The Armalites of the South
1861-1862: Jefferson F. Davis / Alexander H. Stephens (Non-Partisan) [Provisional]
1862-1868: Jefferson F. Davis / Alexander H. Stephens (Pro-Administration / Anti-Administration)
1861: Unopposed
1868-1871: Nathan B. Forrest / Howell Cobb (Patriot's, with extra-political support from America Will Break)
1867: John C. Breckinridge / Albert G. Brown (Jeffersonian), Robert E. Lee / scattered (Pro-Administration Independent)
1871-1874: Nathan B. Forrest / vacant (Patriot's, with extra-political support from America Will Break)
1874: Fitzhugh Lee / Patrick C. Cleburne (Jeffersonian)
1873: Louis T. Wigfall / Leonidas Polk (Patriot's)
1874-1902: Wade Hampton III / Sterling Price, later various including Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson (Patriot's, with extra-political support from America Will Break)
AWB Time-travels to 1864, turns the war around at the last hour. Robert E. Lee's opposition to them comes from their extra-territorial status in the Confederacy and the undue influence these men from another world have on his Confederacy. Getting his hands on a history of the Civil War as it was he finds himself increasingly unsure of what has come to pass but finds little political support for it. His silence for a time is bought with nitroglycerine pills but as Confederate Politics develops between the Pro-Expansionist, Pro-International Slave Trade and AWB supported Patriots who have questionable views about continued Democracy in the Confederacy and the Jeffersonians who are hardly better and want to tiptoe around the AWB Lee finally throws his hat into the ring. The results are disappointing though for him, but surprising for such a political novice, he wins a majority in his home state of Virginia and on a national scale wins more votes then John C. Breckinridge but outside of Virginia he fails to make any gains in the Electoral College, and in fact loses several delegates pledged to him there.
The Forrest years are brutal, the Ku Klux Klan, a new veterans organization funded by the AWB grows in size and violence in support of the Patriots. AWB backed filibusters set off for Central America and the Coast of Africa. The United States dictatorship under President McClellan is bogged down in a war in Canada against Britain, Mexican Republicans are defeated by Napoleon III and in Santo Domingo the yoke of the Spanish Empire is entrenched. Robert E. Lee is overwhelmed by the sense that Democracy in the world is dying but cannot for years yet reconcile his worries for such with the growing discomfort he feels about his knowledge of the end of Slavery in the world that was supposed to be. He retreats from the question for some time, to become the Commandant of the Virginia Military Institute and to organize the decentralized system that would become the Confederate Military Academy system.
And then in 1873 he does find some degree of hope. His nephew Fitzhugh becomes the Jeffersonian candidate for President and begins to openly question the violence's spreading across the Americas and the growing economic and political power of the non-citizen, and diplomatically immune, and growing AWB population. In this campaign Marse Robert found a new hope. he traveled the nation he fought for, he met with old comrades many of whom worried about the Confederacy becoming an AWB colony, and some admitting that they knew it already was a protectorate. In his rhetoric, Robert E. Lee grew bolder about his disdain for what the South was becoming but still, even as the election grew nearer grappled with his conflicted feelings that he now held for the Peculiar Instiution.
And then, Fitzhugh won. The AWB and the KKK were furious and seemed to many to be staying in their tents like Achilles, or Guilty Men. In Richmond and Rivington there was intense negotiations. The AWB hardly cared about the Patriot's but their personal status while the Patriot's held their own aims about what the South should be. And in these Negotiations, quietly done in empty offices and hotels, Robert E. Lee would find himself outfoxed and growing more and more tired. But also more revolted by what he had helped create. In the end the deal as it was was a mere papering over of the problems of the three factions in Southern Politics. But Lee trusted these men at their word. And so the inauguration moved forward. In the week before though things began to turn sour. AWB-KKK forces began protesting. In New Orleans a mob seized control of the city. Filibuster forces started returning home. A coup seemed inevitable.
Fitzhugh and his uncle were ready to fight though, and the inaugural was a tight military affair heavy in security. But shortly after the swearing in, word came over the Telegraph wire, the regular army units outside of the City, under the command of George Pickett were in revolt, and other revolts were happening across the Country. Fitzhugh was hurried off the stage, he would attempt to escape the city for Petersburg but was doomed. As the forces of Counter-Revolution closed it it was Robert E. Lee who gave the final, off the cuff address of the hopeful administration. He would die giving it, as the assassins bullet ripped into him from what seemed like an impossible range. But what he said would live on forever in the dark shadows, the company towns and the slave cabins for decades to come. For he told the world the truth he had denied forever: that Slavery was wrong, that the AWB was an evil, that true republicanism called for the involvement of all peoples to have a say in their life.
In what would follow Lee was the South's greatest traitor, but long after he was dead and gone, long after Wade Hampton had fallen into corrupt irrelevance under the lords of the AWB, Lee's Last Address as it would forever be called would keep a fire going, one that would, eventually see the dreams of Lee's old opponent Abraham Lincoln be realized