TB, thanks so much for all this new content. I would never in a million years write a politics so detailed, let alone all the quotations that breathe a special kind of life into the world.
Wilfred Laurier's quote is particularly fitting. It works very nicely with the traditional ethos of the continent. Always look seven generations back, and seven generations ahead.
What are the cities like?
The biggest difference with OTL is that many more cities have an intact early core variously called the Old City, Old Town, The Fort, The Post, etc. Often the area is walled, or at least there are the walls of the old fort sit intact near the center. Most large cities maintained fortifications into the latter half of the 19th century; even as the ASB took shape, a residual fear of armed conflict between states remained for some time. And even after permanent peace became the normal state of affairs, no national standing army existed until the administration of Armand Linville, and so state militias remained large and stationed in the respective capital cities.
I have put some thought into the confederal capital of Two Forts, located at the site of OTL Pittsburgh. The center of that city is indeed a pair of forts located at the Forks of the Ohio River. The forts were originally English and French, and their guns once faced each other over a frightening no-mans-land that today forms the Confederal Mall, a long, grassy park dotted with pools and monuments. The mall runs parallel to the Monongahela River to the south. To the north, parallel to the Allegheny River, is Market Street and the oldest part of the city. Most government offices lie to the east, between the rivers. The areas to the north and south contain most of the industrial development of the city. The city lies within the state of Allegheny, the border being formed by the Ohio and Allegheny Rivers. I really need to do a map.
Can you give me a detailed map Of TTL Maryland and Lower Virginia?
Maryland had to come next. Its story must be told.
Early Maryland
Maryland was founded by the Calverts, Barons Baltimore, a Catholic English family looking to establish a land where they could live out their manorial ambitions and profit from plantation farming. The colony grew under the benevolent but absolute rule of the Calverts, and the planation culture that took shape there resembled that of Virginia, only Catholic.
The colony's religion placed it in an awkward position within the British Empire. Tensions flared up repeatedly between the original Catholic colonists and Protestant newcomers. During the Civil War, power passed between partisans of the two confessions. Lord Baltimore managed to come out on top, welcoming the Stuart Restoration in England and expelling the Puritan interlopers from his restored colony.
The Jacobite Conflict and Lord Effingham's War
However, political chaos continued to churn both the British Isles and their colonies. Less than thirty years after the Restoration, the empire was again torn apart by a conflict between king and parliament. This time, the reigning Calvert came out strongly in favor of the King James and the Jacobites, something to be expected of an English Catholic. He fled England for Maryland. All this provoked an open conflict with Virginia. Things looked dark for Calvert when Maryland's Protestants rose up to support Virginia and the Revolution. Maryland avoided occupation and annihilation by allying himself with the Shawnee and obtaining arms and loans from leading citizens of Pennsylvania. William Penn himself, who might have objected, was absent from America at the time. The war dragged on until 1691, when Virginia's underpaid militia began deserting in such numbers that the attack had to be called off.
Maryland in the 18th Century
Maryland's Jacobitism effectively destroyed the unity of the English colonial empire. It allowed Pennsylvania to declare its continuing neutrality in the conflict, which led to that colony's slow drift toward independence. The war with Virginia set a precedent for English colonists using Indian allies against one another, a practice that caused a great deal of bloodshed but that ultimately may have saved many native societies by guaranteeing them a place in the continent's political order.
By the middle of the 18th century Maryland also had a secure place in the continental order. Normal trade and cross-border migration was occurring with its neighbors. An alliance with the Iroquois to the north was one of the connecting bonds that led eventually to the emergence of the Confederation.
Contemporary government
To this day the colony remains loyal to its absentee king. The Jacobite claimant, who lives in Italy, has more-or-less abandoned claims to the English and Scottish thrones, but acknowledges the minimal constitutional role he plays in Maryland. It has never been seen as appropriate for the King to live in Maryland - in the old days this would have looked like the start of a campaign to conquer all of Boreoamerica, while in more modern times it would look like an infringement of the liberty of Maryland and of the ASB more generally. But he does visit his little realm fairly often.
Besides the distant King, Maryland has a resident constitutional monarch, the Baron Baltimore. He performs most of the duties of a head of state, opening the General Assembly and lending a general sense of pomp and flair to the life of the province. The General Assembly is a unicameral parliamentary body. The title "Lord of the Manor" is extant among some Marylander families, but there was never a separate house of lords; the mere rumor that the Baron was considering creating one was enough to provoke another Protestant uprising in 1715, which was only barely put down.
On the map can be seen the original capital, St. Mary's. The town was abandoned during the wars with Virginia and is today a minor settlement. Annapolis, the second capital, is located up the bay, and you can't miss the current capital, Baltimore, whose metro area has outgrown its official city boundaries and spread into neighboring counties. Other important towns are Tohoga and Anacostia on the Patomac, important suburbs of Alexandria, Virginia. Cumberland, in the extreme northwest, was an important point on the westward route for missionaries and settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries.
