The Yellow Rose: The Liberated Republic of Texas
View attachment 681173
Founded in the wake of the Second Texas Revolution, the
Liberated Republic of Texas declared itself forever free from the Confederate States of America under the leadership of the triumvirate of John Brown, Frederick Douglas and Charles Marx. With the failure of traditional abolitionism to defeat the slavocracy during the short-lived Dixie War, the Texan Founding Fathers unveiled a political program they called
Amalgamation, billed as the great leap forward for the abolitionist movement. Calling for the active destruction of wage and chattel slavery alike, full equality of the races and women's rights, the doctrine of Amalgamation was enshrined in the new Texan Constitution. The LRT has made good on this heritage and is commonly regarded as a pariah state by the civilized world for a consistent policy of arming slave revolts, worker uprisings and colonial rebellions the world over, though the coming wave of decolonization owes much to the Texan policy of sheltering and training exiles and revolutionaries from around the world and is sure to expand their sphere of influence.
The flag of the Liberated Republic of Texas uses red to represent the blood shed for freedom and a black cannon to symbolize defiance. The yellow rose is the traditional symbol of Amalgamation, taken from the traditional association of the color yellow with people of mixed race, as seen in the song "The Yellow Rose of Texas',
a version of which also serves as the national anthem. The national motto, "NO UNION WITH SLAVE-HOLDERS", taken from
The Liberator, declares the Texan commitment to the destruction of slavery in all its forms the world over. This was inspired by a Marxist Texas scenario I saw recently, and I decided to see what I could do with a similar POD. As he seriously considered in real life Marx moves to Texas in his twenties, coupled with a larger wave of European immigration to the state in the wake of a slightly more repressive 1848 and John Brown being temporarily smuggled out of the country after Harper's Ferry. Rather than making Marx the central figure I decided to make Brown the elder statesmen, with Amalgamation serving as the Communism analogue in a timeline with a successful Confederacy. Aside from the focus on racial and gender equality in addition to more traditional anticapitalism and anticolonialism, Amalgamation also has an incredibly rich faith tradition rather than a tendency toward state atheism.