"May 1891.

"On the second Saturday of every June, the Confederate States of America
celebrates Secession Day, the Southron victory of Third Manassas.
Traditionally small children gather in circles on that long-silent
battefield and join hands in circles and run around, letting go of each
other's hands when the music stops and all the children fall to the
ground.

"Symbolically, it is a good presentation of history. When the War of
the Great Secession ended in Ben Butler's defeat, the States of the
Confederacy lost the motivation for concerted action and each State ,
giggling, minded its own business.

LETTER FROM DIXIE CONT'D

"In 1883, some young adventurers from the Confederacy brought together a
"Legion" of roughly a thousand men and tried to conquer Central America
as William Walker had tried four decades earlier. Their expedition was
repulsed from Nicaraguan cities with relative ease. The would be
conquerors paid with their lives for their failure to accurately
estimate the defensive capacity of the Latins two generations after
Walker's brief heyday.

"The British and the Yankees sided with the Nicaraguans and other
Central Americans, and the escapees and the expedition's dependents were
brought to Texas ports by British and Union hulls.

"Coincidentially perhaps, the first notice of boll weevil infestation
was printed in 1884, the year the "Nicaragua Legion" reached home.
Among the goods shipped that year to Texas were several thousand bales
from Nicaragua and it was surmised later that weevils had hitched a ride
to Texas amid that cotton.

It would be interesting to describe this
alternate Samuel Clemens.

Does he have no major PODs before
the U.S. Civil War?

Does he and his brother still form a
short lived Confederate unit in
northern Missouri, and then move
west to Virginia City Nevada near the
start of the U.S. Civil War, when his
brother gets appointed to be a
secretary to the Territorial governor
of Nevada at that time?

Does Abraham Lincoln still become the
governor of Oregon Territory in 1850
when he is appointed by Zachary Taylor
to the position and die of old age there in
1892?

On May 11, 9:25 pm, Remus go.com> wrote:

Forget the last paragraph. I reread your
original post and noted your reference to
the Agreement.

MEMOIRS OF SAM CLEMENS

I knew that I had not been Joe Johnston's first choice to be Vice
President. Johnston had hoped for an interparty alliance with a fellow
General, John Bell Hood of Texas and the Rebel Party. But Hood had no
interest in the Vice Presidency and Joe Johnston certainly was
uninterested in being Hood's Vice President. Johnston was planning to
recruit one of his relatives by marriage as Vice President, but
Johnston's pick was caught swindling the city he misgoverned. And
Johnston's third choice, South Carolina's Wade Hampton III, who is very
moderate for a Calhounite, had his leg broken by a mule and was infirm
from the resulting amputation.

So Johnston's choice fell to me. I was the Governor of West Missouri for
a year and a half when the banks were not foreclosing, the rain was
ample without any floods, and the legislature drowsy without the Good
Samaritans, Younger and James, raising hell (because both of them were
in Richmond, agitiating on the confederal level).

"I understand you have no real experience of the War," said General
Johnston to me.

MEMOIRS OF SAM CLEMENS

On the day before the visit of Old Emperor Max of Mexico to Richmond, I
was introduced to Mr. John Wilkes Booth, the chief of the Confederate
Secret Service, by Secretary of State John Marshall Stone. Originally,
Booth had been a spy and a smuggler back during the Great Secession,
obtaining opium and other pain killing medicines from Europe and sending
the precious commodity to the South in carriages and saddlebags. Booth
went where he pleased in the North, using his career as an actor as a
rationale for moving about that country.

Back when Judah Benjamin was Jeff Davis' Secretary of State, before the
Confederate Supreme Court was established, Benjamin himself had
recruited Booth as a spy for his Southern homeland More lucky than
Nathan Hale, the American spy of the Revolution, the enemy was defeated
before they found out about Booth, and JWB remained as the principal
intelligence officer of the CSA.

raystwo@webtv.net (Raymond Speer) wrote in news:27036-482BAB1E-623
@storefull-3175.bay.webtv.net:

*GRIN* on the "Robur the Conqueror/Master of the Air" reference...

David

--
_______________________________________________________________________
David Johnson home.earthlink.net/~trolleyfan

"So many of you come time and time again to watch this final end of
everything which I think is really wonderful and then to return home to
your own eras and raise families and strive for new and better societies
and fight terrible wars for what you know is right, it gives one real
hope for the whole future of lifekind...

...Except of course we know it hasn't got one."

On May 14, 11:16 pm, rays...@webtv.net (Raymond Speer) wrote:

Please keep this one coming!
One question, though. In OTL, Sam Clemens was married to Olivia (they
lived about two miles from my current location when he was an editor
for the Buffalo Express). Could you give a bit of background on Laura?
Thanks.

Who was Laura Wright?

In our world, she was a lady who Sam was sweet on back before he met
Olivia, when Sam was a "jack of all trades" in Nevada. IOW, she walked
out of Sam's life to go and teach school at some other frontier
community. Biographers assume that Sam had been shy and had never
explained to Laura the depth of his affection.

A lifetime later, when Sam was the world famous Mark Twain and Livy was
dead, Laura wrote to her long-lost beau. She had married a Missouri
judge and the marriage had collapsed, and Laura Wright Dake was a little
old school marm forced to keep school teaching by stern economic
necessity. (She was the sole support of a handicapped 37 year old son.)

Sam was never fond of "old age" and pitied anyone afflicted by time,
especially himself. He sent Laura money and affectionate notes.

Years after Sam's death, Laura was a little old lady who had a chest
full of old letters from Sam Clemens. She told her only interviewer that
her letters were written to her by Sam Clemons and she intended to
destroy them rather than let them be seen by the world.

MEMOIRS OF SAM CLEMENS

The Confederate White House physician, Dr. Henry Wirz, had an immobile
arm from an old war injury he got in the Great Secession. But his kind
and attentive bedside manner kept him the Confederacy's chief executive
as a patient.

"Your Excellency," Wirz said with a slight foreign accent, "you have a
throat inflammation that ought to keep you in bed for today and
tomorrow."

I nodded as he took my pulse. I glanced at the bedside table where the
morning paper lay. A BRITISH-YANKEE CANAL IN NICARAGUA? read the
headline, and below it was : The South Encircled.

My wife, Laura, patted my hand. Considering it her duty to nursemaid me,
I lay back and smiled my thanks for her care and concern.

When Wirz left, I plucked the paper off the table again. On the inside
pages, there was a long account of yesterday's reaction in the House and
Senate to reports that British and Yankee strangers with surveying
equipment had embarked on a grand survey of Central America.