Posted on 01/19/2003 10:14:36 AM PST by buffyt
What If George Washington had never made his miraculous escape from the British on Long Island in the early dawn of August 29, 1776? What if a Confederate Aide hadn't lost General Robert E. Lee's plans for invading the North? What if Lincoln had listened to the Democrats who thought the Civil War couldn't be won, and that they should NEGOTIATE with the Confederates instead. What if the Allied invasion on D Day had failed? What if the Mongels had succeeded in conquering Europe?
On Page 226 I was reading WHAT IF about the Civil War. This chapter was written by James M. McPherson.
Unreasonable or not, it was a fact. The peace wing of the Democratic Party stepped up its attacks on Lincoln's policy of trying to restore the Union by war. Branded by Republicans as disloyal "Copperheads: the Peace Democrats insisted that the Northern armies could never conquer the South and that the government should seek an armistice and peace negotiations. Confederate military success in the summer of 1862 boosted the credibility of such arguments. And worse was yet to come for the Lincoln Adminsitration. Western Confederate armies, which had been defeated in every campaign and battle From Jan. to June 1862, regrouped during July and carried out a series of cavalry raids and infantry offensives in Aug. and Sept. that produced a stunning reversal of momentum in that theater as well. As the Army of Northern Virginia splashed across the Potomac into Maryland, Confederate armies in Tenn. launched a two pronged counteroffensive that not only reconquered the eastern half of the state but also moved into Kentucky, captured the capital at Frankfort, and prepared to inaugurate a Confederate governor there.
Rather than give up and negotiate a peace, however, Lincoln and the Repulican Congress acted dramatically to intensify the war. Lincoln called for 300K more three-year volunteers. Congress passed a militia act that required the states to produce a specified number of nine-month militia and impose a draft to make up any deficiency in a state's quota. The same day, July 17, Lincoln signed a confiscation act that provided for the freeing of slaves owned by disloyal, (i.e., Confederate) masters.
Southern states had seceded and gone to war to defend slavery. Slaves constituted the principal labor force in the Southern economy. Thousands of slaves built fortifications, hauled supplies, and performed fatigue labor for Confederate armies. From the onset, radical Republicans had urged a policy of emancipation to strike a blow at the heart of the rebellion and to convert the slaves' labor power and military manpower from a Confederate to a Union asset.
On July 22, he informed the Cabinet that he had decided to use his war powers as commander in chief to seize enemy property to issue an emancipation proclamation. Emancipation, said Lincoln, had become "a military necessity, absolutely essential to the preservation of the Union. We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued... Decisive and extensive measures must be adopted....The slaves are undoubtedly an element of strength to those who have their service, and we must decide whether that element should be with us or against us."
To me, this sounds so much like what is going on in Washington today between the supporters of G W Bush, and those who are against him. Oh how history repeats itself. If you want to find out what the author thinks might have happened if Lincoln had not stood firm against the Democrats, you will have to find the book and read it. I highly recommend this book.
(Excerpt) Read more at amazon.com ...
From Publishers Weekly
Like its predecessor (also edited by Cowley), this is an engrossing collection of essays on counterfactual history. Each contributor examines a pivotal event, then considers the ramifications had the event come out differently. In some cases the ramifications are so monumental that their effects are more obvious than intriguing. For example, if Socrates had died in battle during the Peloponnesian War, Victor Davis Hanson suggests, democracy, Christianity and Western thought as a whole would be... read more --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Other similar books
The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century by Harry Turtledove (Editor), Martin H. Greenberg (Editor) (Paperback)
Third Reich Victorious: The Alternate History of How the Germans Won the War by Peter G. Tsouras (Editor) (Hardcover)
The Moscow Option: An Alternative Second World War by David Downing (Hardcover) A Date Which Will Live in Infamy: An Anthology of Pearl Harbor Stories That Might Have Been by Brian Thomsen (Editor), Martin Harry Greenberg (Editor) (Paperback) Roads Not Taken: Tales of Alternate History by Gardner Dozois (Editor), Stanley Schmidt (Editor) (Mass Market Paperback)
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Delores Archaimbault and Copperhead was a pejorative epithet applied to Northern members of the Democratic party, also known as Peace Democrats, who criticized the presidential administration of Abraham Lincoln for its war policies and who sought an armistice with the Confederacy. A loosely-affiliated group, the Copperheads expressed their views on the war in the press, at political conventions, and in state legislatures. Their views struck a responsive chord among like-minded Democrats in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio in the period 1862 to 1864, while their Republican opponents considered their ideas and alleged actions as nothing less than treason. Not all those known as Copperheads supported the doctrine of secession, but as a group they found common cause in their objections to the actions of the Lincoln administration. It is all too easy to overgeneralize and oversimplify when discussing the Copperheads' origin, beliefs, and motives. The derivation of the name Copperhead itself is uncertain. Some writers believe it referred to the copperhead snake, while others attribute it to the buttons cut from copper coins depicting the goddess of liberty that were worn by many Peace Democrats. It may also have been associated with the copperhead snakes of South Carolina, the hot bed of militant states' rights and secession. At any rate, Copperheads were uniformly depicted in Northern newspapers as copperhead snakes who wanted to make peace with the Confederacy at any price and on any terms. But Copperhead views and objectives were often quite different from those attributed to them by Republican politicians and newspapers. Still there is little question as to why they so aggressively opposed the war.
Opposition to the war in some areas of Illinois arose over worsening economic conditions. The loss of Southern markets and the closure of the Mississippi River in 1861 lowered grain prices, and a bank panic occurred among Midwestern banks that based their paper money upon Southern bonds. Only 17 out of 112 banks in Illinois survived the creation of the Confederacy. The economic downturn in agriculture and banking also resulted in a commercial recession, which increased the number of those who opposed the war and criticized the Lincoln administration. Illinois' "Copperhead Legislature" of 1863 is a case in point. Much of the discontent expressed in the Illinois legislature of 1863 centered around economic grievances against railroads and the operators of grain elevators, anticipating the agrarian concerns that emerged as the Grange Movement of the 1870s. In the face of economic hardships, opposing the war for some Illinoisans was less a matter of disloyalty and more a bread-and-butter issue. Economic issues, however, were not the only source of discontent. Existing political differences and partisan spirit in Illinois were greatly exacerbated by the Civil War. Illinoisans were not of one mind as to how the war should be conducted, nor was there consensus in all quarters if it could or should be won. Those differences became manifest when delegates convened the Illinois Constitutional Convention of 1862. Proponents of a new state constitution argued that the Constitution of 1848 was no longer adequate for a state whose population had doubled by 1860 and that paid its government officials at rates no longer considered adequate. The proposed convention had been approved by voters in 1860 and delegates were elected the following year. Democrats controlled the convention and opted to draft a partisan document. With Samuel Buckmaster presiding over the convention, Democrats did all they could to
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oppose the Republican party and Governor Richard Yates. The Democratic delegates conducted investigations into army appointments and purchases in an attempt to embarrass Yates, tried to strip the governor of military authority, proposed reducing his four-year term to two years, and shamelessly gerrymandered the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts in their favor. The blatantly partisan nature of the delegates' actions and views at the convention doomed the so-called "Copperhead Constitution" of 1862. Illinois voters rejected the proposed constitution in a special June election by a margin of 24,515 votes. Many of the Democrats at the Illinois constitutional convention were accused by Republicans of being members of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret political society that allegedly conspired against the Union. Joseph K. C. Forrest, the Springfield correspondent of the Chicago Daily Tribune and a Republican crony of Governor Yates, made the charge in an effort to discredit the governor's Democratic critics. The Tribune even suggested that treason might be afoot. The Democratic delegates at the convention flatly denied the charges. A special bipartisan committee was appointed to investigate the matter. The committee found no evidence of the Golden Circle's existence in Illinois; Forrest admitted that his story was based upon rumor and unsubstantiated reports. Nonetheless, rumors about the Knights of the Golden Circle continued to swirl through Republican papers, which attempted to link the group with the "Copperhead Constitution." The political contest between Illinois Democrats and Republicans continued in the fall election campaign of 1862. The upsurge in anti-administration sentiment in Illinois sent a Democratic majority to the state legislature in 1863. This was Illinois' so called "Copperhead Legislature." Governor Yates and the Lincoln administration were challenged on almost every front by the new Democratic legislature. The House of Representatives proposed that all spending for the war effort and the appointment of officers be assigned to a three-member commission. The House also aired a list of grievances against the president and the governor and brought forward the names of prominent Peace Democrats to serve as five of the six Illinois commissioners to a proposed peace convention at Louisville, Kentucky. Only the death of a Democratic senator (the Democrats held a slim 13 to 12 majority over Republicans in the Senate), prevented the Senate from taking similar action. Tensions ran high on both sides of the aisle through the better part of 1863 before Governor Yates dissolved the legislature on a technicality. The Illinois Constitution authorized the governor to prorogue the legislature if the two houses could not agree on adjournment. So ended Illinois' "Copperhead Legislature" of 1863; not without protest, but without effective recourse against the governor's bold action. The stymied Democrats also seemed helpless to refute renewed accusations about the illusive Knights of the Golden Circle. Chicago Daily Tribune correspondent Forrest connected the Democratic-controlled legislature with the Golden Circle as he had with the state constitutional convention of the previous year. Forrest reported that the secret society was plotting the establishment of a "Northwest Confederacy" and hoped to drive Lincoln from office. The Illinois State Register at Springfield, a Democratic paper, was reported to be its official organ. That charge was quickly denied by the paper's editor. It would not be the last time that unsubstantiated claims about the activities of secret Copperhead societies would make their appearance in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Despite these political setbacks, Illinois Peace Democrats continued to dissent from the policies of the government regarding the war. At a large gathering held at Camp Yates outside of Springfield in 1863, Peace Democrats renewed their call for peace without victory. Among them were some of the most prominent citizens of the state, including civilians who had been released from Union military prisons. Those present affirmed their loyalty to the federal Constitution in peace and in war, pledged themselves to upholding the law, and squarely charged the Lincoln administration with undermining the Bill of Rights. They called for the return of the former Ohio Congressmen Clement Laird Vallandigham, whom Lincoln had arrested and banished to the Confederacy for publicly expressing sympathetic views toward the Southern cause. They also expressed their outrage over the arrest of William H. Carlin, son of a former Illinois governor, who denounced the government's use of martial law in certain areas of the North, and condemned 16 Governor Yates' proroguing of the state legislature as unconstitutional. The speakers on that occasion also rejected the legitimacy of secession, thus refuting the charge that all Peace Democrats or Copperheads were secessionists at heart. They desired a peaceful restoration of the South to the Union and called for a national peace conference toward that end. The soldiers who had served the Union cause could take pride in their service, but the war had to end short of victory. What so many Northern Democrats decried as misrule and anarchy was the arbitrary arrest and trial of civilians by military authorities. The contest between civilian courts and military tribunals also occurred in Illinois. Circuit Judge Charles H. Constable of Mount Carmel, a Democrat, released four deserters who had been arrested by army sergeants acting on the orders of Colonel Henry H. Carrington, commander of the Indiana Military District. Constable argued that the army had no authority to arrest deserters from Indiana within the sovereign state of Illinois. Outraged by the judge's action, Carrington led a detachment of Indiana cavalry into Marshall, Illinois, in March 1863. There he arrested Judge Constable, who was then trying the two army sergeants on the charge of kidnapping. A federal judge ordered Constable's release on the.grounds that Carrington's cavalry had no authority to hunt deserters outside of Indiana, thus supporting Constable's earlier opinion. Constable's actions in this incident and his subsequent release from federal custody was something of a cause celebre among Illinois Peace Democrats.
Desertion from the Union Army and attempts to capture deserters also became a source of dissension on the Illinois home front. Opponents of the war often encouraged desertion, while the army's efforts to arrest deserters in southern Illinois sometimes met with civilian resistance. Deserters were concealed, and armed mobs often greeted their would-be captors. Mandatory enlistment under the Conscription Act of 1863 was extremely unpopular in Charleston, Jacksonville, and Vandalia. An armed mob drove Union officers in charge of enlistment from various parts of Fulton County in protest of the conscription law. The officers were actually attacked, and at least two fatal shootings were reported. Another mob at Olney threatened to burn the town if the local enrollment lists were not surrendered. In Union County, a guerrilla band assaulted Unionists and destroyed their property. Confederate sympathizers in southern Illinois sometimes practiced intimidation tactics, beating and shooting those who supported the Union war effort. Such vigilantism was practiced by both sides. One regiment largely comprised of soldiers from southern Illinois was arrested and placed under guard at Holly Springs, Mississippi, in March 1863 because so many had deserted and the remainder was fraternizing with the enemy. It has been estimated that in a five-month period, eight hundred deserters were arrested in Perry, Saline, Jackson, and Williamson counties and two thousand for Illinois as a whole. Such desertions and civil disturbance clearly indicate the unpopularity of the war in some sections of the state. Especially unpopular in some areas of Illinois was the Emancipation Proclamation. Very few Illinoisans had enlisted in the army in 1861 to end slavery. The conflict ostensibly began as a war to save the Union, even though the issue of slavery cast a shadow over the decade of crises leading to secession and conflict. News of the preliminary
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Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862 was received with hostilities in several sections of the North and within some quarters of the Union Army. Union troops from western and southern Illinois were among them, reflecting attitudes toward slavery and African-Americans that were transplanted in these areas by migration from the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky. It should be remembered that in 1818 many Illinoisans favored repeal of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787's ban on slavery in the Northwest Territory and its future states. Although the movement to introduce slavery into Illinois was unsuccessful, the cultural origins of Illinoisans continued to condition their attitudes on questions of race. Slavery was as abhorrent to most Illinoisans as it was to other residents of the "free Northwest," yet there were communities where the majority opinion ran the other way. Many Illinoisans were not prepared to grant African-Americans, whether enslaved or free, equal rights under the law. Copperheads had no desire to extend the benefits of American citizenship to African-Americans in their exclusionary concern over the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In denouncing the Emancipation Proclamation, for example, they uttered racist attitudes that would continue to trouble race relations in the Midwest for years to come. Abolitionists were sometimes more detested than slaveholders. Opposition to the proclamation was also present in Coles County and in northwestern Illinois, although by no means were people in those areas of one mind. Anti-emancipation sentiments were more common in some Illinois counties than in others, and often opinions differed within a given county. The views of individuals in a particular locality largely correlated with the sources of migration to those areas. Those of Southern extraction were more likely to oppose emancipation, while those from New England tended to be for it. Copperhead activity in McDonough County, for example, was significant after 1863, but comparatively insignificant in neighboring Warren County. Similarly, a company within the 34th Illinois Regiment recruited from Randolph County in southern Illinois was anti-Lincoln. Other companies of the 34th, however, supported Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. Clearly, Illinois was a house divided on the issue of slavery. On balance, more Illinoisans favored emancipation than opposed it. Attitudes toward the South and suspected Southern sympathizers hardened in 1864, when the prospect of a Union victory was clearly in sight. Soldiers on leave often demonstrated intolerance and outright enmity toward those suspected of being sympathetic to the Confederacy or critical of the government. Violence erupted in 1864 at Charleston, Illinois, a center of Copperhead sentiment. Six soldiers and three civilians were killed; another four soldiers and eight civilians were wounded in a riot on the courthouse square. Violence subsided when a detachment of federal troops arrived from Mattoon. Fifteen Copperheads were subsequently arrested, and all were turned over to civilian authorities by Lincoln's order. Two of the prisoners went to trial and were acquitted. The Charleston Riot, however, appears to have resulted more from personal animosities, taunting, and too much corn whiskey than from a deliberate conspiracy
 18 or a spontaneous outbreak over strictly defined issues. Several indictments for murder were later issued, but no convictions were ever handed down. The trials could have been continued for years, but most Illinoisans, like Americans as a whole, were anxious to put the war behind them as quickly as possible after Appomattox.
Meanwhile, rumors about Copperhead conspiracies were again making the rounds. Governor Richard Yates, seeking re-election in 1864, resumed his collaboration with the Springfield correspondent of the Chicago Tribune in spreading those tales in an attempt to further discredit his Democratic opponents. The result was the "Camp Douglas Conspiracy," which asserted that Copperheads were planning to liberate 8,000 Confederate prisoners incarcerated at Camp Douglas near Chicago. Chicago was to be sacked and burned, the war carried to other Midwestern cities, and a Northwest Confederacy created. When rumors spread that Governor Yates was arming Union Leagues, Charles Walsh, an Irish-American Democrat implicated in the alleged Chicago conspiracy, began to gather muskets and revolvers in order to protect the polls. Walsh was arrested, the arms in his basement confiscated, and the existence of the "Camp Douglas Conspiracy" exposed in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Walsh and seven of his supposed cohorts were sent to Cincinnati, tried for treason by a military tribunal, found guilty, and sentenced to five years in prison?but with the recommendation that Walsh be pardoned. Historians have been divided in their treatments of the Copperheads. Some have portrayed the Copperheads as willful obstructionists and conspirators, much as their detractors had during the Civil War. Other investigators, by contrast, see them as conservative and highly partisan dissenters whose often misguided actions fell short of treason. The thrust of recent scholarship supports the latter interpretation. Whatever the verdict on the Copperheads, the controversies that swirled about them defined the limits of dissent in the North during the Civil War. The larger questions they raised about the protection of civil liberties during times of civil strife, the relationship between rights and responsibilities, and the meaning of the United States Constitution are still of interest to historians and legal scholars. The history of the Illinois Copperheads is also a vivid reminder to all of the passion and intolerance that occurred in that crisis and the personal consequences of taking a stand.
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Better still, what if the US had never entered WWII (by the "backdoor" of Pearl Harbor [cutting off Japan's supply of oil, and convincing the British and Dutch to do the same, can be viewed as a provocation, no])?
Or better yet, was the slogan "Saving the world for democracy." achieved as a result of WWII - that is, ask the Poles, Czechs, ... etc. Were German/Japanese satellites of WWII simply traded for Soviet/Chinese satellites of the Cold War - Korea - VietNam - ...
Not a plausible scenario the US had overwhelming economic superiority they could have destroyed 10 times the number of American ships we still would have won.
a) gotten us into wars that we shouldn't have gotten into;
OR
b) not tried to hinder us from getting into & winning the wars that we SHOULD have gotten into?
Weren't the seeds of Communism already well entrenched by the time America entered the war?
I tend to agree on the "No WWII" theory. Without the infusion of fresh blood, the Western Front could have well lurched along to an end in stalemate, and a Europe divided up much as you speculate.
Fascinating, this alternate history speculation. All the more so in that we'll never have a way of knowing. A world that avoided a Second World War would certainly be a much different one, but who can know if a crisis that had come about in that alternate world might not make it a worse place to live?
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