Iron Fire
Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter", don't stop to pack.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
This is the first time I've tried blogging, and it focuses on my current project, the alternate history "Decades of Darkness". This describes what might have happened if, early on in its history, the United States had been divided between a separatist New England, and a rump-USA where slaveholding states were in the majority - and stayed that way. If you've come across this blogspot by accident, the Decades of Darkness timeline is available online at http://alternatehistory.com/decadesofdarkness/ . It is also posted through the soc.history.what-if newsgroup. (Thanks to Doug Hoff, by the way, for inspiring a blog of Decades of Darkness [DoD]).
This blog will describe some of the reasons why I wrote DoD, brief glimpses of the upcoming posts, miscellaneous nuggets of information which have turned up through my reading, and some of the backstory which isn't practical to put into the timeline itself. I will try to keep this going fairly regularly, but there may well be lulls when the pressures of work or other commitments keep me away.
To start with, I thought I'd describe something of how DoD came to be written. There were two main ideas percolating at the back of my mind for some time before I started drafting the timeline. The first was that a separate New England would be a rather interesting idea to explore, if one that was rather unlikely to arise. It seemed to me that if it happened at all, it would be a result of the Embargo Act, not a product of the Hartford Convention during the War of 1812. Secession was difficult enough to achieve in peacetime, and it would be much harder when it meant leaving during a shooting war. So, if a separate New England was to be created, I thought it would happen around 1809-1810, with some alternate version of the Embargo Act persisting for longer and arousing much greater anger in the New England states. It would also require some mishandling by the federal government, at the very least, which suggested James Madison as the man for the job. (I've always thought that while he had some admirable qualities, he tended to make some rather egregious mistakes, e.g. the War of 1812).
The other main idea was more of a philosophical observation. The United States has achieved considerable good throughout history, including its participation in both world wars, and as a model for democracy. But how much of this was an inevitable product of the United States' current form of government? In other words, could an alternate United States arise, which had an underlying form of government not too different from the one we know, but which was nonetheless an opponent of liberty and universal democracy?
The short answer to this question is yes, because we have a historical example. The Confederate States of America had a constitution largely copied from that of the USA, with the addition of a clause protecting slavery and a couple of other additions, and with institutions of government more or less identical to that of the USA. Yet it denied universal democracy, and was quite happy to restrict liberty for large parts of its own population (and not just those of a different "race").
So, those two ideas were floating vaguely around my head when Doug Muir posted a challenge on soc.history.what-if about making a United States which was not just a slaveholding power (which after all, it was in our history), but an expansionistic slaveholding power. I thought about that for a while, and then figured that if New England could indeed separate from the USA, and if the circumstances of that departure were unpleasant enough, you would well end up with an expansionistic slaveholding USA. This alternate United States would in some respects be not all that different to the one in real history: it would still be run according to the US Constitution, it would have similar institutions of government, and so on. But in so much else, it would be almost unrecognisable.
The DoD timeline started from these ideas, although as with everything else, many other things have been added. Originally, for example, I planned to focus almost all of the description in North America, with the rest of the world covered in passing, but a lot of it has been set in Europe of late, and this will probably continue.
Cheers,
Kaiser Wilhelm III
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
This is the first time I've tried blogging, and it focuses on my current project, the alternate history "Decades of Darkness". This describes what might have happened if, early on in its history, the United States had been divided between a separatist New England, and a rump-USA where slaveholding states were in the majority - and stayed that way. If you've come across this blogspot by accident, the Decades of Darkness timeline is available online at http://alternatehistory.com/decadesofdarkness/ . It is also posted through the soc.history.what-if newsgroup. (Thanks to Doug Hoff, by the way, for inspiring a blog of Decades of Darkness [DoD]).
This blog will describe some of the reasons why I wrote DoD, brief glimpses of the upcoming posts, miscellaneous nuggets of information which have turned up through my reading, and some of the backstory which isn't practical to put into the timeline itself. I will try to keep this going fairly regularly, but there may well be lulls when the pressures of work or other commitments keep me away.
To start with, I thought I'd describe something of how DoD came to be written. There were two main ideas percolating at the back of my mind for some time before I started drafting the timeline. The first was that a separate New England would be a rather interesting idea to explore, if one that was rather unlikely to arise. It seemed to me that if it happened at all, it would be a result of the Embargo Act, not a product of the Hartford Convention during the War of 1812. Secession was difficult enough to achieve in peacetime, and it would be much harder when it meant leaving during a shooting war. So, if a separate New England was to be created, I thought it would happen around 1809-1810, with some alternate version of the Embargo Act persisting for longer and arousing much greater anger in the New England states. It would also require some mishandling by the federal government, at the very least, which suggested James Madison as the man for the job. (I've always thought that while he had some admirable qualities, he tended to make some rather egregious mistakes, e.g. the War of 1812).
The other main idea was more of a philosophical observation. The United States has achieved considerable good throughout history, including its participation in both world wars, and as a model for democracy. But how much of this was an inevitable product of the United States' current form of government? In other words, could an alternate United States arise, which had an underlying form of government not too different from the one we know, but which was nonetheless an opponent of liberty and universal democracy?
The short answer to this question is yes, because we have a historical example. The Confederate States of America had a constitution largely copied from that of the USA, with the addition of a clause protecting slavery and a couple of other additions, and with institutions of government more or less identical to that of the USA. Yet it denied universal democracy, and was quite happy to restrict liberty for large parts of its own population (and not just those of a different "race").
So, those two ideas were floating vaguely around my head when Doug Muir posted a challenge on soc.history.what-if about making a United States which was not just a slaveholding power (which after all, it was in our history), but an expansionistic slaveholding power. I thought about that for a while, and then figured that if New England could indeed separate from the USA, and if the circumstances of that departure were unpleasant enough, you would well end up with an expansionistic slaveholding USA. This alternate United States would in some respects be not all that different to the one in real history: it would still be run according to the US Constitution, it would have similar institutions of government, and so on. But in so much else, it would be almost unrecognisable.
The DoD timeline started from these ideas, although as with everything else, many other things have been added. Originally, for example, I planned to focus almost all of the description in North America, with the rest of the world covered in passing, but a lot of it has been set in Europe of late, and this will probably continue.
Cheers,
Kaiser Wilhelm III
posted by Jared at 1:15 pm
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