United States of America (Southern Victory)

''This article is about the United States as it appears in the Southern Victory series. For other versions, see the United States of America.''

The United States of America was a North American Republic, officially founded in 1776, gained its independence from Britain in 1783 after a lengthy revolutionary war.

However, various regional issues within the country, most important of which was chattel slavery, led to a brief civil war which saw the pro-slavery southern states form a new republic, the Confederate States of America, and secede from the U.S.

From 1862 until 1944 the intense rivalry between the U.S. and the C.S. would lead to war on three separate occasions, until the U.S. ultimately defeated and occupied the C.S., reuniting the country.

Foreign
In 1861 under President Abraham Lincoln, the United States became involved in a civil war when eleven slaveholding Southern states attempted to secede from the Union and form the Confederate States of America. A year and a half of warfare (what became known as the War of Secession) followed.

In September 1862 the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee defeated and destroyed US General George McClellan's Army of the Potomac at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, then advanced on Philadelphia. President Lincoln, feeling the cause was lost and under pressure from Britain, signed a treaty recognizing the CSA's sovereignty.

Domestic
Lincoln was voted out of office in 1864, and the Democratic Party won the next four Presidential elections. The Democrats, who before the war had favored Southern interests in the Federal government, took a soft line against the CS, and for the first twenty years that nation--and its ability to threaten the US--grew. It purchased Cuba from Spain in the 1870s.

1881-1914


In 1880, American voters, tired of the Democrats' soft line, elected Republican James G. Blaine President. In Blaine's first year in office, his Confederate counterpart, James Longstreet, purchased the states of Chihuahua and Sonora from Mexico, making the CS a transcontinental power by giving it access to the Pacific port city of Guaymas.

Blaine felt he could not tolerate this expansion, and went to war with the CS. The CS was supported by Britain and France. The US Army was disorganized and woefully under prepared for the war, and was easily defeated. The CS graciously offered the US status quo antebellum in everything but recognition of the Confederate claim to the two Mexican states. Britain, however, took half the state of Maine as a territorial concession and annexed it to the Dominion of Canada.

Foreign
Following the war, the German military observer to the United States, Alfred von Schlieffen, recommended sweeping reorganizations to the US military to US General-in-Chief William Rosecrans. The military took these suggestions to heart, and Schleiffen, realizing the US's wealth of resources and antagonistic relationship with France could make it a potentially valuable ally, became along with German ambassador to the US Kurd von Schlozer, a voice in Berlin in favor of a US-German alliance--what ultimately became the Central Powers after German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck offered such an alliance to the US and the US accepted. (The alliance also included Austria-Hungary. For their part, the CS joined Britain, France, and Russia in forming the Entente.) The two alliance systems maneuvered in many cooperative diplomatic efforts, each trying to extend its own alliances at the expense of its rival's.

Domestic
Over the next thirty years, Democrats dominated US politics, but with a much more nationalistic slant. The Republican Party, on the heels of the failures of both Lincoln and Blaine, had become largely defunct, and was soon eclipsed by the upstart Socialist Party as the Democrats' primary opposition.

The Democratic ideology was the US nationalism known as "Remembrance." The US took to heart Schleiffen's suggestions for a military reorganization, replacing the position of General-in-Chief, which had limited supervision over largely autonomous field armies, with the centralized United States General Staff. However, the reforms did not stop there; all of US society was reorganized. Government became more bureaucratic, life more regulated. Under hard-line presidents like Thomas Brackett Reed (1897-1902) and Alfred Thayer Mahan (1889-1897), every facet of the country was fine-tuned to be able to support a war effort against the Entente. (It was during Reed's administration that a mutual defense pact was signed with Haiti, perceived as a rather aggressive mood, and that the US threatened war with the CS if it attempted to dig a canal through the Isthmus of Nicaragua.)

That war came in 1914 when Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. Alliance systems were invoked, and war spread across Europe--and North America. The Great War had begun.

Foreign
Unlike in its previous two wars against the CS, the US did not allow its enemy to make early gains in the Great War, vigorously contesting the Confederate advance through Washington DC, Maryland and Pennsylvania. The US invaded both the CS and the Dominion of Canada and held the line against both through several years of hard fighting on stationary fronts, also mounting a naval conquest of the British Sandwich Islands in the opening weeks of the war. US scientists and engineers, cooperating with their German counterparts, produced many new weapons and innovations, including poison gas and barrels, though these two were quickly aped by the US's enemies.

The US supported the Red Rebellion in the Confederacy in 1915, forcing the CS to take men off the line to suppress the rebellion--though the US was forced to do the same to contain the perennially rebellious Mormons.

In 1916 US superiority in numbers and resources began to tell and they were able to push their enemies back. They made significant inroads into the Canadian province of Quebec and President Theodore Roosevelt decided to take advantage of Quebecois disaffection with their Anglophone neighbors stemming from religious and linguistic differences and create the Republic of Quebec.

Finally, in 1917 the US achieved a breakthrough. The first came in Tennessee, where General George Armstrong Custer ordered the Barrel Roll Offensive, in violation of General Staff doctrine. After that, Confederate armies collapsed throughout the country and soon British and Canadian armies did, too. At the cost of 1.5 million KIA, the US had at long last achieved its great victory.

Domestic
The gains the US made on the war front secured re-election for Roosevelt.

Foreign
With an eye toward preventing the Entente from threatening the US again in the future, Roosevelt forced the defeated British to yield all claim to Canada and allow it to be occupied by US forces. He also demanded large indemnities and severe arms restrictions from the CS and the concession of the states of Kentucky, Sequoyah, and Houston. He placed the state of Utah under martial law.

Throughout this period, the US had paid less attention to the defeated CS. Sinclair had forgiven the war indemnities after the assassination of Wade Hampton V, and the US stopped sending weapons inspectors to enforce compliance with the arms restrictions shortly thereafter. During the Mexican Civil War, the U.S. provided tepid support for the Popular Revolutionaries against Maximilian III. The up-and-coming Freedom Party of the C.S., on the other hand, sent volunteers to keep Maximilian on the throne.

The U.S. continued to make military matters a lower priority into the 1920s and 1930s. This was reversed to an extent under Hosea Blackford with the outbreak of the Pacific War. While it couldn't save Blackford's bid for re-election in 1932, his Democrat successor, Herbert Hoover did bring the Pacific War to a close.

However, Hoover continued the country's impotency in the face of CS aggression. When Jake Featherston of the Freedom Party, he asked for a loosening of restrictions on arms in the face of ongoing "black unrest". Hoover, having no use for radical elements, accepted Featherston's claims, and granted his request.

Featherston encouraged civil unrest among former Confederates in Kentucky, Houston, and, to a lesser extent, Sequoyah, and also supported insurgents in Utah. In 1937, Hoover's successor Smith ended martial law in Utah as an attempt to appease the latter group. In 1940, Smith met with Featherston in Richmond to discuss a solution for the three former Confederate states. Featherston clearly got the better of Smith at this meeting, convincing the US President to agree to plebiscites in the three states and agreeing that, whichever country won, the states would remain demilitarized for twenty-five years--a promise he had no intention of keeping.

Through Freedomite intimidation tactics, the US lost the plebiscites in Kentucky and Houston, and Featherston immediately stationed troops in these states upon retaking possession of them. Featherston then issued an ultimatum claiming the US had fixed the Sequoyah plebiscite and demanding the return of that state as well as several other small territorial concessions made at the end of the Great War. The US refused and was invaded on June 22, 1941 when Featherston launched Operation Blackbeard without issuing a formal declaration of war.

Domestic
With the long-sought after victory attained, Americans began looking more toward domestic policies than foreign. (One unfortunate manifestation of this shift in public opinion was that the US backed down from its protest of Turkey's genocide against the Armenians when Germany supported Turkey.) The years immediately following the Great War were marked by severe labor unrest, and in 1920, when Roosevelt ran for re-election to an unprecedented third term, he lost to Socialist Upton Sinclair.

Sinclair's first term was a time of peace and prosperity for the US, and he was re-elected in 1924. The good times continued through his second term. However, in 1928, Sinclair's Vice President, Hosea Blackford, was elected (having defeated the once-popular Roosevelt, Sinclair was wary of violating the two-term precedent) and within a year the stock market collapsed and the US economy plummeted. The Blackford Administration was further embattled when Japan attacked the US, beginning the Pacific War. Though the war was a draw and was not particularly costly for the US, the Japanese managed to raid Los Angeles while Blackford was appearing there at a campaign function. Blackford was defeated in 1932 by Calvin Coolidge, who died before taking office; his term was served by Herbert Hoover. Hoover fared no better than Blackford in sparking economic recovery (though he did manage to conclude the Pacific War), and was himself defeated by Socialist Al Smith in 1936.

Foreign
The US was unprepared for the Confederate invasion and was driven back quickly in the first months of the war. Confederate forces took Sandusky, Ohio, on Lake Erie and neatly bisected the US, cutting every transcontinental supply line not involving Canada.

The front stabilized when the Confederates reached Sandusky, and the US launched a counterattack in Virginia; however, the Confederates very effectively ground this assault to a halt north of Fredericksburg. US commander Daniel MacArthur launched two ill-advised assaults on that city known as the Battles of Fredericksburg. After the second such assault, the Virginia front essentially became a stalemate.

Early in 1942 President Smith was killed in an air raid on Philadelphia. Charles W. La Follette became President.

The US sent supporting columns to open secondary fronts all along the border to counteract the Confederate advantage of interior lines of communication. This was effective in severely taxing CS Army personnel, but the Confederate column in Ohio launched Operation Coalscuttle into Pennsylvania late in 1942. The army pushed the US back into Pittsburgh, where it was destroyed in an enormous months-long battle.

Following the destruction of the Army of Kentucky, US General Irving Morrell followed up with a campaign to liberate Ohio and push through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia, with his ultimate objective being Atlanta. By the fall of 1943, his forces had nearly reached that city. Their fighter-bombers had gained air superiority over the Confederates, their paratroopers were threatening the flanks and rears of Confederate positions, and their barrels were superior to the enemy's.

Also in that year, the US Eleventh Army under General Abner Dowling retook Houston and took Camp Determination in Texas. The U.S. Navy won a decisive victory over the British in the Battle of the North Atlantic and retook Bermuda. Japan disengaged from US forces and attacked Britain's Asian colonies.

However, Philadelphia came under fire from Confederate rockets that fall.

The US supported guerrilla fighters within the CS recruited from among the black population, which was the target of a genocide by the racist Featherston. The CS supported yet another Mormon rebellion in Utah, and Britain - still a nominal enemy despite both the Entente and the Central Powers being much looser in terms of intercontinental cooperation than was true in the Great War - supported a Canadian uprising. In 1942, that uprising expelled a Quebecois garrison from the city of Winnipeg. The US was also engaged in a war against Japan; it defended the Sandwich Islands, a Great War territorial gain, against that nation and retook Midway and Wake Island. This war ended in 1943.

In Hanford, Washington, US physicists began a top-secret project to build a superbomb.

Foreign
Unfortunately, despite the military gains the country had made, plunging into the Confederacy, the CS was able to deploy the new superbomb first, destroying a sizable portion of downtown Philadelphia. In response, the US destroyed Newport News in a failed attempt to kill Jake Featherston. In addition, the US destroyed Charleston, South Carolina.

Featherston fled further into the CS, but was ultimately killed. With his death, the CS surrendered. The US Army quickly occupied all CS territory from coast to coast, and settled into what was believed to be a long occupation, as die-hard Freedomites continued to resist the US, and US forces routinely responded with bloody retribution.

At the same time, the US, now fully aware of the Population Reduction perpetrated against Confederate blacks, began punishing the government officials who'd carried out the killings, while at the same time trying to force some equality upon the population.

Domestic
On the home front, despite the US's ultimate victory, Charles La Follette lost his bid for re-election to Democrat Thomas Dewey. Dewey's stated goal was to complete the reintegration of the former Confederacy into the US, making North America whole again. On the world stage, Dewey announced plans to continue the country's partnership with Germany to police the world and prevent the spread of superbomb technology.