AH Challenge: Smallest, most populated, most powerful USA

The challenge is to make the USA the smallest it can, with the highest population and most power. The smaller, more populated, and more powerful it is, the better.





I will start by proposing two scenarios. Either discuss/criticize these or post your own.


New France survives:
France never lost its territories in North America. The United States still revolts but only has the East Coast. New France fails to get a large amount of immigrants like OTL, plus the fact that the French Revolution is butterflied away. The USA still becomes known as the land of opportunity, and receives almost as many immigrants as OTL.

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No Mexican American War and CSA survives:
The USA doesn't get anything other than the areas that were de facto Texan from Mexico, and actually doesn't fight a war at all. Britain colonizes all of Oregon. The Confederate States win the Civil War. Most immigrants go to the USA, and Mexico has one coup and dictator after another, and when gold is discovered in California, only a third of the OTL amount of people bother to strike it rich. The population of the USA never reaches what it did OTL, but the USA becomes relatively powerful due to necessity; their mortal enemy is just to the South.

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With New France, the Americans may revolt (though it becomes less likely), but the French will be powerless to prevent them from moving into the Ohio Valley and flooding it with settlers, making it a de facto part of the US.
 
The easiest way to prevent American expansion early on is to remove the Louisiana Purchase. Maybe Jefferson never becomes president, or maybe he does but negotiations break down and Napoleon decides not to sell. Either way, Americans have no place to expand but into the Ohio Valley and have to stop there.
 
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