Sure! Go ahead! I wouldn't say they would think they lost because they weren't welcoming though. The Union was no worse than OTL Yankeedom at the time of the Shatter of 1801, and by 1812 was only marginally more so anti-"Inferior." Goodyear and Burr really pushed the Union into xenophobia. The best way to make an anti-WMiT would be to have the South and Bonaparte actually hold the British back some in 1812, or at least to a point where they don't totally destroy New England. There would be no xenophobia worse than OTL in WMiT if the South and France actually held up their end of the alliance. This might lead to a golden age where an eventual North American Union forms in a few decades as ties mend and the Bonapartes decide to spread the enlightenment to the rest of Europe. Maybe England accepts a respectable treaty and gets to keep its colonies, but France allowed dominance on the continent of Europe proper. Britain and France are both anti-slavery, so eventually, perhaps in the 1880s or so, the South finally ends slavery. You might do well to kill off Meinrad Beutel as well, or make him like a great campaigner for civil liberties and respect for all the nations of Europe or something.
Basically the idea I had was, Burr's mental state degenerates even further and he dies a mostly-discredited madman, then the Union military manages to hold off the Brits long enough for the upper classes to evacuate the cities in 1812. This leads to a general sense of national soul-searching and then I had this idea of Lucretia Mott becoming a national celebrity for daringly leading a group of women and children to safety from the British sack of Boston, then leveraging her fame to express her Quaker beliefs on a national level. Mott would have been, obviously, pushed to the brink by the ordeal, but (in keeping with reversing WMIT's theme of post-traumatic descent into madness by showing post-traumatic growth instead) would have come out of it with a view that America had betrayed its roots by abandoning democracy (the Shatter) and a failure to come to terms with and embrace its nature as a nation of many peoples (brought together, of course, by God to learn to treat each other as equally his children).
The sight of this plucky 19-year-old heroine from Massachusetts standing up and daring America to be better charms the Union, and of course plenty of politicians who embrace this view are also promising that once all of America's peoples are free, equal, and united for the common good
we'll get our own back at those royalist fuckers, so the idea that the Union must unite the continent beneath the banner of equality and only then will they be worthy of the Stars And Stripes takes root. Beutel is inspired by this instead of the madness in WMIT proper, and basically becomes *Bakunin with Marx's popularity. Even though this Beutel is basically harmless because his ideology calls for officials to have terms of 2 weeks (see how the neo-Zapatistas run their territory!) and frowns upon states and standing armies as tools of oppression, the Imperials still ban him, so his ideology borrows from Yankee radical egalitarianism and becomes more of a lower-class movement as time goes by.
During the CoCaro/Virginia war, as the Union's digesting Ontario (I'd actually
keep Goodyear here for a confrontation down the line), a slave revolt breaks out as in WMIT due to the increasingly precarious states of CoCaro and Virginia, and volunteer militias organized by John Brown go south to help open a corridor to the Union border (where of course any slave who crosses will be free and protected by Union law). Virginia responds with force, Brown dies helping slaves escape but the Virginians cross the border and only retreat when Union regulars arrive, the Union intervenes militarily to avenge the insult and Brown's death (and also fuck those traitor slavocrats), Virginia's in no place to defend itself from a serious external invasion and goes down, CoCaro negotiates peace because the Union isn't ready to digest more than Virginia at the moment. Virginia is restructured with full equality for blacks. CoCaro and Georgia start discussing a team-up. William Lloyd Garrison becomes a major religious figure and supports a divine mandate for egalitarianism and anti-slavery crusading.
British revolution is a total clusterfuck for the Bonapartes and between that and paying off the other European puppets the Boneys are strapped for cash. They sell southern Louisiana to the Georgians and the northern half right up to the Pacific to the Union. England decides to go Venetian-style merchant republic, maybe?
then an idea I had, Kit Carson, born in a Virginia frontier town in OTL Kentucky so he's kind of unsure about the Union after the conquest, signs up for the Union expedition out west, the idea to meet the natives and encourage Natives to move East and Native tribes to allow blacks and whites to move West (that's just the ticket to encourage racial harmony, by God!), decides to stay out there. Clashes between Union-allied and anti-Union tribes are common, Carson goes to help allied Sioux beat up some Pawnee, finds himself looking down the barrel of his revolver at a teenager, and realizes "what the actual fuck am I doing?" and goes back to Philadelphia saying "hey guys, we should really do something to stop this horrible racial violence! God hates his children killing each other for stupid reasons, right?". Meanwhile Georgia is ethnically cleansing the Cherokees and the Union's using that as PR against them because of tensions over the stranglehold Georgia has on the Union's lucrative Mississippi trade route, so the Union gets on board with this idea and starts seriously trying to bring Native confederations into the Union as states.
Bonapartes decide to pursue "pan-germanic" nationalism in the 1830s and '40s and beat the Charlemagne drum (Napoleon II decides that he's a Charlie fanboy to go with?), so they can assimilate the Rhine confederation and bring in "Visigothic" Spain. This is of course bullshit but it's the 19th century, that's to be expected. Nordreich is now looking at enemies on multiple sides and tries to play Austria and Russia off against each other; on the plus side the Russians are now pulling away from Boney because they have their own plans and the Austrians are starting to get ambitions about Italian spheres of influence and leery of tying themselves too close to the Boneys. Meanwhile the Union has a standing "all refugees welcome" policy and is feeling pretty proud about how they're taking all the cast-offs and peasants who the Royalist Bastards consider "inferior", making them into New Americans, and building a major industrialized economy with them--yup, that New American Utopia ain't far away! Hell, the Vermonters even joined back up to get some of those sweet, sweet monetary perks.
1850s, CoCaro and Georgia form the "Confederacy of the South" due to mutual fears of Yankee invasion, since tensions are at a fever pitch due to the trade dispute and Union hatred of slavery. Meanwhile, the Union, despite feeling like they're beating the Royalists, are in the middle of an internal dispute between Goodyear's faction, which sees the New Americans as just something to exploit, and the Radical Egalitarians led by Thaddeus Stevens and his protege Abraham Lincoln. The straw that breaks the camel's back is a split election, Goodyear gets caught paying off Congresscritters to sway the House to his preferred candidate, Stevens is declared winner after public outcry and Goodyear flees the country to Britain (discrediting his faction) as Stevens gives a triumphant inauguration speech, promising to liberate America, "so that government by all of the Peoples of this land, for all of the Peoples, shall never perish from the Earth". The Confederacy hears this, panics for obvious reasons (slave revolt, with the slave trade still unrestricted, is an even bigger threat than OTL, and Stevens is waving a red flag in front of a bull), and DOWs. Union is caught by surprise but rallies (the Bonapartes are busy keeping California and their vast European empire under control and paying the Austrians to remain on their side) with the help of volunteers from places like Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy, and the Balkans--basically, either countries who like the Union for treating their ethnic kin decently, or people who want war experience to fight for their freedom--and defeats the Confederacy with the help of a predictably massive slave revolt, setting up black equality, locking down the river, and inviting immigrants in. The war's bad, but nowhere near as bad as it could've been thanks to limited French help for the South; more comparable to the OTL Civil War than to the absolute madness of the Great American War. Heinrich Wirz assassinates Stevens and is executed; Abe Lincoln takes Stevens' place.
Lincoln is more like OTL Lincoln's temper and skill crossed with Teddy Roosevelt's position and accession, and the popularity of FDR in one of those years FDR won damn near every state. He keeps the Union together, even as radical-egalitarianism (think OTL's
DeLeonism, or anarcho-syndicalism; basically, radical egalitarians believe that democracy must be extended to the workplace and that the rights of the little guy are paramount to avoid abuses of power like Goodyear's) sweeps the nation and becomes not so much a dominant ideology as the way people accept things are (kind of like capitalism did in America OTL
). He leaves office at the end of his second term and is replaced by Schuyler Colfax, who runs on a platform of flexing Yankee military muscles, opposing Royalist Imperialism, and supporting anticolonialist movements around the world.
Next big focus is in the 1880s, after the Democratic Republic of Texas is peacefully annexed to the Union as the State of Tejas (gotta respect the locals' language, after all, even if half the population is Natives and whites who moved in over the years). Colonel Cha-O-Ha ("In the wilderness", OTL Crazy Horse) of the State of Lakota, first Native American to reach that rank in the Union military and something of a pet "test case" to Union chief of staff Ulysses S. Grant, is at the forefront of a Union volunteer force sent to help part-indigenous Mexican rebel Benito Juarez against the corrupt, incompetent rule of the Bourbons. His exploits make him a folk hero back home and he writes a book about fighting the good fight with the heroic Sons of Liberty down there against the imperialist bastards, and he decides to run for office when he gets home. Juarez is victorious, and the Union starts eyeing California while sending help to rebuild Mexico and make it a really nice ally.
Meanwhile, Teddy Roosevelt is exploring in Africa, becomes a trusted advisor to King Cetshwayo kaMpande, and argues for action against the imperialist actions of the European powers as he tries with some success to build a pro-Union federation of indigenous powers in southern Africa. Tensions begin to rise between the Bonapartes, who've solidified control over their empire for the most part and are starting to realize just how much money the Union is making
every freaking year, increasing rapidly, and the Union, who've never really stopped seeing the Boneys as Royalist Bastards. Meanwhile the Russians are eyeing the Nordreich, the Nordreich is feeling antsy, the English are trying to make a buck while funding anyone who will screw with the Boneys, the Middle East is incredibly restive (I'm thinking that TTL the Bonapartes aren't able to take down the Ottomans but just manage to get control of Egypt and Libya and secure Balkan independence?), the Iranians pulled a Meiji and are eyeing all their neighbors and sharpening their knives, the Austrians are wondering if they want to take a chunk out of the Nordreich or the Russians or the Balkans or Italy and are eyeing their minorities with concern, the Balkans want their own back on literally everybody, the Japanese are looking outwards, the Chinese are in the middle of fixing their endemic corruption problem (thanks, Ming Dynasty, for creating it and thanks, Qing Dynasty, for doing fuck all about it), and the Yanks are starting to wonder if maybe they shouldn't declare that America Is Reborn already since they're pretty damn free and equal and have most of the continent now under Yankee control.
Some damn fool thing in the Balkans sets them all against each other and it blows up in the 1900s under Cha-O-Ha's administration (he ran on a platform of muscular nationalism, belligerently aggressive *affirmative action, and sticking it to the Royalist Bastards by freeing the peoples trapped under Royalist thumbs). The Nordreich and Austria attack the Boneys as Russia attacks the Nordreich, Austria, and whoever holds the choicest bits of the Middle East and the Balkans attack Austria and whoever holds those bits of Turkey that Greece feels it deserves. Scotland and Wales, seeing Europe go mad, decide "fuck it, why not," and attack England. The Union takes one look at this mess, says "oh fuck that", finds a suitable excuse, and occupies California, Alaska, and *Canada because it has 90% of the arable land on the continent and a much higher population who've been
waiting for this moment for a Hell of a long time, then sits on it all as the Russians and Bonapartes complain. Not that the Californians, Alaskans, or *Canadians are complaining all that loudly, they aren't hugely into the idea of dying for some asshole on the other side of the planet.
When the Europeans are all exhausted and their colonies are about to revolt, the Bonapartes and Austrians and Russians take down the Nordreich but the Russians and Bonapartes are still fighting the Austrians and possibly each other, so they
keep fighting until French India throws out the French and French Africa has a disturbing number of local dignitaries hosting Union warships in strategic harbors for diplomatic visits, at which point they peace out with each other in a deal that
neither is satisfied with, and grudgingly agree to the Union's conquests. England is puppeted by the Scots and Welsh in uneasy harmony.
Triumphant, Cha-O-Ha arranges a new Constitutional Convention, because damn it, if they're going to reform the USA they'd better have the
perfect set of laws to go with it. The resulting affair is sort of like the OTL USA in that there's an elected President, an elected legislature, and lifetime appointed Supreme Court, but there's no Senate and the *House's districts have to be approved by the Supreme Court. The Articles of Rights of the People are also laid out:
- Birthright citizenship. Any person, born inside the New United States, except for those born to foreign diplomats, is a citizen of the NUSA and has full voting rights at age 20*. This is largely the same as the OTL USA's 14th amendment, save that it lacks the 3rd and 4th clauses, and the 2nd clause omits the reference to "Indians not taxed" as they're considered citizens. Explicit provisions made to prohibit discrimination and demand equal protection along race, gender, class, and religious lines.
- Freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, faith, the press, and to petition the government; largely identical to OTL's 1st amendment, except that "Congress shall make no law" is replaced with "Neither the New United States nor any of its member States shall make any law". Added clause also states that giving money in secret is not protected speech.
- Equivalent to OTL's 5th Amendment but with stronger land rights protections including protections for Native 'heritage and religious sites'.
- Trial by jury in all criminal and some civil cases, equivalent to the OTL 6th and 7th. Right to public defense explicitly stipulated.
- Equivalent to OTL 4th Amendment.
- Equivalent to OTL 5th Amendment.
- Protects the rights of the individual over the rights of the state (but does not make a statement about the federal government). Essentially to preempt a sectional crisis like that Shatter of '01.
- Equivalent to OTL 8th Amendment, but also outlaws debtors' prison and certain other punishments deemed unfair to the Common Man.
- Equivalent to OTL 9th Amendment.
They also add a clause saying "amend constitution as needed to protect the rights of the people, 3/4 of states must agree and it has to go to a plebiscite and get 3/4 of the people on board".
The brand spankin' new Stars and Stripes is rolled out, the Mexicans ask if this changes the trade deal and are told "nah", and America throws itself a big party then starts planning to EXPORT FREEDOM across the world, because there are so many more people to introduce to the values of FREEDOM and Radical Egalitarianism.
Great European War 2: Electric Boogaloo fires circa 20 years later, and is fought with OTL late '20s tech. It's a mess, and the Bonapartes' empire breaks up around their ears, as does the Austrians', and the Russians ain't exactly doing so hot either, and the Chinese are back and looking to kick the remaining Europeans out of Asia. The English have a violent revolution following a new hyper-radical ideology thought up by a crazy Frenchman called
Georges Sorel; think Commie Nazis. The English go at it with Scots and Welsh again, only this time the French can't support Scotland and Wales, and everything goes to shit. What's left of the colonial empires go their own way, Spain tries to pull away from France but ends up pulling itself apart in the bargain, the Arab world is brought under the thumbs of the Iranians and Egyptians, the Balkans go at it again, and the Russians go at it with the Austrians and French again until their nationalist rebels become too much of a problem. Austria collapses into nationalist and Radical Egalitarian revolts, and Italy pulls itself free before being taken over by a Radical Egalitarian regime that's swiftly backed by the NUSA. English Commie Nazis go down but it's a right mess. Ireland flees to America's embrace and liberalizes. Finally the exhausted remains of the once-great empires drag their broken husks to the peace summit offered by President WEB DuBois, and the NUSA, which once looked at all these guys with secret hate and plotted their downfall...
...now feels nothing but pity and a kind of sadness at the sheer
waste of lives that these empires have caused.
Peace breaks out, soon enough the Americans develop the Bomb but say "OK let's not use that too much, guys", the Americans let goods flow in to Europe to help rebuild the wreckage, and are especially willing to help out their new Radical Egalitarian pals in the region. The monarchies are forced to liberalize by raw popular pressure thanks to the massive waste of lives. Total war, after all, is the breeding ground of democracy 'cause people don't want to die for some asshole in a palace, they'd rather die for freedom.
The world ends up, after the ruin of the grand empires, basically a giant American playground. California, *Canada, and Alaska eventually join the NUSA properly, the English, Scots, and Welsh form an EU-esque "Union of Britain" that's soon copied by the German statelets that broke off from France and Austria, and Russia slowly watches as its periphery muscles its collective way to autonomy. America rebuilds the postcolonial world, making lots of friends, and begins preaching that everybody's equal to anyone who'll listen.
The *Cold War is an economic competition between America and China, which ends with China liberalizing and becoming sort-of-friends with America. There are no brushfire conflicts, no genocides, no neocolonial economic exploitation. Just a world slowly strolling into a bright future.
Overall theme is
this Union embraces the best of America's traits and blames the worst for dooming the country in the first place, instead of doubling down.
*Picked 20 because it's a nice round number and I don't think they'd go for 18 in the 1900s.
ideologies in brief:
Sorelianism: Commie Nazis.
Radical Egalitarianism: Very American approach to anarcho-socialism. Very anti-classist, industrial-oriented. Evolved from an older, vaguer concept of "for the little guy!"
Beutelism: Anarchist hippies.
Goodyear Thought: Corporatocracy, exactly as evil as it sounds. Affects a quasi-Venetian merchant republic identity. (England still gets shat on at both ends here)
Monarchism: Authoritarian quasi-ideology, basically whatever works to keep the nobility of the various European countries in charge. Assholes.
There is no proper fascism because Sorelianism takes the racism and ultranationalism and totalitarianism of fascism and mixes it with cheap populist and quasi-Marxist rhetoric.
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thoughts of that outline?
