel Maurer's concerns about anachronistic disestablishmentarianism.)<br />
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Despite the general indignation in the C.N.A. over Major Jackson’s high-handedness, Jefferson continued to receive a steady stream of white settlers and Negro slaves from the Southern Confederation. Jefferson was also a popular destination for Frenchmen seeking to escape their economically depressed homeland. Although most French immigrants settled in the Francophone areas around Lafayette, a sizeable minority, many of them Jewish, chose to make their homes in Henrytown’s growing seaport. Trade between Jefferson and France helped to revive the economies of both countries, and led to the renewal of ties dating back to the Rebellion. [1]<br />
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A third source of settlers for Jefferson was the Spanish Caribbean, particularly Cuba. The anti-Hohenzollern uprisings there had touched off bloody revolts by the islands’ Negro slaves, and Jefferson was the popular destination for panicked plantation owners and shopkeepers fleeing the slaughter. The white ruling classes in the Spanish Caribbean were eventually able to put down the slave revolts and regain control of the islands, but many of the refugees chose to remain in Jefferson, mainly settling in the old Spanish towns of San Antonio, Espiritu Santo, and Nacogdoches. Jefferson was also the destination of choice for many French and Spanish residents of Louisiana and West Florida who left to avoid British rule. Jefferson had always been a multilingual society with significant French and Spanish minorities, and this remained true after the Trans-Oceanic War. [2]<br />
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The Mexican War of Independence ended in 1805 with the departure of the last Royalist army. However, six years of war had left the new Republic of Mexico divided and bankrupt. Initially, Güemes Padilla’s prestige allowed him to hold the country together while it slowly recovered from the conflict. Unfortunately, the rigors of the war had taken their toll on the former viceroy, and he died in January 1806.<br />
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Güemes Padilla’s death brought a long-simmering conflict between his two chief supporters, José María Morelos and Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, into the open. Morelos had been Güemes Padilla’s chief military strategist, while Hidalgo was a charismatic former priest known as the “conscience of the revolution.” Morelos was able to use his control of the Mexican Army and support from Mexico City’s criollo elite to succeed Güemes Padilla as provisional president of the republic. This did not sit well with Hidalgo, who regarded himself as better fitted to lead Mexico than Morelos. A clash between the two was inevitable.<br />
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Güemes Padilla had been strongly influenced by the ideals of the Enlightenment, and during and after the War of Independence he had spoken in favor of “freedom of conscience.” Whether he intended to establish complete freedom of religion, or even the disestablishment of the Catholic Church, is a question that divided his contemporaries, and has vexed historians ever since. [3] Regardless, when Morelos pledged himself to continue his predecessor’s reforms, Hidalgo accused him of seeking to eliminate the Catholic Church and transform Mexico into a “Godless nation.” Although Morelos denied this, Hidalgo was able to use the accusation to whip up popular opposition to his rule.<br />
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Morelos was determined to maintain himself in power, and he cracked down on Hidalgo’s followers in Mexico City. Hidalgo, fearing for his life, fled the capital. A company of soldiers sent to Cuautla to arrest Hidalgo were ambushed there by his supporters on April 14, an event that marked the start of the Mexican Civil War. [4]<br />
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In Jefferson City, the Hamilton-Monroe-Gaillard government followed events in Mexico closely. Hamilton was particularly concerned by a proclamation issued by Revillagigedo in June 1805 calling on the Jeffersonians to renounce the uprising of 1796 and submit to his government’s rule. Hamilton began preparing for war with Mexico, but fears of a Mexican attack diminished when news came of the outbreak of the civil war.<br />
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As well as diminishing the threat of war, the outbreak of the civil war in Mexico led to the end of Jefferson’s international isolation. As the civil war continued, several areas of the former Viceroyalty of New Spain broke away to form their own states, including Guatemala and Yucatan. Secretary of State Adams was able to establish diplomatic relations with the other breakaway Mexican states, and soon did the same with the newly-established republican governments in the Spanish Caribbean. [5]<br />
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A second event that helped end Jefferson’s diplomatic and financial isolation was the death of King Louis XVII of France in 1807. To most Frenchmen, Louis was nothing more than a puppet of the country’s British and German enemies. He was widely and derisively known as “the king on a string.” Since suffering a near-fatal bout of tuberculosis in 1789, Louis had been in poor health, and it was widely believed that his impotence kept him from consummating his marriage to Maria Luisa of Spain.<br />
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Upon Louis’ death, the French throne passed to his younger brother Louis Charles, Duke of Normany, who reigned as Louis XVIII. The new king was determined to free the country from Anglo-German domination. He extended diplomatic recognition to Jefferson, and encouraged French bankers to offer loans to the Jeffersonian government. He also encouraged the development of the French textile industry, which provided a steady market for Jeffersonian cotton crops. Hamilton chose Albert Gallatin, the Geneva-born Representative from Lafayette, as Jeffeson’s first minister to the Court of Louis XVIII. [6]<br />
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In Mexico, the civil war ground on. Hidalgo’s supporters, who became known as the Clericalists, were too weak to contest control of Mexico City, and contented themselves with conducting hit-and-run attacks on government targets. President Morelos’s supporters, known as the Federalists, remained secure in the capital, but were unable to maintain control of Mexico’s hinterland. Atrocities became common on both sides, and a steady flow of Mexican refugees fleeing the violence crossed the Rio Grande into Jefferson. Most of the refugees were Clericalists who had seen their homes and property destroyed and their friends and relatives killed by Federalist troops. As their fortunes improved in the prosperous, fast-growing new state, and they gained the franchise, they gravitated towards the Continentalist Party, which came to favor the Clericalist side in the civil war. [7]<br />
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Jefferson’s prosperity and growing international recognition redounded to the credit of the Continentalist government. In the 1807 elections, the Continentalists won 50 out of 66 seats in the Chamber of Representatives, ensuring that the Hamilton-Monroe-Gaillard ticket would be returned to office fourteen months later.<br />
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The second phase of the Mexican Civil War began in August 1809 when Hidalgo was captured by the Federalists and executed. Control of Hidalgo’s “army of clerics” fell to Simón Figueroa, who lacked his former commander’s ability as a tactician, but who turned out to be a skilled propagandist. Assisted by sympathizers in Jefferson, Figueroa’s anti-Federalist broadsides circulated throughout Mexico, turning popular opinion against Morelos’ government. Figueroa was also skilled at concealing his forces from government troops; the Clericalists were seemingly able to strike at will, albeit without inflicting much harm, and there seemed nothing the Federalists could do to stop them.<br />
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Hamilton was able to turn the erosion of Morelos’ authority to good effect. Covert assistance from the Jeffersonian government allowed the Clericalists to seize control of the provincial capitals of Nuevo Mexico and California, and both provinces were soon home to well-armed Anglophone settlers with close ties to the Clericalist army.<br />
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Although, Morelos publicly described the Clericalist attacks as being “like the stings of mosquitos which, though troublesome, could be born by a patient man,” privately he feared that his government’s authority was on the verge of collapse. Determined to end the Clericalist threat once and for all, in the spring of 1815 he issued a proclamation declaring that anyone found aiding the rebels would be subject to summary execution. Federalist troops then spread out to every urban area in Mexico, rounding up and executing suspected Clericalist sympathizers. [8]<br />
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The result was a pitched battle between Morelos’ troops and a mixed force of Clericalists and Anglo settlers led by Horatio Conyers in the hills outside Albuquerque, Nuevo Mexico in October 1815. The government army was forced to withdraw, and Nuevo Mexico was spared the horrors of the Federalist inquisition. Conyers became a hero to Anglophone and Hispanophone alike in Santa Fe.<br />
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When news of the Battle of Albuquerque reached Jefferson City, it became clear to Hamilton and his supporters that the Clericalists would be unable to resist the latest Federalist onslaught on their own. The time had come for the Jeffersonians to openly intervene in the Mexican Civil War.<br />
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1. Henri de Amory. <em>The Ghost of Lafayette: The Franco-Mexican Alliance</em> (Mexico City, 1959), pp 38-41.<br />
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2. Mitchell Carr. “Patterns of Immigration in Old Jefferson,” <em>Journal of Jeffersonian History</em>, CIV (November, 2009), pp. 288-302.<br />
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3. See Dolores Santiago. <em>Revillagigedo and the Historians</em> (Jefferson City, 2013).<br />
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4. Ortez. <em>The Birth of Mexico</em>, pp. 53-55.<br />
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5. Gregory Pomerantz. <em>The Life of John Quincy Adams</em> (Mexico City, 1975), pp. 207-21.<br />
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6. Charles Agassiz. <em>Louis XVIII and the Rebirth of France</em> (London, 1972), pp. 166-81.<br />
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7. Valentina Cabral. <em>A History of the Continentalist Party</em> (Jefferson City, 1996), pp. 44-47.<br />
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8. Ortez. <em>The Birth of Mexico</em>, pp. 91-96.Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-30607032192612903662016-09-18T21:49:00.000-04:002016-09-18T21:49:02.562-04:00I, Robot: To Preserve by Mickey Zucker Reichert<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Back in February, fantasy author Mickey Zucker Reichert published the third book in her I, Robot prequel trilogy, <em>I, Robot: To Preserve</em>. The books turned out to be not so much a prequel as a reboot of Isaac Asimov's positronic robot series. As I noted in <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2012/02/i-robot-to-protect-by-mickey-zucker.html">my review</a> of the first book,<em> I, Robot: To Protect</em>, Reichert shifted the time frame of Asimov's original stories by 27 years, so that Susan Calvin's birth takes place in 2009 rather than 1982. This allows Reichert to set her trilogy in our own future rather than in an alternate present, since under Asimov's original chronology <em>To Protect</em> would have taken place in the year 2008.<br />
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I liked <em>To Protect</em>. Despite the changes Reichert made to Susan Calvin and to the background of the positronic robot series, she maintained Asimov's focus on the interplay between the robots who obey the Three Laws of Robotics and a human race that has no built-in laws of behavior. Unfortunately, in her second book, <em><a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2015/11/i-robot-to-obey-by-mickey-zucker.html">I, Robot: To Obey</a></em>, Reichert shifted the focus away from the Three Laws so that she could write a violent, action-packed thriller centered on a ridiculous MacGuffin. The final book, sadly, continues the tradition established in the second book. Reichert presents us with another violent, action-packed thriller with a seriously unlikely plot. <br />
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In the second book, Susan Calvin, second-year psychiatry resident at a Manhattan teaching hospital, suddenly found herself caught between two equally murderous groups: an anti-robot movement called the Society for Humanity, and a hit squad from a military intelligence agency code-named Cadmium. Both groups believed, for no good reason, that Calvin knew a cheat code that would switch off the Three Laws, allowing positronic robots to be turned into unstoppable killing machines. The Society wanted to kill Calvin to keep the cheat code secret, and Cadmium wanted to kidnap Calvin and torture the cheat code out of her so they could weaponize their own positronic robots. The novel ended with a New York cop named Jake Carson thwarting both groups and saving Calvin's life.<br />
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As the third novel opens, Cadmium has come up with a new plan to gain the cheat code from Calvin, a plan that is both murderous and needlessly convoluted. Step one of the plan is to murder a brilliant medical researcher that Calvin has worked with, and make it look like the Society was responsible. In order to give an apparent motive for the Society to commit the murder, Cadmium made it look like the Society made it look like the murder was committed by Nate, an android from US Robots who works at the hospital. Unfortunately for Cadmium, the police are too obtuse to notice the clues they planted that point to the Society as the real culprits. Instead, the police arrest Nate for the murder, then arrest Nate's creator, Dr. Lawrence Robertson, the president of US Robots.<br />
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Step two of Cadmium's plan is to stage an attack on Calvin while she's walking through Central Park, and have one of their agents save her from the supposed attackers. Calvin believes that the attackers are working for the Society, and that her savior is a recently-discharged Marine named Pal Buffoni. Buffoni is a handsome devil, and it isn't long before he is able to seduce Calvin, winning both her trust and her love. The staged attack occurs shortly after Calvin has stolen Nate from the police, and Buffoni helps Calvin hide Nate in her apartment. Carson, the cop who saved Calvin a year earlier, then shows up at her door looking for Nate, since he has just been assigned to recover the android. Calvin and Buffoni disguise Nate and send Carson on his way.<br />
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Step three of Cadmium's plan is to stage another attack on Calvin, this time making sure to kill her closest friend. Buffoni then pressures her to try to figure out what the cheat code is, even though she has assured him that there is no cheat code. Carson reappears, and is able to surreptitiously inform Calvin that Cadmium has been behind all the attacks. Calvin pretends to work out the cheat code while luring Buffoni into a trap, and Carson is again able to save her.<br />
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Logically, there was no reason for Cadmium to commit the first murder and try to frame the Society for it. The first staged attack on Calvin in Central Park accomplished everything they wanted to accomplish: convince her that her life was threatened, and make her reliant on Buffoni for her protection. For that matter, there was no logical reason for the second staged attack. Calvin was already in love with Buffoni, and ready to follow his lead. The murder and the second attack occur because Reichert needs them, not because Cadmium needs them. The murder leads Calvin to quit her job at the hospital and go to work for US Robots, which is where Reichert needs her to be at the end of the novel to set up the stories in Asimov's original <em>I, Robot</em>. The second attack allows Carson to figure out that Cadmium is behind everything, so he can save Calvin again.<br />
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To sum up: Reichert's prequel trilogy made a very promising start, then suddenly veered into poorly-plotted mayhem. Was it her plan all along to make the prequels such a jarring departure from Asimov's original, or did she run out of inspiration after the first book and settle for writing a couple of violent thrillers? The whole cheat code MacGuffin derailed the trilogy to no purpose, since the hypothetical existence of a cheat code is never mentioned in any chronologically subsequent story.<br />
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I suppose if you squint hard enough, the prequels sort of look like the Elijah Baley novels (except much more violent and poorly plotted), so maybe that was what Reichert was aiming at. If so, I can't help wishing that she had tried to imitate the cerebral tone of Asimov's robot novels (and of the original <em>I, Robot </em>collection, for that matter), and not just the murder-takes-place-and-protagonist-solves-it plot structure.Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-88624069654610636962016-08-25T19:13:00.000-04:002016-08-25T19:13:33.811-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle: Rise of the Parties<br />
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In the course of writing <em>For Want of a Nail</em>, Sobel mostly skipped events between the end of the Trans-Oceanic War in 1799 and Jefferson's entry into the Mexican Civil War in 1815. Since this is pretty much the formative years of the independent State of Jefferson, I've decided that <em><a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html">Scorpions in a Bottle</a></em> is going to have an entire chapter devoted to this period. Below is the first half of Chapter 8: "The State of Jefferson."<br />
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Once the Jeffersonians completed the conquest of Tejas and northern Coahuila in 1798, all thoughts turned to Mexico City, and the expectation that Viceroy de la Grúa would respond to the Jeffersonian uprising by sending a Spanish army north. The Jeffersonians prepared as best they could, sending a delegation to the Comanche seeking an alliance against the Spanish, and fortifying the roads to Mexico City and Santa Fe. Hamilton even sent Monroe to Norfolk as an unofficial emissary to Bland, seeking help from the North Americans. By then, however, word of Major Jackson’s arrogant interview with Cornwallis and Curtis had reached the capitals of the C.N.A., and popular feeling against the Jeffersonians was at an all-time high there. [1]<br />
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It was against the backdrop of this anxiety concerning a Spanish counterattack that the Senatorial campaign of 1798 took place. Under the Lafayette Constitution, the terms of the fifteen-member Senate and the three-member Governate expired in January 1799. One of the oddities of the Jeffersonian constitution was that the two-year terms of the Chamber of Representatives were out of synch with the five-year terms of the senators and governors. As a result, the next class of senators would be chosen by the Chamber elected in 1797.<br />
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In the months before their terms expired, some of the senators began quietly canvassing members of the Chamber in hopes of securing enough votes to secure their reappointment. Rumors soon spread among the population of Jefferson of vote-buying within the legislature. The result was a wave of popular anger, not just against individual senators, but against the Senate as an institution. A statewide convention was soon organized with the goal of amending the Lafayette Constitution to abolish the Senate. In the course of the convention, which met in late September 1798, a faction appeared led by William Sayre and Samuel Curtis calling itself the Liberty Party that called for the direct election of the governors. When word reached General Hamilton, he sent a letter to the convention arguing that giving the governors an independent mandate would upset the balance of powers between the executive and legislative branches, increasing the risk of executive tyranny. Hamilton’s prestige was at its height at the time, and the convention chose to accept his counsel. The Senate’s power to choose the governors was transferred to the Chamber of Representatives. [2]<br />
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When the Chamber met in January 1799, Hamilton was offered another term as governor, but declined, stating that he preferred to remain at the head of the army while war with the Spanish continued. Johnston also declined a second term due to his declining health. Thus, Madison and Rush continued in office, while Monroe was elevated to replace Johnston.<br />
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When word of August Ferdinand’s elevation to the Spanish throne reached Jefferson City in the summer of 1799, Monroe presciently remarked, “Jenkinson thinks he has won Spain, but he has lost America.” [3] Events soon proved Monroe correct: by summer’s end, word came of Revillagigedo’s anti-royalist revolt in Mexico City, as well as others in Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Porto Rico. The threat of retaliation from Mexico City receded, and the leaders of the new state began the work of securing its independence.<br />
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The three governors appointed the late John Adams’ son John Quincy Adams Secretary of State, a frustrating office since no other nation was willing to recognize Jefferson as an independent state: Jenkinson’s government was opposed to any independence movements in Spanish America now that Spain had a friendly government; Louis XVII was firmly under the thumb of the Anglo-German alliance; [4] and the other revolutionary governments in Spanish America refused to recognize Jefferson for fear of antagonizing Revillagigedo.<br />
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The outbreak of the Mexican War of Independence led Hamilton to resign as commander of the Jeffersonian army. He then accepted the office of Secretary of the Exchequer, and set about putting Jefferson’s finances on a sound basis. Hamilton’s initial efforts to obtain a loan from a foreign government ran into the same difficulties as Adams’: no foreign government was willing to loan money to a state that lacked international recognition.<br />
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The salvation of the new nation’s finances came from a North American invention: the cotton gin. By mechanizing the process of separating cotton fibers from their seeds, the cotton gin removed a bottleneck in cotton production that resulted in a fifty-fold increase in cotton produced. A Northern Confederation inventor named Eli Whitney built the first cotton gin in 1793, and copies were soon found throughout the Southern Confederation and Jefferson. The outbreak of the Trans-Oceanic War delayed the growth of cotton production, but with the coming of peace in 1799 cotton production in Jefferson boomed.<br />
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The surge in cotton production brought with it a surge in demand for Negro slaves to cultivate it. This aroused the ire of the Liberty Party, who regarded slavery as antithetical to the ideals of the Rebellion. They called for the abolition of slavery, the repatriation of the freed slaves to Africa, and the transformation of Jefferson into the utopian republic of white yeoman farmers envisioned by Thomas Jefferson himself. [5]<br />
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While Hamilton himself disliked slavery, he believed that the new state needed the revenue that the cotton boom was bringing in, and slavery was a necessary component of the cotton boom. Jeffersonian ships were soon a common sight in Caribbean ports, their masters bidding fiercely on newly-arrived West African slaves. As the boom continued, the ships ventured across the Atlantic to the slave depots of Whydah and Lagos, purchasing slaves to be transported directly to Henrytown.<br />
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Hamilton himself articulated an alternative to the Libertarians’ agrarian utopianism. As the Mexican War of Independence unfolded, and New Spain descended into a maelstrom of violence and chaos, Hamilton came to believe that the Jeffersonians had a duty, a “continental destiny” as he put it, to take control of the country and guide it toward economic prosperity (including slave-based cotton cultivation) and orderly government. Hamilton’s Continental Destiny ideology attracted a large following in Jefferson, including many members of the government. [6]<br />
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As the 1803 elections approached, Hamilton’s followers organized themselves into a party in opposition to the Libertarians, calling themselves the Continentalists. Governors Madison and Rush tended to sympathize with the Libertarians, and by the summer of 1803 both groups had put forward slates of candidates for the Chamber of Representatives, and nominees for the Governate. Monroe broke with his former mentor Madison and joined Hamilton and John Gaillard as a Continentalist nominee for the Governate. Madison and Rush chose Sayre to replace Monroe in their own Libertarian ticket. On election day, October 5, the Continentalist candidates won 44 out of 58 seats in the Chamber, and at their first session on Monday, December 19, voted for the Hamilton-Monroe-Gaillard ticket for the Governate. [7]<br />
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1. Bruce. <em>The Life of Governor Theodorick Bland of Virginia</em>, pp. 410-412.<br />
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2. David Christman. <em>The Origins of Political Parties in Jefferson</em> (Mexico City, 1960), pp. 44-53.<br />
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3. Alexander Hamilton. <em>Memoirs</em> (Jefferson City, 1814), II, pp. 119-20.<br />
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4. After the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, King Frederick William III of Prussia, with Jenkinson’s encouragement, created a political union among the victorious allied German states called the Germanic Confederation. This left the Holy Roman Empire in an untenable position, leading Francis II to dissolve it and proclaim himself Emperor of Austria.<br />
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5. Peter Collins.<em> The Liberty Party in Old Jefferson</em> (Mexico City, 1954).<br />
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6. Christman. <em>The Origins of Political Parties in Jefferson</em>, pp. 107-15.<br />
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7. Henry Cisneros. <em>The 1803 Elections and the Rise of Partisanship</em> (Jefferson City, 2009).Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-10857589432842960792016-08-21T18:47:00.000-04:002016-08-21T18:47:18.395-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle: The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We continue with chapter 7 of <em><a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html">Scorpions in a Bottle</a></em>. Today's section looks briefly at the Trans-Oceanic War in Europe and the terms of the peace treaty ending it.<br />
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In Europe, the 1795 Franco-Austrian invasion of the German states had initially gone well for the two Catholic powers, with the French crossing the Rhine to occupy the Duchy of Wurtemburg and the Palatinate, while the Austrians occupied Silesia and advanced through Saxony toward Berlin. Jenkinson responded by sending British troops to the German states, where they successfully halted the French and Austrian advances. However, the Anglo-German forces lacked the strength to push the French and Austrian armies back, and the war in Germany settled down into a stalemate for several years.<br />
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The stalemate ended abruptly when the Russians concluded their conquest of Poland in 1798 and declared war on Austria, which had been providing covert aid to the Poles. Faced with a new enemy in the east, the Austrians withdrew most of their troops from Prussia, allowing the Anglo-Prussian army to focus on the French.<br />
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Two decisive battles took place within days of each other in September. On September 11, an Austrian army led by Francis II was defeated at the Battle of Kremsier by a Russian army led by Mikhail Kutuzov. Seven days later, an Anglo-German army under the overall command of Arthur Wellesley defeated a French army under Charles François Dumouriez at the Battle of Heilbronn. When news of the two defeats reached Paris, Marie Antoinette was removed from the regency by the king’s uncles, who sued for peace. [1]<br />
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While negotiators met at Aix-la-Chapelle to work out a peace treaty, an anti-monarchist uprising took place in Paris. The French royal family was driven out of the country and a republic was declared. Fearing the breakdown of order in France, Jenkinson ordered Wellesley to enter Paris and put down the rebellion. With Anglo-German troops occupying Paris and the French monarchy dependent on them for its survival, the terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle were dictated from London and Berlin.<br />
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The final treaty was ratified on March 1, 1799. It confirmed the loss of the Floridas and Louisiana to the British, and required the Austrians to cede Galicia to the Russians and Austrian Silesia and northern Moravia to the Prussians. Although the victorious allies declined to annex any French territory, France was required to pay an indemnity of 40 million livres to Prussia and the other German states, which placed a further strain on French finances. Finally, in an effort to end the Franco-Spanish alliance, the Bourbon king of Spain, Charles IV, was deposed, and Prince August Ferdinand of Prussia, youngest brother of the late Frederick the Great, was set on the Spanish throne as Ferdinand VII. [2]<br />
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News that a Protestant prince was being placed on the Spanish throne caused consternation in Spain and throughout the Spanish Empire. British garrisons in several Spanish cities were set upon by mobs. The uprisings in the cities were put down, but armed irregulars called “guerrillas” made much of the Spanish countryside hazardous for British troops. [3] <br />
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When news of Ferdinand’s enthronement reached Spanish America, the result was a series of uprisings, with most of the Spanish garrison troops joining the rebels. In Mexico City, the leading figure in the rebellion was former viceroy Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla, the Count of Revillagigedo, who had governed the colony from 1789 to 1794. Revillagigedo’s successor, Miguel de la Grúa Talamanca, supported the new king, and the result was a six-year civil war. Revillagigedo’s rebellion attracted the support of New Spain’s clergy, most notably Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and José María Morelos. The Mexican War of Independence ended with Revillagigedo’s victory and the withdrawal of the last loyalist Spanish soldiers on March 17, 1805. [4] <br />
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1. Sir Wilfred Eddington. <em>The Five Years’ War</em> (London, 2003), pp. 466-79.<br />
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2. There has never been any consensus among historians on the war’s name. In the New World it is known as the Trans-Oceanic War, while British historians call it the Five Years’ War and continental historians call it the Habsburg War.<br />
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3. Spain remained ungovernable for years until King Ferdinand abdicated in favor of his son Louis Ferdinand, who had converted to Catholicism after the family moved to Madrid. Esteban Gutierrez. <em>Luis Fernando and the Spanish Hohenzollerns</em> (Mexico City, 1938).<br />
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4. Carlos Ortez. <em>The Birth of Mexico</em> (Mexico City, 1979).Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-88486915469280039482016-08-14T14:49:00.000-04:002016-08-25T19:17:42.036-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle: The Louisiana War<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today's excerpt from <em><a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html">Scorpions in a Bottle</a></em> is the third section of Chapter 7: The Trans-Oceanic War, and tells of the Southern Confederation's conquest of Spanish Louisiana in 1797-98.<br />
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In the Southern Confederation, the proposed expedition to New Orleans was delayed for a year while the S.C. militia under General Edward Curtis and Captain Nelson’s fleet were diverted to West Florida to assist the Georgia militia. A combined S.C.-British force captured the West Floridian capital of Pensacola on July 22, 1796, after a three-week siege that saw the besieging armies decimated by an outbreak of yellow fever. By the time Pensacola fell, illness had left less than half of the combined force fit for duty, and Cornwallis chose to end the campaign and return to Halifax. [1]<br />
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Curtis traveled to Halifax in the spring of 1797 to meet with Cornwallis and Nelson, and there the three men planned to renew the campaign. Cornwallis’s men boarded Nelson’s transports in June while Curtis returned to Pensacola to organize the overland march to New Orleans. The British fleet returned to Pensacola in July, and the S.C. militia set off three days later, traveling along the Gulf coast with Nelson’s ships sailing offshore. The combined force laid siege to Mobile on August 12, and the settlement quickly capitulated. The same occurred two weeks later when the combined force arrived at the settlement of Biloxi. From there, the two forces split up, with Curtis’s militia making their way around the western shore of Lake Pontchartrain while Nelson’s fleet sailed up the Mississippi. The two forces reunited just outside of New Orleans in late September, and the Spanish governor of Louisiana formally surrendered the city on October 1. [2]<br />
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Major Jackson’s force of Jeffersonians still occupied the log fort they had constructed nineteen months before, and Jackson himself traveled to New Orleans two days after the city’s fall to inform Cornwallis and Curtis of Jefferson’s separation from the Spanish Empire. He also, on his own initiative, laid claim to all of Louisiana southwest of the Mississippi-Arkansas river complex on behalf of the State of Jefferson.<br />
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Although Jackson was only eight when the Rebellion broke out, his family were well-known rebel sympathizers. After the restoration of British rule in the Carolinas, Jackson and two of his brothers were imprisoned by British troops. Conditions in the stockade where they were held were onerous, and both brothers died during their captivity; Jackson developed a fierce, lifelong hatred of the British as a result. [3] While in New Orleans, he behaved with notable rudeness to both Cornwallis and Curtis, threatening military action against the Southern Confederation if his claims on behalf of Jefferson were ignored by their troops. Cornwallis and Curtis debated attacking Jackson’s outpost, but Curtis was under orders from Connolly to move upriver and occupy the Franco-Spanish settlements at Baton Rouge and St. Louis, so the two men agreed to respect Jackson’s claims. [4]<br />
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From New Orleans, Nelson’s fleet sailed upriver in November, and the two armies followed on land. After capturing Baton Rouge on November 17, Cornwallis and Curtis decided to establish a winter camp there and make preparations to continue the campaign in the spring. The armies constructed a large encampment called Fort George and settled down for the winter, while Nelson returned with most of his fleet to New Orleans.<br />
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Reorganized and resupplied, the combined army marched north from Baton Rouge in April 1798. They encountered no organized resistance from the Spanish, but endured several attacks by Indian war parties before reaching Fort Radisson in July. Pausing for a week in the Indianan capital to resupply and care for their sick and injured, the armies marched north to St. Louis, the northernmost Franco-Spanish outpost on the Mississippi, which was captured on August 25. With the fall of St. Louis, all of Louisiana north of the Arkansas River was in North American hands.<br />
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1. Pickett. <em>The Florida War</em>, pp. 121-33.<br />
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2. Roscoe Chettering. <em>The Conquest of Louisiana</em> (New York, 1897), pp. 83-87.<br />
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3. Alice Rich.<em> Jackson: The Third Founder</em> (Mexico City, 1967), pp. 24-39.<br />
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4. Miles. <em>Jefferson in the Trans-Oceanic War</em>, pp. 371-78.Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-84051525107916850092016-07-31T18:57:00.000-04:002016-07-31T18:57:16.895-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle: The Jefferson War<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
We resume work on <em><a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html">Scorpions in a Bottle</a></em> with the second section of chapter 7, following the course of the Trans-Oceanic War in the Jefferson settlement. As I've <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2015/09/sobel-wiki-always-bridesmaid.html">noted before</a>, this part of Sobel's history is somewhat problematic, since he never gives us a reason why the Jeffersonians would rebel against Spanish rule and set themselves up as an independent state. I've done what I can to square that circle.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
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In Jefferson City, news of the outbreak of war between Britain and Spain met a mixed reaction. By then, the original rebels were greatly outnumbered by more recent settlers from the Southern Confederation, many of whom still had close ties with friends and relatives in the South. Of the settlement’s three governors, Hamilton sympathized most with the British, and he sought to conclude a formal alliance with the British Empire that would allow Jefferson to break away from Spanish rule and become a sixth confederation of the C.N.A.<br />
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Hamilton’s proposed alliance was vetoed by his two fellow governors, who affirmed the settlement’s loyalty to the Spanish Empire and sent a bill to the Congress requesting that a militia force be raised to defend Tejas and Louisiana from British and North American incursions. The stage seemed set for war between the Jeffersonians and the North Americans, and Hamilton chose to resign rather than direct a war against the British. Madison and Johnston nominated Senator Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania to replace him, and Rush was unanimously confirmed by his fellow senators. [1]<br />
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The Jeffersonians’ response to the war underwent a sudden transformation when Governor Muñoz sent word in December refusing their offer to raise an army in defense of New Spain. By then, the sickly governor’s superiors in Mexico City had become alarmed at the steady influx of North Americans into Tejas, and grew determined to establish firm control over the Jeffersonians. Muñoz declared the Jeffersonian government dissolved, and announced that he was sending a subordinate to take control of the settlement. [2]<br />
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The Jeffersonians were stunned. It seemed to them that the events of the American Crisis were being played out again in their new settlement. Overnight, the determination to resist the British was redirected into a determination to resist the Spanish. Although the Jeffersonian government continued to reject Hamilton’s proposed alliance with the British, his plan to break with the Spanish Empire was adopted, and his former colleague Madison called upon him to take command of an army to seize San Antonio and end Spanish rule over Tejas.<br />
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Hamilton accepted command of the proposed army, which began assembling in Jefferson City over the winter. At Hamilton’s suggestion, a second army was formed under the command of General Jacob Mellon, who had served as Hamilton’s second-in-command during the Apache War. In March 1796, Mellon’s force was dispatched east with orders to secure as much of southern Louisiana as possible, and New Orleans as well if that proved feasible. As it turned out, Mellon’s army lacked enough artillery and siege equipment to take New Orleans, and in May Mellon left two companies of men under the command of Major Andrew Jackson to keep watch on the city. Mellon turned back with the rest of his army and joined forces with Hamilton in the south. [3]<br />
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While Mellon’s men had made their way along the Gulf coast from Henrytown, Hamilton’s army of some 1,500 men set off along the road connecting Jefferson City to San Antonio. Forty miles outside of the provincial capital, near the Rio Guadalupe, Hamilton met a force of some 500 Spanish soldiers under the command of Colonel Juan Bautista Elguézabal, on their way to Jefferson City to enforce Muñoz’s order dissolving the Jeffersonian government. Colonel Elguézabal was unaware of events in the Jefferson settlement, and he initially thought that Hamilton’s men were coming to San Antonio to join the Spanish army.<br />
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Hamilton made no reply to Elguézabal’s order to stack arms and prepare to be escorted back to Jefferson City. Instead, he ordered his men to form a line of battle. Elguézabal and his men did not understand the significance of the maneuver until Hamilton ordered his men to attack the Spanish. Despite enjoying the element of surprise and a three-to-one advantage, the Jeffersonians were nearly defeated by the Spanish. It was only due to Hamilton’s ability to rally his faltering army on several occasions, and the death of Elguézabal late in the battle, that the Jeffersonians were finally able to prevail. [4]<br />
<br />
With their victory at the Battle of Rio Guadalupe, the Jeffersonians were able to march into San Antonio unopposed. Governor Muñoz was sent back to Jefferson City under guard, and Hamilton addressed the San Antonio ayuntamiento, declaring the formation of the State of Jefferson and asking them to send a delegate to the Chamber of Representatives in Jefferson City to act as the city’s representative. The victory over Elguézabal proved costly enough that Hamilton chose to remain in San Antonio for the rest of the campaign season. Mellon arrived with his army in September, and Hamilton spent the fall and winter months reorganizing his army and building up supplies for the spring campaign.<br />
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Leaving Mellon in charge in San Antonio, Hamilton set out in March 1797 on his march to the Rio Grande, which he intended to establish as the new state’s southern border. In April, Hamilton’s army occupied the river town of Laredo, the capital of the province of Nuevo Santander. As he had done in San Antonio, Hamilton had the governor taken into custody and escorted to Jefferson City. He then addressed the town’s residents, claiming Laredo for the State of Jefferson and asking them to choose a representative to send to the Chamber in Jefferson City. Hamilton spent the summer and fall in Laredo, fortifying the town in preparation for an expected counterattack by Spanish forces from Mexico City. In October, he left for Jefferson City to consult with the three governors. [5]<br />
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1. Guerrero. <em>The State of Jefferson</em>, pp. 217-21.<br />
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2. Henry Miles. <em>Jefferson in the Trans-Oceanic War</em> (Mexico City, 1956), pp. 42-53. Some historians believe that Muñoz was delirious or under the influence of alcohol-based medication when he issued his orders to the Jeffersonians. See Lysander Gomez. “Possible Incapacitation of Governor Manuel Muñoz,” <em>Journal of Jeffersonian</em> <em>History</em>, XCVI (February, 2002), pp. 712-19.<br />
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3. Henry Miles. <em>The Mellon Campaign in the Trans-Oceanic War</em> (Mexico City, 1949), pp. 173-79.<br />
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4. Elizabeth Wolters. <em>The Battle of Rio Guadalupe</em> (Jefferson City, 1998).<br />
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5. Miles. <em>Jefferson in the Trans-Oceanic War</em>, pp. 337-48.Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-74067776666517551112016-07-23T03:02:00.000-04:002016-07-23T03:02:19.092-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle: The Florida War<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today's section of <em><a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html">Scorpions in a Bottle</a></em> begins chapter 7, The Trans-Oceanic War, which tells of the outbreak of a general European war in 1795, and its effect on the North American colonies.<br />
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Jenkinson’s declarations of war were the culmination of two years of diplomatic maneuvering following the death of Louis XVI of France in September 1793. The Queen Mother, Marie Antoinette, following in the footsteps of Catherine de Medici, had herself declared regent for her eleven-year-old son, the dauphin Louis Philippe, who succeeded his father as Louis XVII. The Queen Mother sought to renew the Franco-Austrian alliance of the 1740s, and planned a joint attack on Prussia. Jenkinson concluded a defensive alliance with Prussia and several smaller German states, as well as renewing the ancient Anglo-Portuguese alliance. Marie Antoinette and her nephew launched their invasion in April 1795, leading Jenkinson to expand his ministry to include several leading opposition figures. The declarations of war set off a series of engagements throughout the world, including a renewed Spanish siege of Gibraltar and a Russian invasion of Poland.<br />
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Word of the outbreak of war reached North America in October. In Quebec City only a few radical separationists such as Paul Cerdan favored armed revolt. The British victory in the North American Rebellion had persuaded the Quebecois that armed resistance to British rule would be futile. On the other hand, if France defeated the British in Europe, the Quebecois might very well find themselves returning to French rule in the peace settlement. Thus, although most of the Francophone population favored the French, they were content to await the resolution of events in Europe rather than attempt to precipitate an uprising at home. [1]<br />
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In New York and Norfolk, news of the outbreak of war with the French sparked celebrations, parades, and speeches. For many North Americans, it was the first public patriotic celebration since the outbreak of the Rebellion twenty years before, and served as final proof of the reconciliation between rebel and Loyalist. The Northern Confederation Council voted N.A. £12,000 towards the cost of the Tomkinson expedition into East Florida. [2]<br />
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In Norfolk, Governor Bland had more ambitious plans than simply subsidizing the Georgian invasion of the Floridas. He intended to seize New Orleans, and as much of the rest of Spanish Louisiana as possible. Together with the other governors of the Southern Confederation, Bland applied to Connolly for the creation of a united S.C. army to march across Georgia (ironically, along the trail blazed by the Greene expedition) and lay siege to New Orleans. Bland also approached Dickinson, requesting that the viceroy use his influence with the British government to gain the assistance of the Royal Navy in attacking New Orleans. [3] Bland’s relentless advocacy proved irresistible, and by the summer of 1796 a British naval expedition under Captain Horatio Nelson was ready to set sail from Halifax for a rendezvous with the S.C. militia at the mouth of the Mississippi.<br />
<br />
In East Florida, Colonel Tomkinson’s regiment defeated and captured a smaller Spanish military force thirty miles north of St. Augustine. The road to the East Florida capital was open, and Tomkinson pressed forward, laying siege to the city on August 23, 1795. Tomkinson knew that his force, consisting largely of raw recruits leavened with veterans of his old company, was unequal to the demands of a protracted siege. Therefore, after two days spent organizing his men, he launched a sudden surprise attack on the Spanish capital. Tomkinson himself led a picked force of veteran troops against a weak point in the fortifications while the remainder of his men kept the city’s defenders occupied with a general assault on the walls. Tomkinson was able to break through, and resistance collapsed as word spread among the Spanish troops that the Georgians had entered St. Augustine.<br />
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For the next two weeks, Tomkinson’s undisciplined men gave themselves over to plunder, with the city’s taverns a particular target. Over a month passed after the fall of the city before Colonel Tomkinson was able to re-establish order over his men and resume the conquest of East Florida. [4]From their base in St. Augustine, Tomkinson’s men ranged over the Florida peninsula, destroying any Seminole villages they came across and massacring the inhabitants. By the spring of 1796, aided by reinforcements from the other provinces of the Southern Confederation, Tomkinson had subjugated East Florida and set about invading West Florida. There, through the late spring and early summer, he conquered a string of Franco-Spanish settlements on the Gulf Coast, including the capital city of Pensacola and the French outpost at Mobile. The Georgia legislature at Savannah formally annexed the Floridas to the province on July 2, 1796, without seeking the approval of the S.C. Council, Viceroy Dickinson, or the Jenkinson ministry. [5] Jenkinson grudgingly accepted the Georgian fait accompli, and the annexation was formalized in the subsequent 1799 peace treaty with Spain.<br />
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1. Davis Malone. <em>The History of Quebec</em> (Dorchester, 1954), pp. 73-81.<br />
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2. Madeline McIver. <em>Financing the Trans-Oceanic War</em> (New York, 2012), pp. 55-60.<br />
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3. Bruce. <em>The Life of Governor Theodorick Bland of Virginia</em>, pp. 377-88.<br />
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4. Pickett. <em>The Florida War</em>, pp. 46-55.<br />
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5. Bernard Telford. <em>Georgia and the Rise of the S.C.</em> (Mexico City, 1965), pp. 39-48.Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-17023398400634980922016-07-11T19:36:00.000-04:002016-07-11T19:38:18.094-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle: Settlement and Conflict<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Work continues on <em><a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html">Scorpions in a Bottle</a></em>. I now present the third and final section of Chapter 6: The Dickinson Era, which takes us to 1795 in the infant C.N.A. and leads us into the Trans-Oceanic War.<br />
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Like Dickinson and Howe before him, Governor-General Clinton found himself facing an ongoing insurrection in the Green Mountain region of New Hampshire, and like them he found himself unable to subdue it. The Green Mountain insurgents were augmented by farmers throughout Massachusetts who had served in the Continental Army. With the Rebellion lost, these rebel soldiers found their pay from the Congress worthless, and many lost their farms to foreclosure. Some left with Ward and were lost; some left with Greene and settled in Jefferson; most left for the Green Mountains and joined in the Allen insurgency. From their mountain strongholds, the insurgents were able to carry out sudden raids against British regulars and Northern Confederation militia, then melt away into the forests and hills.<br />
<br />
Lord Cornwallis, the commander-in-chief of British forces in the C.N.A., was hampered by his parsimonious superiors in London, who remained obsessed with paying down the national debt and consequently kept his force undermanned and undersupplied. Cornwallis was also unable to coordinate effectively with Clinton, of whom he remained suspicious even years after the Rebellion. As a result, the Northern Confederation was never able to field a force of sufficient strength to overcome the insurgents. The conflict eventually settled down into a stalemate, in which successive governors of the N.C. chose to leave the Green Mountain region alone, and the insurgency died away into a general hostility to all government authority. It was not until the 1888 electoral triumph of the People’s Coalition (whom they supported) that the people of the Green Mountains were finally reconciled to rule by the C.N.A. [1]<br />
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Throughout the 1780s and 1790s, the N.C.’s traditional commercial activities were joined by the first appearance of mechanized industry. The invention of the spinning mule in Britain shortly after the Rebellion was followed quickly by its appearance in New England, and a cloth-weaving industry took hold there. At the same time, the presence of iron ore and coal in central Pennsylvania led to the beginnings of an ironworking industry in that province. Council delegates from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania urged the passage of import duties on cloth and iron from Europe (including Great Britain) to encourage local manufacturing. The proposed duties were voted down, but the notion of protective tariffs against the mother country had been raised, and would not go away.<br />
<br />
The settlement of Indiana began in earnest in 1786 when a group of investors from Massachusetts formed a land company and negotiated the purchase of a tract along the Ohio River from the Indiana Council. The company purchase attracted settlers from New England, who by 1792 numbered over 500. Since the new settlement was on the far side of the confederation from the capital at Fort Radisson, the settlers petitioned the Indiana Council in 1792 to create a provincial-level government for them. The Indiana Council was initially reluctant to do so, but financial pressure from the Northern Confederation Council overcame their resistance, and in 1794 the entire area south of Lake Erie was formed into the province of Albany, with the right to appoint one third of the Indiana Council. [2]<br />
<br />
Settlers were also crossing the Appalachians in the Southern Confederation. The first settlers in western Virginia arrived under the aegis of the Transylvania Company, an abortive attempt to establish a new proprietary colony in the 1770s. After the Rebellion, the trail blazed by these first settlers was used by a new wave in the 1780s taking advantage of an offer by Governor Bland. Bland feared that the cheap land being opened up in Jefferson would draw away Virginians, leaving the province depopulated. To prevent that, he offered 400 acres in western Virginia to any man who would settle there and work to improve it. To discourage speculators, he stipulated that any man accepting the offer would be required to remain on the land he received for ten years before being allowed to sell it. These “Bland grants” formed the basis for many of the settlements established in western Virginia, including the founding of Bland City, the largest city in western Virginia. [3]<br />
<br />
Georgia faced a more immediate problem than a lack of settlers. Much to the colonists’ dismay, the North ministry had sold the neighboring Florida colonies to Spain, and the government in Savannah soon had its hands full dealing with parties of Seminole Indians raiding across the border. Complaints to Connolly and Dickinson had no effect, nor did complaints to the Spanish governors of East and West Florida. Finally, in 1792, Governor Thomas Brown sent a company of provincial militia under Captain Richard Tomkinson into East Florida to search for the Seminole raiders. Tomkinson’s expedition was unsuccessful, and he lost a fifth of his force to disease and desertion. In addition, the Governor of East Florida, Brigadier Juan Nepomuceno de Quesada, sent a sharply-worded note of protest to Brown, warning that any further incursions would be met with force.<br />
<br />
Brown ignored de Quesada’s warning, and sent Tomkinson and his men back into East Florida the following year. Tomkinson once again failed to locate any Seminoles, but his losses were much lower, and he was able to avoid a confrontation with Spanish troops. A third expedition in the spring of 1794 ended with Tomkinson attacking a Spanish settlement and killing several of the inhabitants. This prompted de Quesada to send a retaliatory expedition into Georgia which attacked and plundered several plantations near Augusta before returning to St. Augustine with over a hundred freed slaves.<br />
<br />
Planning for a fourth expedition was postponed when word reached Savannah in the spring of 1795 that war in Europe was imminent between Britain’s Prussian ally and Spain’s French ally. With the prospect of general war in the offing, Brown issued a call for volunteers to form additional militia companies. By June 1795, a full regiment of provincial militia had been organized, and Tomkinson, now promoted to colonel, led them south across the Saint Marys River in a march on St. Augustine. [4] News of the Georgian attack on Florida reached London in August, prompting Prime Minister Sir Charles Jenckinson to issue a declaration of war against the Franco-Spanish alliance.<br />
----<br />
<br />
1. Harvey Ritter. <em>Allen’s Irregulars: The History of a Brave People</em> (London, 1967).<br />
<br />
2. Jane McAlaister. <em>The Birth of Indiana</em> (Michigan City, 2007), pp. 74-88.<br />
<br />
3. Bruce. <em>The Life of Governor Theodorick Bland of Virginia</em>, pp. 308-15.<br />
<br />
4. Ralston Pickett. <em>The Florida War</em> (Cornwallis, 1841).Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-88907470413595866842016-06-24T15:13:00.000-04:002016-06-24T15:15:37.415-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle - Abolitionism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
The writing of <em><a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html">Scorpions in a Bottle</a></em> continues. The current section -- the second part of Chapter 6 -- deals with the rise of abolitionism in the Northern Confederation in the 1780s.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
In North America, too, it came as a surprise when Lord
Cornwallis was passed over for Dickinson to replace Albany, not least by
Dickinson himself. Along with the official notification of his appointment,
Dickinson received a personal note from Lord North congratulating him on his
advancement and soliciting his recommendation for his own replacement as
Governor-General of the Northern Confederation. Dickinson responded by
suggesting Governor Clinton, thereby further alienating Galloway, who resigned
as Governor of Pennsylvania after issuing a public denunciation of Dickinson’s
role in the Rebellion. [1]<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Galloway was not the only prominent figure to speak up
against Dickinson’s selection. Governor-General Connolly made no secret of his
outrage that a reliable Loyalist like himself should be passed over in favor of
a man who had taken up arms against the Crown. Connolly did everything in his
power to undermine Dickinson’s authority, though thanks to Bland his power
amounted to little.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Bland, for his part, remained on cordial terms with
Dickinson, although he soon fell out with Governor-General Clinton. By 1785,
Bland’s views on the Rebellion had changed dramatically, possibly as part of
his ongoing struggle with Connolly. Despite having served himself in the
Continental Army, Bland had become a committed Loyalist, and he had taken to
laying blame for the Rebellion on Northerners, including Clinton himself.
Matters came to a head in 1788, when Bland attacked Clinton by name during a
meeting of the S.C. Council. “The Rebellion began in the north,” he declared, “and
northerners remain rebels at heart. They are the vipers in our bosoms, and we
will yet rue the day we allowed them to escape the hangman’s noose and
insinuate themselves in our counsels.” [2] When Bland’s remarks reached him, Clinton
gave as good as he got, declaring that “our friend from Virginia is a man of
great sensitivity. He left the rebel cause only a month after Saratoga. Had the
victory not been won by Burgoyne, today he would be toasting the health of
General Gates and others of his stripe. But Burgoyne prevailed, so our friend
damns the rebels of Boston and conveniently forgets the rebels of Williamsburg.”
[3] Hostilities between the two confederations remained high for the remainder
of the century, only dying down after the victories of the Trans-Oceanic War.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Bland’s growing intransigence, combined with Connolly’s
hostility, meant that subsequent meetings of the Grand Council accomplished
little. The border dispute between Quebec and the N.C. continued to hang fire,
with residents of the two confederations nearly coming to blows in the District
of Maine in 1788. The Grand Council’s only accomplishment of note during this
period was a 1785 resolution renaming Pittsborough Burgoyne.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
For the most part, Dickinson’s tenure as Viceroy saw
conditions in the former rebel colonies return to their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ante bellum</i> state. Commerce between the confederations and Britain
resumed, as the Southerners increased shipments of tobacco and other cash
crops, while the Northerners carried on the old triangular trade between New
England, West Africa, and the sugar islands of the Caribbean.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
The most notable exception to this return to pre-rebellion
conditions was the growing movement in the Northern Confederation for the
abolition of Negro slavery. Abolitionism received a boost during the Rebellion
after Lord Dunmore issued his Emancipation Proclamation in November 1775,
offering freedom to any slave or servant who deserted a master in rebellion against
the Crown, and who took up arms against the rebels. Although Dunmore’s initial
attempt to form an Ethiopian Regiment of freedmen proved premature, the
Proclamation became general British policy after the rebels declared themselves
independent. After the British victories at Albany and Philadelphia, thousands
of Negro slaves deserted their masters and made their way to Loyalist territory.
Altogether, it is estimated that from ten to fifteen percent of the slaves in
the rebellious colonies, roughly fifty thousand to seventy-five thousand, were
freed under the Dunmore Proclamation between 1775 and 1778. [4] The result was
the creation of a sizeable class of free Negroes throughout the Thirteen
Colonies. By 1780, free Negroes in the Northern Confederation outnumbered
enslaved Negroes by two to one. Pennsylvania became the first province to
abolish slavery in 1784, followed by Connecticut and Massachusetts the
following year. In 1790, the N.C. Council passed legislation to gradually
abolish slavery by freeing children born to slave mothers after that date. [5]<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
This proved to be another source of friction between North
and South in the C.N.A. Although the Dunmore Proclamation also created a class
of free Negroes in the Southern Confederation, these always remained a
relatively small minority of the Negro population, and were always subject to
various restrictions. Southerners frequently accused Northern abolitionists of
encouraging runaways and slave uprisings. Southern paranoia regarding
abolitionism increased as the influence of Northern abolitionists led to the
passage of similar legislation by the Quebec Council in 1796 and the Indiana
Council in 1803. [6]<o:p></o:p></div>
----<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
1. Michellet. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dickinson
and Galloway</i>, pp. 414-15. Galloway’s decision to resign was also doubtless
affected by the death of his wife in February 1784. He later remarried, and his
descendants through his second wife became one of the most prominent families
in the C.N.A.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
2. Percy Harcourt. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Vipers in Their Bosoms: Clinton and Bland in 1788</i> (London, 1956), pp. 166-67.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
3. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ibid.,</i> pp.
178-79.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
4. Lloyd Mason. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Emancipation Proclamation</i> (New York, 1967), pp. 254-61.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
5. Barkley Daugherty. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Slavery
in the Dickinson Era</i> (New York, 1954).<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
6. John Harnett. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
History of Slavery in the Southern Confederation</i> (London, 1935).<o:p></o:p></div>
Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-87378822133970920182016-06-18T11:36:00.001-04:002016-06-18T11:36:14.686-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle: The First Grand Council<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
Work on <em><a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html">Scorpions in a Bottle</a></em> continues. This section, the first part of Chapter 6, recounts the reaction to Burgoyne's death, and the first meeting of the Grand Council in 1783.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
The death of the Duke of Albany shocked the people of the C.N.A. At 61, Albany had been in robust health, and was widely expected to remain as Viceroy for several years.<br />
<br />
Lord Cornwallis was in Pittsborough to attend the upcoming Grand Council meeting, and he was able to immediately step in and take up his duties as Acting Viceroy. It was Cornwallis who presided over the first meeting of the Grand Council. Since he had little interest in the issues raised by the various delegates, he mostly remained in the background after Dickinson was chosen to preside over the Council. [1]<br />
<br />
The first question to be addressed was whether the Council had a quorum, since Manitoba had declined to send a delegation, and three of the Indiana delegates were still in transit from Fort Radisson. Dickinson urged that it would be unwise to leave the business of the Council a hostage to fortune, dependent on the uncertainties of travel, weather, and the whims of the individual confederation councils. Privately, he suspected that Legge’s recent death would keep the Manitobans from participating in the government of the C.N.A. for some time to come, and he preferred to carry on without them rather than allow their absence to delay the Council’s work. He persuaded the Council to rule that as long as delegates from at least three confederations were present, the Grand Council had a quorum to conduct business. [2]<br />
<br />
One item before the Grand Council was the question of coordinating Indian treaties, since it was clear that it would not be in the best interests of the confederations to allow conflicting land claims to arise. It was agreed that any treaties reached by the confederation governments would have to be ratified by the Grand Council before going into effect. <br />
<br />
The council also dealt with ongoing border disputes between the Northern Confederation and its northern and southern neighbors. The dispute with the Southern Confederation over the area south of the Ohio and Monongahela Rivers was resolved in the N.C.’s favor, with the line surveyed by Mason and Dixon in the 1760s being extended to the Ohio River. The dispute with Quebec over the northern border of the District of Maine was shelved in the absence of accurate surveys of the area. [3]<br />
<br />
Dickinson’s report to the North ministry on the first Grand Council meeting may have influenced the ministry’s choice of a successor to Albany. It was initially assumed by North’s cabinet that Cornwallis would succeed to the post. Dickinson’s report swayed the ministry to the view that Cornwallis’s marked disinterest in civil administration meant that he should continue his current offices as Lt. Viceroy and commander-in-chief of British forces in North America. Sir Charles Jenckinson, who had succeeded Rockingham as Colonial Secretary after the latter’s death, recommended Lord Dorchester for the post. Lord North felt that Dorchester would be of more use if he remained as Governor-General of Quebec. North surprised those present by suggesting Dickinson himself as Viceroy. It had been generally assumed that the Viceroy would be British, since the post had been envisioned as a direct representative of the Crown in the North American government. However, once the idea of a North American Viceroy was broached, it was agreed that Dickinson would be the best candidate. [4]<br />
<br />
----<br />
1. George Jackson. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Day: The First Days of the C.N.A</i>. (New York, 1967), pp. 331-35.<br />
<br />
2. Dickinson. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Life and Work</i>, pp. 217-19.<br />
<br />
3. Walter Edmunds. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Origins of the Grand Council</i> (New York, 1999), pp. 286-98.<br />
<br />
4. North was favorably impressed with Dickinson’s dedication to the cause of Anglo-American unity during the drafting of the Design in 1780. It has been suggested that North privately preferred Dickinson over Burgoyne for the office of Viceroy at the time, but allowed himself to be persuaded to support the latter. See Poorman. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Designing the Design</i>, pp. 255-58.Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-7657993402401164142016-06-13T12:20:00.000-04:002016-06-13T12:36:18.574-04:00Tyranny of the gun<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
So.<br />
<br />
There has been <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/us/orlando-shooting-what-we-know-and-dont-know.html?_r=0">YET ANOTHER</a> mass shooting in the United States of America. This time, the target was a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and the shooter was, apparently, a Muslim-flavored homophobic religious fanatic. <br />
<br />
For the <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/06/12/14-mass-shootings-14-speeches-how-obama-has-responded/85798652/">FOURTEENTH TIME SINCE HIS INAUGURATION</a> the President of the United States has made a public address in the wake of a mass shooting.<br />
<br />
Every year, at least <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34996604">eleven thousand Americans</a> kill each other with guns. If America were being occupied by a foreign country whose soldiers killed eleven thousand Americans at random every year, we would rise up and drive them out of our land to put a stop to such a senseless slaughter. But we can't drive out the brutal occupying army that is shooting us down in the streets every day, because the brutal occupying army is <em>us.</em><br />
<br />
The gun nuts tell us that these deaths are the price of freedom. If a foreign army was shooting eleven thousand of us every year, and we couldn't do anything to stop them, would we call ourselves free? Of course not. Yet, as long as it's our fellow Americans who are shooting eleven thousand people every year, that means we are free. Right?<br />
<br />
Of course not. Just because the occupying army is domestic rather than foreign does not mean it is not an occupying army. We <em>are</em> being tyrannized, and just because we're tyrannizing ourselves doesn't make it any less of a tyranny. If some homophobic asshole decides he wants to slaughter a bunch of LGBT people, and he can walk into a gun shop and buy the means to do so, that is tyranny. If some lunatic hears Carly Fiorina spewing bullshit about black market baby parts and decides to slaughter a bunch of Planned Parenthood employees, and he can walk into a gun shop and buy the means to do so, <em>that is tyranny</em>. If some white supremacist decides to slaughter a bunch of black people in a church, and he can walk into a gun shop and buy the means to do so, THAT IS TYRANNY.<br />
<br />
<em>But,</em> the gun nuts say, <em>we need guns to protect ourselves from the government.</em> Yeah, guess what? If the government wants you dead, all it has to do is target you with a drone strike, and YOU WILL BE DEAD, and all the guns in your arsenal won't be able to stop them. If President Obama had decided to take out the Bundy militia in Nevada a couple years back, all their guns wouldn't have been able to stop him. THEY WOULD BE DEAD. You know why Obama didn't just launch a drone strike on the Bundy ranch? Because he believes in the rule of law. That's what kept Cliven Bundy and all of his fellow wackaloon guns nuts alive: not their guns, but an <em>idea</em>.<br />
<br />
And do you know what would happen if the President of the United States was <em>not</em> constrained by a belief in the rule of law? Consider, for example, Donald Trump, who has <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/02/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-imprisoned/">openly boasted</a> about his plans to use the government to revenge himself on his enemies. <em>He</em> won't be constrained by any silly ideas about the rule of law. If he wants to carry out a drone strike on someone, he'll just fucking well do it, and anyone who objects can expect a drone strike of their own. YOUR GUNS WILL NOT PROTECT YOU from any government ruthless enough to ignore the rule of law.<br />
<br />
<em>But,</em> the guns nuts tell themselves in the secrecy of their hearts, <em>we need guns to protect ourselves from the </em><a href="http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/NRA_comic_called_hoax_but_accusations_1226.html"><em>scary black people</em></a><em>. </em>Well, too bad! Your racial paranoia is not sufficient reason for the rest of us to go in fear of our lives. If you don't like living in a country with scary black people, I suggest you move to someplace that doesn't have any. I hear the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerguelen_Islands">Kerguelen Islands</a> are available.<br />
<br />
Remember, folks, the Second Amendment was <em>not</em> designed to let anyone who wants a gun have one. It was designed to create a well-regulated militia (ie the locally-based Army Reserve units that we now call the National Guard), as the amendment itself states in the part that the gun nuts always leave out. The "personal right to bear arms" is a modern perversion of the amendment promoted by the gun industry and created by corporate-friendly right-wing Supreme Court justices. And what the Supremes giveth, the Supremes can taketh away. The tyranny of the gun is not a permanent part of the United States of America. We can change it ... if we want to.Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-23835396873578931112016-06-06T23:45:00.000-04:002016-06-06T23:45:44.044-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle: The First Viceroy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
This section of <em><a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html">Scorpions in a Bottle</a></em> concludes chapter 5 on the establishment of the C.N.A.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">In the months
immediately following Saratoga-Albany, Burgoyne worked diligently to strengthen
the fragile lifeline connecting his army to the main British base at New York.
He was aided by the Continental Army’s leadership reshuffle, which ensured that
he faced no concerted opposition from the Americans. By the time of the
armistice in June 1778, Burgoyne’s position in Albany was secure, and he was
free to send units to occupy the remaining rebel positions, such as Fort
Stanwix, and to move his own headquarters to New York.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The reassignment
of Clinton to Norfolk and Howe to Boston left Burgoyne in control of the four
Middle Colonies. Unlike his two colleagues, he had no ongoing rebel
insurrection to deal with. [1] Burgoyne’s most intractable problem was the
Royal Governor of New Jersey, William Franklin, who shared Lord Dunmore’s
vindictiveness towards the former rebels. Like Clinton, Burgoyne was eventually
forced to use his own authority to replace the obstinate royal governor with a
more moderate man to keep him from provoking a renewed uprising.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">In addition to
administering the most loyalist section of the Thirteen Colonies, Burgoyne also
had a talent for gaining popular approval that stood him in good stead. Most
notably, Burgoyne, a widower, enjoyed a highly-public romance with Mrs. Abigail
Conrad, the widow of a soldier in the Continental Army who had died at Valley
Forge. Burgoyne’s marriage to Mrs. Conrad in February 1780 was the social event
of the season, and did much to win over former rebels in the Middle Colonies.
Burgoyne also wrote and produced two new plays while in New York, both on American
themes. The first told the story of the Indian princess Pocahontas, and the
second that of Peter Stuyvesant, the tyrannical, peg-legged governor of Dutch
New York in the seventeenth century.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">In November, word
came of Burgoyne’s elevation to the peerage, followed shortly by news of the
passage of the Britannic Design, and of Burgoyne’s appointment as Viceroy of
the C.N.A. Burgoyne’s satisfaction at his appointment was tempered by the news
that he would be expected to move from New York City to the rough frontier town
of Pittsborough.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Over the course
of the next year, the Thirteen Colonies saw the return of Dickinson, Dorchester,
Connolly, and the others from London, and preparations were made for the
establishment of the C.N.A. Dickinson took up residence in New York, and
Connolly in Norfolk, in anticipation of their appointments as governors-general
of the Northern and Southern Confederations. The summer of 1781 saw the Duke of
Albany and his family make a triumphant tour across the former battlefields of
the Rebellion from New York to Philadelphia. He gave speeches at Princeton,
Trenton, Germantown, and Brandywine, in which he praised the valor of those who
fought on both sides, and spoke of the colonial rights enshrined in the Design
as a victory for the colonial cause.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">In the fall,
Albany led his family along the long, rugged trail that Braddock had blazed 25
years before to the forks of the Ohio. In Pittsborough, Albany was hosted by
Alexander McKee, a prominent Loyalist, while plans were drawn up for a
permanent residence called Government House where the Viceroy would reside and
oversee periodic meetings of the Grand Council.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">In the spring,
Albany sailed down the Ohio to Kaskaskia, to meet with Pierre <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Concordé</span>, a prominent local landowner
who would serve as the first Governor-General of Indiana. From there, he took
ship down the Mississippi to New Orleans, and from there sailed to Norfolk to
meet with Connolly, and with Theodorick Bland, who would remain the Royal
Governor of Virginia under the Design. [2] Albany returned to Pittsborough in
early June, accompanied by a force of Virginia militia sent by Bland to
discourage any attempt by Marion’s raiders to attack the party. He spent the
remainder of the month overseeing preparations for the upcoming ceremony of
investiture.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">At noon on July
2, 1782, Albany was formally sworn in as Viceroy of the Confederation of North
America. Lord Cornwallis, who had been appointed Lt. Viceroy, was sworn in at
his headquarters in Boston the same day. Similar ceremonies were held for
Dickinson in New York, Connolly in Norfolk, Dorchester in Quebec City, <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Concordé</span> in Kaskaskia, and Francis
Legge in York Factory. In the latter two instances, the ceremony also
celebrated the renaming of the new confederation capitals to, respectively,
Fort Radisson and North City. [3]</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The new Viceroy
of the C.N.A. divided his time between overseeing the construction of
Government House in Pittsborough and traveling to the capitals of the provinces
and confederations of the new colonial union. Albany found that the most
troublesome of his new duties was mediating between Connolly and Bland. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Connolly was
determined to assert the prerogatives of his new office as governor-general,
and Bland was equally determined to minimize those prerogatives. Bland was able
to prevail by arranging to have himself appointed to represent Virginia in the
Southern Confederation Council, and by encouraging his fellow royal governors
to do likewise, which they did. Faced with a council made up of his fellow
royal appointees, each with his own patrons and supporters in Parliament,
Connolly found that he could do little except bluster and complain, which he
did copiously.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Dickinson, by
contrast, was able to rely on his popularity among his fellow Northerners to
ensure smooth relations with the delegates appointed by the N.C.’s provincial
governments. In particular, the former rebel general George Clinton owed his
own rehabilitation and advancement to the office of Royal Governor of New York
to Dickinson’s influence, and he remained a strong supporter of the new
governor-general. Dickinson received less support from Galloway in
Pennsylvania, who was generally unhappy with the changes that had been made to
his Plan of Proposed Union, and was particularly unhappy that Dickinson had
been chosen over him to serve as Governor-General of the Northern
Confederation. [4]</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The Indiana
Council was chosen by that conferderation’s landowners, most of whom, like <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Concordé, were Frenchmen who had settled
there before the Seven Years’ War. Indiana’s isolation meant that they had
little to do with the eastern confederations, though the arrival of a steady
stream of settlers from the British lands foretold that the confederation’s
future would bring it closer to the rest of the colonial union. The Quebec
Council, likewise, was drawn from French landowners of longstanding. Despite
this, Lord Dorchester’s long tenure as governor, going back to the 1760s,
ensured that he and the Quebecois were able to work well together. Manitoba
remained what it had been before the Design, a fief of the Hudson’s Bay Company
inhabited mostly by fur traders. Legge spent most of his time in Quebec City,
visiting North City for only a month or so during the capital’s brief summer to
attend his own investiture ceremony. [5]</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">By the late summer of 1783, Albany had succeeded in establishing the
Britannic Design as a working system of government for Britain’s North American
colonies. The first meeting of the Grand Council was scheduled to take place on
September 28, and Albany was deeply involved in preparations for the event when
he contracted a cold on September 3. With the upcoming meeting so close, Albany
ignored his doctor’s suggestion of bed rest, and continued his work. This
worsened his condition, and within a week Albany had come down with pneumonia.
The Viceroy was bled several times, in line with the medical practice of the
day, which of course served to weaken him further, until he finally succumbed
on September 20, 1783. [6]</span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">----<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">1. In addition to
Marion’s insurrection in the Virginia and Carolina backcountry, the Allen
Brothers in the Green Mountain district of New Hampshire refused to lay down
their arms after the June armistice. Repeated efforts to put down the Green
Mountain insurrection were frustrated by the rugged terrain and local antipathy
to British rule.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">2. There is a
popular legend that Albany met with Nathanael Greene as the latter was
preparing to make the final leg of the journey to Jefferson. Unfortunately, the
historical record shows that Greene’s party had already departed from Louisiana
by the time Albany arrived. Bennet. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
First Group,</i> pp. 317-18.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">3. Fort Radisson
was named after Pierre-Esprit Radisson, a co-founder of the Hudson’s Bay
Company. North City was of course named after the Prime Minister.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">4. Bronson
Michellet. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dickinson and Galloway: From
Friendship to Rivalry, 1774-1804</i> (New York, 2003), pp. 379-86.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">5. Legge fell ill
in the spring of 1783 and died at Quebec City on 15 May. The office of
Governor-General of Manitoba remained unfilled for five years until the
Jenckinson Ministry appointed Samuel Hearne at the suggestion of the H.B.C.
Paul McIlwain. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Manitoba: A History</i>
(Port Superior, 1995), pp. 27-30.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p> 6</o:p></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">. Philip
Williamson. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Albany: The First Viceroy</i>
(New York, 1988), pp. 351-55. Albany’s widow, Lady Abigail Burgoyne, chose to
remain in Pittsborough after his death, raising their two sons in the country
of their birth. She never remarried.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-72385430740933943822016-05-23T12:12:00.000-04:002016-05-23T12:12:16.164-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle: The Britannic Design<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Today's section of <em><a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html">Scorpions in a Bottle</a></em> commences chapter 5, on the Britannic Design, the legislation that reshapes Britain's North American colonies into the Confederation of North America.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
While the Four Viceroys were working to restore the
authority of the Crown in the Thirteen Colonies, and Greene’s followers were
making the Wilderness Walk to Jefferson, the North ministry faced the task of
putting the Carlisle proposals into effect. The chief obstacle to North’s
efforts was the King himself. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Throughout the American Crisis, King George had been the
strongest advocate of using harsh measures to bring the colonists to heel. Lord
North had been personally unhappy with the hard line taken against the American
colonists, but he had believed it was his duty as leader of the government to
defer to the monarch’s wishes. It was only with the outbreak of the Rebellion
that it became clear to North that the King’s judgment was faulty, and that it
would be necessary to defy the monarch if he hoped to restore the colonies to
British rule. [1]<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
The success of the Carlisle Commission in the face of the
King’s displeasure encouraged North trust his own judgment. Despite demands
from the King’s allies in Parliament for widespread reprisals against the
colonists, North pursued his own policy of reconciliation. In an address before
the House of Lords on November 12, 1778, he said, “Mistakes have been made in
these chambers, as they have been in Boston and Philadelphia, but it will do
little good to dwell on them. Instead, we must seek ways to preserve old
institutions, and this will involve a serious reconsideration of the nature of
our government, and of its relations with our North American brothers.” [2]<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Several members of North’s government, notably Lord Germain,
refused to support his “brotherhood policy” and resigned their Cabinet posts.
North took advantage of Germain’s departure to bring the Marquess of
Rockingham, a noted reconciliationist, into his government as Secretary of
State for America. Lord Germain, meanwhile, became the leader of the “King’s
friends,” who opposed North’s lenient policies towards the Americans.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Rockingham’s instructions to the Carlisle Commission and the
Four Viceroys encouraged them to do everything in their power to “encourage a
spirit of Forgiveness in our Friends, and restrain the impulse towards
Vengefulness.” Rockingham also instructed that no further rebel leaders should
be arrested for treason and sent to London for trial. Since the end of the
Rebellion, ten of the most notorious rebels had arrived and were being tried:
Hancock, the two Adams cousins, and Robert Treat Paine from Massachusetts;
Washington, Jefferson, Henry, and Richard Henry Lee from Virginia; Roger
Sherman from Connecticut; and the pamphleteer Thomas Paine from Pennsylvania.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p>T</o:p>he treason trials had become a <span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><em>cause célèbre</em></span> among London radicals, as the
rebels took the stand to defend their actions. Washington in particular created
a favorable impression as he described his evolution from a loyal subject of
the Crown to the commander-in-chief of the rebel armies. Thomas Jefferson was
able to smuggle a copy of his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apologia</i>
out of Newgate prison and it circulated widely among radical circles in spite
of efforts by the government to suppress it. [3] In the end, despite the
opposition of the radicals, all of the defendants were found guilty. All but
Washington, who was sentenced to life imprisonment, were publicly hanged, drawn
and quartered in January 1779. [4]<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Lord North was forced to navigate a precarious middle path
between the radicals, led by John Wilkes, and the reactionaries, led by Lord
Germain. The need to oversee the restoration of order in North America, as well
as the growing financial crisis in Britain due to the costs of the Rebellion,
delayed work on drafting a final settlement for the American colonies. [5] In
addition, Rockingham believed that it would be best to allow the passions
inflamed by the treason trials to cool.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
It was not until the early months of 1780 that the North
ministry was able to devote its attention to the North American settlement. On
the advice of Rockingham, North invited several American reconciliationists to
London to consult on drafting the settlement, including Galloway and Dickinson.
As he had proposed at the secret Cabinet meeting of February 1778, North chose
Galloway’s Plan of Union as the template for a government for the North
American colonies. However, the events of 1775-78 led to significant changes to
Galloway’s initial plan. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Fearing that the creation of a single unified government for
all thirteen colonies would increase the likelihood of a future second
Rebellion, North proposed that three separate governments be established: one
for the Southern colonies, one for the Middle colonies, and one for the New
England colonies. Each regional confederation of colonies would be governed by
a council chosen by the colonial governments for three-year terms and a
governor-general appointed by the Crown. On the contentious issue of
Parliamentary taxation, North agreed to compromise on the principle of
Parliamentary supremacy by granting the councils the power to veto tax bills
with a two-thirds supermajority.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Drawing on Franklin’s 1754 Plan of Union, each confederation
would have the power to treat with the Indians: making war and peace, and
regulating trade and purchases of land. It would also have the power to
legislate for the colonies and levy taxes on them. Any legislation passed by a
confederation government could be vetoed by Parliament within three years of
its passage. Each council would include representatives from the other two confederations,
and each would send nonvoting representatives to Parliament.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
In order to resolve any issues that might arise between the
confederations, there would be an annual meeting of the three councils, during
which they would function as a Grand Council for all the colonies. The question
of a permanent meeting place for the Grand Council proved to be a difficult
one. Philadelphia would have been the logical choice, but the association of
the city with the Continental Congress made it unacceptable to the North
ministry. Thomas Moffat of Rhode Island suggested New York City, but this was
rejected by the Southerners, who were led by John Connolly of Virginia and Robert
Wells of South Carolina. Wells’ suggestion that a new capital be built on the
Potomac River was rejected by the Northerners. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
The issue was resolved by Connolly, who proposed
Pittsborough, Pennsylvania as a compromise. Although the city had been founded
just 20 years earlier, its location at the forks of the Ohio River made
Pittsborough an attractive choice. The Ohio country was already being opened to
settlement before the outbreak of the Rebellion, and it was clear that new
colonies would soon be planted west of the Appalachian Mountains. It is likely
that Connolly’s suggested was also motivated by the fact that he owned
considerable land in western Pennsylvania that would gain in value once the
North American capital was established there.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Unusually, the bill that the North ministry sent to the
Commons for consideration was not given the straightforward descriptive name
that was common for Parliamentary legislation at the time. The working title
had been the North American Government Act, but at Dickinson’s suggestion the
bill was given the name “The Britannic Design.” In the working draft of the
Design, the union of colonies was referred to as the Confederations of North
America. However, an error in the final draft of the Design left the final S
off of Confederations, and this was never corrected. The new colonial union was
known thereafter as the Confederation of North America.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
The polarized state of opinion in Britain was reflected in
the reaction to the Design when details of the legislation reached the public.
The May 10, 1780 issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lloyd’s Evening
Post</i> denounced the Design: “Having expended so much blood and treasure in
bringing the rebels to heel, are we now to grant them all they demand short of
independence itself?” Lord Germain spoke out against the Design in a speech to
the House of Lords, calling it “infamous” and “an insult to the many brave men
who gave their lives to preserve our Constitution.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
By contrast, Edmund Burke praised the Design, saying, “Lord
North has seen the wisdom of granting a generous peace to the Americans. This
act will do more to ensure comity between England and America than a thousand hangings could have done.” The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Courant and
Westminster Chronicle</i>, which had been highly critical of the North
ministry’s handling of the American Crisis, described the Design as
“well-conceived to end the troubles which have afflicted relations with the
Americans.” [6]<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Despite the opposition of Germain and the other allies of
the King, it soon became clear that the Design had broad support in both
houses. Nevertheless, in the course of the Parliamentary debate on the bill, it
underwent several modifications. Most importantly, a number of members, mainly
in the House of Lords, feared that the proposed New England confederation would
be too likely to rise in rebellion again. Since the middle colonies were
regarded as more loyalist, it was decided to combine them with the New
England colonies to produce an enlarged Northern Confederation with its capital
at New York City. The Southern Confederation would include all the colonies
south of Pennsylvania and the Delaware colony, and its capital would be
Norfolk, which had been Clinton’s headquarters since the end of the Rebellion.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Sir Guy Carleton, the Governor of Quebec, arrived in London
during the debate over the Design. He proposed that his colony should also be
included in the Design, to act as a further loyalist counterweight to the
rebellious Thirteen Colonies. In order to prevent the Quebec Council from being
outvoted by the councils of the other two confederations during Grand Council
meetings, it was further decided to create two additional loyalist colonies
from the territory of Quebec. The lands of the Ohio country that had been added to the colony by
the 1774 Quebec Act were separated, and after some debate were given the name
Indiana after the Indians who made up most of its inhabitants at the time. Its
capital would be the French settlement of Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River,
later renamed Fort Radisson. The lands north and west of Lake Superior were also
separated and given the name Manitoba. Due to the lack of white settlers in the
proposed Confederation of Manitoba, the western half of Rupert’s Land was also
added, over the objections of Hudson’s Bay Company, which held title to the
area. To satisfy the Company’s shareholders, it was agreed that the Company
would be compensated for any cultivable land that was sold to prospective
settlers. Eventually, the eastern half of Rupert’s Land was ceded to Quebec
under the same terms. The capital of Manitoba would be the Company headquarters
at York Factory on the coast of Hudson Bay, later renamed North City.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Franklin’s original Plan of Union had included an executive
called the president-general who would be appointed by the Crown, and whose
assent would be required for any legislation passed by the Grand Council. With
the number of confederations increased to five, it was decided that a similar
executive would be required to oversee annual meetings of the Grand Council in
Pittsborough, and to serve as a permanent representative of the British
government. With the Four Viceroys in control of the North American colonies,
the new executive was named the Viceroy. It was widely expected that Burgoyne
would be named to the post, which prompted the King to raise him to the Peerage
as Duke of Albany, a name that commemorated his decisive victory in the
Rebellion. [7]<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Additional minor modifications were made to the Britannic
Design to secure passage by Parliament. The confederation councils were limited
to no more than twenty members, the supermajority required to veto
Parliamentary taxation was increased from two-thirds to three-quarters, and the
office of Lieutenant-Viceroy was created. With the final provisions of the
Design now fixed, Lord North’s allies in the Commons spent two months
maneuvering past the obstructions raised by the King’s allies, gaining final
passage on January 9, 1781. A last-ditch effort by Lord Germain to block passage
in the Lords was frustrated by Lord Shelburne, and the Britannic Design was
sent to the King for his assent on January 23. Rumors filled London that the
King would refuse his assent, or even that he might abdicate.
Reportedly, it was Lord Germain himself who convinced the King that he would do
more harm to the Constitution by his refusal to act than by giving his assent
to the Design, and he finally agreed on January 26.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
----<o:p></o:p></div>
1. Winthrop Wadsworth. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">King
George III and Lord North: The Struggle for the American Soul </i>(London,
1971), pp. 401-12.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
2. Henry Collins. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lord
North and the Rise of Parliament</i> (New York, 1956), p.98.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
3. Warner Jones. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In
Defense of Liberty:</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 1778 Treason
Trials</i> (Mexico City, 1966).<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
4. Governor Theodorick Bland of Virginia, who had served
under Washington in the Rebellion, personally interceded to allow him to serve
out his sentence under house arrest at his Mount Vernon plantation. Washington remained
there until his death in 1793. William Branch Bruce. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Life of Governor Theodorick Bland of Virginia</i> (Norfolk, 1891),
pp. 227-29.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
5. Since the attempt to raise revenue in the American
colonies had provoked the Rebellion, the North ministry gave up on this
approach. Instead, it was decided that some of the cost of the Rebellion would
be made up by ceding the Floridas back to Spain in return for a payment by the
Spanish of <span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">£5 million.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">6. Sharon
Poorman. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Designing the Design: Lord North,
John Dickinson, and the Drafting of the Britannic Design</i> (New York, 2013).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">7. Sir Guy
Carleton was named Baron Dorchester at the same time.</span></div>
Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-21191043463105474032016-05-16T02:43:00.000-04:002016-05-16T02:43:02.018-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle: The Lafayette Convention<br />
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The latest section of <em><a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html">Scorpions in a Bottle</a></em> continues the story of the founding of the state of Jefferson, carrying on from the <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/04/scorpions-in-bottle-settlement-of.html">Settlement of Jefferson</a>. We now look at the circumstances surrounding the Lafayette Convention, in which the settlers draft a written constitution for their new not-quite-state. This section completes chapter 4 of <em>Scorpions,</em> "The Wilderness Walk". <br />
<br />
Next up: the Britannic Design!<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
As subjects of the King of Spain, the Jeffersonians were in theory under the command of the royally-appointed governor of Tejas, and subject to Spanish law and administration. In practice, Cabello did not insist on strict adherence to Spanish law. Initially, the American exiles were so worn from their arduous two-year journey that Cabello was content to allow them to settle in place and recover from their ordeal. After the Apache War, the Jeffersonian militia was sufficiently large and experienced that Cabello preferred to avoid risking an open break with the new settlers. Martinez Pacheco quietly accepted his bribes and did not disturb the Jeffersonians, while Muñoz was content to allow the status quo to continue. [1]<br />
<br />
For their part, the Jeffersonians organized their settlement along the lines they were familiar with from the Thirteen Colonies. Towns had their own councils, and these councils sent delegates to a settlement-wide council headed by Greene. Greene’s council included delegates not only from the American exiles, but also from the French settlers in <st1:city w:st="on">Lafayette</st1:city> and the Spanish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ayuntamiento</i> of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Nacogdoches</st1:place></st1:city>. (Since deliberations in the Jefferson Council were conducted in English, it became customary for delegates from the French and Spanish settlements to be bilingual, a custom that was later carried over into the Mexico City Constitution.) As newer arrivals from the British colonies established their own settlements, these also sent delegates to the Jefferson Council. By 1790, the Jefferson Council had expanded to include 44 delegates from 10 settlements in Spanish Tejas. [2]<br />
<br />
Greene’s death in February 1790 brought about a crisis among the Jeffersonians. Since the departure of the original group from <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Williamsburg</st1:place></st1:city> ten years before, Greene had been the undisputed leader of the exiles. His death created a power vacuum that various factions within the settlement competed to fill. The most important division among the Jeffersonians was between those settlers who had come from New England and those who had come from <st1:state w:st="on">Virginia</st1:state> and the <st1:place w:st="on">Carolinas</st1:place>. The New Englanders tended to be more radical, more committed to the ideals of the Rebellion, more overtly anti-British, and more abolitionist. The Southerners, by contrast, were more moderate, more pragmatic, less anti-British, and more pro-slavery. The Southerners also made up an absolute majority of the Jeffersonians, while the rest of the settlement was divided among New England, Francophone, and Hispanophone minorities who had little in common with one another. [3]<br />
<br />
James Madison, although a Virginian by birth, had been a protégé of <st1:place w:st="on">Jefferson</st1:place>’s during the Rebellion, and he remained strongly committed to his late mentor’s ideals. In the growing disputes among the Jeffersonians, he found himself siding with Hamilton and the <st1:place w:st="on">New England</st1:place> faction. In his pamphlet “The Tyranny of the Majority”, he warned his fellow Southerners that they risked tearing the fledgling settlement apart if they used their numbers to force their own policies on the other settlers. What was needed, Madison argued, was a written constitution to serve as a blueprint for a government, which would make explicit which powers it exercised, and just as important, which powers it was denied. [4]<br />
<br />
Hamilton and Madison agreed that the Jefferson Council, being essentially an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ad hoc </i>body assembled haphazardly by the original settlers in the year after their arrival, lacked a mandate for the drafting of a frame of government. Instead, the two men and their allies promoted the idea of a convention called for the specific purpose of drafting a new constitution for the settlement. The selection of Lafayette for the site of the convention, rather than Jefferson City, was intended to emphasize the idea that the new constitution would represent the interests of all the free inhabitants of Jefferson, Catholic as well as Protestant, Francophone and Hispanophone as well as Anglophone.<br />
<br />
The convention was called to order on Wednesday, June 19, 1793, and Madison was chosen by the delegates to preside over the meeting. The delegates to the Lafayette Convention were strongly influenced by the late John Adams, who had published a treatise called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thoughts on Government</i> shortly before the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. Adams had advocated for separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and for a bicameral legislature in which a popularly elected lower house would choose the members of an upper house.<br />
<br />
Over the course of the next two months, the Lafayette Convention, guided by Madison and Hamilton, created a government for the Jefferson settlement based on Adams’ prescriptions. The various towns and settlements of Jefferson were divided into 42 electoral districts, each with roughly one thousand free inhabitants, which would send one representative to the lower house of the legislature, the Chamber of Representatives, for a term of two years. The Chamber in turn would choose a fifteen-member upper house, the Senate, whose members would serve for five years. All legislation would originate in the Chamber, and would then either be confirmed or vetoed by the Senate.<br />
<br />
The most contentious issue facing the Lafayette Convention was the nature of the executive branch. Should the executive be a single man or three men? Should it be chosen by popular vote or by the legislature? Given the factionalized state of the settlement, it was agreed that choosing a single executive would exacerbate tensions, and therefore a three-man executive would be preferable. Madison favored an executive chosen by the legislature, and he was able to sway the convention to his side. The executives, known as governors, would be chosen by the Senate from among the members of the legislative branch, and would serve for a term of five years. A proposal to limit the governors to a set number of terms, either one or two, was opposed by Madison, and again he was able to persuade the convention to vote his way. [5]<br />
<br />
The judicial branch would consist of a seven-member High Court, who would serve for life, and who were nominated by the governors and confirmed by a two-thirds vote of the Senate.<br />
<br />
If the machinery of government established at Lafayette seems unnecessarily elaborate for a settlement with only 42,000 free inhabitants, it must be remembered that Jefferson was growing at an extraordinary pace, due to both immigration and natural increase. The delegates to the convention were well aware of the fact that they were creating a government not only for the present, but for an indefinite future that might well see Jefferson expand across North America and become a nation of millions. With that in mind, the delegates at Lafayette added a provision to the constitution allowing for the expansion of the Chamber of Representatives to reflect the results of a decennial census of the settlement. [6]<br />
<br />
The delegates dealt with the issue of slavery by not dealing with it at all. The institution was not mentioned at all in the Lafayette Constitution. As it happened, both supporters and opponents of slavery could point to sections of the constitution that they interpreted as giving them the power to either protect or limit the institution should the issue arise in the future. [7]<br />
<br />
All of the townships in the Jeffersonian settlement restricted the franchise to male property owners, and this was reflected in the constitution, which established a <span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">£5 property requirement for voting in elections to the Chamber of Representatives. Although some modern historians see this as evidence that the Lafayette Constitution was fundamentally undemocratic, it should be remembered that land in Jefferson was so cheap that a household could acquire £5 worth of property within three years of being established. It has been estimated that out of 8,000 free adult males residing in Jefferson in 1793, about 7,500 met the £5 franchise threshold, which made Jefferson the most democratic society in the world at the time. [8]<br />
<br />
The delegates to the Lafayette Convention ratified the final draft of the constitution on August 23. A referendum among enfranchised Jeffersonians took place on Tuesday, October 15, with nearly 80% voting their approval. Elections for the Chamber of Representatives were held on Wednesday, December 4, and the winning candidates assembled in Jefferson City on Sunday, January 19, 1794.<br />
<br />
The newly-elected Chamber did not include either Madison or Hamilton, both of whom expected to be chosen for the Senate. Their expectations were realized when the Chamber cast its ballots for the Senate, with each Representative offering fifteen names. Although neither man received the votes of all 42 Representatives, Madison finished first with 39 votes, and Hamilton second with 33. When Madison and Hamilton met with their 13 Senate colleagues on January 25, all agreed that they two of them would serve as governors, along with Representative Samuel Johnston of North Carolina, who had been a leading figure in the colony during the Rebellion.<br />
<br />
The formation of the new government would soon be tested by the coming of war between Spain and Great Britain. As a consequence of that war, the Jefferson settlement would find itself suddenly thrust upon the world stage.<br />
<br />
----<br />
1. Guerrero. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The State of Jefferson</i>.</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
2. <em>Ibid.,</em> pp. 214-17.<br />
<br />
3. Dana Wycliff. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Cultural Struggle in Early Jefferson</i> (Mexico City, 1910).<o:p></o:p><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">4. James Madison. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tyranny of the Majority</i> (Jefferson City, 1791).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">5. Celia Fernandez. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Decision at Lafayette: The Making of the Jefferson Constitution</i> (Jefferson City, 2009).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">6. Robert Wymess. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prelude to Greatness: The Jeffersonian Constitution of 1793</i> (Mexico City, 1970).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">7. Collier. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lost Opportunity</i>, pp. 284-87.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">8. William and Edina Geisinger. “Property and Voting Rights in Early Jefferson,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of Jeffersonian History</i>, LXXII (May, 1994), pp. 442-51.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-34109853485469319692016-04-25T11:59:00.001-04:002016-04-25T11:59:42.301-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle: The Settlement of Jefferson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Work on <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html"><i>Scorpions in a Bottle</i></a> continues, in spite of delays occasioned by <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2013/04/vertigo.html">another bout of vertigo</a>. Today's section carries on the story of the State of Jefferson from the <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/03/scorpions-in-bottle-greene-expedition.html">Wilderness Walk</a>. I had to do some actual research for this bit on conditions in Spanish Texas in the 1780s. Fortunately, now that I live in a college town, I have access to the stacks at Penn State's Pattee Library.<br />
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The land the American exiles had chosen as their new home,
although sparsely populated, was not an ungoverned wilderness. In the century
before the Rebellion, Spanish authorities in Mexico City had become concerned about
encroachment from French Louisiana, and had made various attempts to establish
missions among the local Indians of Tejas. For the most part, these missionary
efforts were unsuccessful. When the French ceded Louisiana
to Spain in 1762, the need
to maintain a settled presence in Tejas had receded, and most of the Spanish
settlers had been concentrated around the new provincial capital of San Antonio, though there were also important settlements
at <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga</span> and Nacogdoches. The arrival
of some 2,000 American exiles in 1782 effectively doubled the settled
population of Tejas.</div>
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Given the traditional Spanish hostility to Protestantism,
Governor Cabello’s willingness to allow the exiles to settle in his province may
seem puzzling. However, it must be remembered that a majority of the arrivals
were either French Catholics or high church Anglicans from Virginia
and the Carolinas. Hamilton records that Father de Gray
requested a dispensation from Cabello for the Americans, emphasizing the cruel
treatment they had endured at the hands of the British. It is likely that
Cabello was swayed by the palpable hatred most of the exiles exhibited towards
the British; he was clearly hoping they would serve as a barrier to British
expansion into Mexico
(as indeed they ultimately did). [1]</div>
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Greene and the settlement’s other leaders made a concerted
effort to earn Cabello’s trust. A number of the American settlers converted to
Catholicism, most notably James Monroe. Greene sent a letter on Cabello’s
behalf to Charles Carroll in Maryland,
informing him that Catholic colonists would be welcomed in the new settlement,
where they would enjoy complete religious liberty and Cabello’s personal
protection. The result was a steady stream of new Catholic settlers from the
Thirteen Colonies, as well as from Quebec and Nova Scotia. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The arrival of the American exiles proved opportune in one
respect. For some time, the Spanish authorities in Tejas had been growing
concerned about the depredations committed by the nomadic Apaches, which had
been ongoing for decades. Brigadier Teodoro de Croix, the Commandant General of
New Spain’s frontier provinces, had determined
that war against the Apaches would be necessary. The arrival of the American
exiles, many of them veterans of the North American Rebellion, provided Croix
with just the force he was looking for. For his part, Greene saw Croix’s
proposed war as an opportunity to prove the value of the new settlers to the
Spanish administration. In the spring of 1784, Hamilton led a force of 300 American settlers
to serve as auxiliaries in Croix’s Apache War. The war was a success; those
Apaches who survived were conquered by the Comanche. [2]</div>
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<br /></div>
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The new settlement, which soon gained the name Jefferson, proved attractive to other Americans. As might
be expected, many were former rebels who had been reluctant to take part in the
initial hazardous overland trek, but were eager to leave British rule and live
among friends where their republican sympathies were welcomed. More
surprisingly, some were Loyalists who were unhappy with the final settlement
that had been worked out between the British government and the reconciliationists,
and who refused to live under the resulting Britannic Design. The settlement
also attracted European idealists of various stripes, most notably Albert
Gallatin of Geneva.
By far, though, the most numerous emigrants were neither rebel nor Loyalist,
but were simply land-hungry North American settlers, often younger sons of
Southern plantation owners. The latter tended to appear at Henrytown with their
own Negro slaves, intent on establishing their own slave plantations in the new
settlement.</div>
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The appearance of the new Southern slaveowners reignited the
issue of slavery in the new settlement. Most of the slaves who had been brought
on the original Wilderness Walk had either escaped during and after the
journey, or been freed by their masters after the establishment of Jefferson. Hamilton and James Madison spoke out in favor
of abolishing slavery altogether. Many Jeffersonians, though, regarded Negroes
as inherently inferior and incapable of participating in the new society being
established along the Trinity River. They
favored maintaining the institution of slavery. As more settlers arrived from
the Southern Confederation, this attitude became the majority sentiment in Jefferson. [3] </div>
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News of the American settlement in Tejas soon found its way
to King Charles III in Spain.
Initially, Charles approved of the new settlement, particularly after accounts
of the Apache War reached him. However, he became disturbed by the settlement’s
quick growth. By 1786, the American population of Tejas had surpassed 10,000,
far outnumbering the province’s Spanish population. With the threat posed by
the Apaches gone, the settlement was also growing beyond its original grant in
the Trinity valley, spreading west to the Brazos and Colorado
Rivers, and approaching San Antonio itself. The
king issued a proclamation forbidding further entry into Tejas by North
Americans. [4]</div>
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By the time the new proclamation reached Tejas, Cabello had
departed to take up his new appointment as Viceroy of Peru. His successor was
Rafael Martinez Pacheco, an overbearing man with a long, troubled history in
Tejas. Matters might have reached the breaking point then had not Greene taken
advantage of the new governor’s cupidity. A series of bribes persuaded Martinez
Pacheco to look the other way while shiploads of new settlers continued to
arrive from Charleston and Norfolk. [5] By the time Governor Martinez
Pacheco was relieved of his post in 1790, the Jefferson
settlement had grown to 20,000 inhabitants (including 4,000 Negro slaves). By
then, royal scrutiny of the new settlement had ended. Charles III died in December
1788, and was succeeded by his less-capable son, Charles IV. Charles preferred
to leave the administration of the government to a succession of first
ministers. Martinez Pacheco’s successor, Lt. Col. Manuel Muñoz, was an elderly
man in poor health who was unable to govern Tejas effectively. Between them,
King Charles and Govenor Muñoz allowed the Jeffersonians operate with total
autonomy. The Jeffersonians took advantage of this benign neglect to craft a
new instrument of government for themselves.</div>
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1. Nicholas Oldro. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cabello
y Robles and the Jeffersonians</i> (Jefferson
City, 2010). </div>
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<br /></div>
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2. Bruce Silcox. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Apache War of 1784</i> (Mexico City, 1932).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3. Baldwin Collier. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Lost Opportunity: Slavery in Jefferson
City, 1782-1795</i> (New York, 1948).</div>
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<br /></div>
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4. Christopher Halling. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">King
Charles III of Spain: An
Enlightened Despot</i> (London,
1971), pp. 416-17.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
5. Russell Guerrero. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
State of Jefferson: 1782-1820</i> (Jefferson City, 2008), pp.
188-91.</div>
Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-89107432220386172162016-04-03T10:16:00.001-04:002016-04-03T10:16:31.591-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle: The Hudson Campaign<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
It's time to do a little backtracking with <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html"><i>Scorpions in a Bottle</i></a>. I began my account of the Hudson Campaign <i>in media res</i>, as it were, with Burgoyne facing disaster in October 1777, just before the timeline's point-of-divergence. The present section is the prequel, showing Burgoyne setting out from Canada in high spirits and certain of victory. With this section done, the third chapter of <i>Scorpions</i>, "The Rebellion Ends", is now complete.<br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the year 1777 dawned, the North ministry found itself
facing unexpected difficulties. The campaign in America, initially completely
successful, had ended in disappointment. Instead of capturing Philadelphia,
and thus ending the Rebellion, Lord North and his ministers heard of the
setbacks in Trenton and Princeton.
It was recognized that a simple show of force would be insufficient to put down
the Rebellion. It would be necessary to employ as much military strategy as a
comparable engagement with a European power would merit.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fortunately for Lord North, the hour had brought forth the
man. General John Burgoyne had returned to London
several months before the evacuation of Boston,
and so was able to bring firsthand knowledge of conditions in America to the
North ministry, along with a first-rate military intelligence to analyze the
situation and recommend a course of action. Burgoyne recognized that the
Americans’ greatest strength, the vast extent of the area under their control,
could also be their greatest weakness. Provided that sufficient forces could be
brought to bear, the thinly-settled territory could easily be split asunder,
and the centers of the Rebellion isolated from each other. Once this was done,
the rebellious areas could be overcome piecemeal. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The optimal strategy, as Burgoyne well understood, was to
build on the army’s strengths. The strong positions in Canada and New York City
provided a ready-made platform from which to seal New
England off from the remaining colonies. Burgoyne himself would
lead one army south from Quebec, while a second traveled east from the Iroquois
country, and Howe led a third north up the Hudson from New York. All three
armies would meet at Albany, securing control of
New York province and leaving New England isolated. This plan was approved by Lord
Germain, and Burgoyne sailed to Canada
to take command of an army of some 7,000 men, including regiments of Hessian
soldiers, French Canadian militia, and Indian auxiliaries. [1]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
General Howe, who had remained in America,
also initially favored a pincer attack on Albany,
but by the spring of 1777 he had decided instead to carry out an amphibious
attack on Philadelphia, leaving Clinton
in command of a small force in New
York City with orders not to leave the vicinity of the
city. Although Lord Germain sent Howe a letter saying he expected Howe to move
up the Hudson, Howe chose to regard this as a
suggestion rather than an order, and proceeded with his attack on Philadelphia. In June
1777, as Burgoyne was moving his army south down Lake Champlain, Howe was
preparing to embark his troops for the move on Philadelphia. Howe finally set sail on July
23, making landfall at the head of Chesapeake Bay
on August 24.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Burgoyne was aided by a leadership dispute among the
Americans. General Horatio Gates sought command of the Northern Department for
himself, and he spent much of 1777 intriguing to replace General Philip
Schuyler. The two traded command of the area several times, depriving the rebel
forces of consistent leadership. During his periods of command, Gates’ natural
indolence left the rebels unprepared in spite of their knowledge of Burgoyne’s
impending attack. In late June Burgoyne’s forces easily drove the rebels out of
Fort Ticonderoga,
at the south end of Lake Champlain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once Burgoyne began moving south from Lake
Champlain, he found that he had run out of easy victories. For the
next four weeks, his men faced a grueling struggle to advance though a wilderness
festooned with rebel booby-traps. A detachment of Hessian soldiers was repulsed
on a foraging expedition to Bennington,
New Hampshire on August 14,
losing several hundred men. Meanwhile, Lt. Col. Barry St. Leger’s force, moving
east down the Mohawk Valley, was halted at Fort Stanwix
and forced to turn back. By September, Burgoyne’s provisions were dwindling,
and most of his Indian allies had deserted him.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Had Burgoyne continued to face General Schuyler, all might
have been lost. Fortunately, the capture of Fort Ticonderoga
allowed Gates to regain command of the rebel army, and once again his indolence
proved vital to Burgoyne’s success. After taking command of the rebels, Gates
was content to rely on his predecessor’s preparations. They were sufficient to
halt Burgoyne, but not to defeat him. [2] An attack by Burgoyne on September 12
ended in stalemate for the two opposing armies. As was often the case in the Hudson campaign,
Burgoyne’s chief strength was the weakness of his enemies: a quarrel between
Gates and General Benedict Arnold deprived the rebel commander of his most
energetic and able subordinate. For the next three weeks, Burgoyne dug in and
prepared to receive a rebel counterattack. It was only gradually that Burgoyne
realized that Gates had no intention of launching his own attack, and was
content to sit and wait at Saratoga
while Burgoyne’s army slowly melted away. Burgoyne on October 7 chose to launch
another attack on the rebel positions. Had he faced only Gates, the attack
would almost certainly have succeeded in dislodging the rebels. Unfortunately
for Burgoyne, Arnold
had chosen to remain with the rebel army in spite of his quarrel with Gates,
and his quick thinking and daring leadership allowed the rebels to repulse
Burgoyne’s advance, and even threatened to drive the British army from its
fortified redoubts. It was only nightfall, and Arnold’s incapacitation after being wounded
in the leg, that prevented a complete rout. [3]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1. Wesley Van Luvender. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Military Thought and Action of John Burgoyne</i> (New York, 1944), pp. 117-23.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2. Robert Sidney. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Horatio
Gates: The Man Who Lost the Rebellion</i> (New York, 1970), pp. 45-59.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3. Bamford Parkes. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Benedict
Arnold: The Rebel Genius</i> (New York, 1965), pp. 210-22.</div>
Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-69194570829068652182016-04-01T01:00:00.000-04:002016-04-01T01:00:22.946-04:00TOP SECRET: It's on for Cleveland!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6k4QfVHE_C024I9tQv0rqz2nqK9EWoNtLfnCHx9uuXhRIBbcdZS3TMZuOQV4OrAjOLoYjet8urmJ0vGn23VoHc9y8jsymWyN9BWIrBXBSFWoYcJ4UL_RQhyEbbQFnpKLPbLF-7ct5IKo/s1600/gunflag.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6k4QfVHE_C024I9tQv0rqz2nqK9EWoNtLfnCHx9uuXhRIBbcdZS3TMZuOQV4OrAjOLoYjet8urmJ0vGn23VoHc9y8jsymWyN9BWIrBXBSFWoYcJ4UL_RQhyEbbQFnpKLPbLF-7ct5IKo/s1600/gunflag.jpeg" /></a></div>
<br />
Those of you who are also on the Soros payroll will doubtless have already received the following instructions with your monthly stipend. However, due to my status within the Organization as a Low-Level Information Source, I have been tasked with disseminating the details of Operation American Splendor to our allies within the New World Order:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
TOP SECRET<br />
TOP SECRET<br />
TOP SECRET<br />
<br />
1 April 2016 <br />
<br />
In order to further our long-term goal to eradicate the world's sovereign nations, particularly the United States of America, and establish a One World Government, the following operation (code name AMERICAN SPLENDOR) has been advanced to ACTIVE STATUS. This is a PRIORITY ALPHA operation, meaning that all Organization members not engaged in ALPHA PLUS or higher activities are required to suspend activity and devote all resources to AMERICAN SPLENDOR.<br />
<br />
The object of AMERICAN SPLENDOR is to disrupt the Republican National Convention being held in the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio from July 18 to 21. This will allow our agents within the Republican National Committee to suspend the convention and appoint former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as the Republican Party's 2016 presidential nominee.<br />
<br />
Members of the Organization and allied organizations within the NEW WORLD ORDER taking part in AMERICAN SPLENDOR will take up positions outside the Quicken Loans Arena starting at 8:00 am on the morning of July 18, 2016. Those taking part in AMERICAN SPLENDOR will assume the appearance of gun rights activists protesting the banning of firearms within the Quicken Loans Arena. AMERICAN SPLENDOR participants should carry hand-lettered signs with pro-gun messages (see APPENDIX A for sample sign texts). AMERICAN SPLENDOR participants should also carry loaded firearms, including pistols, machine pistols, single-shot rifles, and semi-automatic rifles. Any Organization members lacking firearms can purchase them at sporting goods stores and gun shops. Members who have criminal records that would prevent them from purchasing weapons at retail outlets that carry out background checks can instead purchase weapons at gun shows (see APPENDIX B for list of gun shows being held between 1 April and 30 June 2016). </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
AMERICAN SPLENDOR participants should attempt to engage actual pro-gun activists present outside the Quicken Loans Arena to persuade them that the gun ban within the arena is unconstitutional and should be ignored. On the evening of July 19, while the roll call of the states is taking place, AMERICAN SPLENDOR participants and as many actual pro-gun activists as can be persuaded should attempt to storm the Quicken Loans Arena and take up positions on and around the convention floor. AMERICAN SPLENDOR participants will then open fire on convention delegates and members of conservative media outlets (see APPENDIX C for list of approved conservative media targets).<br />
<br />
After five minutes of sustained gunfire, AMERICAN SPLENDOR participants will divest themselves of all firearms and pro-gun possessions and assume the identities of convention delegates. While law-enforcement personnel are arresting remaining actual pro-gun activists, AMERICAN SPLENDOR participants will exit the Quicken Loans Arena along with surviving convention delegates, then make their way to pre-arranged rendezvous points in downtown Cleveland hotels (see APPENDIX D for list of rendezvous points). At rendezvous points, AMERICAN SPLENDOR participants will be provided with temporary identity kits and transportation out of Cleveland.</blockquote>
<br />
In a separate communication, the Soros Organization has outlined preparations for selected friendly media outlets to respond to Operation American Splendor with calls for a national state of emergency, a ban on pro-gun organizations, and mass arrests of pro-gun activists. The Organization will also be activating a sleeper agent in California to eliminate radio host Alex Jones, who has demonstrated an uncanny ability to detect and expose dozens of previous false-flag operations aimed at eliminating private gun ownership and American sovereignty.<br />
<br />
Remember, folks, this is all top secret information. If details of Operation American Splendor become widely known among conservative activists and media outlets, the attempt to disrupt the RNC and make Governor Romney the Republican presidential nominee could suffer complete failure. So, mum's the word!Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-75492012568580304072016-03-30T10:58:00.002-04:002016-03-30T10:58:49.033-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle: The Greene Expedition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi19MARa_8M84xWz2NxirkH_CLwDJ5VfKEE30bjKDVokblturUTru5oFq1etyPjONy4AeZ8rJc6pBhbDN6RbsvnxZ1eH6Ukl2qdlShVSrD_GwlH0N-qHhMs_-_KVX5anHffUIDrwKs9FWA/s1600/wilderness+walk.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi19MARa_8M84xWz2NxirkH_CLwDJ5VfKEE30bjKDVokblturUTru5oFq1etyPjONy4AeZ8rJc6pBhbDN6RbsvnxZ1eH6Ukl2qdlShVSrD_GwlH0N-qHhMs_-_KVX5anHffUIDrwKs9FWA/s320/wilderness+walk.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The latest section of <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle.html"><i>Scorpions in a Bottle</i></a> follows the former American rebels as they make the dangerous trek from Virginia to Spanish Texas that would later be immortalized as the Wilderness Walk. This section follows on from the account of the <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle-loyalist-reaction.html">Loyalist reaction</a> of 1778-79.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The southern expedition was more successful. Under the
command of Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island,
this expedition gathered near Williamsburg in the
spring of 1780, intending to travel overland to the province
of Tejas in New
Spain. Three quarters of its members were from the Southern
colonies, and included a number of slaveowners who brought their Negro slaves
with them. This led to some friction with members from the northern colonies,
who believed that the overland route would be dangerous enough without the
added difficulty of keeping watch on hundreds of slaves to prevent their escape
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">en route</i>. Governor Bland attempted to
persuade General Clinton to forbid the Greene expedition to remove any Negro
slaves from the colonies -- not out of humanitarianism, but for fear that the
expedition’s slaves would escape their control and join Marion’s raiders in the western hills.
Despite these efforts, the Greene expedition included roughly 500 slaves, along
with some 3,000 to 4,000 white colonists. [1]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Greene’s reasons for taking the more difficult overland
route, rather than sailing to New Orleans or the
mouth of the San Antonio
River, were twofold.
Firstly, he intended to augment the expedition’s numbers by traveling through
the Southern colonies and recruiting disaffected former rebels. Secondly, he
hoped to blaze a trail through the wilderness that would allow later settlers
to follow him to the new settlement. The first aim proved successful:
uncertainty concerning the numbers of the Greene expedition are due mainly to colonists
who joined after the departure from Williamsburg,
who may have numbered anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 people. The second aim was,
on the whole, a failure. The difficulties encountered by Greene’s expedition
made the overland route unpopular, and practically all colonial emigration to
Tejas after 1782 arrived via ship.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Greene’s original plan would have seen the expedition travel
by road from Williamsburg to St.
Augustine, Florida before
traveling west along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans. However, news of the British
government’s decision to cede Florida to Spain forced the expedition’s leaders to revise
their plans on the fly, and the decision was made in July to strike west into North Carolina. The
expedition reached Kings Mountain,
South Carolina, and paused to
reorganize, before continuing west. However, by September a combination of
unfamiliar terrain and skirmishes with the local Indian tribes made it clear
that they would be unable to reach the Gulf
Coast by winter, and the expedition
turned back to winter in Charlotte,
North Carolina.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Setting forth again in April 1781, the Greene expedition was
able to travel west after engaging Indian guides among the Cherokee. The
expedition struck the Mississippi River in August, then traveled downstream to Baton Rouge, which they
reached in early September. The journey was difficult, and almost half the
people on the expedition had either turned back, or died from disease. Baton Rouge had been under Spanish rule since the North
ministry ceded the Floridas
in 1780, and most members of the expedition wanted to settle there permanently.
Had they done so, the subsequent history of the North American continent would
have been very different. However, the arrival in November of a second party of
800 former rebels, who had traveled by ship from Charles Town, South Carolina,
convinced the surviving members of the Greene expedition to press on to Spanish
Tejas in the spring. [2]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
During their stay in Baton Rouge,
the leaders of the Greene expedition came into contact with the Acadians, French
settlers from Nova Scotia
who had been forced from their homes during and after the Seven Years’ War.
Many Acadians feared (presciently, as it proved) that the aggressive,
land-hungry British colonists would soon expand into Spanish Louisiana, and
they looked with interest on the expedition’s plans to establish a new
settlement in Tejas. As a result, when the Greene expedition resumed its
journey in April 1782, it was accompanied by some 200 Acadians and other
Francophone residents of Louisiana.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For decades, French settlers in Louisiana had engaged in illegal smuggling
with Spanish colonists in Tejas. These contacts between French and Spanish
colonists proved fortunate for the new arrivals, since it allowed them to
establish friendly relations with the Spanish settlers upon their arrival in Tejas
in the summer of 1782. Particular assistance was provided by Father Jean
Baptistee de Gray, an Acadian priest who had been expelled from Nova Scotia during the
Seven Years’ War. With de Gray’s assistance, the exiled Americans were granted
permission by Governor Domingo Cabello y Robles to establish several
settlements on the Trinity River, including Jefferson City,
Arnold, and Henrytown, the latter a port at the
mouth of the Trinity River. The Acadians
established a separate settlement called Lafayette
near the Spanish settlement of Nacogdoches.
By November 1782, the new settlements had been well-established, and the
American exiles set to work creating a new society in a strange land. [3]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
----</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1. In his account of the Greene expedition, Hamilton claimed that the
Negro slaves were never meant to be transported to the new settlement, but were
supposed to be sold <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">en route</i> to help
finance the journey. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Farewell to Change</i>,
p. 117.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2. Richard Bennett. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
First Group: Pioneers in the Wilderness</i> (Mexico City, 1933).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3. Rafael Coronado. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1782:
The Founding of Jefferson</i> (Jefferson City,
1982).</div>
Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-78581081294011930342016-03-05T22:06:00.001-05:002016-03-06T07:08:20.077-05:001860 squared<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Republican insiders are desperate to keep Donald Trump from becoming their presidential nominee. At the moment, their efforts are focused on keeping Trump from winning an outright majority of delegates. If they succeed, that would put us in the fabled realm of the "brokered convention", where behind-the-scenes dealmaking would allow the Republicans to deny Trump the nomination and award it instead to a mutually agreeable compromise candidate. The model is the 1920 Republican convention, which was deadlocked among several candidates until Warren G. Harding emerged as an acceptable compromise candidate, receiving the nomination.<br />
<br />
The trouble with the "brokered convention" scenario is that it doesn't always work. The most notorious example is the 1860 Democratic Convention. In 1860 the slavery issue haunted American politics like a vast, scary, haunty thing. It had already broken up the Whig Party, and now it was the Democrats' turn. At their convention in Charleston in April, proslavery Southern Democrats were adamantly opposed to the frontrunner, Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, and they successfully blocked his nomination. However, the proslavery faction were not strong enough to put forward a candidate of their own, and neither side could agree on a compromise candidate. After 57 ballots, the convention adjourned without nominating a candidate.<br />
<br />
Six weeks later, the Democrats convened again in Baltimore. This time, the proslavery delegates walked out, and the remaining delegates nominated Douglas. The proslavery delegates held their own convention, where they nominated Vice-President John Breckenridge. Thus, there were two different Democratic candidates, splitting the vote and allowing the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, to win the general election.<br />
<br />
Now the Republican establishment is faced with not one, but two outsider insurgent candidates, Trump and Texas Senator Ted "<span class="st">Backpfeifengesicht" Cruz, both of whom are running ahead of their own preferred candidate, Florida Senator Marco "Empty Suit" Rubio. Neither Trump nor Cruz is likely to back down and support an establishment candidate, or each other for that matter. So the Republicans may well find themselves facing their own deadlocked convention.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">If we see a repeat of 1860, we could be looking at not two, but three subsequent "rump" conventions. The regular convention reconvenes in Cleveland in August after the Rules Committee has rejiggered the eligibility requirements to ensure a Rubio nomination. Both Trump and Cruz boycott the Cleveland convention and hold their own conventions. The Make America Great Again convention meets in Las Vegas and nominates a Trump-Christie ticket; the Trust in God convention meets in Houston and nominates a Cruz-Huckabee ticket; and the regular convention in Cleveland nominates a Rubio-Kasich ticket.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">The result is chaos on an epic scale. Which candidate ends up on which state ballot? It'll be up to each state's Secretary of State whether to put one, two, or all three Republicans on the general election ballot. If Trump isn't on, say, the Pennsylvania ballot, then a lot of Trump supporters will stay home on election day, which would be very bad news for downticket Republicans, especially for incumbent U.S. Senator Pat Toomey's re-election. Multiply that by 50, and you get a nightmare scenario for the Republicans. Losing to Hillary Clinton would be the least of their problems; they might well lose control of both houses of Congress and more state legislative seats than you can shake a short vulgarian finger at.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">I'm not saying this is what's going to happen, but I do believe that it <i>might</i> happen, if the Republicans get their "brokered" convention.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">Be careful what you wish for.</span>Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-23856212263862188002016-03-05T18:30:00.000-05:002016-03-05T19:47:23.298-05:00Sobel Wiki: And Close the Door<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyHgZ78SrSCDwx5GqrOTaR4tKOv1j72zt0rBkclEDooWFAjiEXRbrVpwYT39CJxswqIFRavP2YkX7PaLnAohp9-d467LDae67-WJ01Jq3YE9wnzAC5U9CL109zYV8eoDvIPBvkYQOTz-U/s1600/Conservative.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyHgZ78SrSCDwx5GqrOTaR4tKOv1j72zt0rBkclEDooWFAjiEXRbrVpwYT39CJxswqIFRavP2YkX7PaLnAohp9-d467LDae67-WJ01Jq3YE9wnzAC5U9CL109zYV8eoDvIPBvkYQOTz-U/s320/Conservative.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
This month's featured article at the <a href="http://fwoan.wikia.com/wiki/Sobel_Wiki">Sobel Wiki</a> is on the <a href="http://fwoan.wikia.com/wiki/Conservative_Party">Conservative Party</a>, one of the two original major parties in the Confederation of North America.<br />
<br />
In our own history, British politics in the 19th century was dominated by two parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals, both the product of mergers of earlier parties. This has led to the use of "conservative" and "liberal" to describe the dominant political ideologies of modern developed nations. This also influenced the development of political parties in British Commonwealth nations. For instance, when Canada was confederated in 1867, the names and ideologies of the British parties were adopted by Canadian politicians.<br />
<br />
Thus, when Sobel described the formation of political parties in the C.N.A. in the early 19th century, they were called the Conservatives and the Liberals. This is actually an anachronism: the name Conservative wasn't adopted in the U.K. until 1834, and Liberal wasn't adopted until 1859. It may be that the names came into use in the Sobel Timeline Britain around the same time as they did in the C.N.A. Sobel mentions a Liberal government in Britain falling in 1835 and being replaced by a Reform-Conservative coalition. It appears that the economic shock of the late 1830s disrupted British politics to the point where these names fell out of use, and the older names Whig and Tory were revived. British politics in the Sobel Timeline was still dominated by the Whig and Tory Parties in the 20th century.<br />
<br />
As for the C.N.A.'s Conservative Party, it and its rival Liberal Party appear as separate confederation-level parties in the 1810s and 1820s, during the period of the First Britannic Design, when the C.N.A. is a loose collection of semi-autonomous British dominions. The same economic shock that disrupts the British party system in the late 1830s unleashes various forms of chaos on the confederations of North America. It is in response to this chaos that the North American parties lead the push for political centralization that results in the Second Britannic Design of 1842.<br />
<br />
Under the first forty years of the Second Design, the Conservatives and Liberals take turns controlling the new national government, both becoming corrupt. The corrupt equilibrium is upset in the late 1860s when the Conservatives push through electoral reforms expanding the franchise and reapportioning Grand Council seats. The reforms are meant to solidify Conservative rule, but they end up allowing a populist third party, the People's Coalition, to appear and flourish. The Coalition's gains come, ironically, at the expense of the Conservatives -- by 1883 the Coalition has displaced the Conservative Party as the official opposition, and by 1893 the Conservatives have ceased to play a role in national politics. By 1903 the party has dwindled to the point where it can no longer nominate a candidate for governor-general, and it effectively shuts down.Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-84710338022146858582016-02-27T10:33:00.000-05:002016-02-27T10:33:21.739-05:00Schrödinger's vulgarian<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Aficionados of quantum mechanics will be familiar with the paradox of Schrödinger's cat, which was posed by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. Since one version of quantum mechanics holds that different outcomes of a quantum event exist simultaneously until the event is observed from outside, Schrödinger pointed out that a cat in a box whose life depended on such a quantum event would be simultaneously alive and dead, until somebody opened up the box and looked inside.<br />
<br />
Now consider Donald J. Trump, short-fingered vulgarian and Republican presidential candidate. Trump has been leading polls among Republican voters for the last six months, has won the last three Republican primary contests, and currently has 82 pledged delegates to his name, more than all the other Republican candidates combined. As Trump's chances of winning the Republican primary increase, two possible futures are coming into existence, depending on whether or not he wins the general election in November.<br />
<br />
In the Trump-wins outcome, he is remaking the GOP into a right-wing populist party along the lines of Marine Le Pen's National Front and Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom. In this outcome, Trump is a transformative figure, the Franklin Roosevelt of the Right, harnessing the widespread xenophobia of the American electorate to creat a national-populist majority, and altering the contours of the American political system.<br />
<br />
In the Trump-loses outcome, he is destroying the GOP by pandering to an extremist xenophobic minority. In this outcome, Trump's extremism leaves downticket Republicans with the equally unattractive choices of either embracing his radical xenophobia, or trying to distance themselves from it, either of which would alienate an important Republican voting bloc and risk handing hundreds of Federal, state, and local elections to the Democrats.<br />
<br />
Eight months out from the general election, it's impossible to know which outcome to expect when Trump faces off against <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2015/07/political-reality.html">Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton</a>. Will Trump end up steamrolling Clinton as he has all of his Republican opponents, or will his tactic of out-crazying his opponents fail against a candidate who doesn't have to be crazy to win votes? One can make a case for both outcomes, and we won't know for certain until November 8 rolls around and the nation actually votes.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, Trump the Transformer and Trump the Destroyer co-exist in the person of the blustering candidate. Only time will tell which one we're currently watching.Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-10672562240843382342016-02-23T10:10:00.001-05:002016-09-26T15:07:22.555-04:00Scorpions in a Bottle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Those of you who are not long-time readers of the Johnny Pez blog may be wondering: "What is this <i>Scorpions in a Bottle</i> of which you speak?<br />
<br />
Basically, it's a project I embarked on some time ago to write a sequel to Robert Sobel's classic work of alternate history, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail_%28novel%29"><i>For Want of a Nail ...</i></a> Sobel wrote his book back in 1971, and the alternate timeline he created ends there. I felt that there was a crying need to extend Sobel's timeline to the early 21st century, so that's what I'm doing.<br />
<br />
"But Johnny," you may be saying, "you can't write a continuation of someone else's work just like that. It's under copyright. You'd need permission from Sobel's estate." True. That's why I <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2014/08/for-want-of-nail-next-generation.html">contacted Sobel's estate and secured their permission.</a> I am fully authorized to write and publish a sequel, which I have tentatively decided to call <i>Scorpions in a Bottle,</i> which was Sobel's original title for his book. Having accomplished this, only two obstacles remain before me: actually writing it, and finding an actual publisher.<br />
<br />
The writing is ongoing, and I've posted written sections of <i>Scorpions in a Bottle</i> on this blog. This particular post will serve as a sort of running tally of what bits I've written so far, and an outline of what remains to be done.<br />
<br />
Here's what I've done so far (with links, because blog):<br />
<br />
<a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-albany-congress.html">Prologue: The Albany Congress</a><br />
1. The American Crisis<br />
2. Outbreak of Rebellion<br />
3. The Rebellion Ends<br />
A. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/04/scorpions-in-bottle-hudson-campaign.html">The Hudson Campaign</a><br />
B. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2014/11/scorpions-in-bottle-point-of-divergence.html">The Battle of Saratoga-Albany</a><br />
C. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2014/10/scorpions-in-bottle-joseph-galloway.html">Joseph Galloway</a><br />
D. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/01/scorpions-in-bottle-carlisle-commission.html">The Carlilse Commission</a><br />
E. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle-back-to-normal.html">The Restoration</a><br />
4. The Wilderness Walk<br />
A. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle-loyalist-reaction.html">The Loyalist Reaction</a> <br />
B. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/03/scorpions-in-bottle-greene-expedition.html">The Greene Expedition</a><br />
C.<a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/04/scorpions-in-bottle-settlement-of.html"> The Settlement of Jefferson</a><br />
D. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/05/scorpions-in-bottle-lafayette-convention.html">The Lafayette Convention</a><br />
5. The Britannic Design<br />
A. <a href="https://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/05/scorpions-in-bottle-britannic-design.html">Drafting the Design</a><br />
B. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/06/scorpions-in-bottle-first-viceroy.html">The First Viceroy</a><br />
6. The Dickinson Era<br />
A. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/06/scorpions-in-bottle-first-grand-council.html">The First Grand Council</a><br />
B. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/06/scorpions-in-bottle-abolitionism.html">Abolitionism</a><br />
C. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/07/scorpions-in-bottle-settlement-and.html">Settlement and Conflict</a><br />
7. The Trans-Oceanic War<br />
A. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/07/scorpions-in-bottle-florida-war.html">The Florida War</a><br />
B. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/07/scorpions-in-bottle-jefferson-war.html">The Jefferson War</a><br />
C. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/08/scorpions-in-bottle-louisiana-war.html">The Louisiana War</a><br />
D. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/08/scorpions-in-bottle-treaty-of-aix-la.html">The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle</a><br />
8. The State of Jefferson<br />
A. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/08/scorpions-in-bottle-rise-of-parties.html">Rise of the Parties</a><br />
B. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/09/scorpions-in-bottle-mexican-civil-war.html">The Mexican Civil War</a><br />
9. The Conquest of Mexico<br />
10. The Jackson Era<br />
11. The Clinton Era<br />
12. The Crisis Years<br />
13. Mexico in Transition<br />
A. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2014/09/john-mason.html">John Mason</a><br />
B. Miguel Huddleston <br />
C. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2014/09/for-want-of-nail-2-electric-boogaloo.html">The Rise of Pedro Hermión</a><br />
D. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2014/09/scorpions-in-bottle.html">The Henrytown Convention</a><br />
14. The Rocky Mountain War<br />
15. The Kramer Associates<br />
A. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2015/01/scorpions-in-bottle-he-straddled.html">Bernard Kramer</a> <br />
B. The Guatemala Canal<br />
C. Omar Kinkaid <br />
16. The Era of Faceless Men<br />
17. The Fall of the Republic<br />
18. The People's Coalition<br />
A. The Norfolk Convention <br />
B. <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2014/09/scorpions-in-bottle-suffragette-city.html">Woman Suffrage</a> <br />
<br />Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-2673530943330252562016-02-21T19:36:00.000-05:002016-02-21T19:36:23.774-05:00Scorpions in a Bottle: The Loyalist reaction<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyU1mTbBY_5rS72GdSaDpgs0p9_kGXrDDl1OW_CBmTJN0Fk9k8YHOzG-gMChNw8ustFKFgIdBSS_TMWzj5TOQiu80xi5LxwYwSMOL4Sae2O69aV6fp_-LLOTQgqe1KI1wYZWtZMrI3a1o/s1600/dunmore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyU1mTbBY_5rS72GdSaDpgs0p9_kGXrDDl1OW_CBmTJN0Fk9k8YHOzG-gMChNw8ustFKFgIdBSS_TMWzj5TOQiu80xi5LxwYwSMOL4Sae2O69aV6fp_-LLOTQgqe1KI1wYZWtZMrI3a1o/s320/dunmore.jpg" width="197" /></a></div>
<br />
The <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/02/scorpions-in-bottle-back-to-normal.html">last excerpt</a> from <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2014/08/for-want-of-nail-next-generation.html"><i>Scorpions in a Bottle</i></a> marks the end of the chapter on the British victory over the Americans. We continue on from there to describe the Loyalist reaction, which Sobel notes included the lynching of "some one thousand" former rebels in 1778-79. I provide a few details of that dark time here:<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It seems to be a law of nature that a people suffering
oppression will respond to liberation by oppressing their former tormentors. For
three years, Loyalists in the American colonies had been subjected to various
forms of harassment by supporters of the Rebellion. Now that their own side was
ascendant, they took advantage of the reversal of fortune to revenge themselves
in kind for the slights they had suffered.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The most notorious instances took place in Virginia. As soon as General Clinton
established his military headquarters in Norfolk,
Virginia, in September 1778, he
was besieged by Lord Dunmore, the colony’s Royal Governor, demanding that he be
reinstated. Lord Dunmore had been forced to flee Virginia in 1775 after issuing a
proclamation declaring martial law and offering freedom to any slave who
deserted a rebel master. He had left for Britain in 1776, but with the
restoration of British rule to the colonies he returned. The Ministry had
continued to issue Dunmore his salary as Royal Governor of Virginia
during his sojourn in Britain,
and he was finally able to prevail upon Clinton
to restore him to power in the colony, supplanting Governor Pendleton.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Clinton had ordered the
arrest of several prominent rebels, including Washington, Jefferson, and Henry,
and they had been sent to London
to face charges of treason against the Crown. Dunmore
was not satisfied with these limited measures. He was determined, he said, “to
see treason extirpated root and branch from this country.” Although Clinton prevented Dunmore
from carrying out mass arrests of former rebels, the governor was later accused
of encouraging lynch mobs that killed at least 600 men who had served on
Committees of Correspondence and Safety and in the Continental Army. Some
former Continentals began organizing their own militia to fend off the lynch
mobs, and clashes between the two groups threatened to develop into civil war.
At the behest of Bland and other moderates, Clinton
finally removed Dunmore from office,
appointing Bland in his place. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By then, however, the rebel militia had become too powerful
to disarm, and too distrustful of British rule to disband. They found a leader
in Francis Marion, a South Carolinian who had fought against the Cherokee
during the French and Indian War and received a captain’s commission in the
Continental Army. Apart from a battle with the Royal Navy in June 1776, Marion had seen no action
during the Rebellion. However, his commission in the rebel army resulted in his
arrest after the restoration of British rule, and the forfeiture of his
property. After escaping a lynch mob in November 1778, Marion
fled to Virginia, where he soon joined the
rebel militia being organized against Dunmore.
Marion’s
experience fighting the Cherokee allowed him to successfully ambush several
lynch mobs, and the militiamen elected him their general early in 1779. When Clinton sent his own troops to put down Marion’s
militia, they withdrew into the Virginia and Carolina backcountry. For
the next 25 years, Marion’s
men eluded capture while carrying out raids against prominent supporters of
British rule. [1]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Similar incidents of lesser severity occurred in the other
twelve colonies. These served to convince many former rebels that they could
expect nothing but further harassment from their fellow Americans, and that
their only hope for a decent life was to leave the American colonies. Hamilton later wrote,
“The nature of man is to seek revenge for real and imagined wrongs.
Reluctantly, then, we must move on. To stay here is, unfortunately,
unthinkable.” [2]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By 1780, Hamilton, Arnold, and various other leading former
rebels had organized two expeditions. The northern expedition, led by Artemas
Ward, set out from Pittsborough in March and traveled down the Ohio River to
the settlement of Kaskaskia (later Fort
Radisson) on the Mississippi. At this point, Ward chose to
cross the Mississippi and travel overland to
the west, rather than sail upstream to the former French settlement of St. Louis. Nothing
further is known of Ward’s expedition; no word from any member ever reached the
British colonies. [3]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
----</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1. Sir Douglas Carlisle. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Four Viceroys: Burgoyne, Carlton, Howe, and Clinton</i> (New York,
1967), pp. 43-58.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
2. Hamilton,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Farewell to Change</i>, p. 98.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
3. The mystery of the fate of the Ward expedition has become
a perennial subject of speculation, similar to that of the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke. As early as
1797, during the conquest of Spanish Louisiana, some of the men in General Edward Curtis’s army sought for evidence of
the expedition’s fate, but in vain. Most likely, the expedition was slaughtered
by hostile Indians before it was able to establish a permanent settlement. The
most thorough account of the expedition itself, and the efforts to locate it,
is Angela Ott. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ward Expedition:
History and Myth</i> (New York,
2007).</div>
Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-36233829548441174802016-02-15T07:25:00.001-05:002016-02-15T07:25:51.978-05:00Scorpions in a Bottle: Back to normal<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
In <i>For Want of a Nail,</i> Sobel shows the American Revolution ending in June 1778 with the Continental Congress agreeing to return the Thirteen States to British rule. And then ...<br />
<br />
That's basically it. The next thing you know, almost all the American armies have surrendered to the British, and the Thirteen Colonies are under martial law while everybody waits for Parliament to come up with a permanent settlement. How did thirteen separate revolutionary governments each decide to surrender power and accept subordination? We never find out.<br />
<br />
Clearly, this is a matter that needs explaining in my sequel to Sobel, <i>Scorpions in a Bottle</i>. This is what I came up with:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />
(this section carries on from the <a href="http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2016/01/scorpions-in-bottle-carlisle-commission.html">Carlisle Commission section</a>)<br />
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With the Rebellion at an end, and the American colonies once more restored to British rule, Galloway held that the Congress had completed its task, and adjourned the body. As direct representatives of the North ministry, the members of the Carlisle Commission found themselves acting as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de facto</i> government for the colonies. The commissioners established themselves in Philadelphia, and in consultation with General Howe, directed the restoration of the ministry’s authority. [1]<br />
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Reconciliationist regimes had been established in the Southern colonies, including Maryland and Delaware. In the middle colonies of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, the British Army had succeeded in establishing civil authority in the areas they controlled. However, the story was a different one in the New England colonies, where the Rebellion had begun, and where opposition to the return to British rule was strongest.<br />
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Burgoyne’s victory at Saratoga-Albany had broken the spirit of the New England militia serving under Gates. These men had returned to their farms and villages, bringing with them tales of Gates’ incompetence and the fecklessness of the Congress. Benedict Arnold, probably the most able rebel military commander in New England, might have been able to rally the New England rebels to continue their resistance had he been able. Arnold, however, had suffered a serious injury at the Battle of Freeman’s Farm, and was recuperating in isolation at his home in Connecticut. With him gone, there was nobody in a position to counter the growing sense of despair among the New England rebels. [2]<br />
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At the behest of Galloway and the Carlisle Commission, Dickinson agreed to serve as an envoy to the rebel government in Boston. Dickinson found the city in turmoil, as mobs championing different rebel factions fought in the streets. The city’s leading merchants, fearing the loss of all order, agreed to Dickinson’s proposal for a regiment of British soldiers to be stationed in the city. [3] The Carlisle Commission assigned Howe himself to the command, and on October 17, 1778, two and a half years after their withdrawal, the British Army returned to Boston. Once order had been restored, Howe appointed Elbridge Gerry, by now a leading Massachusetts reconciliationist, as head of the colonial government. [4] Over the course of the next year, Howe was able to use similar measures to bring the other three New England colonies under his authority. With Howe in control of New England, Burgoyne in charge of the middle colonies, and Clinton in the South, the era of the Four Viceroys had begun. [5]<br />
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1. Henderson Bundy. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Carlisle Commission</i> (New York, 2005), pp. 78-95.<br />
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2. Bamford Parkes. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Benedict Arnold: The Rebel Genius</i> (New York, 1965), pp. 217-25.<br />
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3. Lord Henry Hawkes. <i>Peace and Victory: The Last Stage of the American Rebellion</i> (London, 1884), pp. 623-35.<br />
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4. Robert MacKreith. <i>Lord Howe and the Rebellion</i> (New York, 1965), pp. 303-14.<br />
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5. Sir Guy Carleton, Governor of Quebec, is considered the fourth Viceroy,<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> although he did not share in the task of pacification of the rebellious colonies.<br />
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</span>Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8237917339730792916.post-20069829347339464882016-02-04T10:47:00.001-05:002016-02-04T10:47:43.778-05:00You know you should be gladThe Johnny Pez blog now presents the Beatles performing "She Loves You" live at the ABC Theatre in Ardwick, Manchester on November 20, 1963.<br />
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Because Beatles.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QoF-7VMMihA" width="420"></iframe></div>
Johnny Pezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07430884010621619176noreply@blogger.com0