The Cobalt Throne and the House of Iturbide

Wolve said:
I'll post a map with the Updated States later.. but the Eastern States aren't much different.. except for New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Albion (PEI..)

The Dominican Republic is the American (Queskeyan Commonwealth), Cuba is divided into Havana and the Carribean Territories (includes Jamacia), Bahama Territories, Northern Michigan is the state of Ottawa, West of OTL Ontario is Washington Territory, Colorado is Colorado.. Kansas is Kansas, Mini-Nebraska is Hamilton, Montana, The Dakotas are East and West Dakota.. Idaho is Jefferson, Oregon is Oregon, Washington St. and B.C. are Cascadia, Wyoming is Cheyenne.. ect..
Cheyenne will not be in Cheyenne? The line on the map as it stands now puts OTL Cheyenne, WY in Colorado.
 
Here you go..
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Brief History of Texas

On March 2, 1836, the "Convention of 1836" signed the Texas "Declaration of Independence," declaring Texas an independent nation. On April 21, 18362 the Texans won their independence when they defeated the Mexican forces of Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto. A factor in the defeat of Santa Anna's army at San Jacinto was the time the Texas Army got to gather itself, thanks to a small group of brave men at The Alamo and General Sam Houston's strategy of giving up land until he had properly trained his army. Santa Anna himself passed into captivity, and on May 14, Republic of Texas officials and General Santa Anna signed the treaty of Velasco.
Later in 1832, the Texans adopted a constitution that formally legalized slavery in Texas. Between 1836-1845 Texas began pushing for formal US annexation.. Unfortunately for Texas the United States was too busy with the Anglo-American War to consider annexing anymore territory she would have to defend. By 1845 the situation had grown even worse for Texas her economy was in shambles and a foreign debt threatened to bankrupt the young Republic.
It would take the Crisis of 1845 to finally shake the Republic out of it’s lethargy. Banks within the United States began calling for a repayment of Texan debt. The government was in no way in a position to even pay a tenth of the debts owed to the US. The American Government was threatening a military occupation (similar to Napoleons of Mexico) if Texas was unable to repay her debts owed to the US..
This angered many Texas who had considered themselves up until this point as Americans who just happened to reside in the Republic of Texas. The Texas Government fell into a virtual anarchy as Congress debated over allowing the US to occupy and liquidate Texan assets to repay the debt or find a way to extend her credit… At one point a gunfight broke out in the Assembly building. Things came to a head when President Jones was shot by a disgruntled Congressman…. A “Unity Party” emerged calling for order to be restored and calling on Sam Houston to lead the government out of the current crisis. Sam Houston eventually was given almost dictatorial powers under the “Emergency Act” and would oversee the “2nd Constitutional Process” that would totally reorganize the Texas Republic and begin it’s gradual rise from the ashes of 1845…

Sam Houston would eventually work out deals with California and the United States that would exchange useless territory on the frontier in exchange for forgiving most of the Texan Debt… The Government’s corrupt spending habits were cut and new spending was supplemented by a “Protectionism” Scheme that would also foster the growth of the fledgling Texas Industries…. Texas would manage to recover and actually grow marginally between 1856-1870… Though it would not be until 1890 that the discovery of Black gold would bring Texas from being a relative backwater to the front of the world stage…
 
The Slavery Debate of 1867 and the 19th Amendment
(From Wikipedia)

The Compromise of 1856 had mandated the freedom of the womb to take effect in 1870 with the freemen being granted both passage to a “Colony” and land or territory in the Northwest…) By 1867 slavery was becoming more and more ostracized by the mainstream of American society. Many saw a need to go beyond the Compromise of 1856 and begin immediately freeing slaves. In 1867 this reached a head after Virginia, North Carolina, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri all passed slavery bans between 1865-1867. Furthermore it was beginning to look as if Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi would soon join the anti-slavery bandwagon. It looked as if Slavery would be dead long before the 1870 Freedom of the Womb would take place…

Hardliners in Havana, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and West Florida tried to push through a bill delaying FoW to 1880.. It backfired Abolitionist forces within Congress where quick to take advantage of the public outcry against the remaining slave states and began pushing for passage 19th Amendment (a complete abolition and enfranchisement act) they would eventually succeed but not before amending it to extend the “Passage” and Education requirements to be extended from the 1856 compromise to all current slave holders. (That is they where required to fund a portion of the freeman’s education or passage in reparation for past service accrued in the last 5 years.) The Date of Emancipation was set to take place on July 4th, 1870… The 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified on August 7th, 1869 by Florida. Hardliners in the Deep South tried to “secede” but where seen by the majority in those states as lunatics and while some armed incidents did take place those involved where summarily arrested and the majority of them would have there properties liquidated later by Civil Courts and distributed to there former slaves….

Many new “freemen” would end up settling in the south taking advantage of the Federal Government’s very strict policy of education and fair “labor” policies…. Others would take advantage of the Northwestern “Settlement Acts” or the “Passage Bill” and would end up settling in Patagonia or in the vast territories of the Northern Plains and Cascadia. The 1874 and 1876 elections became very interesting with many of the freed blackmen dominating many of the legislatures of the former slave states. While some “white supremacists groups emerged primarily in Georgia and Alabama those involved in crimes against the black community soon found themselves on trial by Juries of their victims…..

While race relations in the United States would take nearly a century to truly reach a equality, with the Gulf and Caribbean states being the worst, the Northern and Western states would by the early 20th century see almost a parity between the races.

One of the side effects of the 19th Amendment was an actual reduction of the populations of the Deep South between 1869 and 1873 as many whites actually ended up migrating to South Africa, Texas, and other European colonies that “held similar views” This was actually beneficial to the South in its efforts to catch up with the North in it’s industrialization campaign.
 
I hope this will be the last thread I ever bring back. However, this timeline looks great! Will it ever be continued? And could Texas really have staved off annexation sentiments at home and in the U.S.? The U.S.'s aggressive words in response to the debt may anger a lot of Texans, but ultimately wouldn't the years pass and wouldn't Anglo-American Texas want to go to the U.S., instead of being caught by three Hispanic states to the west?
 
THE FAILURE OF THE REPUBLIC: Our Southern Neighbors 1820-1940

The New World was according to our forefathers supposed to be inhabited by Liberal Democratic Republics. One things that they failed to realize that the enduring Republican form of government that has for so long endured on our fair shores is not the only answer to prevent tyranny. In fact Republics can become just as tyrannical as a King or Emperor, one just has to look at the recent history of the Federation of the Andes, or the history of the failed Republic of Haiti.

The root cause of the “Kingdoms of the New World” was the societies that birthed them, both ancient Mesoamerican and Spain, where in large part autocratic societies with little in the way of democratic tradition, the American Revolution on the other hand was largely a continuation of the last 3 centuries of British history. As it has been proven though a Kingdom can in some ways be even more democratic than a Republic. The Kingdom of California was birthed out a revolution by a essentially a landowning elite that didn’t want to loose its considerable power and Agustin Irbutide was the right man for his time and he largely codified during his rule the power of the Dons of California… However his son would shake things up, not necessarily by choice but because of the reality of the times in which he lived.

During the reign of Pedro I, California’s society would be shaken to its core. The Gold Rush of 1862 would in a period of a few short years transform California from a predominantly Hispanic State to a multicultural melting pot. The Millions of European, American, and Asian immigrants clashed with the deeply conservative Californio society. In less than a decade California was transformed from the few landowning Dons controlling just about every aspect of life to a fledgling democracy with King and Don’s holding on for dear life.

The Gold Rush not only brought with it immigrants of every creed and color, but it brought in millions upon millions of Reals into the Californian economy and turned many of the new immigrants into very wealthy men. In 1866 many of these men where becoming very resentful at the way they were being treated by the Californio Aristocracy and decided to do something about it.. The 1866 San Francisco riot was the result of this failure of the government to adapt to the new realities of California.

The King could have literally declared martial law and crushed the uprising, many fiction novels have been written in the last decade based on this point of departure, (and of course many authors on this timelines version of AltHist.com with California usually ending up in some sort of wanked USA.)

Instead cooler heads prevailed, for many years the King’s ministers had been warning His Majesty of much needed reforms and the excesses of the House of Don’s. So instead of San Francisco being destroyed by the Californio Army the king decided to appoint a special envoy to hear the complaints of the more moderate members of the Nuevo Riche.

The reforms that came out of this historic meeting would continue for nearly a generation. The king’s first and most controversial move was the appointment of nearly 20 new Don’s from the more reputable new businessmen and landowners, this had the effect of literally breaking the power base of the old Dons. The new Dons came from just about every walk of life, from German peasants to Yankee businessmen, even a Texan Sailor. This new mix of Dons shook up the old stoic upper house of the California legistature allowing the king and his ministers to push through even more reforms, including the enfranchisement of a greater portion of the Californio populace, to those holding more than 500 Reals worth of property or more or for those who served in the Californio Navy or Army for more than 5 years.
 
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