Timeline-191

Timeline-191 is a fan name given to a series of Harry Turtledove alternate history novels.

The American Empire

• The American Empire Trilogy
• Blood and Iron (2001)
• The Center Cannot Hold (2002)
• The Victorious Opposition (2003)

1918: Old Animosities Rekindled

The United States celebrated hard during 1918 as it reveled in the euphoria of having won revenge on the Confederate States, with parades and parties lasting well into the autumn. President Roosevelt and General Custer (general being his true rank now, as Roosevelt promoted the aging officer in Nashville as the war was ending) rode together in the Philadelphia Remembrance Day Parade—the biggest one to date. The tradition of showing the national flag upside-down to show distress was put aside to show that the USA had reversed the outcome of 1882.

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But,the U.S. and C.S. navies still had to deploy minesweepers to de-mine their harbors,which kept them busy almost until the end of the American Empire trilogy.

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Not everyone celebrated hard, however. Returning veterans found scabs working for cheaper wages in the factories and mines that they themselves had worked at before the call to arms during the war. More veterans found themselves being put down by capitalists and factory owner, and went on strike in industrial centers like Pittsburgh and Toledo. The owners sicced the Pinkertons and police on the strikers, but were repulsed by the war veterans, having faced far worse challenges in the trenches. The country seemed to be on the verge of revolutionary upheaval, and the Socialist Party capitalized on their gains among the lower classes. In November 1918, they captured the House of Representatives for the first time in their history, upsetting several of Theodore Roosevelt's plans for domestic and foreign affairs.

Related Topics:
Pittsburgh - Toledo - Pinkertons

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Citizens of the defeated and truncated Confederacy were hardly in a mood to celebrate that fall of 1917 and into 1918. President Roosevelt had forced humiliating terms upon them in return for his peace, and President Semmes had no choice but to agree to it. Kentucky was lost to the United States. So was Sequoyah, and also western Texas—which the USA had admitted into the Union as the state of Houston, with its capital at Lubbock. Pieces of Arkansas, Sonora and Virginia that were being held by US troops at armistice time were also admitted into respective US states. The CS Army and Navy were severely curtailed and shrunken, and massive reparations to be made to Philadelphia. These terms angered Confederates hither and yon, but they had no choice. It was Roosevelt's Peace or the war renewed, and they were in no condition to fight. Due to the payments being sent North, the Confederate dollar spiraled out of control, as hyperinflation ruined the CSA economy. In reaction, hatred against the USA went up among the white population, with several reactionary political parties sprouted up across the South. One of these fringe groups was the Freedom Party, founded by Anthony Dresser in Richmond, Virginia.

Related Topics:
Lubbock - Hyperinflation - Freedom Party - Anthony Dresser

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As for the British Empire, the Dominion of Canada included, President Roosevelt forced recognition of the Republic of Quebec (established in April 1917 as the war in Canada was drawing to a close) and the Republic of Ireland out of London, along with relinquishing claims to the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the Sandwich Islands, and to all of Canada. The Dominion government was made an illegal assembly, with US Army authorities setting up occupation headquarters in Winnipeg and turned each province into a military district. Occupied Canada was declared to be US territory as part of the new American Empire, "stretching from the Gulf of California to the Arctic Ocean." In 1919, General George Custer requested and was granted the post of governor-general of Occupied Canada, mostly in retribution for what he perceived to be a Canadian "murder" of his brother Tom in the fighting of 1881.

Related Topics:
Republic of Ireland - Bahamas - Bermuda - Sandwich Islands - Occupied Canada - Gulf of California - Arctic Ocean

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1919-1924: American Blood & Iron

The Freedom Party was doing well for itself in Richmond. Its chief speaker, a vengeful, spiteful and bitter ex-sergeant named Jake Featherston, harangued crowds at public meetings and squares on how the Confederacy had been "stabbed in the back" by the Whig Party, the War Department, and, most of all, the black minority, who had risen up in Red rebellion in 1915. His angry mannerisms connected him and his Party to the masses, and soon the Freedom Party became the white man's proto-version of the Socialists that were popular with the Confederate blacks and the Northerners in the USA. Everyone who knew better saw Featherston as the Party's true leader, and the "Sarge" won leadership in a power struggle against Dresser in mid-1919. Once he was comfortably settled in his new office, Featherston reorganized the Party into a political party revolving around his goals and ambitions, and white-shirted "stalwarts" were soon elected into the Confederate Congress, while their assault squads took on Featherston's pronounced enemies.

Related Topics:
Jake Featherston - Whig Party

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The victorious United States, with its American Empire, took no notice of political events occurring down south, save for a worried Representative from New York City named Flora Hamburger. Despite her calls for action, her party took no notice, preferring on ousting President Roosevelt out of office in 1920—which it did, when Upton Sinclair becoming president of the United States on March 4, 1921. That same year, Jake Featherston ran for office against Wade Hampton V of the Whigs and Ainsworth Layne of the Radical Liberals. He lost by a narrow margin but resolved to fight on. In the meantime, a deranged stalwart assassinated the new president in Alabama, and the Freedom Party immediately began to lose support—which hurt the Party a lot in the elections of 1923 and 1925. Another factor that limited the Freedom Party's chances for success was President Sinclair's lifting of the war reparations, which took the meat out of the Freedom Party's platform. Featherston and his most ardent stalwarts had nothing to look forward to for the next several years.

Related Topics:
New York City - Flora Hamburger - Upton Sinclair - March 4

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In Canada, Governor-General Custer ruled the former dominion with an iron-felt glove, surviving several assassination attempts by a Manitoban farmer named Arthur McGregor, whom he killed in the farmer's final attempt as Custer was parading through his town. At that point, the war hero was retiring, having been forced out by the new Socialist administration, who wanted to shelve the USA's militarist-feel and go back to the days of peace, hoping that by treating its neighbors with respect that there would never be another war. Sinclair was popular enough to win re-election in 1924—the same year that the Freedom Party started involving stalwarts in the Mexican Civil War, an action the USA did nothing to stop.

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1925-1933: Freedom on the Brink of Power

The medium of radio had just been discovered, and was now starting to reach the people. Jake Featherston was the first politician to realize its potential, and soon people sitting in their homes could hear his raspy, thundery voice shouting from their radio sets, telling the Confederate people the "truth" about the Yankees, Whigs, and blacks. Even with this broadened appeal to the masses, the Freedom Party's hopes ebbed further with Featherston's defeat at the polls in 1927 against incumbent Burton Mitchel III. The Confederate people were just starting to enjoy the fruits of peace and prosperity, and the war and black uprisings were just mere events of the past—despite Featherston and his stalwarts doing their utmost to remind them. It seemed that nothing could ever change the fortunes of time, and then in 1929 the world's stock markets crashed.

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In the CSA, Burton Mitchel III was blamed. In the USA—having just come out of the properous 1920s with a booming economy and a Canadian revolt having just been crushed in 1925, newly elected President Hosea Blackford took the heat. Millions lost their jobs, and in Utah, occupied since 1916, Mormon fanatics gunned down Governor-General John Pershing. When Japan and the USA went to war in 1932 after Japan was caught smuggling weapons to Canada by the USS Remembrance, and Japanese bombers attacked Los Angeles, Blackford was turned out of office by Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. Coolidge died before he could hold office, and Hoover installed his platform policy of government non-intervention in the economy.

Related Topics:
Hosea Blackford - John Pershing - Went to war - USS ''Remembrance'' - Los Angeles - Calvin Coolidge - Herbert Hoover

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Things were happening in the CSA, however. Whole cities echoed to the boot-steps of marching stalwart formations as the Freedom Party, whose ranks were flowing once more with the angry and the wrathful, prepared for Election Day 1933. Jake Featherston attacked the Mitchel Administration with the most vulgar venom and hate, blaming Mitchel for the crash and his response to the floods that had devastated the Mississippi. Millions of Confederates lapped it up and shouted for more, which he had. When he took the oath of office on March 4, 1934, the world held its breath. "Freedom" was on the march.

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In Europe the storm clouds were also beginning to gather. The final vestiges of Bolshevik revolution were crushed by 1927; among the last holdouts was the Volga town of Tsaritsyn under the "Man of Steel" and his second in command the Hammer (Molotov). Under Tsar Michael Russia remained a primarily agricultural, backward country. Frequent anti-Semitic pogroms and foreign loans managed to deflect further restlessness, but the latter contributed to the Business Collapse in 1929 when Austria-Hungary demanded the repayment of a loan that Russia was unable to fulfill.

Related Topics:
Volga - Tsaritsyn - "Man of Steel" - Molotov - Anti-Semitic

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Austria-Hungary itself remained a united empire, but none save the Austrians and Hungarians felt any loyalty to the Habsburg monarchs. In fact, the multi-ethnic federation seems to have been held together only by German aid and bayonets. The Ottoman Empire also appears to be in the same boat, undertaking the ethnic cleansing of its Armenian population. Despite strong censure from the US and more lukewarm protests from Berlin, the killings continued until there were hardly any surviving Armenians.

Related Topics:
Ethnic cleansing - Armenian

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Kaiser Wilhelm II ruled a strong Germany, and his troops continued to occupy Belgium, the Ukraine and the puppet Kingdom of Poland, but post-war relations with the US was such that many on both sides of the Atlantic believed that the two countries would come to blows someday. The Collapse put an end to that, however, and the old enemies reasserted themselves once more.

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After the Collapse, France found itself under Action Française and its king Charles XI, who began making noises about the return of Alsace-Lorraine to French rule. In Britain the Silver Shirts under Oswald Mosley held the same views and popular support of Action Francaise, though they never became more than a minority in Parliament. Italy never came under Mussolini's rule; not much else is known about it.

Related Topics:
Action Française - Alsace-Lorraine - Oswald Mosley

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Japan did not remain quiescent either. Prior to the Pacific War with the US, she 'persuaded' France and Holland to hand over Indochina and the East Indies. Though there were fears in Britain that Hong Kong and Malaya would also be annexed in this way, Japan showed no interest in doing so. Japan also gained much influence in China during this period, and seems to have annexed Manchuria as well.

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1934-1941: The Victorious Opposition

The Depression lingered on in the USA and Occupied Canada through 1934 and 1935, with millions of men out of work and productivity down. President Hoover's only highlight during this time was ending the war with Japan, but many people still questioned why it had been fought in the first place. In Congress, Flora Hamburger Blackford questioned why Hoover and the Democrats were allowing the Confederate States to enlarge its army in violation of the peace treaty. At the same time, she had to deal with several Freedom Party congressmen from the former Confederate states of Kentucky and Houston (formerly part of Texas), who stalled Congressional sessions with calls for a plebiscite in their home states. When Socialist Al Smith was elected over Hoover in 1936, the Freedom Party's shouts started to get heeded.

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The Freedom Party in the Confederate States had already turned the government into a one-party rule, with the Confederate Congress passing laws proposed by President Jake Featherston. He faced no opposition from the Confederate Supreme Court because he maneuvered the high court into making its position vulnerable, whereupon he merely extended executive power and abolished the judicial branch. Forced-elections in 1935 and 1937 solidified and confirmed Freedom control of the House and Senate, while state legislatures and governorships were captured. The Army had been purged in 1936, and conscription renewed in 1938. The troublesome Vice President Willy Knight was removed from office after his attempt on Featherston's life later that year, and was soon imprisoned. The police was slowly padded with stalwarts, and soon, with a nod from the national administration and Attorney General Ferdinand Koenig, the states were installing correctional camps for "rioteous" and "unruly" Whigs and Radical Liberals. Radical Liberal Louisiana was toppled by Freedom stalwarts, with Huey Long's regime replaced by a more agreeable administration with Featherston's interests in mind. And, with black rebellion flare-ups popping up all over the CSA, the president had begun looking for quiet and suitable places to exact revenge for wrongs, real or (mostly) imagined, that the blacks had done. Louisiana was the perfect place to begin "reducing population."

Related Topics:
Confederate Supreme Court - Ferdinand Koenig - Huey Long

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Al Smith finally agreed to hear Jake Featherston's demands for the former Confederate states. In the resulting plebiscites of January 7, 1941, Kentucky and west Texas voted to return to the CSA, with promises from Featherston to not remilitarize them, or to ask for Seqouyah (which had voted pro-USA) or any other former CSA territory. Within weeks, Featherston broke his promise and planted his modernized and expanded Confederate Army on the Ohio River, convincing Smith that the time to face Featherston down had finally come. When Germany's longtime ruler died, tensions rose in Europe. The new Kaiser Friedrich I refused to return French territory that France's ruling party had demanded. Britain, France and the CSA soon declared war on Germany, with Russia joining in days later. With war breaking out in Europe, Jake Featherston felt it was time to have his revenge against his greatest enemy: the United States of America. On the first day of summer in 1941, he ordered Operation Blackbeard to begin. The Confederates open World War II in North America with a surprise attack on Philadelphia and Ohio the next day, June 22, 1941.

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