Gotta love propaganda from the Boston press. By all means feel free to reverberate the Federalist Party song from now until the Almighty returns.
So first New Jersey and all but the Free City of Hudson and east bank of the Hudson in New York have not been a part of New England since the mid-1800s when her people decided they liked having more food and coal in the wintertime. You can harp about secessionists if you like but if not for occupation with military troops I think Vermont might have gone their own way too.
California is independent because they had so much gold by 1856 that they decided federal taxes and shipping to the East and markets of Philadelphia or New Orleans was simply too expensive. They became a British protectorate and are settled by so many different people as to be a culture unto themselves. Hence why they no longer control anything more than 15 miles north of San Francisco Bay and why the US state of Cascadia has provided Pacific access with its railway since 1871.
The Canadian province of Albion (OTL Washington, Oregon, and northern Idaho) is their major population center and has a secessionist movement easily rivalling Quebec's. The *only* reason that the US does not control everything west of Sault Ste Marie was because of a twisted deal by Seward in the 1860s to try to balance the slave and free states, instead the Second Mexican-American War served as a unifying force that also gave the US eight of its current states just as the First Mexican War gave us five.
Had New England joined the US, I think she would have become the industrial center earlier and the continent might have industrialized much sooner. Until the Wisconsin and Minnesota iron stores got underway with the steelworks in Birmingham and Pittsburgh in the 1850s along with the railway connections in the 1850s our country had little heavy industry while New England was among the top 3 industrialized countries in the world. Their educational system is admittedly *much* better, we would have benefitted from that. However, the "Dual Monarchy" of the Kennedy-Bush family of the Federalist Party who have held the Chairman office for 7 of the last 8 terms and its No Child Left Behind Act are taking a serious toll. Also the Federalists hold a 75-80% share of the Directorate while the second largest party in New England has what, 14% of the ruling body?
Slavery was also gradually lifted starting in 1869 with total manumission coming New Year's Day in 1890 thank you very much. The programs of using convict labor until 1946 were cruel but prisoners earned wages to pay for their incarceration, the abuses largely cleared up by the "chain gang investigations" of the 1920s with the holdovers in the Deep South running until 1946. There was no slavery on the North American Continent by January 2, 1890 despite what your Party material may tell you. At least we did not try to implement a prohibition on alcohol and let the criminal element run free!
OOC: Okay, but just one problem; that New York and New Jersey are part of New England in the present day, as I established in an earlier post(unless Arcvalons objects), and I don't think New England would be welcoming of any "No Child Left Behind" type legislation. Also, as established earlier, OTL's Cascadia region is part of Canada....which also negates "Albion".....(the state of Shasta might work, though, but it'd kinda risk negating the whole purpose of this DBWI so let's wait a bit)
IC: Hmm....while it's a decent retrospective, I do feel a few corrections are necessary:
1.)Gradual emancipation did begin in 1869, but only in the states of Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, and Kentucky(completed in 1876, 1882, 1879, 1889, and 1884 respectively). It wasn't until South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama threatened to secede in 1890 that the final ban on slavery became immediate, and it took 2 and a half years of bloody civil war to FINALLY destroy chattel slavery down there, and implement the 15th Amendment once and for all.
2.)New England may have instituted Alcohol Prohibition, but it ended in 1937, and was one of the first countries, actually, to affirm cannabis legalization in the '40s(Canada followed not long after). Your country instituted a total nationwide drug ban in 1947 that was only repealed in the last 20 years.....and not without huge amounts of opposition from the South at that(Fun fact: Mississippi became the first state to ban cannabis consumption in 1841.).
3.)The Boston charter school program was a failure, yes, but don't confuse that with "No Child Left Behind"....that was an American piece of legislation and one that started in Mississippi at that(there's a reason their students are the least successful in the country).
4.)Albion? You mean the hypothetical country that would have been formed had the secessionists won out in the early 1900s? The truth is, the movement has been practically all but nonexistent since the '50s. The provinces of Oregon, Cascadia[OTL's Washington and B.C. south of 55* North], and Blackfoot[OOC: eastern Oregon, western Idaho], are all pretty much proud to be Canadians and I don't see that changing at any point in the near future.
5.)California's days as a British protectorate ended in 1891, though, after just a decade; they didn't like the fact they were already starting to become a vassal of Britain.