AHC Less American States

New to this forum but it's great reading. I'm not great at alternate history but I love reading it. Anyway, I got to thinking about a history challenge to keep the size of the USA the same, but make the number of states in it less.

Usually the topic is more states. But could we keep the USA the same size as it is now but make less states.

For instance, having Maine not separate from Massachusetts or not have West Virginia separate from Virgina. Of course those were somewhat related to slavery.

So what is the least amount of states, the USA could have? I am putting this in the pre 1900 as that's when most of the PODs would happen

Thanks
 
New to this forum but it's great reading. I'm not great at alternate history but I love reading it. Anyway, I got to thinking about a history challenge to keep the size of the USA the same, but make the number of states in it less.

Usually the topic is more states. But could we keep the USA the same size as it is now but make less states.

For instance, having Maine not separate from Massachusetts or not have West Virginia separate from Virgina. Of course those were somewhat related to slavery.

So what is the least amount of states, the USA could have? I am putting this in the pre 1900 as that's when most of the PODs would happen

Thanks
Let me think...
United Dakota -1
United Virginia -1
United Massachussetts- 1
United Oregon -2
Nevada-Utah -1
New Mexico and Arizona -1
Mississippi-Alabama -1
Louisiana-Arkansas -1
Michigan-Winsocisn* -1
Total. 50-8=40. That is ten gone!


*Sorry cant spell it correctly!
 
Let me think...
United Dakota -1
United Virginia -1
United Massachussetts- 1
United Oregon -2
Nevada-Utah -1
New Mexico and Arizona -1
Mississippi-Alabama -1
Louisiana-Arkansas -1
Michigan-Winsocisn* -1
Total. 50-8=40. That is ten gone!


*Sorry cant spell it correctly!
Good list, but these ones are kind of implausible & I could see Arkansas split between Missouri and Louisiana but not the whole thing going to LA.
Wyoming + Idaho + Montana = Yellowstone
Vermont as part of NY or NH.
Kentucky as part of Virginia
 
bump. i like the idea of this thread.

what about maryland absorbing delaware?


NY/ NJ/ PA seem kind of mashable

ohio plus indiana?

texas plus oklahoma?

kansas plus nebraska?
 
For the best book on states, just look below.

Lost States True stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and other states that never made it by Michael J. Trinklein

couldawouldashoulda mentioned combining Texas and Oklahoma.
Texas+Oklahoma=Texlahoma

Also not mentioned were the carolinas (north and south) combine both into Carolina

Intersting thought - I'm not sure if this is just me, but everytime I go to type/write Oklahoma, I start typing/writing Okhrana. Has anyone else done that?

Final thought - As is well known, I have advertised many of the books that I have purchased from amazon. I just want to say I am not being paid by amazon to get more customers to buy from their website. If I was, I would be advertising 1 to 2 books per post.:D:D

Wishing you well, his majesty,
The Scandinavian Emperor
 
Let me think...
United Dakota -1
United Virginia -1
United Massachussetts- 1
United Oregon -2
Nevada-Utah -1
New Mexico and Arizona -1
Mississippi-Alabama -1
Louisiana-Arkansas -1
Michigan-Winsocisn* -1
Total. 50-8=40. That is ten gone!


*Sorry cant spell it correctly!

Well to get a united Massachusetts and united Virgina, you would have to have a POD on slavery. That seems harder to do. Of course without slavery there's be no rush to create a slave state for a free state, so that might have limited the need.

A united Dakota probably could come about easily if you had the railroads build their line in a different way?

Without the ACW there is no rush to get Nevada in the union so you'd need some POD on that to get Nevada+Utah united.

Didn't the Northwest Ordinance stipulate making the area into three to five states. So right there we could knock off two. Probably united Illinois & Indiana and united Michigan & Wisconsin. Though that last one seems tricky as Lake Michigan is a huge natural place to divide.



 
Have them abolish states at the Convention.
Won't happen.

NC keeps Tennessee.
Georgia keeps the top halves of Alabama and Mississippi; the bottom halves are united into West Florida.
Texas keeps half of New Mexico; the other half is united with Arizona.
Unite Kansas and Nebraska.

There're four fewer states.
 
Something like this.

Untitled-2.png
 
missouri and iowa?

Possibly but not all of Iowa. I know Missouri and Nevada were two states that had a significant amount of territory added after they became states.

I think pushing Missouri's boundary further north, but not all the way to where the northern boundary is today, would have made the rest go to Minnesota.

OK so let's see if we combine suggestions:

We lose

Maine (with MA)
Vermont (with NH)
New Jersey( with NY & PA)
Delaware (with PA)
West Virginia (with VA)
Kentucky (with VA)
Tennessee (with NC)
Mississippi (With GA and FL)
Alabama (with GA and FL)
Iowa (with MO and MN)
Wisconsin (with MI)
South Dakota (with ND)
Washington (with OR)
Arizona (with NM)

That's -14 or 36 so far.
 
Seeing lots of suggestions for mashing states here, but not seeing many ideas for PODs that would cause this to happen on a consistent basis. To make a big change to a lot less states, I think you need a POD before the adopting of the Constitution, at which point the federal-state balance of power was set (or else cause a later event to dramatically increase the power of the federal government).

I would suggest the best way of doing this is by a reorganisation from the colonial power under British rule. Perhaps a failed American Revolution could cause an initial clampdown, and then a constitutional upheaval in an attempt to deal with the representation issue. At the same time, the provinces could be reorganised into several crown colonies. Perhaps:

Province of Quebec based on the St. Lawrence Valley
Province of New England, including the Maritimes
Province of ethnically diverse middle colonies (NY, NJ, PA)
Province of greater Virginia (inc. Delaware and Maryland), based on tobacco plantations
Province of Carolina (inc. Georgia), based on cotton plantations

A later second revolution causes the US to split off with larger states as the norm.
 
For the best book on states, just look below.

Lost States True stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and other states that never made it by Michael J. Trinklein

Wishing you well, his majesty,
The Scandinavian Emperor

Final thought - As is well known, I have advertised many of the books that I have purchased from amazon. I just want to say I am not being paid by amazon to get more customers to buy from their website. If I was, I would be advertising 1 to 2 books per post.:D:D

I guess it helps that "below" is not a live link to anything, just an old-fashioned text reference!:p

Intersting thought - I'm not sure if this is just me, but everytime I go to type/write Oklahoma, I start typing/writing Okhrana. Has anyone else done that?
No, but now I might!:eek:

...
Without the ACW there is no rush to get Nevada in the union so you'd need some POD on that to get Nevada+Utah united.

Actually, Nevada was originally an integral part of Utah. My brother (who went to high school here in Nevada) tells me that part of the reason it was let go was that the miners and other roughneck types who settled in the western part of their territory (as defined when Deseret joined the Union after the War On Mexico) were just plain too ornery and profane for the Mormons to want to hang on to them. Another motive being of course the Civil War politics you allude to--with the admission of NV the Senate got 2 more Republican Senators.

That's most of Nevada--the southern tip was transferred from the Arizona territory.

{With that addition, Nevada looks to me more like it belongs in a block with California rather than Utah. Certainly if you look at where the more recent immigrants to NV, such as myself, come from, and you consider the nature of Nevada's interstate ties, it is in fact much more strongly related to California than Utah today. Though every time I look into the older history of the state the Utah influence shows up more strongly. Certainly the Latter-Day Saints are a major demographic here in Washoe County! Anyway my personal preference, if my state has to be merged into one or the other, would be California, for what that's worth.}

Considering the addition of northwest Arizona territory to NV leads me to wonder, how early might the territory of Arizona plus New Mexico, probably under the latter name, be admitted to the Union as a whole? I'm not sure how much any delay in admitting NM OTL was due to it having too little population altogether and how much due to its having the "wrong" kind of population--Nuevo Mexico having been a settled Spanish colony long before 1700, its people were a mix of Spanish and Native, and there were a fair number of them. The combined region of AZ and NM today contains a really huge percentage of the Native Americans of the modern OTL USA. So a POD to admit the whole thing as one big state of New Mexico would involve politics that outmaneuvers bigotry against both Indians and Latinos and accepts that they too will be fully participating citizens, with their own stronghold state yet! Perhaps a factor in keeping them together would be the desire to keep the influence to a minimum?
 
The Dakotas could possibly be split between Minnesota (2/3 of ND and 40% of SD was part of Minn. Territory for awhile), Montana and maybe Nebraska.


Possibly but not all of Iowa. I know Missouri and Nevada were two states that had a significant amount of territory added after they became states.

Missouri as a Territory actually shrank (the Missouri Territory having originaly been the Louisiana Territory sans Louisiana itself), though the little bootheel shape was'nt originally going to be part of the state, however some rancher/planter guy had bought all the land in the area and told Congress, as he owned the land he wanted it to be in Missouri, so they added it to it.
 
No Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Rather than having existing states abandon all claims they had on western territories and create a mechanism for the routine organization of new states out of newly acquired federal land in "the Northwest" (todays Midwest), no 1787 NW Ordinance means the existing states in the early 1800's hold on to their western land claims, restulting in many of the original states spreading westward in a series of long, narrow, and at times discontinuous horizontal bands, adjusted as necessary to resolve conflicts. As this becomes increasingly tricky after the Louisiana Purchase and (if this occured in this TL) the annexation of Texas and Mexican territory north of the Rio Grande, some new states come into the union that reflect the different history and background of these states, but a precedent has been set for reallybig states - at least as big as Texas.

In this scenario, I'd imagine around 20 states in the contiguous US:

The original 1787 states, at least 3/4 of them extending to the Mississippi River in one way or the other plus the following complete speculations:

Florida (possibly including the panhandle extending to the Mississippi River)
Louisiana (OTL's Louisiana including all or parts of OTL Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma)
Dakota (Both OTL's Dakotas plus Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota and parts of eastern Colorado, eastern Wyoming, eastern Montana)
Montana The Rocky Mountain area north of New Mexico/Arizona (basically Western Colorado, Wyoming and Montana and Idaho)
Hispania Areas ceded by Mexico with a substantial preexisting Spanish-speaking population (parts of west Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, parts of California)
Deseret You got it! What US alternate history is complete without this! The Mormons in Utah and extending into adjacent parts of Nevada, Idaho, western Colorado, etc
Columbia The Pacfic Northwest, but bigger (Oregon, Washington, northern California
Texas OTLs Republic of Texas with the Nueces border.

There might also be some sort of "Indian Reserve" somewhere that is federally administered (maybe OK and KS) or father west

In such a time line (in which the federal government had no consistent role in how the new states were established and organized as it does in OTL) I'd imagine more differences in local culture and law among the states. The whole US might be a looser confederation of states. Of course the more likely outcome of (no northwest ordinance) is eventual war and conflict among existing states for the west, no US constitution and no federal union, and the eventual balkanization of the US with most of it being reabsorbed by British North America. Not a bad outcome for this Anglophile Yank, actually!
 
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