Follow-up prequel:
The Copper Revolution was a military coup in the United States of America that overthrew the democratically elected government of President Levi Lieberman and the 108th United States Congress. Lieberman's reformist administration had alienated hardline members of the military-industrial establishment, as well the governors of various states who had grown accustomed to weak federal oversight. The coup was directly precipitated by Lieberman signing the Coinage Standardization and Reform Act into law, which would, among other things, eliminate the copper penny, thus coining the name "Copper Revolution." It was the second (third by some counts) military coup in the history of the United States.
The weakening of the federal government of the United States during the First Anxiety of the mid-20th century and the weak presidential era of the 1980s had created instability in the United States. Many of the states were essentially operating as sovereign nations, loosely tied to each other and the United States as a wholes. Laws varied so much from state to state that the only thing binding them together was a mutual currency. The federal government had devolved into a corrupt, sprawlingly inefficient bureaucratic morass incapable of reasserting authority. In 1996, nationally renowned professor turned senator Levi Lieberman was elected president with massive support and his Constitution Party sweeping Congressional and state elections. This coincided with many older reforms by previous administrations coming to fruition, enabling Lieberman to enact reform measures intended to restore the unity of the American nation.
The resurgence of federal strength was directly taking power from state governments. Many states had become so strong on their own that their governors had become "supergovernors", some even developing their own international policies and accumulating various titles and honors. One such governor was Cooke S. Carey of Illinois, first elected governor in 1972. Since that time, he had also become the First Elector of Illinois and Chancellor of the Midwest Bloc, and was unrestricted even by his own state government, essentially ruling as a dictator. Carey was directly attacked by Lieberman as the hallmark of state government overreach and a sign of the failure of American democracy. For his part, Carey declared Lieberman to be an authoritarian despot who would exceed the worst of his predecessors and destroy the individual 51 states. Even as other supergovernors acquiesced to or were removed by pressure from Washington, Carey resisted.
Additionally, outside of the conflict between the capital and the states, there was dissent within the workings of the federal government, as individual agencies and departments had found their own power with the weakening of the president and Congress. The military in particular had not seriously taken orders from a president in decades, and typically selected their own leadership and policies, with the president only acting as a rubber stamp in his position as commander-in-chief. Lieberman challenged this system. His attempts to clean out the military bureaucracy were criticized internally as purges.
The boiling point was the passage of the Coinage Standardization and Reform Act. The Act was intended to streamline coinage in the United States, and would eliminate the penny, which had been rendered completely worthless due to inflation over the years. This particular section became a pet issue of Governor Carey, as the penny bore the face of Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois hero. It was not that anyone particularly cared about the penny, but Carey decided to use the act to test the limits of his influence. On August 3, he declared that if the act passed, Illinois would secede from the Union, become its own nation, and mint its own pennies. Secession had already been bandied about as a potential option, and this was chosen as the final straw. The federal government decided to call his bluff. Congress passed the bill and Lieberman signed it into law on September 4, 2003.
The next day, Carey declared the independence of the Lincolnian Republic of Illinois. Lieberman then federalized the Illinois National Guard and ordered the arrest of Carey for treason and rebellion. The Guard did not follow these commands, instead becoming known as the Illinois Armed Forces. Union loyalists were arrested for treason against Illinois. Lieberman then ordered the military to enter Illinois, but his orders were once again defied. Lieberman then began a firing spree in the War Department of all insubordinate officers. It was soon evident that Lieberman had almost no control over the top levels of the military. Many officers supported him privately, but publicly remained loyal to the top generals. The division within the military simply preserved the status quo, with pro-Lieberman factions being unable to take power. Frustrated, Lieberman federalized the Virginia and Maryland National Guards, who were in his favor by way of loyal governors, and ordered them to lay siege to the Pentagon.
The military responded by deploying armored divisions into Washington to lay siege to the Executive Mansion in the early hours of 9 September. This was the official start of the coup. The two sieges went on for five days, while various states pledged loyalty to either side, or abstained altogether. However, no state government sent reinforcements to the capital. However, in Washington itself, protesters had taken to the streets in favor of Lieberman, sparking similar movements across the nation. Military leaders were concerned that if the siege went on too long, the public support for Lieberman would make their situation untenable, and resolved to remove him as fast as possible. An assault on the Executive Mansion began on 15 September, with the outer defenses falling easily and the poorly equipped Secret Service unable to defend the building itself. Fighting went on through the day as President Lieberman and his inner circle sequestered themselves in the bunker.
The bunker was breached just after midnight on the 16th. Those present were arrested. President Lieberman himself and a few others had escaped into the city through the secret tunnel. Lieberman was most likely attempting to reach the embassy sector of the city to be granted transport out of the country. However, he was intercepted in the Metro with his son and Chief of Staff Isaac and three Secret Services members. All five were then executed at an unspecified location. Vice President Moisés Aguilar, then nominally became president. He had been in hiding since the start of the coup, declaring himself president after the announcement of the assassination of Lieberman. Aguilar was found in eastern Maryland two days later and also executed. Secretary of State Danielle Fremont, next in line for the presidency, was forced to resign and make way for Secretary of War Gordon Hopewell, the chief architect of the coup.
While Aguilar was being searched for, there was a brief incident in Philadelphia where troops attacked the U.S. Mint and ordered them to begin making pennies, assuming they had stopped. They had not, as the provisions of the CSRA had not yet taken effect. Nevertheless, Mint station chief Kevin Jones refused to comply, declaring himself to be for "the Constitution, President Lieberman, and democracy." Jones was shot on the spot. He later became a symbol of insurgency and resistance in the United States and is remembered as a casualty of the coup.
On 18 September, Hopewell was sworn in as president. Hours later, Cooke Carey, the "President" of Illinois, announced that Illinois would be rejoining the Union. Hopewell accepted his announcement and declared the crisis to be at an end. It was not. Immediately after news of President Lieberman's extralegal murder spread, the protests across the nation became violent riots and marked the start of the Second Anxiety, which rocked the nation for another two decades.
