Coal and Catholicism question.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe Sweden lacked coal, but had an extremely large quantity of some kind of super charcoal (was of extremely high quality).
Sweden had limited coal reserves. What it had was lots of timber, which made charcoal cheap, and very high quality iron ore. This meant that their charcoal-produced iron could still compete on quality.
 
OK, to give more information on my idea and help determine if the USA can help with this.

My original idea was trying to figure out how the United States could end up with 95%+ of Roman Catholics in one of its two political parties (the way that the Jews are iOTL).
What if you make one of the parties very strong anti-catholic? The feelings were in the community. I had immediately this famous picture in mind:
800px-The_American_River_Ganges_%28Thomas_Nast_cartoon%29.jpg
 
What if you make one of the parties very strong anti-catholic? The feelings were in the community. I had immediately this famous picture in mind:
800px-The_American_River_Ganges_%28Thomas_Nast_cartoon%29.jpg


Oh the Know-nothings definitely have their descendants in one of the two parties. And the Blaine amendment passed iTTL.
 

Md139115

Banned
Oh the Know-nothings definitely have their descendants in one of the two parties. And the Blaine amendment passed iTTL.

Historically, the Irish Catholics went to the Northern Democrats and the Know-Nothings folded into the Republicans following their party's collapse.

It is a bit more complicated than that though as Southern Democrats never trusted this faction of their party, while Lincoln and his successor's did a good job suppressing their party's impulses.
 
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