Quote from: Opaopajr;821838Just because the game's metagame canon is eye rolling bullshit doesn't mean you have to labor ret-conning it. We can still play snapshots of Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance periods without getting into the weeds on "how it all makes sense."

Maybe in your home games, but in mine we tend to want verisimilitude and a world that feels real to us.

I like Deadlands, but the lack of slavery in the CSA always struck me as a wimp-out. They settled for the feel of Brisco County when they could have gone for Joe R. Landsdale, for 1950's white-hat/black-hat TV serials when they could have gone for Sam Peckenpah.

On a semi-related note, here's something I'd always wondered about yet until recently never took the time to read: The actual Constitution of the CSA.

http://www.jjmccullough.com/CSA.htm

Quote from: Warthur;821850So how does the Civil War start if the South abolished slavery when the North did?

Maybe they completely rewrote the setting for Reloaded, in which case we're talking apples and oranges, but originally...

Civil War starts...up to this point, the major historical aspects are in line.

Battle of Gettysburg 1863 - (Holy Shit, the dead come back to life killing everything, maybe we'd better ease off on major battles for the time being)

1865 or 1866 - South abolishes slavery.  Lots of reasons this makes sense given the altered history since Gettysburg.

So not sure where you get the "North and South both abolished slavery before the war" thing, unless like I said, they rewrote it in Reloaded.

Quote from: CRKrueger;821857unless like I said, they rewrote it in Reloaded.

They did not. For the first several years of the war slavery was legal both in the North and the South. IIRC, the South abolished it a year or two after the North simply because it was either that or lose. I'm not 100% certain of that time frame since I haven't looked at my DL stuff in awhile, but if it's necessary I can always dig out my DLR Player's Handbook and check the history section.

Yeah, that is my recollection of the Deadlands timeline. That since the South was losing, they decided to end slavery, so they would gain support from England, which was the time was the anti-slavery driving force in the world. In real life, England was pro-Confederacy to a degree, but wouldn't help because of slavery. And there was some Confederate politician who actually said (in retrospect), they should have done just that. Might not have been a common sentiment, but it wasn't completely alien, either.

And let me point out, the North had slave states. Missouri, was a Union state, yet was slave. And in Southern Illinois, slavery was legal in some limited circumstances, to work salt mines. I don't believe it was fully abolished until the Civil War actually ended when they passed the amendment abolishing slavery (the Emancipation Proclamation only covered the rebelling states)

The American Civil War is a really complex thing, it's far too easy to say it was all about slavery, but that's basically what is done today.

Quote from: CRKrueger;8218571865 or 1866 - South abolishes slavery.  Lots of reasons this makes sense given the altered history since Gettysburg.

The whole point of this thread is that a lot of people don't find that the reasons given make sense. Slavery might have been a complex issue and the war might have been murkier than "slave-owning states vs. non-slave-owning states", but at the same time it was undeniably the hot-button issue driving the secession in the first place. Furthermore, giving up slavery would have been actively unconstitutional since the CSA constitution forbade the passing of any law "denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves". The way I see it, if slavery was ideologically important enough to secede over, and important enough to write into the constitution, it'd take more than 2 years after even the craziest outcomes of Gettysburg for the South to change its mind on the subject.

Hence why in my version of the alt-history the English and Confederacy conspire to give the Confederacy superior access to ghost rock, at least early on - the deal also gives England better access to ghost rock than the other European powers enjoy, which is an advantage big enough for the British to swallow their qualms about giving the Confederacy under-the-table unofficial help.

Quote from: JeremyR;821926The American Civil War is a really complex thing, it's far too easy to say it was all about slavery, but that's basically what is done today.

I hate 'Nazi Confederacy vs anti-slavery Union' as much as I hate 'Whitewashed Confederacy vs Blackwashed Union'. The OP seems rather to want the former, in reaction to the (I think unintentional) tendency of the official timeline towards the latter.

But, AFAICT IRL the attempted secession was almost entirely about slavery, about fear of the constriction eventual abolition of slavery. However the North was not fighting against slavery, but to preserve the Union - which AFAICT had no Constitutional basis. Slavery was morally wrong, but the Confederate states had the Constitutional liberty to secede for any reason or none, so stopping that was a moral wrong too. IMO both sides were fighting primarily for bad causes.

Edit: Like I said, best thing is stick much closer to real-world timeline. It's not as if the game actually centres on the war, anyway - it centres on the Wild West.

Quote from: S'mon;821933But, AFAICT IRL the attempted secession was almost entirely about slavery, about fear of the constriction eventual abolition of slavery. However the North was not fighting against slavery, but to preserve the Union - which AFAICT had no Constitutional basis.

What are you talking about? The Constitution is what sets up the Union in the first place.

QuoteSlavery was morally wrong, but the Confederate states had the Constitutional liberty to secede for any reason or none, so stopping that was a moral wrong too.

Where in the Constitution does it say this?

Quote from: Warthur;821940What are you talking about? The Constitution is what sets up the Union in the first place.

Where in the Constitution does it say this?

All rights not specifically granted to the federal government in the Constitution are reserved to the People, or to the States. The States never gave up the right to secede, a right the original 13  had previously asserted against the British Empire.

Quote from: S'mon;822051All rights not specifically granted to the federal government in the Constitution are reserved to the People, or to the States. The States never gave up the right to secede, a right the original 13  had previously asserted against the British Empire.

What is the Constitutional procedure for secession?

Is there a specific right to secede from the Union as opposed to revolting against the Union?

Quote from: Warthur;822112What is the Constitutional procedure for secession?

Is there a specific right to secede from the Union as opposed to revolting against the Union?

I see your mind has trouble grokking the concept of 'reserved rights' - that the US Constitution is not supposed to be all-encompassing.

Quote from: S'mon;822114I see your mind has trouble grokking the concept of 'reserved rights' - that the US Constitution is not supposed to be all-encompassing.

Oh no, I get the point, I just question whether there exists a right to secede that can be reserved to the states in the first place.

I'm not familiar with the Deadlands setting. It never really appealed to me. Nonetheless, I can offer a few ideas. Perhaps one or two of them are even helpful.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- I want the Confederacy to still be into slavery. This pretty much means they'll be the villains of the setting, but that kind of goes with the term "Confederacy" as far as I am concerned.

An end of official slavery is not the same of a true end of it as an institution, if the same people stay in power and the controls are lax. You could have a Confederacy that has officially "abandoned" slavery, but inofficially just changed the rhetorics enough ("indentured laborers" intead of slaves, a stronger emphasis on contracts between really-not-slaves and utterly-not-slave owners). Perhaps apartheid South Africa can serve as a 'role model' for your Confederacy.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- The Texas Rangers still need to be available as a potentially sympathetic force, which to a certain extent rules out them working for the Confederacy.

Texas might also still be a part of the Confederacy, but the "true" Rangers have gone underground and form the core of a guerilla army of sorts trying to 'free' Texas. That way, the PCs can become involved with them and even become involved in the foundation of a new nation.

Or alternatively, the Rangers are loyal, but honorable. Honorable foes the PCs can respect and who may treat their opponents with a certain chivalry are a cool thing for many settings, as this allows for elements such as a strained alliance between opposing forces to face a greater threat, and you create a more diverse and nuanced presentation of the supposed villain faction, which overall creates a more colorful and differentiated setting.
 

Quote from: Warthur;821719The whole equal rights thing still needs to be accelerated, at least in the West. This means there needs to be a potent force pushing for it.

Again, this seems to be a heroic struggle for your PCs to take a major role in, if they like.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- Ghost rock is discovered and is used by the South to close their industrial/technological gap with the North, prolonging the war.

Can you use ghost rock to create some sort of super weapon? You can probably use it to power those submersibles, and you totally should make them a major thing. Using subs to circumvent naval blockades is after all pretty much the purpose of those things; the American Civil War saw the first use of subs in combat; and not using powerful steampunk submarines if you could makes Jules Verne sadly shake his head.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- The South's need for manpower becomes an increasing problem. They eventually set up "slave batallions" lured by the promise of emancipation (an actual plan of the Confederate military in history) - but the batallions are sorely betrayed, sent into nigh-suicidal missions, and various dirty tricks are deployed to ensure that any who actually accomplish their missions never get their promised emancipation.

Sacrificing one's own soldiers for racist reasons sounds too mustache-twirling evil for the purpose of the setting's verisimilitude and utterly stupid from a strategic point of view.  Don't let your villains look like idiots. They can expoit their troops in a completely dehumanizing and contemptuous ways without willingly sacrifice them. The losses of fresh, green troops in most battles are likely pretty high anyway.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- In response to the above, the Union integrates its forces rather than having separate white and black troops. This is to reverse a slump in black Northerners volunteering for fear that black Union forces would be used as badly as the black Confederates. (For their part, the black slave batallions rapidly run out of volunteers, leading to the ugly spectacle of slaves being ordered into battle with Confederate cannons trained on them to blast them if they deviate from orders - further hardening Union attitudes against the south.)

That makes sense from a point of view of a more tolerant life on the frontier - living through horible situations together creates bonds. However, if you want to create a more plausible setting, old habits like racism die hard. Hell, in the real world, during the first world war, the American command of the expedition forces "informed" the French autorities about the savagery and rapist tendencies of their own black soldiers.
If you accelerate the normalisation process too much, it will look just as implausible as a slave-free Confederacy.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- Meanwhile, the North has its own manpower issues, leading to women playing a more prominent role in a range of professions. Soon the fighting is so intense that women are even fighting on the front line for the North.

The first part works, but female frontline troops are a bit early. If you want to go that route, have your equal rights activists demand voting rights for women (and blacks) as a bargain. "We will only die for a government we elected" seems like a decent message and while this condenses the whole soufragette movement to a few months, you still have it as a relevant element.

I would also suggest that these radical (for the time) demands will bring forward a strong counter-movement, strictly against these reforms. These would work well as both political opponents (in the more mellow version) as well as brutal goons (as a sorta terrorist conspiracy). "Proving that the powerful Senator is in fact, a member of [Enter name of reactionary conspiracy here] sounds like a pretty cool adventure or even campaign.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- With men and women of various races mingling more in the North than polite society had previously allowed for, combined with an increasingly hard backlash against the Confederacy's excesses, Northern attitudes begin to conceive of equal rights not as a heresy or a pipe dream, but as the ultimate and loudest possible rebuttal of Confederate ideology.

Also, assassinations. Reforms like these never seemed to work without martyrs.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- A lull in the fighting in 1872 comes up with a new peace initiative: special simultaneous elections in the Union and Confederacy, all offices up for grabs. The idea was that if the public sentiment really was for coming to some sort of peace, they would elect candidates seeking such. Due to the war dragging on for as long as it has with no end in sight, the old Republican/Democrat order has lost much of its credibility and on both sides of the border major new parties arise to challenge for power.

So, despite not negotiating for an armistice, the two countries decide on paralell elections? That sounds... odd, but the kind of odd that might actually work.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- In the North, Victoria Woodhull stands for the presidency on the Equal Rights Party ticket with Frederick Douglass as her VP. They did this in real life too, though in our timeline they were merely a very forward-thinking sideshow - here, thanks to the extreme shifts in attitude in the North that the extreme circumstances of the war have given rise to, they have a real shot.

Did I mention how much credibility assassinations can bring to the recently deceased? This is a good example to use this instrument. Kill one of the two, use it as a moment to forment public outrage that carries the survivor to victory in the election.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- In the South, dissident Confederates find themselves drawn to the Peace With Honour Party, with an overt policy of ending the war gracefully; their main platform revolves around expanding ghost rock-based industrial capacity to the extent that slaves are not needed, giving emancipated slaves the option of seeking honest work in the South or heading North, and reaching a peace deal with the North which would "guarantee and ensure forever that the states of the Confederacy and the Union would be equal partners in peace, whatever form that peace takes".

Okay, sounds good. You probably need a face for that party, someone the player can identify, but something like a sound of reason doesn't seem too much out of place.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- Obviously, the Reckoners have as their top priority the continuation of the war by any and all means necessary, so they need to sabotage this shit ASAP. Thanks to the Agency's closer integration into the heart of the Union government, they are able to get on top of this and give equal protection to both President Grant and his rivals; in fact, Grant gives clear and unambiguous orders that Woodhall and Douglass are to be given just as good protection as he is, fearing for the future of American democracy if assassination (supernatural or otherwise) were to become a perennial feature of the electoral process.

I guess the reckoners are some kind of supernatural force interested in maitaining human suffering?

I however think that assassinations almost never silence a movement, but grant it additional credibility and also creates sympathy for the movement while strengthening its followers determination - as long as it is more than some sort of cult of personality.

I would totally murder either Woodhall or Douglass to get to this point. Also, it's easily obtainable drama, and that is usually good for an RPG.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- In the South, the Texas Rangers do their best, but the incumbent Davis and his people (along with the influence of the Reckoners here and there) keep information back here and there to ensure that the Peace With Honour Party don't quite have as good protection as Davis does. Heroic members of the Rangers discover this imbalance, but not the chicanery behind it; as such, the Rangers are able to correct the problem before disaster hits, but there is a growing distrust between them and Davis.

Preventing any disaster before they hit should primarily be the task of the PCs. If you can, turn this into an open-ended one-shot adventure with pre-made characters and have them try to protect the Peace with Honour candidates; if they succeed, events develop that way; if they fail you have other opportunities. As a warm-up to the real campaign, this could work, but by sheer necessity, this should be quite a challenge for the players to survive, let alone to succeed.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- The election takes place: in the North, the balance of power varies locally, but the Equal Rights Party does take the presidency. Recognising that enough people voted Republican that their priorities need to be heard at the centre of government, President-Elect Woodhall begins negotiations with President Grant with an eye to giving Grant an important role in her cabinet - Secretary of State is mooted.

Again, murder one of them, create a coalition of needs government with Grant. Nonetheless, universal suffrage is pretty much a prerequiste for this.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- In the South, the electoral process is a disaster, with the Knights of the Golden Circle engaging in mass voter intimidation (to the extent of attacking and burning down polling stations in areas believed to favour Peace With Honour) with Davis' apparent blessing. In addition, a massive storm rages across much of the Peace With Honour party's heartland, with flooding and bad weather making it impossible to either vote or retrieve ballots from those regions. Declaring this sinister coincidence "an Act of God", Davis refuses to rerun the vote in those regions, producing results which are, to say the least, a little strange.

You know, actual election fraud is a lot less spectacular, but it is therefore also a lot less suspicious and it still occasionally spawns insurgencies and revolts. If you go with the slavery in everything but the name option, you could probably grant not-slave owners the right to vote for their clients (Actually, a system based on an interpretation of the Roman patron-client relation seems to work rather well in this context and allows to borrow institutional dignity from the Roman Republic. See, it is all very traditional and noble). With a system like this, you don't need to manipulate the vote too much, because you make pretty sure whose votes truly counts.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- Davis declares that the victory of the Equal Rights Party in the North demonstrates the Union's contempt for traditional values and declares that he will not go to any negotiating table until the Union's ability to bully and threaten the South is destroyed. Realising that the War is going to continue yet again, Woodhall and Douglass mutually agree to make Grant Secretary of War.

Actually, a strong anti Equal Rights position could very likely create strong sympathies within the more conservative or reactionary elements in the Union. It might appear to quite a few people that Davis is actually completely right, which, ironically, could accelerate a peace process.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- Meanwhile, in the South not all the Confederate states are so happy with the outcome. Those who rely most on slavery are the happiest; the less plantation-focused States find themselves chafing at the bit. After some heroic Texas Rangers discover just what dark deals Davis has been making to secure his victory, the Rangers consult with the government of Texas and aid it in declaring independence from the South. The newly independent Texas is bolstered by the fact that it is on the periphery of the South to begin with, plus the fact that the Texas Rangers are supporting it, plus its independent spirit makes it popular amongst the Territories. Frederick Douglass immediately schedules a speaking tour of Texas to explore potential for Union-Republic of Texas co-operation, the success of which helps the Equal Rights ideology to spread within Texas itself.

I think that you might get more mileage from a not (yet) independent Texas in this  context.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- Texas might have begun a tidal wave of secessions from the clearly corrupt Confederacy, had it not been for the Louisiana Backstab, in which Louisiana dropped out of the Confederacy and immediately declared allegiance to Imperial France. Seen as a French riposte to Britain's annexation of Detroit, the newly independent Louisiana is forced by the new colonial authority to give up slavery, but is able to do so thanks to New Orleans' status as a hub of ghost rock-based industry. (Indeed, the French involvement here may well be part of their desire to get in on that ghost rock action themselves.) Fearful of creeping recolonisation, the rest of the Confederacy saw no alternative but to back Davis.

In 1872, There is no 'Imperial France'. The Empire doesn't survive the Franco-Prussian War and the resulting Third Republic is in no condition to project enough force to annex territories overseas. In '72, the republic has yet to recover from the war, and the reparations have to be paid as well (they aren't fully paid until '73). The country had a brief, but bloody civil war of its own (against the Commune of Paris) and is still not completely stabilized; the Communards may be defeated, but there is still a strong anti-Republican, monarchist movement. The French Republic might even be interested in a stronger diplomatic tie to the Confederacy to circumvent Bismarck's 'let's all hate the French' club.

Perhaps the best way to include a semi-autonomous, non-Confederacy Louisana (even though it would be a bit contrived) would be a French Empire-in-Exile, with a surprisingly alive Napolen III or IV. as L'Empereur de l'Ouest", calling New Orleans his personal Elba or something like that. A lot of pomp, a grand name (with Bonaparte, maybe even the grandest name of the 19th century), but very little actual power, the resulting Imperial Court could be a great place for pointless intrigues (utterly vicious, because they matter so little) and a point of levity for the campaign. Like Emperor Norton, but with an actual army. And nightmares about Sedan.

Quote from: Warthur;821719- Recolonisation may well happen in the long term anyway: even the Reckoners can't keep the Civil War going forever, but if the collapse of the Union or Confederacy (or better yet, both) leads to a land grab by the European powers, that could set the stage for an even wider-ranging and more destructive war.

In the second half of the 19th century, there are no European powers who could realistically establish colonies in the Americas, besides the British Empire and the French Republic - and the Republic can only do so during a very brief period in the 1880s, when the modernisation of the French fleet outmatches the numerical superiority of the Britsh navy.

Fleets from the German Empire cannot operate in the Atlantic without the toleration of the British Royal Navy; Austria-Hungaria could as well have no coast at all, the Osman Empire is collapsing and Spain is unstable. the Russian pacific fleet might be a factor (especially when the relationship between Russia and Japan develop differently, which might be the case when the American fleet is preoccupied with the ongoing civil war and thus less involved in the enforced end of the isolation policy in Japan), but it's tiny; the much larger Baltic Fleet has the same problems as any German navy has (in addition to no permanently ice-free harbors and the more pronounced bottleneck of the Skagerrak).

So, any recolonialisation attempts are pretty much limited to France and Britain. Maybe, there are a few German colonial efforts, but many are likely abandoned to appease the British Empire, and minor Russian efforts on the Pacific coast (Russia isn't well known for having too little empty space, after all).  

However, depending on the importance of the reclaimed American colonies, the resulting  British and French colonial conflicts could prevent the formation of the Entente Cordial (and, logically, the Tripple Entente); Britain could continue the splendid isolation policy on purpose, which would also keep France isolated as well (and pretty much guarantees German dominance in continental Europe). This could effectively prevent the First World War and replace with a series of minor wars (minor compared to the World War, that is).

The CSA was incapable of ending slavery, the weak executive had no power to compel the state government and slaveholders resisted every attempt by the CSA to control or use their slaves, to point of collaborating with the union government. If the CSA government couldn't compel the Slave holders to grow food for starving confederate soldiers, how are they going to compel the slave holders to give their slaves?

Quote from: theye1;822148The CSA was incapable of ending slavery, the weak executive had no power to compel the state government and slaveholders resisted every attempt by the CSA to control or use their slaves, to point of collaborating with the union government. If the CSA government couldn't compel the Slave holders to grow food for starving confederate soldiers, how are they going to compel the slave holders to give their slaves?

Yes.

Those who doubt this should read the CSA's constitution, an absolutely fascinating document. They did everything they could to hardwire slavery into the very existence of the state.