| May 6 |  |
Editor says, what if Jefferson Davis had helped found a tropical "Drakia" in General Walker's Nicaragua? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s).
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In 1865, on this day Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, Judah Benjamin and the Cabinet Ministers of the Confederate Government-in-Exile arrived in Granada where they received a warm, sympathetic welcome from General William Walker on behalf of the slaver's republic he had established in Nicaragua nine years before.
Due SouthKeen to avoid a trial which would re-open the dispute about the legal right of secession, Abraham Lincoln had decided to permit the rebel leadership to make their escape. And to ease reconstruction, he ordered Union forces to allow over one hundred thousand die hard supporters to head due south and join Jeff Davis et al in Nicaragua.
History would judge that the avoidance of a potentially messy end to the Civil War was achieved by cynically moving the institution of slavery offshore. But at the time, Lincolns supporters would argue that the President was merely following his regular policies by shaping his decision-making around the need to preserve the Union at all costs.
As Lincoln had shrewdly predicted, the pathetic remant government of Davis came to naught. But the flimsy state created by Walker, and sustained by Napoleon III, received a boost that would spur the next generation to seek out Anglo-British imperial support and carve up Central America.
The problem of dealing with the Confederate successor state would be inherited by President Theodore Roosevelt during the construction of the Panama Canal. And the angry Anglo-French investors who had just funded the construction of the Nicaraguan Canal.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Generals Source: Wikipedia Labels: Jefferson Davis, General Walker, Nicaragua, Slavery, Confederacy's Last Chance. Editor says, in authoring this post we received contributions from Eric Oppen, Eric Lipps and Scott Palter. Thanks Guys!
~ The obvious questions are A) How many slaves they managed to bring with them from Dixie and B) How many could the import in the long terms to a far more man-killing enviroment than the US?
~ Would the British, to name one, be willing to help the slavers? Slavery was mucho unpopular in most of Europe...
~ Not to mention outright illegal throughout the British Empire by the 1860s. Had the British decided to help the CSA in the Civil War/War Between the States, they'd have done so holding their noses and averting their eyes, and in the face of intense domestic political opposition.
And it was Alexander "Stephens", not "Stevens". Fixed - thanks. Ed
~ When the author and I discussed this I argued for VERY few slaves - essentially long time house servants who would in many cases have seen themselves as family members even if of a 'lesser sort'. However once in Nicaragua why would they not be able to make slave purchases in Cuba and Brazil? Presume they come out with the Confederate gold reserves and presume that they prosper in Nicaragua. As a whole Nicaragua is a better climate than Dixie - more fertile uplands. Even the worst Carib coastal regions are no worse than the Missisippi Delta or much of Louisiana.
~ Looking over my earlier post, I suspect that the Southern refugees would have been less than fully satisfied with Walker's regime, which, although allowing slavery, imposed limits on it. The Confederate Constitution had ben emphatic that no laws restricting slavery in any way should be passed.
I suspect that the exiled Confederate leadership, once comfortably established in Granada, would have agitated constantly for the elimination of the limits Walker's Slavery Decree placed on the institution, in much the same way that emigre Cubans in Florida have agitated for fifty years for tougher treatment of Castro's Cuba.
~ What Walker would have wished really ceases to matter. He ran his state with a few hundred Americans [and rarely more than 200 at any one time]. A Confederate hejira with tens of thousands simply floods out his people. Presume 50K ex-Confederates and 50K refugees from Maximillian's collapse and Walker few thousand in 1865 simply vanish. Very much the way the Tejanos vanished under a flood of Anglo and German colonists after 1836.
~ TR could take 'em. A re-imperialized Central America would make for an even bigger mess post-WWII with the Red Scare & Containment.
~ Had the British Government actual Intervened in the ACW to help the Confederates it would have done so without holding its nose.
it intended to do so, but was prevented by the outcry of the Lancashire cotton operatives who rioted on being told their jobs dpended on a War for Slavery and the co-chairs of the peace committee were a very nice couple called Albert and Victoria Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
