Dominion of Southern America Part II

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Glen

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The Dominion of Southern America Timeline Discussion
Dominion of Southern America Timeline Part I
Dominion of Southern America Timeline Part II
Dominion of Southern America Timeline Part III
Dominion of Southern America Timeline Part IV
Dominion of Southern America Timeline Part V


Part II
In the aftermath of the Slaver Uprising arose the new British colonial province of Carleton. Carleton was based primarily in the former trans-Appalachian North Carolina as well as Georgia north of the Cherokee River. The pre-Southern Civil War history of Carleton started with settlement by many of the same families who participated in the Regulator War. They would be followed after the American Revolutionary War by Loyalist families who had fled from Virginia and other northern states. The period between the American Revolution and the Slaver Uprising was dominated by clashes between the Loyalists and the First Nations who would raid across the USA-BSA border. Several prominent Loyalists of western North Carolina participated in British operations across the Mississippi during the Napoleonic Wars. While there was slavery in this region, it was not nearly as widespread as in some British provinces and in fact this area had the first abolitionist newspaper in continental British Southern America. The loyalists had driven the wild Indians away from the border between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, stood ever vigilant to repel any aggressions of the Yankees to the north, but were settling down to more prosperous times as the Civilized Tribes to their south turned from war to commerce, when the rebellion started. Loyalists in the region held fast to the Crown and were able fighters in the war, and were amply recognized and rewarded for their fidelity during the fight. When the Crown granted permission for them to form their own province, they chose to name it after the former governor of North Carolina who had done so much to hold their land loyal, and had been instrumental in helping so many of their ancestors migrate to the region, Guy Carleton. The first capitol of Carleton was established at Mulberry.

First house in Mulberry:
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The British Province of Indiana was created to reward the steadfastness of the Civilized Tribes in repulsing the Confederationists and staying loyal to the Crown. The more jaded commentators of the time noted that it was in the their best interests to do so, but others point out that the civilized tribes had made their peace with the Empire long before the contingencies of the Slaver Uprising.

The most fierce fighting for the Loyal Tribes had been just west and north of the Chattahoochee River, though fighting also was seen along the border with West Florida, though here the Indians were more likely to take the battle into white held lands rather than the opposite.

The lines between native and British had been blurred significantly in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Many frontiersmen intermarried with the local tribes, so much so that many of the leaders of the tribes were more Scots than they were native! Similarly, there were not a few leaders in both the Loyalist and Confederation camps who might claim at least one ancestor of native extraction if they were so inclined.

When the Province of Indiana was established, the British made it clear that here, at least, the right of Indians would be upheld equal to that of any other British subject, with the right to responsible government. The first capitol of Indiana was established at Tuscaloosa.

The tribes that dominated the early history of Indiana were the Choctaw and the Cherokee. The other three main civilized tribes consisted of the Chickasaw, who prospered from trade along the Mississippi River where they were ensconced, the Creek, who were most notable for their successes in the invasion of West Florida, and the Cimaroan, who were closely allied with the Creek. Other than the Cherokee who spoke an Iroquoian dialect, these tribes were primarily speakers of the Muscogean language, though almost all knew some of the King's tongue, and many in the tribal leadership were as proficient in English as any Englishman.

While the tribes had been slaveowners, the line between slave and free in tribal society was vastly more fluid than in the rest of British Southern society, so it was not a hard transition from slave to free for this region, and the recompense offered by Parliament gave a needed boost to the region's economy. Also, once the war had ended, the province was able to benefit from the Gold boom in its eastern region. Whites still ended up prospecting the region as much as any native, but they now had to pay for the right, though some got around the restrictions by being adopted by a tribe. Whites who had fought for the Crown found this much easier than some who had fought bitterly against the Indians in the Southern Civil War, but even here a few former enemies who had earned respect in battle found the natives more receptive than some whites might have believed.

The new province's assembly was structured into a bicameral legislature, with an elected lower house and an upper house of representatives appointed by tribal leadership. Overseeing all of this was the Crown's appointed Governor.
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Thomas Cochrane was born at Annsfield, near Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, the son of Archibald Cochrane, 9th Earl of Dundonald and Anna Gilchrist. She was the daughter of Captain James Gilchrist and Ann Roberton, the daughter of Major John Roberton, 16th Laird of Earnock.

Cochrane was descended from lines of Scottish aristocracy and military service on both sides of his family. Through his uncle, Admiral Sir Alexander Forrester Inglis Cochrane the sixth son of the 8th Earl of Dundonald, Cochrane was cousin to his namesake Sir Thomas John Cochrane who also pursued a naval career and became Governor of Louisiana. The family fortune had been spent by 1793 and the family estate was sold to cover debts. Cochrane spent much of his early life in Culross, Fife, where his family had an estate. There is now a bust in his honour outside the Culross Town House.

Through the influence of his uncle, Alexander Cochrane, he was listed as a member of the crew on the books of four Royal Navy ships starting when he was five years old. This common, though unlawful practice (called false muster), was a tactic to have on record some of the length of service necessary before he could be made an officer, if and when he joined the Navy. His father secured him a commission in the British Army at an early age, but Cochrane preferred the Navy, which he joined upon the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars.

Cochrane had a rather mixed record during the wars with the French. On the one hand, he was recognized as serving with bravery and panache, and his daring helped win many a prize for the ships he served upon. On the other hand, he often came into conflict with other officers and was seen as impertinent, disrespectful, and insubordinate. He was reprimanded about as often as he was commended.

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He managed through luck (and the favor of Admiral Nelson, who admired his daring), to remain in service throughout the wars until the death of Napoleon. He then went on half-pay and ran for Parliament as a Radical, winning a seat where he served in the opposition until the outbreak of the Hellas Revolution, when he took leave of politics to fight in the war. After the Hellene victory, he was lauded by both Hellenes and British for his heroism and was quickly returned to Parliament upon his triumphal return.

Upon Cochrane's father's death in 1830, he resigned from Commons to take his father's seat in the House of Lords, but soon was in conflict with that reactionary group until the Reform Revolution of 1832, when new liberal lords were appointed. Then Cochrane became a prominent leader in that august house.

The outbreak of the Slaver Revolt in the mid 1830s was particularly galling to Cochrane, who felt the initial stages of the war were bumbled. Thus, when approached to resume active service and take command as Admiral, he jumped at the chance. As history knows, his aggressive and innovative leadership turned the tide of the war against Farragut's Confederationist navy and help bring the war to a swift conclusion.
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The theory of Diversification through Reproductive Survival had many names and many fathers in the early 20th century, but clearly the most effective popularizer of the theory was also one of its most controversial, the deposed Counsul of the still-born Confederation of Southern America, Langdon Cheves. At the end of the Southern Civil War, Cheves managed through a harrowing journey across British controlled North Carolina to cross over the border into Virginia in the United States of America. While Cheves found mixed reception to his presence on American soil, he had enough friends north of the border and enough notoriety to keep himself out of British hands. He would live out the rest of his life in exile in the USA, where he supported himself by writing and lecturing. At first most of his material focused on the South's failed fight for freedom from Great Britain, but he eventually shifted to a more esoteric subject, the proliferation of species through natural means. His ideas on the topic had apparently formed early, and been influenced by prominent Carolinian physician W.C. Wells, who had initially broached the subject in his writings on the development of the various races of man. Cheves also claimed inspiration from his observations of some of the bizarre plant life found in the Carolinas, such as the Venus Flytrap. Whatever the reasons, his talks popularized the idea, and certain branches of the Deist movement took it to heart (whilst others found inspiration in the previous works of French luminary Jean-Baptiste Lamarck).
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The loyalist yell was a battle cry used by Loyalists in British Southern America during the Southern Civil War. Loyalist soldiers would use the yell during charges to intimidate the enemy and boost their own morale, although the yell had other uses. The exact sound of the yell is unknown and the subject of much speculation and debate. Likewise, the origin of the yell is uncertain.

Units were nicknamed for their apparent ability to yell during battle. The 5th Company of Carolina Cavalry "Smith's Cavalry" were given the nom de guerre of "Comanches" for the way they sounded during battle.

The sound of the yell has been the subject of much discussion and debate. Southern Civil War soldiers, upon hearing the yell from afar, would quip that it was either “Grimes, or a rabbit,” suggesting a similarity between the sound of the yell and a rabbit’s scream. The rebel yell has also been likened to the scream of a catamount. The yell is often portrayed as a simple “yee-haw” and in some parts of British Southern America, "yee-ha". The yell has also been described as similar to Native American cries, and indeed the allied civilized tribes were also known to use the loyalist yell. One description says it was a cross between an "Indian whoop and wolf-howl".

One classic Southern Civil War novel has a character giving the yell sounding as a "yee-aay-eee" upon hearing the war had started. Yet another from the same period, by contrast, has the yell sounding as a high pitched "yay-hoo" repeated several times in rapid succession. Some newspaper accounts document several Loyalist veterans performing the yell as a high-pitched "Wa-woo-woohoo, wa-woo woohoo."

In "The Slaver Uprising," Jones, notes that historians aren't quite sure how the yell sounded, being described as "a foxhunt yip mixed up with sort of a banshee squall". He recounts the story of a Loyalist veteran invited to speak before a ladies' society dinner. They asked him for a demonstration of the loyalist yell, but he refused on the grounds that it could only be done "at a run", and couldn't be done anyway with "a belly full of food". Anecdotes from former Confederationist soldiers described the yell with reference to "a peculiar corkscrew sensation that went up your spine when you heard it" along with a claim that "if you claim you heard it and weren't scared that means you never heard it".

Given the differences in descriptions of the yell, there may have been several distinctive yells associated with the different companies and their respective geographical areas.

The yell has often been linked to Native American cries. Loyalist soldiers may have either imitated or learned the yell from Native American groups, many of whom sided with the British. Some Texas units mingled Comanche war woops into their own, Confederationist version of the yell. The yell has also been associated with hunting cries. Perhaps loyalist soldiers imitated the cries of their hunting dogs.

Another plausible source of the loyalist yell is that it derived from the screams traditionally made by Scottish Highlanders when making a Highland charge during battle. At the Battle of Killiecrankie "Dundee and the Chiefs chose to employ perhaps the most effective pre-battle weapon in the traditional (highland) arsenal - the eerie and disconcerting howl," also "The terror was heightened by their wild plaided appearance and the distinctive war-cry of the Gael - a high, savage whooping sound...." Earlier documentation during the Roman conquests of Britain suggest the use of a particular yell uttered by the northern Celtic tribes of the region, in conjunction with wearing blue woad body paint and no clothing. The notion that the rebel yell was Celtic in origin is further supported by the fact that in 1790 there was a well defined ethnic division between the Northern States of the US and the Southern Provinces of the BSA. In New England 75 percent of the people were Anglo-Saxons in origin, while Celts outnumbered Anglo-Saxons in the South two to one."

A third explanation, with special reference to the rebel yells uttered by the Loyalist Bands of North Carolina is that the rebel yell was partly adapted from the specialized cries used by men experienced in fox hunting, and another described his unit's yell as "a single long cry as from the leader of a pack of hounds."

Considering the existence of many differing versions of the yell, it may have multiple origins.

Contemporary Accounts:

  • One of the earliest accounts of use of the yell comes from an order that was given during a bayonet charge to "yell like furies", which was instrumental in routing the slaver forces under Pinckney back to Charleston.
  • A diary noted, “Then arose that do-or-die expression, that maniacal maelstrom of sound; that penetrating, rasping, shrieking, blood-curdling noise that could be heard for miles and whose volume reached the heavens–such an expression as never yet came from the throats of sane men, but from men whom the seething blast of an imaginary hell would not check while the sound lasted.”
  • A newspaper account recorded, "It paragons description, that yell! How it starts deep and ends high, how it rises into three increasing crescendos and breaks with a command of battle."
  • North Carolina Magazine account, “In an instant every voice with one accord vigorously shouted the ‘Loyalist yell,’ which was so often heard on the field of battle. ‘Woh-who-ey! who-ey! who-ey! Woh-who-ey! who-ey!’ etc. (The best illustration of this "true yell" which can be given the reader is by spelling it as above, with directions to sound the first syllable ‘who’ short and low, and the second "who" with a very high and prolonged note deflecting upon the third syllable "ey.")”
  • Another journal account, "At last it grew too dark to fight. Then away to our left and rear some of Randolph's people set up 'the loyalist yell'. It was taken up successively and passed around to our front, along our right and in behind us again, until it seemed almost to have got to the point whence it started. It was the ugliest sound that any mortal ever heard -- even a mortal exhausted and unnerved by two days of hard fighting, without sleep, without rest, without food and without hope..."
  • A war correspondent for The New York Times describes the loyalist yell as follows: “..the British Loyalist soldiers cannot cheer, and what passes muster for that jubilant sound is a shrill ringing scream with a touch of the Indian war-whoop in it.”
After the Slaver Uprising, the faithful Loyalists were again honored with the post-nomial, United Empire, after their names. The United Empire honor was raised in precedence, and divided into two orders:

  • First Order - Loyal during the Slaver Uprising, not descended from American Revolution Loyalists
  • Second Order - Loyal during the Slaver Uprising, descended from American Revolution Loyalists

In addition, for those who had served with especial distinction in America, a new order of knighthood was established, the Order of the United Empire, which was considered associated with the previously mentioned orders.

Military Coronet of the United Empire:
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John Howe U.E. (pre-slaver post-nomial)
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John Howe was the patriarch of one of the most prominent Loyalist families in North Carolina. Originally a native of Boston, he was an ardent supporter of the Crown during the American Revolution, printing broadsides against the Rebels that would see him banished from the State of Massachusetts. He fled with his family to the British Province of North Carolina in the closing days of the Revolution. There he set up a printing business and established two newspaper, the New Bern Journal, and magazine, the North Carolina Magazine, in the provincial capital, New Bern.

John Howe died in 1836, just prior to the declaration of the Confederation and the war. His son, John Howe, Jr. continued in his father's footsteps, remaining steadfastly loyal to the Crown. Their printing establishment was burned to the ground by rebels and he fled to Loyalist strongholds further inland. He continued printing throughout the war, lambasting the renegades with a crusading zeal. After the retaking of New Bern by the British, John Howe, Jr. restored the family business, and would play a leading role in the future of British Southern America.

John Howe, Jr. U.E.2.
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After the suppression of the Slaver Uprising and the dissolution of the Confederation of Southern America, there was a minor diaspora from the British South and the Texan lands. Some of the slaveocrats who had borne arms against the Crown could not abide in the land of their failure, surrounded by the blacks they had sought to keep slaves. A few who saw the end coming had managed to move them and some of their slave chattel to Portuguese Maranhao. More who lost everything in defeat were more likely to simply move north to the USA. Also liable to head north were those who had cared less about slavery and more about freedom from overseas rule. These southern immigrants often gravitated to the Democratic party which still had anti-British tendencies. The west, both of the United States and of the British South (which now included Texas, New Mexico, and California), also held some attraction for those trying to start a new life after their failure in the revolt.

Ironically, some freedmen in the British South would also head west to try to build a new life, and former slaver and slave would sometimes find themselves standing shoulder to shoulder fighting against hostile Indians in the region. However, there would be other venues for blacks seeking a new life than the British west.
Shortly after the Slaver Uprising, a hysteria spread over the Civilized Tribes of the newly formed Indiana as rumors of witchcraft spread among the peoples. It is believed to have started with rumors of the killer witch, Raven Mocker, walking the battlefields at the end of the war. Soon, however, tribe members were accusing each other of being ordinary witches, and it did not stay confined to the tribes. The next known outbreaks were in the Southern Appalachians where the Scots Irish spoke of the evil eye and fear of curses. Newspapers picked up on the stories and spread them throughout British America. Soon, the people of colour of the mainland and the Caribbean were also actively scrutinizing their neighbors for signs of voodoo against them. Eventually, the panic died out, with only occasional stories by 1842. The more 'scientifically minded' Americans to the north scoffed at the superstition of the British colonies, but sales of witch stories from the South reached new records in the North. Some trace the birth of the Southern Gothic style of novel to this period.

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The state of Missouri was the first state west of the Mississippi. Starting at the border with British Southern America at 36-30, it had as its eastern boundary the Mississippi river. The state's western boundary was a straight line north from the BSA border to the juncture of the Missouri and Kansas rivers, then following the Missouri river north until the parallel at 40 degrees and 30 minutes north. This parallel then formed the northern border of the new state. It was later discovered that the border at 40-30 created a small area cut off from the rest of Missouri by the Des Moines River. When the State of Mississippi formed to the north, this No-Man's-Land would be ceded to it.
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The 20 year period between 1820 and 1840 was known in Spain as the 'Age of the Captive Kings'. Ferdinand VII was restored to the Spanish throne by the Congress of Vienna, but by 1820 his erraticism, misrule, and complete failure to reform led to a revolt by liberal elements joined by the pragmatists of the center and even the right, many of them veterans of the Peninsular War. Ferdinand's supporters on the far right and the royalist purists were overthrown and a reform minded Cortes formed. Ferdinand VII was made to accept a liberal constitution and was thereafter held a virtual (though comfortable) prisoner of his own government, as as his heir apparent, his brother Carlos. King Ferdinand VII's appeals to the Great Powers fell upon deaf ears at the time, and Ferdinand turned inward, essentially becoming a dissipated hedonistic wretch, dying in 1829.

His successor, Carlos Vth, was if anything even more wed to the principals of the divine right of kings, but where Ferdinand was fickle and vindictive, Carlos was steadfast and pious. King Carlos V refused to acknowledge the constitutional limits of his kingship, but the Cortes feared to depose him and proclaim a republic, as this might be the one thing that would rouse the Great Powers from their non-interference. Over the course of 11 years, the King won the grudging respect of the Cortes, and the Cortes, which brought Spain back to a semblance of prosperity, won over Carlos V in the end. In 1840, a compromise was struck between the King and the Cortes, increasing the role of the King in government in return for his recognition of the Constitution de jure and not just de facto. In the 1840s, Spain drifted more to the right, and King Carlos V came to be seen as a strong ruler both in Spain and on the International stage, though he kept his word and never again threatened to overturn the Constitution of Spain.
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Canton factories

The British had no more ended their war in the Western Hemisphere when a new conflict threatened across the world in the Eastern Hemisphere. China had been a major target for trade for the Western powers for a long time, but the West had little to offer the Middle Kingdom. So the British East India Company resorted to supplementing their trade with opium, which they shipped through to China by circuitous routes once the Chinese Emperor forbade its open trade at the factories of Canton, the only place foreigners were allowed to trade with Chinese in Qing China. However, the combination of a further crack-down on opium smuggling by Chinese officials under the leadership of Lin Zexu and the strain on British funds by the Slaver Uprising put China and Britain on a collision course resulting in 1840 in the Opium War.
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The well blooded, modern navy that had won against Confederationist forces just a few years before tore through the Chinese War Junks like rice paper, demonstrating in an undeniable manner that China had slipped behind the West in prowess.

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The war lasted only a year before the Chinese were forced to come to terms. Britain was able to break the monopolies and open up trade directly with the Chinese, have right to learn the Chinese language, gained Hong Kong as a British base, but ironically, no definite agreement could be made on the opium issue, which was left for another day.
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A fall line is the site between an upland region of continental bedrock and an alluvial coastal plain. A fall line is particularly important where a river crosses it, as this is often the point where a river can't be navigated due to the presence of rapids or falls. In the early industrial age, this point on a river was also important as it often provided the ideal location for water-wheel driven mills and factories. The two factors combined made for the almost guaranteed growth of towns and even cities where rivers crossed a fall line along the east coast of North America.

Cities and Towns along the Piedmont – Coastal Plain fall line in the United States of America and British Southern America include, from north to south:

United States of America:
British Southern America:
The Industrial Age initially ran on iron. For many uses iron was adequate, but for the burgeoning dreams of the 19th century, only steel would do. However, steel was difficulty to produce, and the quantities produced easily outstripped demand by the 1840s, spurring a race for a means to mass produce steel.

One of the first successes in steel production was achieved by young immigrant and inventor William 'Steel Bill' Hauxwell. He grew up in Yorkshire and migrated to the United States as a teen in the 1830s, wanting to avoid the troubles in British Southern America. He settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania a hotbed of ironworking. He was a self-made man, who came up with the idea of bubbling air from underneath molten iron to keep down fuel costs, but in the process found the process produced a goodly quantity of steel. The Hauxwell Process became the pre-eminent method of creating steal during the 1840s.
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Some historians cite the establishment of a permanent Russian presence on Sakhalin by 1812 as the beginning of the end for Seclusion and the Shogunate in Japan. Though the power of the Shoguns would continue for decades to come, this failure of the 1808 declaration of Ezochi, Sakhalin, and the Kuriles as sovereign territory of Japan was seen by many intriguers as a sign of weakness. Moves by the Shogunate to strengthen its hold on Ezochi through direct rule may have backfired, because the displaced Matsumae clan became more responsive to Russian influence and is believed by many historians to be behind the smuggling that began in Ezochi at that time, though the only people caught at the activity were Ainu. Continual rebuffing of Russian overtures for trade contributed to Russian interest in smuggling as a way to gain Japanese goods. By 1840, serriptitious trade with the Russians and perceived weakness of the Shogunate combined to lead to the Ezochi Revolution. Fueled mostly by Russian weapons, the rebellion did well at first, but was doomed to failure eventually given the disproportionate numbers involved. However, a direct entreaty by the Matsumae to the Russian Empire was used as a diplomatic excuse to send a fleet to Edo. Under threat of the more advanced weapons of the Russian navy, the Shogun was forced to open Japan to some foreign (Russian) trade through Ezochi, and to acknowledge the autonomy of Ezochi with Russia as guarantor, though Ezochi officially still remained part of the Japanese nation. The days of the Shogunate at that point were clearly numbered.

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The Ainu People of Ezochi
As more states entered the Union with the growth of the old Northwest Territory, it became clear that adding further stripes to the flag would become impractical at some point. Therefore Congress approved a reversion of the flag back to a twelve stripe format to represent the original twelve colonies, while the stars would continue to increase as new states were added to the United States of America.

An example of an American flag during the twenty state phase of American History:
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Jorge Quintana was first President of the Second Mexican Republic. He worked tirelessly to knit together the Mexican states into a true Federal Republic, skillfully balancing state and federal power in his executive capacity, while his allies in the Mexican legislature did likewise. The Amnesty of 1839 did much to start restoring the nation, as did the peace. Mexican Yucatan especially was prospering with its vital Sisal crop, that the British Empire and USA bought in bulk for its use in rope and twine.
Sisal Plant
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The Nicaraguan Pacific rail-line helped increase Caribbean-Pacific trade which in turn helped bring much needed money to the Mexican economy. Another Caribbean to Pacific railway was built by American interests in the Mexican state of Panama, and provided yet another trade route for the region again increasing the influx of business to the former war-torn nation. The Mexicans themselves planned a third Pacific-Caribbean railroad through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
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While a few half-hearted insurrections were attempted during the Quintana years, they were not popular and easily crushed by the veterans who filled the ranks of the Mexican Army (much reduced from the time of the war, but still potent). President Quintana proved himself an able statesman, and in the mode of his role-model and namesake, George Washington of the United States of America, he served only two terms and then retired from public life, setting a precedent for the Mexican state. Sadly, within a year of his stepping down from office, Quintana was dead. It was commonly said that he had lived for the nation, having poured out his life in its service.

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Jorge Quintana just prior to his death​
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Gregor MacGregor was a Scottish soldier, adventurer and colonizer who fought in the South American struggle for independence. Upon his return to England in 1825, he claimed to be Toqui of Patagonia (also known as the Territory of Patagonia). Patagonia was a South American region that with MacGregor's help, drew investors and eventually colonists.

MacGregor was born in Edinburgh, Scotland 1785. His parents were Captain Daniel MacGregor and Ann Austin. In 1800, he joined the Royal Navy and served until the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. By this time, MacGregor had heard about the independence movements in South America and in the United Provinces of South America in particular, where he arrived in 1816 with the rank of Captain.

Gregor MacGregor went from South America back to Edinburgh, in 1825 and pronounced that he had been created Toqui (war leader or prince) of Patagonia, an independent land of the native Mapuche on the southernmost region of South America. The leaders of the Mapuche, the loncos, had granted him fertile land with untapped resources, a small number of settlers of British origin, and cooperative natives eager to please, or so MacGregor claimed. He had created the beginnings of a country with civil service, army and democratic government. Now he needed settlers and investment and had come back to the British Empire to give people the opportunity. At the time, British merchants were all too eager to enter the South American market that Spain had denied to them. The region had already become more promising in the wake of wars of South American independence, when the new governments of New Granada and the UPSA had issued bonds in London Royal Exchange to raise money.

Scottish high society welcomed the colourful figure of MacGregor, and he and his Mapuche wife received many invitations. MacGregor claimed descent of clan MacGregor and that Rob Roy MacGregor had been his direct ancestor. He enhanced his allure by telling about his exploits in the Peninsular War and later in the service of José de San Martín and South American independence. In Edinburgh, MacGregor began to sell land rights for 3 shillings and 3 pence per acre (£0.16/acre or £40.15/km²). A worker's weekly wage at the time was about £1, which meant that the price was very generous. The price steadily rose to 4 shillings (£0.20). Many people willing to have a new start in the new land signed on with their families. MacGregor also opened land offices in Cardiff and Bristol. In 1826 MacGregor raised a loan with the total of £200,000 on behalf of the Patagonian government. It was in the form of 2,000 bearer bonds worth £100 each.

The Legation of Patagonia chartered a ship and Edinburgh merchants received contracts to provision the ship with food and ammunition. In 1827 the first British settlers, many Scottish and Welsh, departed for Patagonia. They included doctors, lawyers and other professionals who had been promised appropriate positions in the Patagonian civil service. Some had also purchased officer commissions in the Patagonian army.

The first settlers found the conditions much more rudimentary than they had expected. A few British deserters from Sandy Point had migrated up to join the Mapuche, and would later be joined by ex-convicts transported to the Magellanic Region from Britain. The settlers struggled for the first few decades, but MacGregor still proved charismatic, and more settlers arrived to tame the raw land. Sheep joined the natives herds of cattle, and a nascent society fusing Mapuche, Scottish, Welsh, and English (with a smattering of Spanish and Portuguese speakers from the north) began to form.

The UPSA attempted once to claim the territory, pushing the frontier further to the south than had been previously claimed. Much to the surprise of many Patagonians who had become disenchanted with MacGregor, Gregor MacGregor himself sailed forth to meet the South Americans in battle. He died leading his rag-tag army in battle, the last of the Toqui to do so. In 1840, the British Crown claimed the remaining lands of Patagonia and combined them with the Magellanic Straits and the Falklands to create the Province of British Patagonia.

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Maps of the World circa 1840s:
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British Southern America had been rent assunder by civil war in the 1830s. By 1840, half of the BSA had achieved responsible government, whilst the other half languished under direct military rule and the whim of Parliament. While from afar, the regions of British Southern America may have seemed homogenous blocks of Loyalist and Rebel, the truth on the ground was far from as simple. This was quickly discovered when the 3rd Baron Dorchester, direct descendant of Sir Guy Carlton, was sent by Parliament to investigate the causes of the Southern Civil War (aka the Slaver Uprising) and the prevention of future calamities. Baron Dorchester found on his journey to the British provinces that many loyalists who had bled for King and Country now found themselves more disenfranchised than ever before. After touring the region, Dorchester returned to England where he presented his report (thereafter referred to as the Dorchester Report). In it, he noted that while slavery and lust for gold had been the impetus for the revolt, the greatest threat to the future of the provinces was unrest over representation, which could in future turn even Loyalist families to intrigue, and threatened to embroil the United States of America if another conflict came to pass. His recommendations harkened back to his grandfather's call for a unification of British Southern America under the supervision of a Governor-General, but added to that the necessity for responsible government in a union of provinces that would slake the thirst of Southerners for representation yet act as a deterrent should the Americans to the north ever turn avaricious eyes towards British lands. He noted the precedent already being set in Texas, Carleton, and Indiana, and recommended that these provinces, united with those who had rebelled, would provide the best guarantee of stability for the future. He also presented to Parliament a petition by many prominant Loyalists, calling for such representative government.

Baron Dorchester Presents United Empire Loyalist Petition to Parliament:
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The 1840 Newark Conference kicked off the Women's Suffrage movement in the United States of America and thus the world.

Prior to 1840, many politically conscious women had been active in the anti-slavery movement. With the successes of the British Reform Revolution and the quashing of the Slaver Uprising, it seemed that slavery was finally abolished (at least in North America). It seemed a natural segue for the energies of the American Abolition Movement to be transmuted into fighting the next great moral battle, the rights of women. At the 1840 conference, such important leaders as Lucretia Coffin Black, Sarah Jane Smith, and Hannah Livingston Cady.

Over the course of the 1840s, the fight for women's suffrage would take on different forms in the two main parties. In the Federalist Party, women's suffrage supporters fought to get a constitutional amendment to extend the vote to women nationwide. In the Democratic Party (which started to be shortened during the 1840s from the earlier name of Democratic-Republican), advocates focused on gaining women the right to vote in the individual states.

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The first conference on responsible government in the British South of America was called in 1841, and was originally conceived to include the regions still under military government - North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, East Florida, Bahamas, Cuba, West Florida, and Louisiana. However, on the recommendation of Lord Dorchester, representatives from Carleton, Arkansas, Jamaica, Hispaniola, Richport (in Spanish, Puerto Rico) and surprisingly, Indiana, were also invited. It did not go well.

On word that the Indiana delegation had accepted an invitation, half of the Georgian delegation walked out of the meeting. While representatives from Hispaniola attended, word had already reached the conference of demonstrations in the streets of the island against any form of union with 'slavers' on the mainland. The conference adjourned with nothing to show for it except a hard won agreement to reconvene the next year, in 1842. Even that had been questioned for a time, so was seen as some little success.

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A large issue in the United States Presidential Election of 1836 was the trouble brewing in the British South. Many Americans had greeted the move by the British to end the practice of slavery with approval, but when it appeared that there might be rebellion brewing towards the end of the campaign season, others advocated supporting any Southern insurgency, in the hopes of removing the British from their borders forever and at least having another republic to their south like Texas, or perhaps even opening the way to annexation. While the actual stances of the two main candidates was somewhat elusive, in the end the superior military experience of the Federalist candidate, Peter Buell Porter, won the day. Buell had volunteered for the War of 1804 and fought with distinction in the territories. He later on served as President John Quincy Adam's Secretary of War, giving him a strong grasp on the needs for the nation's defense. He had been particularly outspoken among his own party for the need for a strong defense against possible British aggression as well as an advocate for removal of Indians across the Mississippi to the northern territories.

His presidency was notable for the defeat of the Black Hawk Band after the death of Chief Black Hawk, as well as containing the chaos of the Slaver Uprising to the south. The Porter Administration took a strictly neutral stance in the uprising, and focused on keeping trade open with all (much to the chagrin of all sides who had hoped to block support to their various factions along the border). The US economy had experienced a strong boom during this period, profiting off the war in many different ways. Some attribute the Panic of 1839 to the overheating of the economy during those years, as well as the wild infrastructure growth of the US over the past several decades. President Porter and the Federalists in Congress moved aggressively to stabilize the American economy, and many historians would come to credit Porter for laying the groundwork for the recovery in the 1840s. However, the electorate at the time did not feel the same, and President Porter was defeated in the 1840 election. He would die only a year after his term ended, in 1842.

President Porter:
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For a variety of reasons, the second conference on Southern Federation did not take place in 1842 as promised, but in early 1843 instead. The attendees were somewhat different than those of 1841. Hispaniola due to internal politics opted out entirely. Richport also did not send a delegate, though they had planned to, a storm had delayed their delegation's sailing. The Georgia delegation sent this year had an almost completely different delegation, but came nonetheless. Most of the rest of the attendees were from the same provinces as before, with one large surprise - Texas.

Many had assumed that Texas would remain an independent province under their agreement with the British, but the Texans of their own once again proposed a closer relationship with the South, this time under the British Crown rather than a rebel banner.

No solid agreement was reached by the delegates, but a number of principles for future talks were, including a number of concessions and caveats for federation. These principles included:

  • Restoration of civil rights for rebels who swore allegiance to the crown
  • Any representatives sent from Indiana to a future federal legislature would have to be elected, not appointed by the tribes.
  • The rights of Aboriginal Americans to vote in Indiana would be preserved, but whites in the province would also be enfranchised.
  • No landowner or renter would be denied the right to vote (those who worked the land in a manorial relation, 'sharecropping' as some vulgarly called it, did not qualify).
  • Catholics would be enfranchised in Cuba, and any other province where they made up a majority of the population.
  • The Territories of New Mexico and California would remain under the jurisdiction of Texas.
  • The British Government should commit to a trans-continental railroad to connect the Pacific Coast of California with the rest of British Southern America.
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In 1843, sleepy eastern Arkansas was awakened by the discovery of diamonds near the small settlement of Fort Douglas, named after the benefactor of the Red River Colony in Arkansas, Thomas Douglas.

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Thomas Douglas​

Douglas, the younger brother of the 5th Earl of Selkirk, settled poor Highlanders in the region on the border with Texas in 1810.

The settlements remained small, especially compared to the provincial capitol of Arkansas, Petite Roche, until the discovery of diamonds in its region. Fort Douglas became a boom town, attracting prospectors from throughout the British Southern America, United States, and even further afield. However, within only a few years, the diamond craze petered out.

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In the mid 1780's, a plan was implemented to settle some of London's "Black Poor" in Sierra Leone in a "Province of Freedom." A number of black poor and, interestingly enough, white women were transported to the shore of Sierra Leone. This resettlement was preferred by many London philanthropists as a solution to continuing to financially support them in London. Many of the Black poor were stranded sailors of African and Asian descent inhabiting London. Sadly, disease and hostility from indigenous people eliminated this first group of colonists.

Freedom was resurrected in Sierra Leone in 1809 when the British chose to make it their main base of operations against the international slave trade which had been banned by Britain. Slaves from all over Africa, though predominantly Western Africa, would be liberated at sea and set free outside of Fort Freedom. They joined together and became known as Creole or Krio people.

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Cut off from their homes and traditions by the experience of slavery, they assimilated some aspects of British styles of life, but were dissatisfied with the impoverished living conditions in the region, and a revolt broke out in 1813. The revolt was only put down by the arrival of over 500 Jamaican Maroons and Hispaniola Blacks, many of whom remained and settled after their service. They blended in to help form the Krio community and together they built a flourishing trade on the West African coast. African English quickly spread across the region as a common language of trade and Christian proselytizing. British and American abolitionist movements envisioned Fort Freedom as embodying the possibilities of a post-slave trade Africa. While small overall, Sierra Leone was still one of England's largest African colonies in the early 19th century.

Fort Freedom's relative prosperity and status as a European colony, however, attracted hostility from regional tribes, and in the late 1830s they struck, taking advantage of the United Kingdom's distraction in North America. Fort Freedom was razed and many Krio had to take to the hinterlands, abandoning their homes and businesses. However, as soon as the Slaver Rebellion was defeated, the British Empire turned her attentions back to Sierra Leone. The Sable Legion, already a famed fighting force blooded in America, was shipped to Sierra Leone to repulse the indigenous invasion. The Sable Legion with Royal Navy backing quickly regained the territory of British Sierra Leone, but did not stop there. Surviving Krio flocked to the Legion's Black Banner, enamoured of their liberators, and in some cases nostalgic over the stories of their Caribbean forefathers who had quelled the rebellion. Just as the Sable Legion had absorbed many freed blacks in continental North America, so too did continental Africans enter their ranks. The Sable Legion went on to invade the lands of the surrounding tribes, extending Fort Freedom's reach by hundreds of miles. The bulk of the Sable Legion would remain in the region to fight Britain's colonial wars and maintain the peace, and would add their numbers to the Krio settlers, though other forces under the Black Banner would take part in the Wild Indian Wars of the British American Southwest.

In the 1840s, many prominent whites in British Southern America would revive the vision of resettlement of freed blacks to Africa, with Sierra Leone their target destination. Other schemes would try British Guyana closer to home, or even Black-ruled Bahia. While these resettlement plans would add to the diversity of each area, sending a dash of the British American South overseas, they were never of sufficient numbers to change the demographics of British Southern America overall.

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The history of South Africa in the 19th century was often one of conflict. The British crown assumed control of the former Dutch colony at the beginning of the century, much to the chagrin of the white Dutch settlers, often called Trekboers. Attempts to bring in British settlers (in many ways to act as buffers between African tribes and Trekboer settlers) had decidedly mixed results. Trekboer attempts to move north and east beyond British control seemed to succeed for a brief span, but the British would subsequently reassert their control.

The greatest stress on South Africa was the ending of slavery throughout the British Empire in the 1830s. When British Southern America erupted in rebellion and civil war, the Trekboers took advantage to once again move beyond nominal British control. However, the Zulus also took advantage of British distraction in British Southern America (as well as the region around Sierra Leon) to initiate a war to drive the Trekboers out of what the Zulus considered their territory. A bloody war of strike and counterstrike developed through the rest of the late 1830s and into the 1840s. By the time the Southern Civil War subsided, the Zulus had gained the upper hand, driving Trekboers back into British South Africa.

And then the Zulu made the mistake of following into British South Africa....

While there were few white units that could be spared, the newly victorious Sable Legion could. Backed up by several regiments of Sepoys from India, the Sable Legion brought modern war to the Zulus, much to their regret. Only the superior numbers of the Zulu kept them from being destroyed entirely. While the Zulu in turn inflicted more casualties on the Sable Legion than any other force to date, it was not enough to save them from defeat.

The Trekboers (or Trekkers as the name was shortened to over time) would remain a small remnant in the greater British colony. While many of the Sable Legion and Sepoy troops returned to other parts of the empire, a few units remained to defend the British peace.
The Oregon Gold Rush is in fact a misnomer, as in fact the term references a series of gold rushes that occurred in the region of the Oregon Territory starting with one of the most famous, the MacKenzie Gold Rush, in 1845. While it is believed gold had been previously found in the region of the MacKenzie River by natives and fur trappers, the Northwest Company had tried to quash most rumors of gold to prevent having its domain invaded by prospectors. However, natives traded sailors out of Gray Island gold, and the word of the precious metal spread as the sailors returned to the United States. Thus were the 'Forty-fivers' born, prospectors who dared the lengthy voyage by land and sea to seek their fortune in the lands north of the 50th parallel. While the initial gold fields petered out, a steady flow of other small sites would keep dreamers and schemers heading for the region for more than a decade, and would help spur the United States out of its economic slump, as well as increase the numbers of settlers to the American Pacific Northwest.

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Prospectors having a rare moment of relaxation during the Oregon Gold Rush
After the death of Chief Black Hawk and the US Legion's driving of Wild Indians from the region, settlement between the Mississippi and Des Moines Rivers rapidly progressed. Eventually settlers in the 1840s, centered at the city of Des Moines petitioned Congress to create a new state in the region, which came to be called Mississippi.

The State of Mississippi takes its name, of course, from the river that forms its eastern boundary. It shares its southern boundary with the State of Missouri, made by the Des Moines River to 40 degrees 30 minutes north, which parallel comprises the rest of its southern boundary. The state's western boundary is comprised of the Missouri River to the Sioux River, and then along the Sioux River to its source. The northern boundary of the state is a line drawn due east from the source of the Big Sioux to the Minnesota River, which it then follows to where it meets the Mississippi River.
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The Gitchigumee Territory has a long and odd story in American history. Located as it is on the north shore of Lake Superior (indeed, 'Gitchigumee' itself means 'Big Water' and is an American Indian term for the Lake it abuts), it is a long strip of the great north that developed through two major historical forces; fur trapping and relocation of 'Uncivilized' Indians.

Even in colonial times, the lands around the Great Lakes were prime fur areas, with both the Hudson Bay Company and the North West (later Northwest) Company vying for control of the area (until the Hudson Bay Company essentially lost the battle). A network of trappers and traders developed in the region, connecting northern Indian tribes with white trappers and traders, many of whom intermarried and their descendants, the Métis, became the dominant force in trading in the Lakes Region. As wildlife become more scarce and settlers moved in to the more southern regions around the Great Lakes, the Métis traders either moved on or settled down themselves, but the poor soil and harsher weather of the north shore of Lake Superior acted as a barrier against such change, especially with the vast north of the Hudson Territory just beyond to continue to provide furs for trade. These predominantly Francophone Métis would play an important role in the future of the Gitchigumee.

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While many natives of the USA east of the Mississippi eventually accepted assimilation and joined more or less the mainstream of American society, intermarrying with settlers of European extraction, some refused to conform to American 'civilization' and instead were forced to relocate by America's military, the Legion. At first, only a few tribes were moved to the far north, while most were moved west, predominantly west of the Mississippi. However, it soon became US policy to resettle all tribes to the Hudson Territory in the far north, including those who had previously been removed to West of the Mississippi if they would not accept American ways. The land that formed the Gitchigumee was not officially part of the Hudson Territory given it drained into Lake Superior rather than Hudson Bay, and so originally was part of the old Northwest Territory. Instead of being a settlement for Indian Tribes, the Gitchigumee became a weystation between the rest of the United States and the tribes of the Hudson Territory. Some Indians did choose to stay in the Gitchigumee, those who at the last moment regretted their decision to accept exile in the far north. Those who did go on to the Hudson Territory faced long, fierce winters, but were free to practice their way of life without interference from the Americans to the South, and could bring some of civilization's comforts to their people through continued fur trade with the Métis of the Gitchigumee (and to a lesser extent, hardy Quebeckers along the border). This trade kept the Gitchigumee a viable economy, supplemented by fishing on Lake Superior and dairy farming later, as well as money from the Federal Government for working as Indian Agents. Indeed, the entire administration of the Hudson Territory was run out of the Gitchigumee Territory.

Gitchigumee Territory and Lake Superior:
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It was in the Presidential Election of 1841 that the United States of America gained her first Franco-American President, Pierre Nicolas de Condorcet. Pierre Nicolas de Condorcet was born in Quebec to his parents, recent emigres Sophie and Nicolas de Condorcet. His father, of course, was known as a famed philosopher, mathematician, and politician, and this did not hurt Pierre's early political career - indeed, partly to capitalize on the fame of his father, the former Marquis de Condorcet, that he chose to use de Condorcet as his surname rather than the older family name of Caritat. He ran on the Democratic ticket against the incumbent President Porter. There is some dispute as to whether or not President Condorcet was the first Catholic President of the United States. He did attend Catholic Church with his wife who came from a long established French Quebec Catholic family, but it is not known whether he was ever confirmed in the church. Also throwing the question into doubt were his strong associations with prominent Deists in Quebec and elsewhere. His father, of course, was a firm atheist.
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President Pierre Nicolas de Condorcet​
The final Conference on Southern Federation occurred in 1844. There was renewed interest in the federation after Texas came out in favor of the plan, and the only major colony in North America and the Caribbean to opt out was Hispaniola.

It was agreed to petition the Crown for the formation of a federation. Almost as hotly discussed as the points of federation was the proposed name for the federation. At first, many favored referring to the federation as a new Kingdom of Southern America under the British Crown, but it was quickly realized that this might antagonize the United States to their north as well as the British Parliament. Several descendants of United Empire Loyalists whose families originally hailed from Virginia (among them Generals Grymes and Randolph) countered with 'Dominion', calling the new federation the truly faithful 'Old Dominion' of America. And so the Dominion of Southern America was decided upon as the name for the federation.

The previous points of agreement from the 1843 conference were reiterated, and a few other points were added. The final document produced is considered by historians to be the true beginning of a Southern Constitution. The points included:

  • Restoration of civil rights for rebels who swore allegiance to the crown.
  • Representatives from all provinces to the federal legislature would be elected.
  • The rights of Aboriginal Americans to vote in Indiana would be preserved, but whites in the province would also be enfranchised.
  • No landowner or renter would be denied the right to vote.
  • Catholics would be enfranchised and allowed to hold public office in provinces where they were a majority such as Louisiana, Cuba, and Richport.
  • The Territories of New Mexico and California would remain under the jurisdiction of Texas until such time as they were populous enough to become full provinces.
  • The Minor Antilles would be under Dominion jurisdiction.
  • The British Government to commit to a trans-continental railroad to connect the Pacific Coast of California with the Dominion.

The final report was sent to the Crown and Parliament, and on June 20th, 1845, the Dominion of Southern America Act was passed and a new jewel was added to the British Crown.

The Founding Fathers of the Federation (sometimes irreverently refereed to as the 'Daddies of Dominion') in alphabetical order by Province and Name:

Arkansas
Henry Johnson Conway
Thomas Rector Conway
Thomas Drew
John Hamilton Gray
Edward Palmer
Joseph Pope
Archibald Yell

Bahamas
Francis Bickerton
William Bucktrout
Mackenzie Hubard
Frank Jaram
Drake Watson

Bermuda
Toby Jaram
James Menzies
Edward Robinson
Michael Ross
Thomas Tarpley

Carleton
Neill Brown
James B. Campbell
Newton Cannon
Horatio Grymes
William Andrew Johnson
James Dean Jones
James Randolph
James Polk

Cuba
William Carter
Carlos Cepedes
Jose Heredia
Andrew Hill
Jonathan Jaram
John Thompson
Felix Varela

East Florida
James Anderson
Joseph Gray II
Thomas Heath Haviland Jr.
Donald Henley
George Mercer Johnson
Charles Maitland
James Middleton

Georgia
Edward Chandler
Howell Cobb Jr.
James Cockburn
George Rockingham Gilmer
Richard Gwatkin
John Hardcastle
George Wood

Indiana
David Evans
Greenwood Le Fleur
George Harkins
John McGillivray
William McIntosh III
John Ridge
John Ross
Buck Watie

Jamaica
J. W. Gordon
Ronald Hubard
Thomas S. Hunter
John Ritchie
Thomas Tilley
Joseph Williams

Louisiana
Paul Hebert
Andre Roman
Joseph Marshall Walker
Daniel McDougall
John Mowatt
Floyd Pitt
Samuel Levi Wells III

North Carolina
Edward Bishop Dudley
William Holden
John Howe Jr.
Reuben Settle Reid
Richard Dobbs Spaight, Jr.
George David Swain
Jonathan Worth
Robert Brank Vance

Richport
Primo Belvis
J. Philip Benjamin
Phineas Bland
James Carter
Juan P. Duarte

South Carolina
Seth Allan
Robert Brown
Alexander George Campbell
Benjamin Carey
Harold Corbin
Barnabas Drew Henegan
George McDuffie

Texas
Moses Austin Jr.
John Brown
Sam Carson
John Galt
Isaac Brock Hamilton
J. D. Henderson
Hugh Macdonald

West Florida
Benjamin Fitzpatrick
James Henderson
Joseph Hunter Johnson
Hugh Macdonald
Bruce Miller
George William Pitt
William Sharkey
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The earliest European contact with the Hawaiians was through the British, a relationship that would gradually grow over the years. While initially discovered by the British in the late 18th century, one of the first permanent contacts with the West were missionaries from the new Deist Christian denominations developing in the USA. Deist missionaries were treated cordially, but had little impact on the Hawaiians. Contacts with Russia were the next in line of European contacts, leading to a trading site in Kauii, but otherwise had little impact. The British were the most successful, however, returning to the islands with Anglican and Methodist missionaries who made a real impact on the royalty and peoples of Hawaii, converting many to Protestantism. The British also persuaded the Hawaiians to revoke he Russian trading mission in Kauii after collusion between the leaders of Kauii and the Russians to overthrow the rule of Oahu was discovered. In the 1840s, with the rise of the Dominion of Southern American and the establishment of trading ports in China, the British found the utility of a weystation more to the north of greater importance. The British and Hawaiians reached an accord, leading to the leasing of the Harbors of Oahu to the British Royal Navy and making Hawaii a protectorate of the British Empire.

The Flag of the Kingdom of Hawaii was clearly inspired by that of the British East India Company, but instead of 13 alternating stripes, it had 9, representing the nine islands of Hawaii.
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The debate over the location for the new Capital of the Dominion of Southern America was a heated one. While the strongest bastions of Loyalism had been in the interior and the north, these regions were less accessible to the rest of the Dominion and especially to London. On the other hand, the coastal regions of the mainland had been some of the most active in rebellion, presumably due to the large amount of the cotton trade that passed through the ports and the many plantations in the regions. On the other hand, enough Loyalists were in those regions (and backed by British regulars) to make these more accessible options viable. A location central to the DSA in general but accessible to sea and rail was most desired. Among the finalists for the location for the capital was a new city to be constructed along the Texas/Louisiana border (Texas needed to be accessible but many other DSA feared Texan dominance if the capital was placed there), New Orleans (gateway to the Mississippi) in Louisiana, Mobile in West Florida, and Pensacola in West Florida. However, the prevailing wisdom was that the location should not also be a provincial capital, provide ready access to the interior, west and east, and Caribbean, and that it should be relatively secure from fear of flooding. In the end, the location of Baton Rouge in West Florida was chosen to be the new Capital. Both West Florida and Louisiana contributed territory to establish the new Dominion's Capital.
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The Flag of the State of Rhode Island evolved over time, but in essence remained the same. It featured on a blue background the Rhode Island symbol of the golden anchor as well as the motto of Rhode Island, "Hope."
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Relations with Wild Indians in the Provinces west of the Mississippi had been initially shaped by Texas. When the Texans gained independence from Mexico, initially they had reasonable relations with Indians in the region, who had sometimes had peace and sometimes war with the Spanish and the Mexicans after them. However, when Andrew Jackson became president of Texas (and later Counsul of the Confederation), things took a decidedly more confrontational course. While Jackson espoused respect for native cultures publicly, he also stated that he felt that Texans and Natives could not share the land, and sponsored their removal to the west; the desolation of New Mexico. The tribes of the Caddo confederacy, rather than deal with Jackson, migrated to western Arkansas Province. The Comanche had a much looser structure than other major tribes, and under Jacksonian pressure the southern and central bands took different tacks. The central ones close to Arkansas moved north into the region, in some cases blending with the Comanche already there and the Caddo who joined them. The southern bands, however, were more likely to migrate or be forced to the west and the New Mexico territory. This brought them into further contact and conflict with the Navajo peoples who were the predominant group in New Mexico. When the Southern Rebellion against Britain broke out, many of those tribes of western Arkansas fought the Confederationists, though saying they sided with the British may have been an overstatement.

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The Provinces of the Dominion of Southern America, in the aftermath of the slaver rebellion, vacillated between concilliation and additional pressure on the western tribes. Many of the Caddo derived tribes found some accomodation with the whites moving into the region of western Arkansas. The Comanche bands in Texas administered New Mexico, due to their raiding ways, were as often or not forced into more and more marginalized lands and to the west, even as far as eastern Albion Province. Some of the migratory bands of the Dene peoples, Apaches, clashed with the Comanche, some merged together with them. The Navajo branch of the Dene peoples were actually more likely to side with the Dominion, their more settled ways better meshing with the society of the Dominion.
The foundation of the Dominion was the trigger for the Great North American Transcontinental Railroad Race.

As part of the compromises that led to the formation of the Dominion, British support for a railroad from Texas to the Pacific was promised. The final agreed to route was as much if not more due to political compromise as to the geography of the continent.

It was planned that the terminus of the route would be San Diego, but a direct route there was not possible due to concerns about the disposition of the British end of the Central Valley of the Californias. It was felt by British and Southerner alike that if a guaranteed route for settlement into the valley was not established, the region would become American by default from immigration from the North, and thus the rail route was planned to head north along the coast to have a spur going into the valley. The route then planned to follow the already established Texan Road to Texas. However, there was also the problem of what route the railroad would take from Texas to the 'Old South' of the Dominion. The obvious route would be one that connected with the already established transportation routes and population centers that hugged the coast. However, these had also been heavily involved in the Slaver Uprising, whereas the highest concentrations of Loyalists were to be found among the border provinces. In the end, a compromise was struck here - the development of a northern route starting in North Carolina, crossing the Appalachian Mountains into Carleton, then jumping the Mississippi to Arkansas. In addition, improvements and additions would be made to existing railroads from Georgia along the Gulf Provinces to cross the Mississippi in Louisiana. After entering Texas, the two routes would begin to converge towards the crossing of the Trinity River at a site surveyors would name New Dover inspired by the nearby white chalk cliffs of the area. From there the route would be one, converging with the Texas Road, though a spur would be constructed from the Southern route to the Texas coast.

However, the official government route would not be the only proposed transcontinental railroad either on the continent or in the DSA.

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The California Gold Rush overlapped with the series of gold strikes called the Oregon Gold Rush. There were persistent rumors of gold south of the Oregon in the hills north of the Central Valley of California in the last half of the 1840s, but it was not until 1848 that verified gold finds were made in the rivers flowing off the Sierra Nevada Mountains that started a major migration of miners and those who would supply them to the region, some coming down from the Oregon, but more coming by sea through San Francisco. The Oregon strikes would sputter on and off for a decade, but the California Gold Rush would burn white hot for several years steadily. Unlike in Oregon where the miners and the farmers were at odds, in American California the farmers who followed the miners united in common cause in their efforts to become a state in the Union.
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The United States of America did not miss the implications of the plans of the British in their Dominion to the South. American migration to the Pacific Coast had long exceeded that of the Texans and the other Southerners of British Southern America. However, many Americans feared that if the British Dominion was the first to successfully build a transcontinental railroad then this balance would change, perhaps even leading to increased friction on the Pacific Coast between the two.

An American Transcontinental Railroad was one of the few issues of true bipartisanship in the USA. The Federalists supported the issue as part of their general commitment to internal improvements for the nation. The Democrats supported it to continue the opening of the west for their primarily agrarian supporters. The two parties did differ over how much financial support the Republic should provide versus private funding.

The majority of the route was obvious, coursing across the center of the nation from the transport hub of Chicago due West through Illinois and Mississippi through the territories along the wagon trail toward the American Pacific. But whether the trail then would veer North towards Oregon or South towards American California was a point of contention. Once word of the official route of the British Transcontinental Railroad was announced, the Americans decided to do both, though with the branch to California to be constructed first. The two branches were planned to meet at the Northwest Company's Fort Decision, the traditional last departure point for both destinations.
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Fort Decision​
The use of indentured servants from India began in the 1830s, with the first workers going to labor starved British Australia. Even before the end of the Slaver Uprising, the practice spread to British Guyana and nearby islands. The practice would explode in the 1840s and 1850s, being seen as a viable alternative to now defunct slave labor.

Plantations in the Dominion had undergone a transformation in the aftermath of the Southern Civil War. Loyalist planters by and large converted their slave plantations to neo-manorial systems similar to those of the Virginians (who themselves had borrowed the practice from the seguerial system of Quebec). Many of the freedmen stayed on working the plantations much as they had before in return for a share of the crop, which often they sold back to their landlords who would act as a broker to sell the crops on the market. While this still left many freedmen dependent on their landlords, those who abused the relationship often found themselves without tenants, who could find places on other plantations for their labor. Indeed, several Loyalists who had not been planters prior to the war had taken advantage of bankrupt Slavocrats who had sided with the rebellion to buy their plantations become planters themselves, though these holdings were much less likely to still have the majority of their former slaves still in situ, as they often had abandoned the holdings of those who would have kept them property for greener pastures out west or on established Loyalist plantations. Other slaver plantations were bought out by British investors, who served as absentee landlords.

It was these newer planters who often turned to Indian indentured workers to man their new found property. Ironically, it would as often as not be freed blacks who only years before were the workers on these fields to whom the new planters would turn to as overseers of these new Indian workers.

Of course, the start of construction on the Dominion's transcontinental railroad would demand much more manual labor, which while in the East many blacks would work on, in the West far more of the labor would come from India.

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In the wake of the Slaver Uprising, several slaver plantations went bankrupt and were sold off, in many cases to loyalist planters who they had fought against during the civil war. However, there were also many British speculators who bought up plantations in British Southern America. Among them were a few who sought to bring tea cultivation as a business to North America. Perhaps it was inevitable that South Carolina, with it's warm climate and acidic soil, but even more to the point, large number of defeated slavocrats, would become the main area of tea cultivation in the early Dominion.
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Race, Religion, and Class in the early Dominion were complex in their effects on society and politics.

As with the Mother Country, Class was the dominating factor in Southern society, albeit moving between classes was easier than in the UK, if not as fluid as in the USA.

Loyalist Planter families and British officials were at the top of the class pyramid. Most of these were of the Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, or Scottish race and the Anglican religion, though in Louisiana and the Caribbean Provinces the Latin (French and Spanish descent) and Catholic members of the upper echelon existed, and of course in Indiana the Civilized Indian (though often admixtured with one of the white races) were prominent, though even in these other groups the key to greater position was to speak educated English and some would convert to Anglican for ease of advancement at the Federal level. Though rare, some Blacks had reached this level of prominence even in the early days of the Dominion, though it was more often those of mixed blood who would reach this rarified height of the social strata.

Tradesmen and small farmers comprised the middle class, and had a more diverse racial and religious background, with Scottish, Scots-Irish, Irish, Welsh, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, French, Spanish, and Civilized Indian and Free Black, though it was more common to see these last two races mixed with white races in this class. While Anglican in the north and Catholic in the south were the most common religions, there were also Baptists, Methodists, and others seen in this group, even the occasional Deist, especially in Texas and the western territories.

The lower class was comprised of laborers and tenent farmers. The majority of this class were Black, but there were significant numbers of Civilized Indians and various members of the white races, and many mixed race members of this class as well. Their religions ran the spectrum of Christian denominations and even some nativist beliefs! Also in this class would be those Eastern Indians who ended their indenture, and practiced the Hindu religion. However, in the decades to come, Eastern Indians would begin to work their way up the social strata.

Outside of the class system in a way were the indentured servants of India, who tended to be looked down upon by all the members of Dominion society, and the Wild Indians of the Western frontier, who were locked upon in various ways, but in general were looked down upon, especially by the Civilized Indian who saw them as an unreformed reminder of the past.

If one imagines the wealthy, landed, educated, Anglo-Saxon Anglican man as the epitome of Dominion society, it is easy to see how the variations in social standing related to how many degrees of separation one was from this theoretical ideal of Southern society.

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Many trace the origins of the Royal Southern American Rangers to the Ranger troop first developed by the Austins to protect settlers coming to Texas. A group noted for toughness but uprightness in a land that could kill a man in a minute, the Rangers lost many a man to the army when Jackson led the Texans to battle in the Southern Civil War. However, there were those who remained to protect the western frontier, and they would make up the nucleus of a new force, commissioned by the Crown, to bring law to the wild frontiers in Texas and the territories governed from Texas, namely New Mexico and British California, and would even be called upon to help in remote western Arkansas. The RSAR became an emblem of the Dominion's west.

A contingent of Royal Southern American Rangers, out of formal dress, on patrol in New Mexico Territory.
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The gold rushes on the Pacific Coast of North America had interesting and sometimes contradictory effects on the formation of the first US states on the Pacific. From the beginning of US dominance in the region, the Northwest Company had been the largest force shaping the region, with their virtual monopoly on the fur trade. However, slowly but surely settlers, mainly farmers, did arrive in the region even before the Oregon Gold Rush. The number of farmers increased in the southern portions of the Oregon Territory, spurred by the numbers of miners arriving in the north of the Oregon. While the Northwest Company had traditionally strove to keep mining out of the region, the resourceful company quickly adapted to the situation and became the main supplier of the miners, importing goods and purchasing produce from the settlers to the south of Gray's Island, the Northwest Company's headquarters in the Pacific Northwest. When the farmers to the south agitated for statehood, they did not want the rowdy miners and trappers of the north as part of the new state. Instead they sought to have all the Oregon Territory south of the 48th parallel, west of the continental divide, and north of the 40th parallel. The Northwest Company was more than happy to support the farmers in having the north excluded, as this was seen as useful for maintaining their power there.

However, to the south of the Oregon in American California, the later California Gold Rush had a very different impact. First, American California lacked a large presence like the Northwest Company. And second, there had been very little farming in the region prior to the gold strike. Therefore miners, merchants, and farmers all rushed into the region en masse, and in fact many of the would be miners ended up joining the ranks of merchants and farmers after the first easy gold was taken. Therefore there was not nearly the separation between the groups as there had been in the Oregon Territory. California applied for statehood in the same year as the Oregonians, and while their territorial ambitions were much less than that of Oregon, they did conflict with them, seeking to annex land to California north of the 40th parallel, so as to encompass the entire northern section of the Central Valley.

In the end, Congress granted both applications for statehood, but with reduced borders for Oregon. It also created a new territory north of the state of Oregon, the MacKenzie Territory.

The State of Oregon has its northern border at the 48th parallel (except for the inclusion of the entire Olympic Peninsula), it's eastern border as the 118th meridian, and its southern border at the 42nd parallel.

The State of California has its northern border at the 42nd parallel, and also uses the 118th meridian as its eastern border. It's southern border lies at the international border with the Dominion of Southern America, 36-30.
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The story of Christmas in North America is a tale of contrasts. It was not until the 19th century that Christmas first came to popularity, initially in British Southern America. Christmas was a popular public holiday throughout most of the British South, especially among the planter class and the more affluent. The scions of prominant planter families would eagerly await the arrival of Father Christmas on that day. Slaves would serve the master's family and guests on that day. The next day, Boxing Day, it was common practice for slaves to be given their ease, and they would exchange modest gifts that day. Many slaveholders would also give some sentiment to their slaves on this day as well. Later, in the Dominion of Southern America, Boxing Day would go out of favor as it was associated with slavery, but Christmas was embrased all the more.

While Christmas was slower to gain popularity in the United States, it lagged not far behind. Many of the intelligentsia of America feared that if American traditions for the day were not established, then the Christmas of Britain would take hold, a form of cultural invasion. Led by the New York school of writers and artists, Americans took the old traditions of the Dutch and amagated them with those of the English and others to form something new. In the USA, it would be Santa Claus (or St. Nick) who would children would dream of riding his reindeer drawn sleigh through the snow to deliver presents on Christmas Eve.
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Friedrich Wilhelm the IVth of Prussia
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After nearly 20 years of oppression, in 1849 the Prussian controlled region west of the Rhine River finally exploded once more into open rebellion against the conservative forces of Frederick William IV of Prussia. Frederick William and his advisers had tried to crush the independent spirit that had sparked the Cologne Rebellion out of the region, but it had only delayed the inevitable. Many would-be revolutionaries, seeking a free and liberal German state independent of the Authoritarian machinations of Prussia (and Austria) had found safe haven in the relatively liberal nations of the Kingdom of France and Belgique, and even in Hanover ruled by George the Vth of the United Kingdom. And in 1849 they led the uprisings throughout the provinces of the Rhine and Westphalia with cries of "Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit!". The most prominent flag to fly was that of the Napoleonic Rhine Republic.
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What few at the time realized was that this would be the spark that lit Europe afire.
The Rhineland Uprising touched off a hundred conflagrations throughout the Germanies. The liberal aspirations of a generation of Germanic peoples had been crushed underfoot for too long, and thus did the twin flames of liberation and nationalism light the German night.

The Prussian and Austrian Crowns were appalled by this turn of events, and the Austrians would soon find their other subject nationalities catching the fever for freedom, compounding their consternation. While the Austrians tried to deal with their possibly fracturing empire, the Prussians were left to deal with their own breakaway territories in the west, as well as what they saw as their God-given responsibility to crush the radical elements in the Germanies. But first and foremost, to hold on to what the Hohenzollerns considered their own.

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The fighting in the streets was surpisingly less one sided than might first be thought of with street tyros against trained troops. But Prussia had not fought a war since Napoleon, and not a war like this. The partisans of the Rhineland used the new rifles in ways that the regular troops, and perhaps more to the point, their commanders, had yet to imagine; firing from cover, in prone position. And of course, they enjoyed the benefit of being able to melt into the populace who succored and supported them. Alas, by 1850, the Rhinelanders and many other revolutionaries had been pressed to the borders, and sometimes over it.

But in 1850, the Prussian Army made a miscalculation in pressing too far in pursuit of rebels, inciting the wrath of their covert benefactors, the French.
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The Kingdom of Hanover, in personal union with the United Kingdom under King George V, shared a strategic border with the Rhineland, and many of the populace were sympathetic to the cause of liberty spreading throughout the Germanies. While many of the Catholic revolutionaries looked to France as a patron, the Protestants of the Germanies looked to Hanover and England. While the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland sought to remain neutral as war broke out between Prussia and France, Hanover sought to give succor to the revolutionaries, under its liberal viceroy, George, Duke of Clarence. George had essentially inherited the role of Viceroy in Hanover from his father, William, Duke of Clarence.
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William was the third son of King George III. He had previously lived for many years with a mistress by which he had many illegitimate children, something he thought little of so far from the line of succession. However, he eventually found himself third in line for the throne after his nephew, who it appeared would be an only child. When his long-time mistress left him, he saw the opportunity to improve his fortunes by a fortuitous marriage.
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He was unsuccessful at first until he made the acquaintance of a daughter of Duke George of Saxe-Meiningen, whose small dukedom was the most liberal state in the Germanies at the time. Despite having fathered many illegitimate children, his marriage was less fruitful, with only their first child, George, named after both his grandfathers and born in Hanover, surviving to adulthood.
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By 1850, Duke George was seen as a popular and enlightened leader in Hanover, and with King George V so far only having produced daughters, some thought he might be the next King of Hanover. While Britannia tried to avoid yet another war, the viceroy entreatied his uncle to give greater support to the cause of German freedom.
 
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