This Mighty Scourge of War: A Reconstruction-Era Quest

[X] Demobilize the Union Army piecemeal.

Doing it all at once is a great way to crash your economy as you suddenly have a surplus of labor. We also don't want to immediately dump control back to locals as they might not be prepared for what is needed.
 
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...Huh, swore I posted a vote for piecemeal demobilization but I can't find it.

Ah well, wouldn't have changed the end result either way.
 
Well as long as that "increased militancy" (whatever that means) is directed against the white supremacists this can be channeled into a good thing.
 
Oops too late to vote, interesting quest though! Looking forwards to the next update.

Handing control over to local Reconstruction governments ASAP is probably the better course of action, the Federal government is slower and more susceptible to influence by both lingering Democrat sentiment as well as foreign powers like the French and English who would pressure us away from more radical social and economic reforms in favor of getting back on the gold standard ASAP. Reconstruction governments meanwhile are composed almost entirely of freedmen and carpetbaggers ideologically dedicated to killing the Old South off for good, damn the costs, with maybe an increasing plurality of smallholder whites/scalawags. The old aristocracy are the weakest they're ever going to get right now though, and the closest thing to influence they still have remaining would be in the border states or northern financial centers which can get the ear of the Feds instead of the local Reconstruction governments they're hard locked out of.

And just musing about wider economics in general - we're going to have to go back on a precious metal standard eventually if we want to participate in world trade, but the longer we can keep the greenback going the more democratized we can keep access to capital. Especially with the Western frontier semi-closed and the ability to buy folks off with free real estate constrained, we're going to need to keep the greenback as long as possible until ruinous inflation is looming. At which point we should probably push hard for bimetallism rather than a gold standard, with how devastated the South is we need to keep our capital flows as liquid as possible to avoid choking off freedmen starting from zero and nascent Southern industries that we need to foster something resembling the start of a proletarian class down there to decisively break from the white plantation legacy.
 
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Chapter 12: Signs of the Times
[X] Demobilize the Union Army immediately.

March 30, 1867

Relinquishing control is often one of the hardest things for a state to do, and so the President's order to end the enlistment periods of much of the Union military and send the troops home—save for those who were necessary to continue overseeing Reconstruction and prevent another outbreak of white supremacist rebellion—was greeted with no small amount of consternation. But President Sumner held firm in his decision: he spoke of giving up the leverage afforded by the Army as a gesture in the tradition of Cincinnatus and Washington, a means to avoid the corrupting lure of power.

Whether or not he was right in that assessment, the rapid demobilization produced ripple effects both for good and for ill. Most of the soldiers returned to their homes in the North, providing a much-needed economic boost at a time when the devastated South was proving to be an albatross on the neck of the nation's finances. Nature abhorred the vacuum they left behind, and what swept in to fill the gap was, in large part, capital—eager to take advantage of the industrial potential of a region long denied to it by the planters. From Chattanooga to Charleston, mining and manufacturing were beginning to emerge as alternatives to the slave-worked cotton plantations that had driven the Southern economy for decades. Devastated cities and towns began to show new signs of life, but sometimes at a cost: the early phases of Reconstruction saw increasingly widespread adoption of the "company town" as corporations bought up former planter land at firesale prices and used it to establish company-owned housing for the workers in their factories and mines.

However, not everyone who stepped into the breach was a capitalist. Though many areas were still under military occupation, the departure of many soldiers allowed citizens to begin to go about their business again instead of living in essentially an armed camp. As a semblance of normal life—or the new normal, at any rate—began at last to return to the South, new figures had room to step into the public consciousness. Foremost among these was Frederick Douglass, who had long been famous for his abolitionist campaigning before the Civil War and remained so for his civil rights advocacy thereafter. During Reconstruction, however, he rose to still greater fame by using his platform to promote other issues as well. He promoted labor unions to guard against a "slavery of wages" brought in by Northern financiers, and spoke out in favor of building a robust school system, education having long been one of his most preferred antidotes to racial prejudice and having suffered from the slapdash beginning of the Reconstruction process. As the former Confederacy returned to peacetime, Douglass began traveling back and forth across the Reconstructing states, using his platform to promote his ambitious plan for the creation of the "New South".

Some demobilized soldiers remained in the South where they had fought against slavery, widely reviled by the white populace but welcomed by the newly-freed Black community (particularly Black soldiers who had once been slaves themselves); there they founded the former Confederacy's first Wide-Awake and Railsplitter chapters, strengthening the political and military constituency for Reconstruction. They were accompanied by a wave of "carpetbaggers" who sought land and opportunity in the New South that would emerge when Reconstruction was complete, made all the more tempting by the sharp reduction in Western settlement brought about by the Camp Napoleon Treaty. Unlike the former soldiers, many of these Northerners had no particular concern for abolition or civil rights (indeed, they occasionally came into conflict with freedmen over appropriated land), but they nevertheless provided a further bulwark against neo-Confederate sentiment—after all, a return to "old Dixie" would destroy their new livelihoods.

The veterans that had returned home and those that stayed in the Southern states made up the vast majority of the Union Army that had won the Civil War and defeated the South's last abortive uprising. But there were also those who turned to more unusual pursuits, and these bold, reckless few would have an effect on history far out of proportion to their numbers.

On February 14, 1867, the Irish Republican Brotherhood—which for two years had been chafing at British heavy-handedness against Irish nationalism—launched an uprising in County Kerry. British authorities, who had placed several informers in the highest ranks of the IRB, were expecting the revolt and had sent Army troops and the Irish Constabulary to shore up local defenses. But they were shocked when, instead of being confronted with the muskets and pikes they had expected, the Fenians attacked with repeating rifles, carbines, and even a cannon. British forces still managed to retreat in good order from Killarney after a bloody battle, but the victory still emboldened nationalist forces and drew a great deal of public attention.

Then, on March 5, the main thrust of the uprising began. With numbers and arms far in excess of what the British had predicted, the IRB stormed Cork and Limerick and were only driven back from Dublin after an intense firefight with the Army and Constabulary. It soon became apparent what had happened: Irish-American soldiers, radicalized in their fight for the Union and familiar with counterinsurgency tactics from their time suppressing the Klan, had joined the Fenians in large numbers and brought their weapons with them. And with their help, a rebellion that history had consigned to be a damp squib was rapidly catching fire.

The British government, already soured to the United States since the Trent Affair in 1861, was practically apoplectic to hear "John Brown's Body" sung on Irish soil—and their ire was returned in full force from the New World when David Herold, last of the White Camelia conspirators, resurfaced in Britain. The large Irish diaspora in the United States was naturally sympathetic to the Fenian cause, but the presence in the UK of the only one of the hated White Camelias to escape justice pushed the surge of anti-British and pro-IRB feeling beyond those bounds. President Sumner and his Secretary of State, Elihu Washburne, now faced a precarious diplomatic situation that could easily boil over into unrest at home or, worse, into outright war abroad.

The sudden diplomatic conflict with Britain also affected another diplomatic question: the purchase of Alaska from Russia. The Tsar had agreed to sell the remote province in part because of the risk, should Russia ever again go to war with Britain, of its occupation by British forces from Canada—which would put them directly across the Bering Strait from Russia itself. But as US-UK relations reached a new low, concerns arose that the purchase might be seen not as a defensive move on the part of Russia but an aggressive one on the part of America, which had displayed territorial ambitions on Canada several times in the past. The fate of over half a million square miles of territory—and more importantly, its widely scattered but still very much present inhabitants—was now being drawn into the delicate dance of great power politics.

But it was not just Alaska that was affected by the brewing crisis. For the first time since the beginning of the Civil War, Americans' eyes were beginning to turn outwards to the rest of the globe. And their gaze fell on a world on the brink of transformation, from countries just on America's doorstep to nations on the opposite side of the planet…

National stability is recovering.
The government's legitimacy is strong.
The capital is safe.
The mood of the War Democrats is angry.
The mood of the Liberal Republicans is angry.
The mood of the Radical Republicans is angry.
The international situation is tense.
The status of Reconstruction is proceeding apace under the auspices of capitalist interests.
The intensity of conflict on the frontier is low.
Of the assassins of Lincoln and his trusted subordinates, two have been killed in the field, five have been executed, and the last one is in exile in Britain.

How should the State Department handle the crisis in the British Isles?

Demand the immediate extradition of David Herold.Issue a diplomatic protest against Britain's sheltering of Herold, but take no further action.Offer diplomatic concessions to Britain for
Herold's extradition.
Britain will likely refuse this request, but the strongly adversarial tone will be seen as tacit support of the Irish rebellion, which will strengthen the morale and support of the Fenians and further antagonize the United Kingdom.This will signal American neutrality in the Fenian Rising. Anglo-American relations will remain cold, but with a possibility of later reconciliation depending on American foreign policy.Britain will issue a list of demands, which may or may not be acceptable. There will be a warming of Anglo-American relations by an amount depending on both the British offer and American response. Fenian enthusiasm will be noticeably dampened.

Should the United States purchase Alaska?

Sign the treaty with Russia.Decline the Alaska Purchase.
The USA will buy Alaska. Any resources discovered there will bolster the economic prospects of Reconstruction. Depending on the handling of the Fenian Rising, Great Britain may be upset.The current status quo will continue. Russia will keep the territory until it can find an alternative buyer.
 
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