150th Anniversary of the Civil War

Pretty much what I I just said.

 

How did the book deal with westward expasnsion? As in who got what?

 

If I remember right (it's been so long), it followed the Missouri Compromise line. California and Nevada stayed with the Union.

 

I can't see the westward expansion land grab going smoothly.

 

Interesting speculation, but I think the CSA and USA would've reunited eventually, and probably before the turn of the 1900s.

There would've been a war regardless. No way the Union would turn turtle and let Fort Sumter fall. But it might've nipped the rebellion in the bud with faster action (fuck you very much, Buchanan).

By the way, there was a lot of favorable U.S. sentiment toward Germany at the outset of WWI (this was long before Hitler). Kaiser Bill fucked it up by sinking the Lusitania.

 

I, too, believe there would have been a reunification sooner rather than later. The North would have realized it just lost 3/4 of federal budget and the South would have realized it had no real industrial means. There's no way either could have survived long apart.

 

Today's the anniversary of Lincoln being shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre.

 

Charlie Hustle was born on the 76th anniversary of the assassination. Coincidence?

 

There was a lot of favorable sentiment towards the Central Powers after the Lusitania and after the U.S. actually went to war too. Especially in German and Irish-settled cities in the Midwest. My hometown, Milwaukee, in particular.

 

There were families in Ohio that flew the German flag outside their homes (don't know if that continued after the Lusitania).

 

Saying states' rights was a cause isn't entirely inaccurate. The states wanted the rights to allow slavery.

 

I'm sure quite a few people were brought into the war by unnecessary aggression from one side or the other. The Jimmy Stewart movie "Shenandoah" tells the story of a Virginia boy who was taken as a prisoner by a Union army because he was running around on his father's land with a Confederate cap he had found and was wearing.