A Ray of Light
The Longstreet Administration
The Confederate elections of 1879 saw the former Commanding General of the Confederate Army, James “Pete” Longstreet, elected into office. His policies were soon seen as a new era for North America. Many, on both sides of the border, thought that real peace was finally at hand. This was not quite the case. Longstreet may very well have bought the continent a few more years. Unfortunately for many, including a good number who participated in it, southern politics was hopelessly over complicated.
No sooner had Confederate independence become assured than emerging political parties began to form. The more conservative faction formed around South Carolinian Wade Hampton while the progressives came to be headed by former President Jefferson Davis. He had returned to the Confederate Congress as a Senator from his home state of Mississippi. The Progressives, being paid lip service by many former Confederate Generals (including Robert E Lee), enjoyed a string of early successes at the ballot box and did a great deal towards setting the new nation on it’s feet. They were not so successful with foreign affairs however.
It was due to this factor that Longstreet, who was coming to head the progressive faction (and it would not be called the Democratic Confederates Party for another year after his election), was elected only by the narrowest of margins. The situational chaos that was Confederate politics, of the time, was that state issues and local allegiances counted far more than anything at the national level and hence the political parties were slow in forming. It was also the main impediment towards a cohesive Confederate foreign policy.
Longstreet saw this for what it was and set on a course of policies that would serve to strengthen the national government. While he was concerned with the unresolved issues with the United States (and no permanent peace treaty as of yet) his real concerns were really more with his allies. The British policy after the American 61 was starting to show itself for what it was. Slowly but surely, Great Britain, now in the skillful hands of Prime Minister Gladstone, was coming to dominate the CS and reducing it to the status of one of Britain’s many lowly protectorates. Longstreet could see his nation becoming much like India or Australia if current trends held.
His solution to this problem was to turn a liability into an asset. Many had thought that, with the election of Lee’s former second in command, this would assure the new war that everyone was convinced was coming. That was why many were surprised when Longstreet pushed for, and got, a series of new talks with the United States that would come to be known as the Langley Accords.
While these talks ultimately proved to be futile in settling any major long term disputes they did relieve a great deal of building pressure between the two American nations. Trade became more or less normalized once again. Tariffs became standardized and many minor but important regulatory concerns were worked out. Such seemingly trivial matters as immigration and entry visa’s were of monumental importance where you still had many families divided by an international border they could not cross.
If such things were all that Longstreet had accomplished then he would have still been remembered for that alone. He used this as a master stroke in the Confederacy’s relations with it’s chief ally, Great Britain. Gladstone, concerned that the Confederates would conclude an un-consulted peace with the United States, was powerless to say so out right. He understood all too well that should the two American nations begin to cooperate once more then Great Britain would suddenly find itself having to compete for prices on various raw materials produced in the Confederacy. This could be a disaster for the British mercantile industry that had greatly flourished due to its special trading preferences with the CSA. That would be only half of a double blow because, at the same time, the US mills would no longer be hampered by the tension in North America. England would take a heavy handed blow here.
While Longstreet played off his greatest enemy with his greatest friend he set his own nation on a course of rapid modernization. A steel industry, ironically funded by US business interests, sprung up in Alabama. Self supporting mill towns, that specialized mostly in textiles, started to become a common site. New farming tools started to replace manpower on the plantations. Most of this was done with government financial incentives and tax breaks.
There is nothing that can highlight Longstreet’s ability, to make his liabilities work for him, more than the slavery issue. African slavery (for they seemed not to care a bit about it in eastern Europe) was quite an embarrassment to British politicians who staunchly supported the Confederate States. Longstreet suggested to them that this problem could be remedied with an adequate amount of funds that he did not have. As a result English tractors were sold at discounts to southern plantations. Low interest loans to these plantations helped pay the reduced sum and as time went on the need for intense labor decreased. In essence, what it amounted to was that Longstreet had managed to get others to pay for his own modernization policies.
This created other problems that went well beyond the complaints by the Conservative faction (by 1873 they were called the States First Party but would change their name in 1885 to the more familiar Home Party). Much of what men like Wade Hampton and, before him, Nathan Forrest had complained about was true. The freeing of large numbers of slaves was a serious threat to the stability of the country. In many regions blacks out numbered whites by a considerable margin. Many of these former slaves had no usable skills and were unable to find work. Such things were the making of revolutions and that was not even considering the prevailing social opinions of the day which were that blacks were inferior.
Longstreet’s solution was in his confrontation with another problem that needed solving and this one could unravel his entire foreign policy along with seriously crippling his domestic. One of Longstreet’s ploys to appease the British was a promise of military support to increase the viability of their defense treaty. While this treaty in no way obligated the Confederacy to get involved in British colonial wars there were reasons Longstreet wished to participate in them even if the involvement was negligible at best. The sad truth, and one that was a tightly held secret, was that the Confederate military was in a sad state of affairs just some twenty years after the war.
The SFP had been holding military spending bills over the heads of the DCP. Hampton was the loudest in pointing out that it had been a national army they had to fight in order to gain independence. Many agreed and as such the States took up much of the military requirements of the Confederacy. The fledgling navy began to wither right along with the army. Standardization problems of every kind plagued the once proud Confederate Military and a host of good Generals such as Stuart, Hill, and finally Wheeler were powerless to do anything about it.
Most prominently, Joe Wheeler saw the opportunity to deploy “observers” to South Africa as a good way to train a junior officer corps that had never seen battle. He looked forward to an even more permanent officer exchange program with the British Army. This was not to be. The subsequent military disasters that resulted in what would eventually be known as the First Boer War, changed all of that.
Confederate participation was nominal however the newspapers, that were sagging due to the lack of any juicy stories (since relations with the US had improved) over blew the entire affair. Many Confederate citizens questioned why their boys were dying to fight whites who were, after all, trying to defend themselves from both blacks and foreign imperialism. It did not seem to matter that the imperialists were Confederate allies and that the blacks of South Africa were not involved in the fighting.
This seemed to have crushed any chances that Longstreet had to reform the Confederate military. He also had grander visions and in order to achieve this he would need both a navy and British military assistance. It was all too clear that the rank and file citizens of the CSA were unwilling to shed blood for foreign wars. Without doing that then Longstreet would not be able to get his hooks into China and, as he saw it, this was crucial to keeping his domestic policies afloat. All those mills would need foreign markets to sell their goods. If the Confederacy only sold their items at home then they would always live in the shadow of other nations. China, at the time, was the biggest cash cow going and Longstreet realized that his nation needed in on it.
Wresting control of the Naval budget was easier than that of the army. Most individual states could not afford a Navy so it was easier to sell the idea that it should be controlled by the national government. Enough people were still around that remembered the Yankee blockade so an argument for having a navy, at all, was not so hard. Sending this navy abroad was an entirely different matter. For that, Longstreet relied on the one man who was personally dead set against the plan but, could push the matter through. James Bulloch (uncle to Theodore Roosevelt) was that fellow and from 1883 to 1900 he turned the Confederate Navy into his own personal fiefdom. This was most likely his real motivation for signing on board with Longstreet‘s proposals.
The force of personality of these two men were enough to turn the Confederate Navy into a real blue water force with global reach. It was an ironic twist of fate that this new navy came complete with enlisted sailors who were mostly former slaves.
For the black sailors it was a job that paid, got them a certain amount of respect within the confines of their organization, allowed them to see the world, gave them training, and most importantly they all felt as if they had a stake in a country that otherwise did not even afford them the status of citizen. In exchange, Longstreet got his navy that was staffed with men that no one would complain about if they were thrown in harms way.
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As well I like how you're handling the slavery issue. To many writers of alternative history either handwave it away or have the South just free the slaves so that they do not have to deal with the issue.
BTW Australia was always a British Colony so it really couldn't be placed in the same light India (or the south in this case) as far as being absorbed into the British sphere of influence. It never left.
I think you're setting up an interesting narrative I want to strengthen that narrative so that others can't take cheap shots.
Thanks Toom! Yeah I had to pick Longstreet for several reasons, not the least of which is, I'm related to his second wife. Course the main reason is, given what kind of man Longstreet was, had the south won the war there is little doubt in my mind that he would have showed up prominently on the historical record, at some point after. Longstreet was not only a political opportunist but, he was quite a talented one. The only thing that kept him out of higher office was he chose the wrong side of the war. Of course, that's not to say he didn't support states rights, he came from a family that was deeply devoted to that cause but, Longstreet was also quite pragmatic. Yes he was vilified by southern politicians after the war but, I don't think it was as much for the fact that he joined the republicans as it was a convenience that they needed. Other Confederate leaders who joined the Republican's, post war, such as Mosby, were not. Most of the anti Longstreet stuff came from one man, Jubal Early. He was very successful at it.
As for Longstreet's criticism of Lee, actually I believe that was mostly overstated, and he was accused of it after the war. You have to remember that where Longstreet was demonized, Lee was raised to the level of patron saint but, again all after the war. The disagreements of these two men have been largely overblown as well. The truth is that they did belong to two competing factions within the Confederate Military. The issue was over how to prosecute the war. Lee's strategy failed at Gettysburg and, ultimately, Longstreet's strategy would fail at Chattanooga and Knoxville. Of course there are those that argue, by the time the Longstreet faction got their chance, it was too late to execute their strategy. Still, the point is that it never effected the relationship between Lee and Longstreet. The fact is that Lee protected Longstreet's career after Knoxville, and wanted him back in the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee always stayed with Longstreet's headquarters when the army was in the field and they seemed to enjoy each other's company. While Lee would call councils of war, they were not that common but, he would always seek the advice of Longstreet. He seemed to think of the man as a sounding board. They didn't always agree but, who does? At the end of the war, at Petersburg, Lee wrote that there were only three men left in the Army that counted (when it came to their opinion). One was AP Hill, one was James Gordon, and the most prominent on the list was, guess who!
So I think a lot of the "animosity" was very overstated because post war politicians didn't want to tarnish their saint, with a loss as big as the Civil War.
After the war, many southern generals published their memoirs as quickly as possible, thereby getting their version of what happened out first. Longstreet by actually criticizing Lee and the entire southern cause, broke ranks with the southern elite at the time where they most demanded unity.
It doesn't matter how little in retrospect he broke ranks. He BROKE RANKS and that's why he vilified.
An inspired choice of "Pete" Longstreet as leader of the CSA, especially how in our timeline he was villified in the South after the War for his repubilcan leanings, not to mention the audicity to speak ill of Bobby Lee's Leadership during the War!
I am thoroughly enjoying your romp through history!
Tooms