AH Challenge: make Alvin Maker without magic, then go forward

[ShawnEndresen]

Don't know how many people here read the Alvin Maker series by Orson Scott Card. It's set in an AH 1820s, with the earliest documented difference being 1650 or so. The series is technically ASB, as magic works, but I think we can get the timeline without magic as it isn't critical to the history.

Here's what we have to work with: Oliver Cromwell lived to the age of 93, and he died not of old age but a lightning strike. The Commonwealth is still limping along today with a Lord Protector. New England remains lyal to the Commonwealth.

Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia make up the Kingdom of America; the Stuarts evidently fled to the New World, and King Arthur Stuart rules from Charleston.

The middle colonies (Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware) successfully rebelled against the Stuarts. They have since expanded into Ohio, Kentucky and probably Indiana and Tennessee. The rebellion, lead by Jefferson, could be called a success when George Washington, Lord Potomac pulled an Arjuna nearly word for word; in charge of suppressing the rebellion, he lays down his weapons on the field of battle and says, "those are my countrymen, and that is my friend leading them. I will not kill my countrymen and my friend for a crown". He is, of course, hanged for treason. But his example breaks the will of many loyalists to fight, and Jefferson and Franklin go on to make a Republic.

Bonaparte rules France.

So. Would anyone care to help me flesh that into a timeline, and then continue it forward?

[Darkest]

That would be hard to pull without the big scary fog wall on the western side of the Mississippi, discontinuing the expansion of the white man.

Also, I thought there were four or five nations in America. The Crown Colonies, the United States of America (much smaller, only a few states), Nueva Barcelona (New Orleans), Canada, and some kind of nation ranging from the Carolinas to Florida...

Awesome series, by the way.

[Archangel Michael]

some kind of nation ranging from the Carolinas to Florida...

Those are the Crown Colonies IIRC. I haven't read the entire sereis, but I did read a good third of the first book in the local B&N while my mom was getting new glasses.

[ShawnEndresen]

The big scary fog wall is, of course, ASB territory. I think we can get a rough approximation of its effects, though, by letting Teskwatawa lead his surviving people across the river while the echoes of Tippecanoe (a much more horrid event than OTL) play themselves out in a country with a lot more rhetoric about human rights and dignity than OTL's United States (a union of three free states, Maryland and Delaware may tolerate slavery at first, but not nearly so well or so long as OTL's United States).

[reddie]

Never understood why the whites just couldn't go around the source of the Mississippi in northern MN. There's also nothing preventing them from settling Gulf coastal Texas, either, since the Fog Wall stops where the Mississippi meets the Gulf.

But I guess the Shawnee Prophet would open a can of magic whoop ass on 'em if they did. He isn't likely to kill them, though, since that seems to be contrary to his beliefs (Tenskwa-Tawa seems to be quite a different guy in Alvin Maker than he was in OTL).

[Count Dearborn]

According to latest book, the fog wall extends all the way to Nuevo Barcelona, where it follows the coast, and then follows the Rio Grande. The only real break is in the Southwest, but to go trought it, you have to brave Aztec Territory. Yep, there was a rebellion in Mexico, and the Aztec retook control, with a return to blood sacrifice. They regained control when the Red Prophet built the wall, but they became too bloody for the Prophet's country, so the shamans caused a volcano that destroyed the capitol city. The fog causes extreme fear.

[reddie]

It sounds a lot like the wall of fear from another ATL series, namely the "Bloatwall" from the Wild Cards books.