Northland (The Shores of Northland)

The Federal Commonwealth of Northland, commonly known as Northland (Spanish: Norteterra, La Septentrion) is a federal republic in eastern North America. Comprised of twenty-five states, three territories, and one federal capital district, Northland is an influential regional power and commands significant political, cultural, and financial power in the Western Hemisphere.

With a population of over 140 million living on over 2.5 million sq km of land, Northland is one of the world's most culturally diverse and industrialized nations. Its geographic and ecology diversity gives range to thousands of mountains, rivers, lakes, forests, jungles, and other natural features. Urban centers, such as New York City, Jamestown and Savannah, are bastions of culture and international trade, while rural regions of the southeast and west form the country's agricultural, hunting and fishing economies. In the Caribbean, Cuban states and the island of Puerto Rico hold important naval outposts and are markedly strong spots for global tourism. The exclave states of the Yucatán peninsula offer incredible biodiversity, thus leading to an economy centered around wildlife research, biotechnology, medicine, and renewable energy.

Pre-Columbian History
Indigenous peoples first came to what is now Northland through Asia, 15,000 years ago. Since then, centuries of cultural and political development occurred under various Native American tribes.

European Arrival and Colonization
Europeans first landed upon the continent in the late fifteenth century, and since then, a long-period of colonization and settlement violently swept away indigenous prevalence in place of western European dominance. The first permanent European settlement in present-day Northland was San Juan, established by Spanish traders in 1521 and still inhabited today. Saint Augustine, a city in East Florida, was founded as a Spanish Mission by Pedro de Aviles in 1565, and is the oldest established and continuously inhabited city on continental Northland.

English and French Settlement
English settlement began in 1585 when English nobleman Walter Raleigh founded the settlement of Roanoke. A few decades later, the outpost of Jamestown was founded in 1607 and gave birth to the colony of Virginia. After years of success in Jamestown, English settlement then expanded south to the Carolinas and Georgia (modern day Jacobina) and to the north with Maryland. Scattered English Puritan colonies were founded in modern-day Quebec, in areas then known as New England. Puritan settlement was very limited in the north, however, as most Puritans settled in Virginia and the Chesapeake after 1630. Massachusetts remained the only major population center north of the Appalachian mountains. In that area, French fur traders and Catholics gradually outnumbered the English Puritans. The Salem Witch Trials in 1692, and the subsequent riots between Catholics and Puritans, caused mass Puritan emigration from New England. In the Seven Years' War (1756 - 1763) New England was handily won by the French and ceded to France after the war, along with Pennsylvania.

Elsewhere, French settlement was mostly prevalent in modern-day western Northland, in states such as Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tanaskee. Other European peoples, such as the Dutch and Swedish, left their imprints as well, especially in the Atlantic seaboard areas. However, by 1700, most Dutch and Swedish settlements were owned by England, who re-arranged them into the colonies of New Coventry and New York.

Independence and Issues of Territory
Modern Northland emerged as the Seven Colonies, which were controlled by England. After the loss of New England in 1763 and the stringent restriction of further settlement, colonists were humiliated, impoverished, and disillusioned with English authority. Hatred of the English was so strong that the colony of Georgia was illegally renamed to Jacobina, after German colonist-rebel Jacob Leisler who lived in the seventeenth century. There are also theories that the colonists renamed the region after King James I.

War and Government
After the enactment of several devastating taxes and a crushed coup, the Seven Colonies revolted in 1768, and all had individually seceded by Spring of 1769. What followed was a six-year war that had spelt devastation for both England and the Colonies, but none-the-less earned Northland its independence.

An elective constitutional-monarchy with a limited centralized government was established in 1776. A parliament was founded with King James I (formerly patriot James Otis, Jr.) presiding over it. However, years of instability caused by governmental incompetence, several tax revolts, and the assassination of James I prompted Northland to adopt a renewed method of governance. In 1790, the Parliamentary Convention greatly re-adjusted the national structure, abolishing the monarchy and instituting a complex legislative and judiciary system, with a capital in Washington, D.C., named after famed military commander and first President, George Washington.

Reclamation War
From 1792 to 1795, Northland, under the leadership of President George Washington, waged war on France in the Reclamation War, which aimed to retrieve former New England and Pennsylvania colonies. The war did not achieve its goal and enacted a large cost on Northland, but still allowed for the annexation of Kentucky and Tanaskee. Furthermore, the war caused extreme financial crises in France which soon amounted to a violent period of Revolution that brought down the French monarchy and introduced an unstable republic.

In 1800, this new French Republic was suffering from staggering amounts of public hostility and debt. In hopes of filling the national treasury and lifting some financial burden, the French government sold a small portion of Louisiana to Northland. While not willing to sell the entire Louisiana territory, the French gave Northland the vitally important southern region, which contained the port of New Orleans. Naming this new state Louisiana, Northland then pursued a period of extensive North American trade and commerce, making the new country rich and wealthy, especially after nearly twenty years of violent warfare. The rest of the crumbling Louisiana Territory declared independence from France in 1803 and formed the Ohio River Valley Republic. After 1803, French influence was only limited to Tuskegee and Pearl River, as well as Texas, an area formerly owned by Spain but won by the French after their victory in the Seven Years' War.

Political Change, Party Politics, Democratization, and Expansion
The wealth and prosperity of the early nineteenth century was once more diminished by warfare. This time, the Ohio River declared war on Northland in 1807 following several trade tariffs upon the country. The war, lasting until 1811, was mostly inconclusive but led to greater strife in the Ohio River Valley and an economic panic in Northland.

Little Enlightenment
The thereafter-named Panic of 1811 consequently produced a large political discourse in Northland. Primarily centered in New York City and Roanoke, the so-called Little Enlightenment led to calls for greater male suffrage, increased democratization, political stability, and diplomatic isolation from the French and Spanish. These calls were successful, when a series of parliamentary reforms in 1815 increased male suffrage and removed various voting fees and requirements. The Government itself was reformed in 1816, with the previously despotic presidency given clear definitions, limitations, and term-limits to only three four-year terms, as well as several reorginizations of parliamentary and senatorial structure, and finally an expansion of the judiciary.

Occurring simultaneously to economic strife was the development of solidified political parties. Even before independence, many factions rose, representing various issues to colonists. However, after independence, many people were polarized by the issue of governmental power. Those who supported James I were named Royalists, while those who supported a Republic, such as Thomas Jefferson, were aptly named Republican. In the nineteenth century, as a clear class distinction began arising, Royalists transitioned into Territorialists, those of the upper class who supported expansion and war. Republicans became a party stocked by the lower-class males who recently earned suffrage. The Party system remained strong as various factions came and went.

Florida Wars
Just as the Little Enlightenment stressed democracy, it also engendered hostility towards France and Spain. Starting in 1820, the Northland government began supporting Spanish Floridian separatists. Northland, led by President John Marshall, sent weaponry, money, and settlers to both East and West Florida, acts which perturbed Spanish authority so much that the Kingdom of Spain declared war on Northland in 1822, and was joined by France later in the year. Unlike the Ohio River War, the Florida Wars were certainly not inconclusive, and carried heavy consequences for all nations involved. After suffering a string of defeats in 1822, and an invasion of Jacobina, Northland forces eventually turned the war to their favor after British support was earned in 1823. After that, Northlander and British forces crusaded through Tuskegee and Pearl River, quickly occupying them while making their way to Florida. West Florida fell easily after the quick siege of Pensacola in August, while East Florida, a strong Spanish bastion, gave the Northlander and British forces quite a fight. Regardless, the East Floridian capital of Orlando fell in May of 1824. After sporadic fighting for a few more weeks, peace was achieved through a series of Treaties in New York City.

The war carried strong symbolic consequences for both Britain and Northland, and healed the previous hostility that existed between the two countries. Northland obtained both Floridas, Tuskegee, and Pearl River, while Britain recovered New England, Quebec, and Pennsylvania. In return for war co-operation, but not wanting to cede all of their war gains, the British government granted Northland parts of New York province and the prized city of Philadelphia. Despite the small cession of lands, most Northlanders had given up on the notion of taking back New England following the failed Reclamation War. New England essentially lost its status as a core Northland region.

Following the war, Northlander political discourse moved farther away from domestic territorial expansion, and more towards the idea of maintaining the current political boundaries while advancing democracy, patriotism, and Northlander cultural independence. A literary movement subsequently began, romanticizing the industrial, urban centers such as Jamestown, Richmond, New York, and Philadelphia, while pointing to the glory and pastoral vitality of rural Northland. The movement, named the Northstar Movement, spawned several great literary classics and created a wholly new political thought in the country. Social distinctions between the rich and the poor were lessened as nearly all stressed civic duty, communal unity, and a more patriotic sense of citizenship.

Texas, Technology, and Industrialization
Despite the growing, anti-expansionist movement among the lower class and burgeoning middle class, the government and upper-class still supported expansion. Finding opportunity in French Texas and a newly independent Mexico, the Northland Parliament devised a series of bills aiming to weaken French and Mexican control in the region. A series of settlement bills appealed to settlers who did not care for Northstar liberalism, and by 1826, hundreds of families were settling communities west of Louisiana.

Soon, Northlander settlers were bumping shoulders with French colonists in Texas. Further south, planters and slavers from Jacobina and the Floridas accrued the chagrin of anti-slavery Mexico. By 1835, nearly 10,000 Northlanders lived in French Texas and along the Gulf Coast of Mexico. In 1836, parliament petitioned France to cede Texas to Northland for a price of sixteen million dollars, citing the instability of the colony and how it would excel under Northlander leadership. The French Republic rejected the petition, and several more that followed after. In response, Amos Curtis, elected President in 1830, sent troops into Texas. Supporting the president, parliament issued several hundred patents and commissions to manufacturing companies and a nascent railway industry, offering them easy business and plentiful resources in a frontier such as Texas. The patents caused a technology boom in 1836 and led to a huge push towards greater industrialization in the country.

Industrialization had already started slowly in Northland in colonial days, picking up speed in the 1800s with the advent of steam power. Industrial efforts subsided after the Panic of 1811, and remained a low priority until the 1830s when new technology, railways, and increased demand for coal renewed efforts. As Northland troops occupied French Texas and naval battles raged in the Atlantic, railways were popping up all over the country as manufacturers were given increased impetus and opportunity. This increased opportunity won the war for Northland, but also muddled party politics, as the lower class manufacturers who were traditionally aligned with anti-expansion Republicans were now being courted and aided by pro-war Territorialists. This resulted in a growing pro-industrial wing of the Territorialist party, and gradual flight from the Republicans which would soon spell their demise.

By 1837, French Texas was hastily admitted as state as settlers continued moving to Mexico. Mexico itself was in no state to fight against Northland. A civil war begun in 1834 was still raging across the country after Northland obtained Texas. Issuing a Presidential Decree, Amos Curtis declared that all predominantly Northlander areas in Mexico are thereby considered Northlander property. Once more, the pro-expansion majority of Parliament supported his actions and the next year, in 1838, eastern portions of the region were admitted as the state of Mexico.

Further Development of Political Parties in the mid-Nineteenth Century
As mentioned earlier, party politics were muddled in the 1830s when the working classes began identifying with Territorialists, a party previously associated with expansionist aristocrats. As more and more of the lower and middle classes began partying with Territorialists because of their pro-industrial stance, the Republicans lost support and moved closer to an anti-industrial, pro-slavery, and pro-isolationist platform.

Territorialist and Republican Development
By 1840, Territorialists, popular in the North and some urban areas of the south, diversified their platform by appealing to both pro- and anti-expansionist voters, supporting immigration and industrial development, and taking a clear stance against slavery. Furthermore, in order to earn anti-expansionist support, Territorialists pushed for the notion of "vertical expansion". Vertical expansion was popularized as the idea of expanding society, culture, and democracy through peaceful nation building, as opposed to "horizontal" border expansion. Conversely, Republicans struggled to maintain political relevancy. Originally standing solely against monarchism and George I, Republicans gradually moved towards supporting civic duty and personal liberty. However, as the Territorialists grew stronger, Republicans attempted to compete with them by abandoning aforementioned issues and adopting others in an attempt to draw more voters in. A realignment thus occurred after Republicans went hardline conservative by openly supporting slavery, agrarian interests, and diplomatic isolation. However, a left-leaning, anti-slavery wing of their party remained active, and had accustomed to calling themselves "True Republicans".

The Republican Party could not compete with the Territorialists, and mostly collapsed by the mid-1840s. True Republicans soon began immersing themselves in Northstar political thought, and thusly reformed themselves as the Northstar Party, which advocated industrial limitations and anti-slavery. The rest of the Republicans faded into obscurity until 1849, when they returned as the popular Conservative Party, which took the southern states by storm. Before that time, however, politics was mostly dominated by pro-industrial politics for nearly ten years.

While appearing strong, even the Territorialists began decaying after the Texan and Mexican annexations in the 1830s, as well as the lack of solid opposition in the form of the Republican party. Their entire platform concerned expansion, whether "vertical" or "horizontal" and its alleged benefits to modern society. After the annexation however, with public opinion once more favoring anti-expansion, the popularity of Territorialism declined significantly after 1845. After a strong loss in the mid-term elections of 1848, the Territorial Party was disbanded by John H.V. Fisher, party leader and talented politician whose career was ended by his party's collapse. Many voters and party bigwigs found a niche in the Northstar Party. However, the strong pro-industrial section of the Territorialists straggled on even during the party collapse, leading to the founding of the Democratic Progressive Party in 1847, finding popularity in Virginia and North Carolina, while Northstar found popularity in Maryland, Delmarva, and New Coventry as well as many western states and Mexico. The rest of the states, such as Texas and the south, voted Conservative.

Despite the disbandment of two major parties and established of three new parties, the ideological status of Northland remained much the same. There existed either urban, pro-industrial, anti-slavery mindsets, or agrarian, anti-industrial, pro-slavery mindsets.

Immigration in the Early Nineteenth Century
From the onset of Northlander independence in 1776 to the Cuban War in the 1850s, the country became a beacon for Quebecois, Spanish, and Irish immigration. As the French crown, and later Britain, ran into problems administering their North American colonies after 1800, several residents in Quebec simply packed up and left, finding a home in Kentucky and Tanaskee. These two states already were French-cultured after decades of colonial rule, and provided a welcome home to Quebec migrants.

The Spanish war in the 1820s brought a further wave of French immigrants into Northland, this time from Louisiana. Spanish and Mestizo residents in conquered territories also immigrated to various parts of the country. In Louisiana, the local French culture began mingling with the growing Northlander and Spanish influences, creating a distinct, syncretic culture that is today known as Cajun.

In the 1840s and 1850s, a severe potato blight struck Ireland, an already impoverished component of Great Britain. Finding no relief at home, and no sympathy with their English government, Irish peasants, workers, and farmers left their homes and traveled to Northland. They mainly found vocation and residence in New York City, Washington, Jamestown, and Roanoke. Within years, those cities became centers for immigration, leading to bitterness among the native Anglo-American upper class.

Unlike the relatively decent treatment of French and Spanish migrants, the Irish and Mestizo peoples were treated harshly. Employment discrimination in the north kept the Irish poor, while ethnic hatred and racism thrust Mestizo groups to the fringes of society.

Slavery
As the issue of expansion was moot after 1850, the question of slavery arose in territories recently annexed.

Role of State Legislatures and Abolitionism
Slavery was legal and prevalent in most of the south, including both Carolinas, both Floridas, Jacobina, Tuskegee, Pearl River, Tanaskee, Kentucky, Texas, and Mexico. It was illegal in Delmarva, Maryland, New Coventry, and after a Northstar resurgence in the late 1840s and a strong cultural push against slavery, Virginia. North Carolina went through instability in 1852 when the Northstar state legislature voted away slavery, but a Conservative majority four years later brought slavery back. Despite the return of slavery in North Carolina, inland counties outright banned the practice.

In general, slavery was a low-priority issue before the 1820s. It was declining in the South, and most northern states had banned it between 1800 and 1811. However, the increasingly prevalent role of industry in the South led to a greater dependence on black slavery. By 1830, nearly 1,567,000 individuals were slaves. By 1850, that number had tripled, as the South became an industrial hotstop. Landowning families, planters, and industrialists benefited greatly from the system, while millions of blacks suffered as human chattel in an incredibly brutal, violent, and torturous system.

Over the course of the nineteenth-century, abolitionism, or the total banning of slavery, seeped into American minds. Initially, most anti-slavery proponents were early Territorialists, and saw slavery as detrimental to white settlers. However, as the repugnancies and horrors of slavery became widely known, a total moral stance against the institution soon developed. Joan Bath's pro-slavery 1831 novel The Necessary Evil was celebrated by southern Republicans and slaveholders, while its brutal honesty and accuracy disgusted and shocked most northern audiences. In response to her book, abolitionist Bernard Page published Tuskegee Rosewood Plantations in 1833, which told the fictional story of a slave family brutalized by their white owners. It sold similarly to Bath's work and fueled the flames of the pro- and anti-slavery issue.

State legislatures felt the turmoil as well. The only new state to ban slavery at the time was Virginia, while all other states in the South virulently defended the institution. Nationally, the issue was just as tense. Beginning in 1829, several Territorialist senators and parliamentarians began proposing industrial slave regulation in the south, while their Republican counterparts blocked nearly every resolution or bill. Similarly, many ferociously debated slavery in Mexico. The Mexican Republic banned slavery when it achieved independence from Spain. In the state of Mexico, most natives wanted to keep slavery out, but Northlander settlers, mostly coming from Jacobina and Florida, wanted slavery to be re-introduced. The state legislature, already wary of Catholic Mexicans, disenfranchised them and proceeded to institute a slave system in 1839.

Edmund Gilly
Under the Presidency of Andrew Penn, elected in 1838 and the first anti-slavery president, several attempts to ban slavery failed miserably, as well as any attempts to regulate it or make the lives of slaves any easier. Penn was killed in 1844 after a bomb went off in the White House, set off by pro-slavery, Jacobinian nationalist Arthur Dabney. After Penn's death, the fight to stop slavery subsided, but only for a short time. It was revived in the 1846 elections when Democratic Presidential candidate Edmund Gilly pioneered a compromise which would establish a Department of Slave Regulation and alleviate the horrors of the system while appeasing southern slavers. Despite the compromise, most Conservatives rejected Gilly's plans. He lost the election, but a wave of anti-slavery sentiment swept over the north, and Edmund Gilly won the election of 1850, thus beginning the First Southern Revolt.

First Southern Revolt
The First Southern Revolt began on January 4, 1851 after Democrat Edmund Gilly won the Presidential election of the previous year. Fearing the institution of slavery would be banned and their lifestyle lost, state legislators from South Carolina and Jacobina declared Gilly's electoral win illegal and threatened secession. Both states raised army levies and defied federal orders. From 1851 to 1853, both states were virtually seceded, and a year of bloody battles and civil war cost about ninety-thousand lives. Charleston was razed by Northlander forces, and both states were placed under military law by the time the conflict ended in the summer of 1853.

The revolt only increased sectional tensions in the country. Southern Conservatives saw the North as brutally oppressing their homeland and god-given rights, while the Democratic and Northstar northerners saw the South as a fortress of barbarism, slavery, and cruelty.

Politically, slave codes were tightened in other southern states, while North Carolina once more attempted to ban slavery in 1855. Succeeding permanently, slavery was abolished in that state, and it only further instilled fear and anger in white landowners in the rest of the south.

Second Southern Revolt
After the abolition of slavery in North Carolina, Gilly managed to win re-election in 1854, and promised to strengthen the cause of abolitionists and follow the lead of states like Virginia and North Carolina. Slowly angered by the martial rule of South Carolina and Jacobina, both Floridas and Texas proscribed abolitionism as an illegal faction, and began tightening slave codes all over their respective states. Several slave revolts broke out in both regions in 1856, and Gilly was once more forced to dispatch federal troops to deal with the issue. The invention of the telegraph, and the prevalence of railways in the south, made the President's job relatively easy, but only so much.



In response to federal troops, the Governors of West Florida, East Florida, and Texas secretly encouraged civilian militias to engage federal troops and crush any slave revolt. The President found out about this, and declared all three states in rebellion. Fearing violent action, the three governors reversed their orders, but hundreds were still killed as militias attacked federal armies. The three governors, James Scott of West Florida, Benjamin Hamilton of East Florida, and Matthew McClare of Texas, were executed on grounds of treason.

Edmund Gilly left office in 1859 as a highly polarized man, having weathered two revolts, being adored by the north, and despised by the south, but not having quite eliminated slavery. Violence in the South gradually increased following the Second Southern Revolt, and culminated in the War of Slavery in the 1870s.

The Cuban War
Following the Second Southern Revolt, southern state legislatures were embroiled with fear and anxiety over the survival of slavery. They also feared federal action and flat out war if they made any brash decisions. Instead, they turned to Cuba, one of the last colonies of Spain in North America. Beginning in 1858, several southern states funding Cuban separatists and nationalists, hoping that the island would revolt and join Northland. A civil war occurred that year, but it was not as quick as southerners would have liked.

In an informal war lasting from 1859 to 1863, Southern states, at times aided by Conservative politicians, fought on ground in Cuba, and at sea against Spanish and allied French vessels. The war was costly, but by the end, Northland had control of Cuba. After pressure from the South and from a Conservative parliamentary bloc, Parliament incorporated the island as a single state, including the capital of Havana. Of course, the island would be a slave haven for Southern Conservatives, but little did they know that the acquisition of Cuba would only energize abolitionists in their fight to get rid of slavery.

Antebellum Social Change
Prior to the War on Slavery, many Northlander citizens turned to social reform and civic activism after witnessing the horrid effects of the Southern Revolts. Although the scope of this activism was limited until after the 1870s, many important figures advocated for significant changes in the country.

Agrarian Interests
Daniel "Dan" Calvin, born in 1799, made his career in the 1810s and 1820s when he toured around the country, promoting the rights of poor farmers and agrarian communities in the west. The Virginia native earned significant popularity among Kentucky and Tanaskee farmers, and his touring led to the creation of the Western Farmers Union. The WFU began small, and was mostly derided by those on the east coast as being unpatriotic and needy. However, after the Florida Wars and the introduction of more agrarian-states, the WFU expanded in scope and popularity. By 1875, it was present in every state, including Cuba.

Urban Interests
Several urban reformers arose at this time as well. Famed author Bernard Page, an ardent abolitionist, fiercely campaigned in the 1830s for industrial workers' rights. Advocating a federal minimum wage, lower work hours, and stringent safety protocols, Page became famous from New York all the way down to Jamestown and Raleigh. Also advocating for workers' rights was Anne Schuster, a Trenton-born aristocrat who criticized the industrial upper classes as being exploitative and inhumane.

The works and careers of all of these people enacted serious change on the country's social state. They polarized national politics, pushed the Northstar party to a more liberal, anti-slavery stance, and convinced many state legislatures to pass laws protecting workers and establishing a minimum wage. Furthermore, the infamous Caller Factory Riot in 1851, which involved two hundred New York City workers rioting over low wages and workplace abuse, was violently crushed by the municipal government. The Riot lead to the state of New Coventry inflicting heavy punishments on the city, including an enactment of martial law, and the passage of several radical laws protecting workers. Despite their repeals later in the decade, the works of various workers and advocates led to an irreversible change in what Northlanders thought of industrialization.

The Road to the War on Slavery
Between 1863 and 1870, the nation was consumed by the slavery debate. The majority of states in the country had legalized slavery, while only North Carolina, Virginia, Washington D.C., New Coventry, Maryland, and Delmarva had banned it. The rest of the states, including Texas, Mexico, and Cuba, allowed it.

Gosser's First Campaign
1861 surely represents a pivotal year for the country, for it is when Northstar Maryland Senator Albert Gosser announced his campaign for the presidency. Unlike his predecessor Edmund Gilly, Gosser was an ardent abolitionist, and through speeches around the nation, promised to end the institution and hold each southern state responsible for their subversive actions in 1850s. Challenging Conservative President John Merry Wilson, Gosser only managed to take New Coventry, Maryland, and Virginia. Even though most agreed with Gosser's anti-slavery message, the country was worn out after two revolts and the possibility of a true civil war looming around the corner. Wilson won the 1862 elections upon a platform of peace, continuity, and the slow reform of slavery.

Ideology and Party Effects on War
As it stood in 1860, The Territorialists and Republicans no longer existed as parties, as both had collapsed due to decadence and over expansion. The Republicans, disbanded in 1844, were split between conservative, pro-slavery, agrarian members and liberal, anti-slavery urban members. The conservative wing of the Republican party formed the spine of the similarly named Conservative party. Liberal Republicans eventually joined either the Northstar party or the Democratic Progressive party.

The Territorialists were also split between two extremes as well. As a whole, all Territorialists supported a liberal, industrial, anti-slavery in some way or another. However, their support of those issues varied greatly. Those who supported limited industrialism and worker's rights joined the Republican-based Northstar party. Those who still clung to pro-industry stances did not join any party, or those who identified themselves as Establishment Territorialists, but founded the Democratic Progressive party themselves.

In 1862, those ideologies clashed in the elections. Although John Merry Wilson won the presidency, many state legislatures in the north swung left. In Delaware, an abolitionist stronghold, the state assembly voted in a super majority of Democrat Progressives, known colloquially as simply Democrats or Progressives, with a further plurality of Northstarists and a petty Conservative minority.

Rising Commotion
The situation remained volatile in 1866. The North was populated by avid Progressives and Northstarists, and became one of the most left-leaning regions in the country. The south, on the other hand, stretching from South Carolina to Florida to Texas, was an impenetrable Conservative fortress, giving all votes necessary for Wilson to win a third term that year.

However, as soon as the 1866 elections wound down, and a pro-slavery president was to remain in office for a final four years, the whole nation seemed to burn with passion, fear, and vitriol. Several slave revolts from December 1866 to early May 1868, a vast period of time, engulfed the deep south. Beginning with the Savannah Revolt, staged in the largest city in the South, the event sparked a series of violent rebellions that left 4500 slaves dead, brutalized, or executed, and 950 white landowning families similarly butchered. Roanoke, capital of the slave-free state of North Carolina, saw large amounts of civil unrest as well, pitting lower class immigrants, blacks, and the upper echelons of the city against each other.

A brief period of calm occurred in late 1868, when Parliament legalized a series of slave reforms, making it illegal to torture, maim, or murder any slave. The Howell Reforms, as they came to be called, delivered a great victory to parliamentary moderates, yet engendered disappointment and malaise among both Northstarists and Conservatives.

Unfortunately, the reforms were short-lived accomplishments when another surge of violence gripped the south after southern planters began ignoring the law. During the callous summer of 1869, former slave Samuel Pillhaughty traveled around the deep south, accompanied by Northstarists and abolitionists, campaigning for total abolition and immediate slave rebellion. His words worked, and that season, several dozen communities in both Floridas experienced violent uprisings that took the lives of 200 slaves and 89 whites. To make matters worse, Albert Gosser once more announced his intent to run for the 1870 presidential elections. In retaliation, the states of Jacobina, Tuskegee, and East Florida all illegally nullified the Howell Reforms, citing the endangerment of their culture and society. Texas, Mexico, Cuba, and Pearl River soon followed. Parliament, in response, enacted heavy sanctions upon them and fought to impose martial law. President Wilson, an ardent Conservative, vetoed every bill which came upon his desk promoting action against the South. Naturally, Conservatives and pro-slavery advocates adored him.

The War on Slavery
By October of 1870, the country was essentially a war-torn canvas of pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocacy. Two revolts, several dozen slave rebellions, and thousands of dead marked one of the darkest periods of Northlander history. Political theorist and Senator Paula Belanger writes in 2002 that "the twenty-odd year period from 1851 to 1870 was marked by a strange ebb and flow of brutal violence and instability. The War on Slavery had yet to enact its extreme toll on the nation, yet the people of Northland felt a mystic knowledge that something was coming, and they had to do something about it." Indeed, something was in fact coming: War.

The Spark
The election of 1870 pitted Albert Gosser, Northstar abolitionist, against Conservative firebrand Sherman Amherst, Senator from South Carolina. The campaigning was fierce and shameless, and proved to be one of the costliest of the last fifty years. Gosser wins, and is able to bring a record-breaking amount of Northstarists and Progressives to the polls, greatly outranking Amherst.

The South reacted violently. On November 30, the state legislature of Jacobina voted to raise state militias and declare Gosser's win illegal. Within three weeks, Texas accomplished the same. All other Southern states did not in fact pass damning legislation, but collectively raised 750,000 troops among them, including Cuba and Mexico.

First Phase
North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delmarva, and New Coventry were the only loyal states to Gosser's Washington. By early 1871, southern troops had invaded and occupied large swaths of North Carolina and Virginia. The situation seemed increasingly dooming as the year went on. A successful southern blockade, initiated in May of 1871 and culminating in a series of naval battles in August, choked the north dry of resources, support, and transportation.

Luck began to change tides in December of 1871 upon the appointment of New York-native Gregory Bohun as master general of northern forces. A talented tactician, brilliant strategist, and one-time archer, Bohun dazzled his forces after utterly destroying a Southern army in February of 1872 at the famed Battle of Banner Elk. That army, led by Tejano commander Marciano Smith-Caller, an equally talented general, was routed and embarrassed by Bohun. Within the season, North Carolina and Virginia were liberated as the southern occupation was driven out in droves. Despite his prowess, Bohun was still met by powerful opposition, and the front lines met little change from 1872 to 1874.

Second Phase
In that time, however, naval warfare was given the spotlight. It was in October 1872 that the Southern blockade was decisively broken, costing the Southern navy nearly 80% of all its ships. The North, keeping its navy mostly intact, then sought to impose a blockade of their own, feeling a thirst for vengeance. By 1873, a strong, resilient blockade lined the Atlantic coast from South Carolina, around the Floridas, and imposing itself on the shores of Cuba and Mexico.

Third Phase
The third and penultimate. phase of the war started in 1874, when the newly-independent nation of Quebec, granted independence of Britain in a peaceful 1860 referendum, was dazzled by Northern ability. The then-Prime Minister of Quebec, Martin Gavin, granted 120,000 troops to the North and declared war on each and every rebellious Southern state.

Now, with two countries and two energized armies armed to the teeth and a blockade strangling them, the South was definitely doomed. The first fatal blow came on March 22, 1874, when the Kentucky state senate convened, banned slavery, renounced all other rebellious states, and firmly surrendered to the North. Tanaskee did the same three weeks later, as Northern forces occupied the state.

As some states surrendered, others remained steadfast in their mission to preserve slavery and their hatred of the North. Jacobinian governor Clarence Lewis fought alongside soldiers as Northern forces powered through the state, enacting a harsh scorched earth policy and burning several hundred slave plantations.

By summer 1874, South Carolina, Jacobina, Tuskegee, and East Florida were all occupied by Northlander forces. Sensing that these states would never surrender, Albert Gosser ordered that those state legislatures be shut down, and military governors be implanted. Gosser's process took a long time, and yielded lukewarm results at best. South Carolinians protested heavily against a military governor, while those in Jacobina actively called for the death of Gosser.

Fourth Phase
Pearl River, Louisiana, Texas, Mexico, and Cuba remained rebellious by the end of 1874. Thus began the final phase of the war, consisting of two invasions. Albert Gosser ordered Gregory Bohun to invade Pearl River, while the navy of Northland performed an amphibious assault on Cuba. Bohun's invasion proved devastating for Pearl River, causing immense property damage after public buildings and plantations were burnt to the ground. Louisiana encountered similar damage and devastation. Following his march through the two states, Texan and Mexican legislators were convinced to surrender, which they did in February of 1875.

The invasion of Cuba proved another victory for Northlander forces, with troops securing Havana on March 11. After the occupation of Havana, the rest of the state soon followed suit in surrender. The day the last Cuban battallion surrendered, March 29, is commonly seen as the end of the war.

No formal treaty, armistice, or peace agreement was ever drafted or signed, as Albert Gosser saw it as inappropriate to sign documents with an illegal set of rebellious territories. Thus, Gosser kept going with his plan to stock southern states with miltary governors and pro-Northlander legislatures. One of the most daring acts he took was the partition of Cuba into four regions: Three states and a capital district for Havana. Immediately unpopular with Cuban residents, Gosser quelled dissidence with a twenty-month campaign of urban restoration, financial aid, and war reparations towards Cuba.

Post-War Instability
Immediately following the War on Slavery was a period of long instability in Northland, not only in the war-torn South, but the North as well. Gosser, as President, was harsh on former rebel states. In an executive order dated from November 1875, Gosser writes "these states that so rebelled from the Commonwealth will hereby not be known as states per se, but Military Regions, for an indefinite period of time,". This order allowed him to appoint military governors of each Region, as well as enforce martial law with little opposition. Parliament attacked him relentlessly, but he only placated them so far as to attach a sunset clause on his order, reading that this militarization of the South will "conclude on the first day of 1900". Southerners were upset at the law, and several major revolts occurred in major cities every year until 1878. These revolts, known as the Executive Rebellions, occurred in cities such asJamestown, Roanoke, Raleigh, and Charleston.

Anti-Black Violence
Among the Executive Rebellions entailed numerous counts of violence against former slaves, including a record number of lynchings from 1875 to 1879, where nearly 4,900 Black Northlanders were beaten and summarily executed by vitriolic mobs.

Also included were acts of robbery, assault, vandalism, rape, battery, and verbal harrassment. White attackers were given little to no punishment for their crimes, while blacks were likely to be ridiculed and threatened for exposing white offenders. In the North, the press frequently reported on anti-Black crimes and painted the South as a racist, barbaric, and un-Christian place.

The Marcos Killings and McClay Crisis
The most widely reported event was that of the rape and dual homicide Jamilla Marcos and her husband, William. Marcos was initially captured and raped by two white men on August 21, 1877 in Galveston, Texas. The next day, Marcos brought her rape to the attention of town authorities, but was coerced and further humiliated by Sheriff Denis McClay as he claimed that white men have the freedom to do as they wish, promptly turning her out of his office. Two days later, McClay led a posse of his friends to Marcos's home outside of town, where they killed and dismembered her husband, William Marcos, and kidnapped her. They proceeded to rape her, and finally, lynch her in what is today Marcos Park.

The Marcos Killings made it to the national press in under a week, and by the end of the month, newspapers in London and Paris were reporting on the dual murders and lynching. In places like New York City and Philadelphia, angry crowds protested the horrific events. Former abolitionists were transformed into anti-lynching activists, and previously apolitical citizens turned out in record numbers to protest on the steps of city hall in Trenton, New Coventry.

The situation worsened, with Parliament convening on August 26 to decide what to do after riots broke out in most major cities. Northstarists argued that McClay and his three accomplices should be immediately put to death, while Conservatives argued that it should be the military government of Texas to decide. That day, both parties drafted the Letter of Advice on McClay, suggesting that the President, whom the letter was addressed to, sentence McClay to fifteen years in prison, while his accomplices receive five years each. Gosser immediately made it clear he found the letter too forgiving of McClay, and instead drafted his own rough draft on McClay. Gosser argued that McClay does not have the rights of regular Northlander citizens due to both his residing in a Military Region and his service in the rebel military, therefore he cannot sue nor be defended in court. He suggested that he be sentenced to death along with his three accomplices. Conservatives outright rejected Gosser's draft, while Northstarists quietly urged him to moderate his tone. Wanting to not upset Parliament, Gosser wrote another draft on August 30, re-affirming his stance that McClay had no rights due to his rebellious history, but the military courts of Texas should decide he and his accomplice's fates. After days of arguing back and forth, Parliament eventually agreed to Gosser's compromise draft. Gosser then published this draft as an official executive order on September 4.

In accordance to Gosser's executive order, the Military Tribunal of Texas, composed of nine lieutenants, met in Beaumont to decide McClay's fate. McClay and his three accomplices were given the right to defend themselves by the Tribunal, despite Gosser's protest of such actions. From September 6 to September 14, all four men gave passionate pleas, citing the dangers the "white race" faces in the post-war South. All four denied the rape and murder of Jamilla and William Marcos. On September 21, the Tribunal met for the final time to decide the fate of the men, and after heavy deliberation, all nine members convicted all four men on premeditated murder for both Jamilla and William Marcos, as well as the rape of Jamilla Marcos and McClay's obstruction of justice in initially turning away Jamilla Marcos on August 22. All four were sentenced to death by hanging. The conviction was carried out on October 2, in front of a large crowd of spectators in Beaumont, many of which included anti-lynching activists and Northern journalists. McClay's execution made national news and the event was cemented in history as justice in the North, and as tyranny in the South.