127: Abraham Lincoln/Cassius Clay - 35.2%
83: Sam Houston/John Crittenden - 30.6%
53: Stephen Douglas/Horatio Seymour - 22.4%
40: John Breckinridge/Joseph Lane - 13.0%
Others - 0.8%
In New York, Illinois, and New Jersey, Houston and Breckinridge withdraw their names fully. In exchange, Douglas removes his name from every slave state except for Maryland and Delaware, as well as removing his name and Houston's name from Oregon. In California, Douglas and Houston agree to a Houston/Seymour joint ticket that loses by less than .5%.
In the House, Houston manages to almost carry enough states. He, Lincoln, and Douglas "stab" Breckinridge in the back. Seymour will be Vice President, Lincoln will be Secretary of the Treasury, Douglas will be Secretary of State, and Clay will be Attorney General. John Fremont will be Secretary of War, and John Bell is nominated for Secretary of the Interior. With this Cabinet prepared, Houston and Seymour won the necessary votes and the Cabinet was soon released. Despite the best efforts of Stephen Douglas, John Bell, and Sam Houston, the states of Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Oregon, California, and vast swathes of territories secede. General Stonewall Jackson leads a grave defense, at one point having captured Arkansas, most of Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, and western Delaware. Through an alliance with the Cherokee, Jackson takes almost all of Texas until the Cherokee turn on him. Joined by Sam Houston himself, an entire Union army sneaked through where Cherokee scouts aided and abetted them, with the help of Houston's adopted Jolly family. At the Battle of Two Houstons(the city and the President), Jackson's army was crushed. However, Jackson made a clever and dangerous maneuver - ordering his infantry to make a clean getaway, he himself stayed behind with cavalry and, for the first bit, artillery. Through a series of feints and pretended mass sneaking/crawling, 18,000 Confederates seemed to advance on 280,000 Union troops onto the flanks. When the Union line, seeing what seemed to be hundreds of thousands of men crawling towards them, and cannonfire seeming to never hurt more than one or two at a time, began to falter, the trap was sprung. They were quickly rallied and ordered to launch an attack towards the sides, which would quickly be greatly lessened before the enemy was engaged, followed by the main body rushing between the two groups, where there was an obvious gap. On doing so, however, they found that 16,000 cavalry was rushing on one side, breaking the Union line and making a run for it, with sixty of them killing at least four hundred men before the leader of the sixty, Jackson himself, ordered a quick maneuver to envelop and destroy six hundred. Once this was done, the remaining guards and Jackson fled, led by the 16,000 troops. Of the remaining 2,000, sixteen were captured and thirty-nine wounded, with orders on them to flee the moment the attack(according to the orders, perpetrated by 90,000 cavalry) was sprung. Seeing this, the Union army drew in a circle, as the orders specified an attack at six a. m. the following morning from the NNE. At half past midnight, however, over 1,900 Confederates came out from under holes they had expertly hidden. Four hundred of them destroyed the sentries in the southwest quadrant from behind, with the remainder going to the NNE army and lighting over 1,500 tents on fire. 750 of them, disguised as Union troops with clothing stripped from their body, formed the rearguaare shortly thereafter. The remaining 750 hid, of which less than forty were caught. Three hundred of them, along with small amounts of outside artillery and thousands of lanterns, made an attack from the NNE look imminent. With all this done by two, the attack was launched on the SW corner. The 750 men ran to and fro, destroying and hiding countless supplies. A hundred of them launched an attack on headquarters, arresting top officers one by one. Of Houston, Fremont, Pope, McClellan, Clay, and Grant, Clay and Houston were found together. Clay's expertise with a blade, with which he once fought off six men alone, and Houston's tenacity, as well as the blades of half a dozen guards, allowed them to defeat a force of thirty-four men. Clay and the lieutenant of the guard fought eight men as the others took Houston to safety, and, when the lieutenant fell, Clay was outnumbered only four-to-one. Clay stabbed three, killing two and slightly wounded(but greatly stunned) one, but one he killed grabbed his sword to keep him from using it against his last opponent. Clay drew his revolver with his left hand, and that was quickly disarmed. However, with his right hand, he had covertly drawn a long dagger and, making as to surrender, he stabbed the man seven times in the right breast. He then turned and walked to where Houston was, bringing the lieutenant with him with the assistance of the wounded Confederate man, whose weapons he had taken. Pope, Fremont, and Grant were lead away quickly. McClellan was captured.
In the succeeding battles, Houston and Clay cleverly fought. The British and French nations drilled the Confederate army and supplied the Confederacy. However, Prussia, Russia, and Italy sent officers to the Union. Soon, Cassius Clay, Nathaniel Banks, and John Pope formed a friendship with Albrecht von Roon, Helmuthe von Moltke, and Karl Friedrich von Steinmetz.
192: Sam Houston/Cassius Clay(Constitutional Union) - 70.5%
35: Henry Wilson/John Van Buren(Republican) - 26.0%
[Houston won an easy victory, as he won the endorsement of basically every Republican not from New England. With the support of even abolitionists like Greeley and Clay, he won the election handily three months before the war would end. Within two weeks, Houston announced that within two years, all slaves would be free.]
Prussia officially declared war for America against the Confederacy, following which Mexico declared war on America. Venezuela and Colombia declared war on Mexico and the Confederacy. With all this done, 160,000 Prussian troops landed in New Jersey. Franz Sigel led an army of over ninety thousand German-Americans, largely from New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin. 250,000 Union troops, led by Nathaniel Banks and Ulysses S. Grant, also joined the 250,000 Prussian and German-American troops. With this army, the Union Alliance took back Missouri, Virginia, Kentucky, and launched a strike into Texas, freeing McClellan. Fernando Wood and Benjamin Wood led 45,000 Confederate sympathizers from New York City, as well as 25,000 more from Massachusetts and upstate New York. With these troops meeting 190,000 Confederate soldiers and 90,000 Mexican soldiers, this group launched an immediate attack on the "Union Alliance Army", while sending for reinforcements. 200,000 Mexican and Confederate troops would immediately march to where the Ohio River and the Mississippi River meet. "The Battle Between Two Rivers", as it was known, saw 500,000 Allied troops fight 550,000 Coalition troops. By drawing them towards the river, Sigel launched a new tactic: Gatling guns picked away at the left and right enemy flanks, as well as artillery, while sixty thousand cavalry crashed into the rear of the middle flank. At the same time, 300,000 infantry pushed forwards with rifle fire, destroying the middle of the enemy. Crushed, the army began to rout. Stonewall Jackson and Fernando Wood rallied the troops and withdrew South, to Little Rock, having lost over 300,000 men. Two hundred Confederates, stranded, were found by Cassius Clay and twenty guards. Clay challenged the commander to a duel in which the commander would receive three duel mates. Quickly disarming the second-in-command, Clay parried the other three thrusts, feinting at one and then the other, before plunging his sword into the commander's foot. He then stabbed the other two quickly, in one lung each, before cutting their jugular. The second-in-command immediately surrendered, but six Confederate troops attacked Clay. He disarmed two and killed or severely wounded all of the other four within ten seconds. With this done, he blew a whistle, and his hidden sixteen guards(four had been present to watch) immediately killed about forty others attempting to attack Clay. Seeing this, the remaining troops surrendered.
Afterwards, at the Treaty of Little Rock, on February 4, the Confederacy and Northern sympathizers surrendered. After two months of fighting and over 180,000 Mexican troops lost to less than 50,000 Allied troops lost, the Mexicans were forced to surrender the Yucatán to a renewed USCA and Baja California to America on May 3. However, on May 23, Houston was shot. John Wilkes Booth, Fernando Wood, and a handful of others shot him, as well as attempting to kill VP Cassius Clay, Secretary of State Horace Greeley, Speaker of the House Horatio Seymour, Secretary of War John Fremont, and Associate Justice Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln survived two shots to the left arm, while the other four had been in a meeting. Clay killed one of the assassins, wounded a second, and forced the other nine to flee. Houston himself was not killed, but he was shaken enough to resign for his health.
TO BE CONTINUED.
