Manhattan Commune....is it possible?

An independet and communist Manhattan in the mid 19nth century, as mentioned in The Difference Engine and Victoria II, so I ask you all.
Can it be done?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Fernando Wood wanted New York City to secede from the Union and become an independent city-state at the opening of the Civil War. And, of course, there was a great deal of unrest in the city throughout the conflict, culminating in the draft riots of 1863. Surely there is enough material to work with to create some sort of Manhattan Commune.

It wouldn't last long, of course. Those things never do.
 
Fernando Wood wanted New York City to secede from the Union and become an independent city-state at the opening of the Civil War. And, of course, there was a great deal of unrest in the city throughout the conflict, culminating in the draft riots of 1863. Surely there is enough material to work with to create some sort of Manhattan Commune.

It wouldn't last long, of course. Those things never do.
Barring the total collapse of the USA.
 
An independet and communist Manhattan in the mid 19nth century, as mentioned in The Difference Engine and Victoria II, so I ask you all.
Can it be done?

No. Communism was never popular in America. And an independent Manhattan? They would be blockaded by the US, and the city would be destroyed in the resulting conflict.
 
Fernando Wood wanted New York City to secede from the Union and become an independent city-state at the opening of the Civil War. And, of course, there was a great deal of unrest in the city throughout the conflict, culminating in the draft riots of 1863. Surely there is enough material to work with to create some sort of Manhattan Commune.

It wouldn't last long, of course. Those things never do.

And even then all he wanted was an independent Slave Trading City that could benefit from trade with the South.
 
Barring the total collapse of the USA.

If I recall, Victoria 1 had an event that if the USA spent way too long in the civil war and totally botching it all in the process, almost every potential breakaway country that could form from it (California, Deseret, New England, Canada if the USA owned it) would form, but oddly the Manhattan Commune wasn't amongst them.

Are we sure it trying its own run is somewhat possible, if doomed? It's the country's largest city, after all...
 
And an independent Manhattan? They would be blockaded by the US, and the city would be destroyed in the resulting conflict.

They would, after all, be totally surrounded by a hostile nation, and would possess no natural resources (iron mines and coal especially) that would allow them to support themselves in a conflict. And that's in the bizarrely unlikely case that such independence was ever declared. Why would they want to?
 
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