US breaks apart after independence timeline

[tom]

http://www.alternatehistory.com/Disc...es/4/3873.html

Come on...

[Paul Spring]

This is the world in 1895. I'm editing the first part of my timeline and I will start expanding it into the late 19th-early 20th century soon.



Sorry about the poor quality - does anyone know how to get a map posted without making it look blurred like this?

[Faeelin]

Waah, I want my American Union!

Good stuff, though.

[wkwillis]

The US was made from the confederation because the state governments were becoming too susceptible to overthrow by the democratic militia. That's the bit where the constitution guarantees each state a republican government.
Jefferson wrote that he saw no reason why the US government should care about whether the transappalachian states would join the US or not, since they essentially were the same people as the coastal states and that he saw no reason why fathers should discriminate between their children that stayed at home and their children who moved across the mountains.
So if the coastal states are independent and don't form a US with a central government with taxing authority, than the transappalachia states become independent too. There is no sectional breakdown for the south vs. the north, but one of the slaveholding coast and the free interior.
Keep in mind that in 1776 and 1783 (IIRC) New York had more slaves than Georgia. The lesson of the Green Mountain Boys (aka the Allen Gang, aka the Allen family, aka Ver Mont) saw off the militia of the three states that were quarreling over who owned the land and could sell it to speculators. This was because they couldn't decide which state owned it. This was also the state of affairs on the transappalachia in general, since the various states all had overlapping claims on who owned what.
I think the Allens decided that anybody could settle on the land if it was still covered with trees, but once it was cleared you couldn't buy it from New York or Massachusetts or New Hampshire and steal it because it was already owned by the squatters that cleared it. He made it stick, too. The same principles were employed by the settler's associations in the Ohio Territory when they cleared the land without buying it first, and then people tried to take it away from them.
They didn't have the money to buy the land from the government before the transportation improved and they could move produce to market to get the money. They had tomahawk rights where they had girdled the trees to clear them for pasture and firewood, corn rights where they had cleared out the trees for corn, and cabin rights where they had actually built a cabin on the land, and established ways to estimate the value for resale. Anybody that tried to evict the squatters got burned out.
Sort of like an anarchistic version of the 160 acre Homestead Act lots the the revolutionary Republicans put through when they took over the government in 1860, when the conservatives seceeded and pulled their representatives out of congress.
So the independent states version of America is going to have a South, a North, a ' Greater Ohio', a 'Greater Cumberland', a 'Greater New Orleans', a 'Greater Florida', a 'Greater Minnesota', a 'Greater Missouri', etc. Think Texas size states as the various agricultural regimes become cultural groups based on lot sizes and customs.

[Admiral Matt]

"So the independent states version of America is going to have a South, a North, a ' Greater Ohio', a 'Greater Cumberland', a 'Greater New Orleans', a 'Greater Florida', a 'Greater Minnesota', a 'Greater Missouri', etc. Think Texas size states as the various agricultural regimes become cultural groups based on lot sizes and customs."

Hmmm... A pretty interesting idea, but what makes you think that Jefferson's opinion on this would be followed more than any of his other ideals that have been dropped over the centuries?

Or do you mean that the smaller nations involved here might be too weak to hold their western cousins in the union?

[tom]

C'mon Paul, we're waiting...