basic ideas:
New Harmony succeeds, and soon spawns several new colonies, by 1865 most of Illinois is owned by the Harmony Association, and the state government is just an arm of the HA.
The Icarian settlement in Louisiana succeeds and becomes a major fishing colony, while also sneaking slaves into Mexico by boat, it becomes a haven for free blacks, and several other colonies emerge. After a police search a group of Icarians grow worried about the authorities and move to Texas, thanks to new weather rain is plentiful and they produce much wealth, new colonies spring up in eastern Texas.
The Anarchist Abolitionist Alliance is formed by Lysander Spooner and Josiah Warren, it becomes a major part of the underground railroad, and seeks to tie abolition with liberation for poor southern whites. It leads to the conversion, of William Still, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglas to anarchism. It also ties African Christianity to a kind of Proto-Tolstoyism.
During the civil war the Underground Railroad organizes anti southern political action, including slave revolts, soldier strikes, The Revolutionary Committees of Correspondence, and Peoples Militia (anti confederate militants). After the Civil War it continues as mutual aid organization, and the major anti Klan force. It also organizes anti rent protests and drives to end the debt of tenant farmers and sharecroppers.
The Workingmen's Party of the United States is formed by delegates from several small parties, it is courted by representatives from the Knights of Labor after its declaration of unionist principles. At it its second congress it reaches an agreement with the KoL, it will serve as the political wing of the union.
Victor Berger begins courting anarchist philosophy, reading General Idea of the Revolution by Proudhon, he joins the WPUS and swiftly becomes the leader of the dissident faction. He backs the creation of the Strike Defense League, an armed organized group of workers who defend unionists from government and private aggression. He tries and fails to start a peoples bank and cooperative federation.
Daniel DeLeon joins the now renamed Socialist Labor Party of America, he swiftly unifies the anti Bergerist faction of the SLP, who had been riven by infighting, for several years. His faction has dominance in the KoL, which he renames the Alliance of Socialist Workers and Labourers. At the 87 congress of the PSL he packs the delegates and expels Berger’s Workers Power Section from the party, but not the ASWL. Berger organizes the People’s Banking Association of the United States, the North American Cooperative Industrial Federation, and American Party of Socialist Labor
Delegates from the Harmony Association, the Icarian Movement, the now defunct American Railway Union, and APSL meet in Chicago and form the Social Democratic Labor Party of America.
Victor Berger ends his dance with anarchy, declaring this in his essay Anarchism: a Social Failure, it is no coincidence that this essay comes during a power struggle with the young anarchist Emma Goldman for control of the party and its auxiliaries. This essay is followed by the expulsion of all anarchists from the SDLP, PBA and CIF. Emma Goldman organizes all the expulsed members into the Industrial Workers Union, Popular Cooperative Alliance and Pierre Joseph Proudhon Memorial Mutual Bank, and the Anarchist Workers Confederacy (think party without elections). This is followed by a mass exit of anarchists from the SLP, into the new organization’s.
Jack London wonders the great plains and desert, during his travels he encounters an indian reservation, seeing the oppression on it he begins looking for support to organize for indian rights. He meets Benjamin Tucker who is organizing a cowboys union, and trying to turn the posse system into a permanent democratically controlled alternative to government police. After talking for several days Jack becomes an anarchist and works with Tucker, this activity leads to the founding of the Ranchers and Cowboys Union, The Free Militia and The Federation of Indian Tribes. These groups meet in the Grand Midwest.