To Order Call: 661.587.9633Monday-Friday 9am-4pm (PST)
Corrupt Bargain: The 1824 Presidential Election. A 2-4 player game about the 1824 election (John Quincy Adams vs. Andrew Jackson vs. Crawford vs. Henry Clay) that was the first election in which no candidate achieved a majority in the Electoral College. In part because the constitution allowed for only the top three candidates to be considered by the House of Representatives, Clay (the fourth place candidate who was also Speaker of the House) threw his support to Adams (the second place candidate) and Adams was able to secure a victory with a majority of the vote by states. Players must decide with every play whether to focus on campaigning for the popular vote, the state vote, or gaining advantages.
Bleeding Kansas is a two-player game portraying the politics and violence in pre-statehood Kansas. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 gave new territories the right to “popular sovereignty,” allowing residents to choose whether or not to allow slavery. Within months the stream of settlers to Kansas was swelled by parties of sponsored abolitionists and pro-slavers, all more intent on fighting one another than building a new state. Bushwhacks and gun battles punctuated maneuvers by rival legislatures elected through massive fraud. It would not die out entirely until statehood in January 1861. The new state’s senators swung the US Senate irretrievably against the South, ensuring the continuation of secession started by the election of Abraham Lincoln.
A British campaign in the late summer of 1777 had defeated George Washington's American army to capture Philadelphia. The British dispersed their strength to hold the city, reduce Colonial forts along the Delaware River, and watch the Americans, who hovered nearby. Washington saw an opportunity to attack the weakened British at Germantown. The complicated American plan fell apart in dense fog, but a few breaks going their way would have endangered the British position in eastern Pennsylvania.
In the late summer of 1777, the British master plan to sever New England from the rest of the rebellious American colonies had come unhinged, leaving John Burgoyne's Northern Army dangerously isolated. In an attempt to break through American defenses to reach Albany, New York, Burgoyne launched his army at the American defenses on Bemis Heights. An American screen dispatched by Benedict Arnold clashed with the British advance in deep woods, triggering an afternoon-long fight fed by reinforcements for both sides. The battle ended in stalemate, as good as a defeat for Burgoyne, but might have tipped in his favor.
In the months after Fort Sumter fell, Missouri was riven by a civil war within a civil war. Missouri rebels, organized as the Missouri State Guard under Sterling Price, had been joined by a Confederate force under Ben McCulloch the threaten Nathaniel Lyon's small but well-drilled Union army in the southwestern part of the state. Lyon, hoping to catch the Rebels off guard, attacked their scattered camps along Wilson's Creek. The initial Union assault went well before the battle devolved into a grueling firefight. Confederate numbers eventually prevailed, but Lyon's attack might have succeeded.
In early 1864, Union Gen. Nathaniel Banks led a small army up Louisiana's Red River. His objective, in conjunction with an overland campaign through Arkansas, was the Confederate Trans-Mississippi capital at Shreveport. Poor coordination of the two columns enabled the Confederates to concentrate their slender resources against each in turn. Banks was first, and in early April his spearhead was hit near the crossroads of Mansfield. Historically, the Union forces, strung out on the march, were routed piecemeal, but the battle could have gone the other way.
As the battle of Chancellorsville raged, a Union corps was dispatched to hit the vulnerable Confederate army from behind. The flanking column was delayed by a single Confederate brigade at Salem Church. The battle grew as Confederate arrived first to firm up the front, then to turn the tables on the Federals. The flankers became flanked, then had to fight for their lives.
