Emma's Rifles running notes

• Premises:
• One: The United States of America was in danger of’ coming apart at the seams,’, starting in 1850 with the Missouri compromise.
Two: By 1850, Britain has a working high-powered rifle. This gives them an enormous military advantage... The "British rifle’ is a compilation of inventions in place by 1870 in different areas of the world, which I consolidated into 1850 as a prototype, SINGLE SHOT RIFLE.). The 'Closest equivalent' was the French Lebel rifle of 1880) •
Reasons: ( A history primer)
• 1850 in America was leaving the “Frontier Transition era to become an industrial nation. Power, both economic, was shifting from the Agrarian south to the rapidly expanding North West and the financial centre of the Northern States, the Boston to Philadelphia corridor...
• The railroad age was consolidating; Short lines from ports were being replaced with rail networks. Rail connection was available from the Atlantic to the Great lakes, to the Ohio, to the Mississippi. The Jacksonian era was closing, and the era of steam power and the expansion of the telegraphs was in ‘full flood’. A society that moved at the speed of horseback now moved at the speed of steam, and messaging, at the speed of light.
• The age of steel had established Britain as (the temporary) pre – eminent world steel producer, but their supply of iron ore is unsecured, as is copper, zinc, and tin, the ‘non corrosive metal ores.
• The great revolts of 1848 to 1850 in Europe had affected America. The economy had recessed, but was resolving its issues and expanding under the influx of California gold.
Premises: ( FOR THE British INVOLVEMENT):

1. The British Empire is running out of fertile soil. A plot is launched to launch a plot to divide and separate America into Free states, Slave states, and then to exhaust both sides in civil war, with the South winning a peace of exhaustion. The plan is to establish client states at the peripherals- The Mesabi regions of Northern Minnesota and the Michigan peninsula- the Chippewa areas. The novel STOPS SHORT OF branching into a historical divergence, where the Mesabi commonwealth hinted at , but is not fact by the end of the novel.
2. Guano, the only known artificial fertilizer at the time, is becoming rare to find. Driving the States into war creates a shortage of American shipping, which allows Britain to pick up the remaining tropical guano islands and secure world domination over the grain areas of Canada. Britain is betting on grain development in Canada and Australia to feed the empire.
To accomplish this, Great Britain has taken advantage of the decision by the American Congress to accept the Slave fugitive act of 1850. However, their secret effort is to divide America into flames, by accentuating the tensions caused by the bounty hunters, and to antagonize the Northern states into fostering a civil war by 1855-56. This will allow a Southern victory, as the American rail net will still be embryonic, and the American navy will not be able to establish the historic blockade.
Geographic area:
• The novel Starts in St Louis Missouri finishes on lake Michigan six weeks later (the next Novel spreads into Western Canada.)
Grant Parker, future leader of the Mesabi commonwealth.
1. Emma Chase.
2. Stuart chase
3. Prince Kinta, whose escape triggers the first massive manhunt under the Fugitive slave Act.
4. The Bounty hunters:
a. Matt Hunter
b. Pierre Chounard
C. Henry Blake
6. Captain (Calvary) Robert Johnston. Officer, abolitionist, and then British agent. Then American double agent
7, the Franklins. A family of the first stronghold north of the Ohio River for escaped slaves. White patriarch, Mulatto children.
8. The British: (Historical)
Robert Baldwin, leader of the English Faction, Colony of Canada
Louis Lafontaine Leader of the French Faction,
Lord Elgin, Governor General.
George Simpson governor of Rupertsland
Fictional:
Nellis and Price, British Army officers testing the new high powered rifle under frontier conditions.
The Escaped slaves:
Prince Kinta, captured and transported in 1848 to America.
Little Cyrus- Calvin Franklin, Kinta's companion.
Calvin Franklin ( Who is actually a freeman.)
Two unnamed fugitives.
the women
Emma, Stuart’s consort/ love interest, thrown together when Stewart killed her Uncle and cousins in reprisal for the killing of his family in the Missouri Mormon wars.
Paula Hamilton, Slave born, three quarters white. Matt’s (eventual) wife.