U.S. States (Napoleon's World)

The following is a description and statistical display of information on every state in the United States of America.

A map of the United States of America (Cuba and Puerto Rico not included):

Description/History
Arkansas was given statehood in 1836 as a "frontier slave state," part of the so-called "New South" that was planned along the western edge of the Mississippi River. At its founding, its two largest cities - Little Rock and Covenant - were quiet Western towns that did not experience significance until the violent Mexican War of the early 1840's. Little Rock was temporarily occupied by General Ramon Ojeda of the Mexican Army in 1841 and 1842, and during that time the replanning of the city as a fortified position to combat American troops further down the Arkansas River.

Similarly, the city of Covenant grew out of the American stronghold which was effectively surrounded there during the violent Siege of Covenant in 1842. After the Mexican War, both cities - Little Rock with its new, intact Mexican architecture, and Covenant with its Army stronghold and strategic position - flourished. Covenant became the true center of commerce, lending to a growth of communities along the Arkansas-Mississippi border all the way south to Vicksburg, due to the booming settlement westwards along the Arkansas. St. Louis, Memphis and Covenant were the three primary shipping centers prior to New Orleans.

Even with the end of slavery, Arkansas continued to grow as an important state and as the leading Mississippian Southern state. After the Hurricane of 1887 devastated New Orleans, Covenant grew almost overnight into one of the most important shipping centers in the South.

The 1900's were predictably turbulent in Arkansas - Little Rock was referred to as "The Capital of Racism" by detractors of segregation, and during Prohibition, the gangs of Covenant were as violent as those of Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. The 1930's and 40's saw a new boom in the South, measured again in the success of Arkansas, but the city never truly recovered from the meager 50's, even during the prosperous 60's and 70's. In 1983, Covenant was host to the most violent race riot in American history, a race riot the city still has not completely recovered from. Still, hope returned for the people of Arkansas when the University of Arkansas Razorbacks football team upset the Huron Highlanders to win the 1985 college football national championship, making the '85 Hogs one of the most storied teams in college football history.

Since the mid-1990's, Arkansas has begun to recover from its lenghty economic mire, and recent forays into eco-technology has once again made Covenant a thriving city after years of decay.

Arkansas is known for producing some of the nation's best high school athletic talent; Covenant Catholic is one of the premier baseball factories in the nation, and Baughley Academy has won five consecutive football state championships as of summer 2009 and sent seventeen players to top college football schools in that span.

Statistics
Statehood: 1836

Capital: Little Rock

Population: 6,788,931 (est. 2009)

Largest City: Covenant 951,787 city proper; 3,078,033 metropolitan area (including Mississippi; est. 2009)

Nickname: The Natural State

Description/History
Aroostook was given statehood in 1834. At the time of its statehood, it, along with Huron, were largely untamed wildernesses carved out of the massive concessions gained from Britain in the Canadian War. The "Aroostians" - brave settlers heading north into the wild of Maine and beyond - were mainly leftover religious purists from Massachusetts heading north to escape the influx of "impure and immoral" emigrants to the Boston and Cape Cod area. With the vast new territory of Aroostook, they found a land that they could make their own.

While Portland was the major port, it was the grand city of Seneca in the interior that was the capital. The "Christian Capital of America" was, for most of the 19th century, a very strict Puritan society, that was fueled by the resurgence of faith nationwide. The state grew in the late 19th century, however, as a major timber and fishing hub. Portland boomed as it competed with Halifax and the Massachusetts fisheries for influence on the North Atlantic trade. Aroostian timber became the primary fueler of heavy North American industry during the Gilded Age, and even exported heavily to the French Empire. As the forests receded, agriculture - particularly livestock - became huge.

Aroostook fell off the map somewhat in the early 20th century along with Nova Scotia, and still struggles to make a name for itself economically alongside larger, richer northeastern states. It is still a major center of the fishing and timber industry even today, although it has been reduced from its heyday.

Statistics
Statehood: 1834

Population: 3,780,300 (est. 2009)

Capital: Seneca

Largest City: Portland 512,000 city proper; 1,000,560 metropolitan area (est. 2009)

Nickname: The Woodland State

Statistics
Statehood: 1851

Population: 42,560,340 (2009 est.)

Capital: Monterey

Largest City: Los Angeles 4,345,000 city proper; 16,432,000 metropolitan area (2009 est.)

Nickname: The Golden State

Governor:

Description/History
Won in an agreement with Napoleon to divy up the winnings against Spain and Britain in North America, Cuba is today one of the largest states in the Union, one of its major agricultural and business hubs, and by far its most culturally diverse. To an extent, Cubans see themselves as a micro-state of their own - if independent from the United States, they would be one of the strongest economies in the world.

After earning its statehood in 1826, Cuba was dominated for most of the mid-19th century by the powerful Marks family - whose most famous member, Josiah, would eventually emigrate to Florida and later become President in the 1870's and work to phase out slavery, despite his Southern roots. On Cuba more than anywhere, however, white plantation owners - who arrived in the hundreds of thousands during the 1830's and precipitated the "white boom" of Cuba's English-speaking white population in the 1850's - found that they had to work in conjunction with the native Cubans who had lived on the island during all of the years of Spanish colonization. In Havana they found an already-vibrant Hispanic culture, and for decades the whites held themselves to their own city of Jefferson about a hundred miles east of Cuba, and the city of Port Liberty on the south side of the island, as their major commerce centers. For this reason, Havana and to a lesser extent Santiago developed as the centers of cubano culture and dominance - despite multiple attempts to wrest control over the legislature, the white Cuban population found itself often dealing with the large Spanish population in the state government. The Marks family, in their leadership of the island, were skillful practitioners of appeasing the cubano interests while forwarding the needs of the white slaveowners and their black slave population.

With the end of slavery in the late 19th century, Thomas Marks - the last member of the Marks dynasty to serve as Cuba's governor - found himself at the pinnacle of a growing crisis in the state. Freed slaves were flocking into Havana, Santiago and Port Liberty looking for work, and the cubano aristocracy valued cheap black labor as much as the white one. At the same time, an influx of European immigration during the early 20th century created a class of "undesirables" or los gringos feos - the Ugly Whites - that the ruling tandem class of whites and powerful cubanos detested.

While never to the extent of Puerto Rico, Cuba experienced years of economic difficulty and high poverty levels. A small elite class of whites and cubanos owned most of the state's wealth. During the 1920's, Port Liberty had one of the largest black ghettos in the country. President Joseph Robinson once commented, "Once a beacon of our success in the Caribbean, Cuba now sails that sea without rudder or sail."

It was Governor Frank Keaton who resurrected Cuba. As the economic boom of the 1930's began under Herbert Hoover, Keaton instituted lax gambling laws and poured millions of state and federal funds into building infrastructure. Cuba featured one of the first modern freeways: the Havana-Jefferson Interchange was a wide highway linking the two major ports together. Soon, Cuba had one of the most advanced and interconnected highway systems in the country. Tourism drove business through the 1940's and 50's, and with Dick van Dyke's labor reform laws, the poorer half of Cuba's population finally began to build their lives anew.

With the boom of the 70's, Cuba became suddenly one of the favorite destinations for businesses and homeowners. The real estate market exploded and the population increased 30% over a twenty year period. Cuba weathered the dark early 80's admirably and led the charge through the stagnant 1990's. Today, Cuba enjoys one of the best public health care systems, education systems, public and state transportation infrastructures and lowest crime rates in the country, as well as a tourism industry that lags only behind California's.

Statistics
Statehood: 1826

Capital: Havana

Population: 18,456,780 (est. 2009)

Largest City: Havana 2,000,500 city proper; 5,788,450 metropolitan area (est. 2009)

Nickname: The Spanish State

Governor: Raul Castro

Description/History
Dakota was formed out of the massive Sioux Country Territory, which was officially renamed the Dakota Territory after Nebraska was granted statehood in 1875. Dakota's territorial governor, James Ewan Mitchell, envisioned the territory as a great melting pot of immigrants - in particular the poor Russian immigrants driven west from the overflowing cities of the East Coast - and Sioux Indians, who the immigrants would intermarry with over time. Mitchell was a pacifist and despite the presence of Fort Pierre at Dakota's extreme southern border, he felt that the best way to integrate Indians was to mix races, not to keep them apart - a radical idea at the time.

Dakota's northernmost border was finally drawn at the 51st parallel after the Alaskan War, which equally involved the fight against Alaskan soldiers as it did against Native Americans. American forces in Dakota had been devastated, and the famous Fort Clark raid in 1886 was a black stain on the population, many of whom were Russian speaking and had sympathized with Alaskan soldiers.

In 1893, Dakota received statehood as one of the western "superstates" alongside Montana, Pacifica and Kahokia. All four stretched far north to the 51st parallel and contained vast, untamed land - as they still do today. Dakota would experience only nominal growth during the early 20th century, and is today still one of the least populated states in the country.

Statistics
Statehood: 1893

Capital: High Bluff

Population: 1,675,000 (est. 2009)

Largest City: Regina 160,000

Nickname: Sioux Country

Statistics
Statehood: 1896

Population: 2,736,424 (est. 2009)

Capital: Salt Lake City

Largest City: Salt Lake City 281,698 city proper; 1,155,731 metropolitan area (est. 2009)

Nickname: Beehive State

Statistics
Statehood: 1844

Population: 20,480,560 (2010)

Capital: St. Augustine

Largest City: Saxby 813,456 city proper; 1,526,444 metropolitan area (2010 census)

Nickname: The Sunshine State

Description/History
Huron was the backbone of Anglophone British Canada before the Americans took it as part of their winnings of the Canadian War, and as such the new "Huron Territory" was widely regarded as a prime candidate for statehood. The territory remained as such for ten years before it as admitted to the union in 1826 alongside Cuba to continue the balance of slave-and-free states in Congress.

Huron remained an untamed wilderness for much of its existence, although its proximity to French Canada made it a growing hub of commerce in the 1850's and 60's. In 1865, the Montreal-Detroit Railroad was completed with Yorktown on its nexus, creating the first international railroad and causing a boom in both Huron and Michigan as a result. During the gilded age, industrialist George Brand established his Ontario Shipping Company in Hamilton, near Yorktown, further leading to the boom. The automotive industry relied on steel and parts built in Huron near Detroit, leading to the growth of Detroit's Huron suburb of Berlin.

Huron continued to grow into one of the more populous and industrialized centers in the early 1900's, and Yorktown soon surpassed Chicago as the second largest city in the country in 1910. The Smith Slump was a huge blow to the state, but under Governor Rodney P. Werck, the state rebounded and almost doubled its population during the Booming Thirties.

The state's steel and hard industry sector enjoyed the economic booms of the late 1950's and 1960's, and their proximity to French Canada made Yorktown a major player in the Cold War, becoming the hub of numerous defense contractors and arms manufacturors. While suffering heavily in the 1979-83 economic crisis, Huron has stayed through the decline of the manufacturing industry better than Midwestern states such as Michigan, Ohio and Indiana through commerce, a strong biomedical sector and as the hub of the defense industry, and thanks to pragmatic, centrist Governors such as Jim Carrey (1995-2003) and Patrick Mead (2003-).

Statistics
Statehood: 1826

Capital: Hale

Population: 11,500,000

Largest City: Yorktown 2,537,000 city proper; 5,650,000 metropolitan area (est. 2010)

Nickname: The Royal State

Statistics
Statehood: 1818

Capital: Springfield

Population: 12,910,409

Largest City: Chicago

Nickname: The Prairie State

Description/History
Nova Scotia was part of the Partition Agreement with France in 1815, after Englad was forced to cede vast amounts of North American territory to France and the United States. A populous region, Nova Scotia earned statehood early in its time as an American territory. As an East Coast state, it has a significance in trans-Atlantic trade, especially with Ireland, creating a rich tradition of Irish immigration to Nova Scotia comparable only to the Irish presence in New England and New York. In the 1870's, during a massive Imperial purge of central Europe, thousands of Poles and Czechs fled to Nova Scotia, creating an ethnic presence in Halifax that remains to this day.

Nova Scotia lost much of its significance throughout the early 1900's due to the airship and airplane industries, but still became a major naval center and continued its focus on fishing, shipbuilding and became a major Navy hub. In the early 1970's, Nova Scotia experienced a renaissance as another one of the mass-immigrant waves that has fueled its growth in the past arrived, this time from South America, Brazil in particular. In the late 20th and early 21st century, Halifax reemerged as a North Atlantic commercial center and the population of its metropolitan area nearly doubled between 1990-2005 in a massive suburban boom, since the core city's population grew by only 20% during that time.

The University of Nova Scotia, located in Edwardstown near Halifax, is one of the best public universities in the United States and the world, and its ice hockey team is the most storied of any in the nation, having a fierce rivalry with nearby Huron.

Statistics
Statehood: 1823

Capital: Halifax

Population: 3,773,089 (est. 2009)

Largest City: Halifax 497,567 city proper; 1,088,455 metropolitan area (est. 2009)

Nickname: The Big Coast State

Governor: Rachel Shaw

Description/History
Oregon was the name given to a wide swath of western territory in the 1800's, formally organized as the Oregon Territory in 1840 with an undeclared border assumed between the United States and Alaska at the 51st parallel, where the current border runs today. The Oregon Trail was a famous route taken by settlers to the Willamette River Valley, which quickly grew. Across the river from the Fort Vancouver site, settlers John Eisenman and Richard Burnstead founded Vancouver City, meant to compliment the military outpost, not far from Oregon City. By 1850, the Oregon Territory south of the Columbia River was one of the more populous territories in the Union. In 1856, at the town of Salem down the Willamette from the larger settlements at Oregon City and Vancouver, a state legislature petitioned for statehood, and was quickly ratified.

With the completion of the Pacific Coast Railroad from San Diego to Vancouver in 1870, Oregon boomed even more. It was soon the fastest-growing state in the country. Even more growth occurred as a result of the Alaskan War between 1884-87 - with the war raging in the Washington Territory to the north, business flourished in Vancouver and Salem as new settlers sought work in lucrative wartime industry. The war established Vancouver as the Pacific Northwest's hub, despite later growth in Tacoma and the Quad-Cities.

The logging industry continued as the agricultural stable boomed along the Willamette, and Vancouver became in the early 1900's one of the key Pacific ports. It hosted the 1914 World Fair, a feat not matched by 'rival' cities Tacoma or Bellingham until 1940 and 1958, respectively. Wamash would not host the World Fair until 1991. During the Pacific War, Vancouver lost some of its importance to Puget Sound ports, due to their natural shipbuilding harbors and inlets. Still, the city continued to flourish and Oregon along with it.

The 1977 Boise Race Riots were a black stain on the state, especially the Oregon National Guards violent handling of the volatile situation. 41 people were killed, hundreds of arrests were made and billions were made in propety damages.

Statistics
Statehood: 1856

Capital: Salem

Population: 5,550,000

Largest City: Vancouver 752,000 city proper; 2,125,000 metropolitan area (including communities in Washington state)

Nickname: The Beaver State

Description/History
Pacifica was once called the British Columbia Territory, North Oregon Territory, Washington Territory, and finally the Fraser Territory - all while several population centers grew along the Fraser River, along the Straight of Georgia and on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. With the boom of Tacoma and the lower Puget Sound cities, the growth of the "Juan de Fuca Ports" - Port Angeles, Sydney, Whiskey Bay, Esquimalt, Bellingham, Wamash and Kirkwood - helped even further stimulate trade in northern Puget Sound and into the Straight of Georgia. The region was the site of some of the most vicious fighting during the Alaskan War, and monuments to this brutal war remain in Pacifica today as a reminder.

In 1888, with Washington's statehood established at the 49th parallel following the inconclusive Alaskan War, the governor of the Fraser Territory, John Wharton, found himself ruling over a territory that was still contested between the US and Alaska. As the Treaty of Sofiyagrad stipulated, the territory between the 54th and 49th parallels were dually Alaskan and American. The Alaskan interest focused largely on Vancouver Island itself; however, the Russian-speaking communities were growing as far south as Wamash and Kirkwood along the Fraser. Finally, in 1895, President Rockefeller himself travelled to Bellingham to meet in a summit with the Alaskan Tsar Feodor, a new and more moderate Alaskan leader, to knock out the Treaty of the San Juan Islands: The Alaskans would finally respect the American claim to all land south of the 52nd parallel as well as Vancouver Island, and America would stop its attempts to claim the Yekaterina Islands between Vancouver Island and Alaska.

With statehood granted to "Pacifica" in 1899, the name meaning to inspire romance and adventure, the new state found itself growing slowly as compared to its smaller but more established southern neighbor, Washington. The state would, through most of the early 20th century, continue to rely on the logging and shipping industries in the "Trans-Straight" region at the southern end of the state, with Sydney, Esquimalt, Saanich and Whiskey Bay emerging as the hubs of southern V.I.'s growth. Across the strait, the "Four Cities" began to emerge as a Northwest commerce center as important as Tacoma or Vancouver. When the Pacifica Railroad Company finally built a rail line all the way north to Pavlovsky, a former Alaskan city in the central mountains of Pacifica, the addition of important fronteir cities was complete. In the mid-20th century, Sahalee and Wamash emerged as two rapidly growing cities alongside smaller Kirkwood and Fraserburg. The Quad-Cities are still even today a major economic center that competes directly with Tacoma and Vancouver, and since the mid-to-late 1980's the Quad-Cities metropolitan area has almost doubled in size, making western Pacifica a growing and important part of not just the Pacific Northwest, but of the entire US west coast.

Statistics
Statehood: 1899

Capital: Whiskey Bay

Population: 4,237,981 (est. 2009)

Largest City: Sahalee 362,210 city proper; 2,078,941 metropolitan area (est. 2009)

Nickname: The Cascade State

Description/History
When California was admitted into the Union in 1853, the lenghty peninsula of Baja California was still technically considered a part of state, despite the populace's detachment from the capital at Monterey and the considerable distance between La Paz, the peninsula's largest port, and San Diego. Over time, the development of the Californian Peninsula began to draw the people of the Peninsula further and further away from the decisions of Monterey and the economic influence of San Francisco and San Diego.

In 1876, Governor William Tenny submitted papers to the United States Congress requesting the formation of the state of Peninsula, which he felt had a significantly large enough population and a unique enough culture to constitute its own state. This was true; Peninsula had the highest Spanish-speaking population of any of the western states and had a population twice the size of Rhode Island's due to the growth of South American shipping in the 1860's. In 1877, the Congress denied the Peninsula Constitution, and the La Paz Rebellion began. "Statehood or Death," was the slogan, and in 1879 the state of California ceded the territory in contention to the State of Peninsula, which was admitted to the Union that same year.

Peninsula developed as a flourishing state in the 1930's after years as a frontier state due to the tourist industry that flocked to the Peninsula's beautiful beaches. The cities of La Paz, Cabo San Lucas and Vista Beach became huge tourist hubs in the 1940's, and with the Sun Belt movement in the 1960's and 70's they became home to retirement homes and even regular commerce. La Paz has developed into one of the Pacific Rim's most important ports, and is the largest port that trades with the important Mexican and Colombian markets.

In the mid-1990's, the real estate market in Peninsula crashed, driving many residents north and east. The state is still recovering internally today, but the tourist base remains strong.

Statistics
Statehood: 1879

Capital: Tennyburg

Population: 7,456,700 (est. 2009)

Largest City: La Paz 1,567,899 city proper; 2,288,902 metropolitan area (est. 2009)

Nickname: The Ocean State

Description/History
Puerto Rico was added to the United States as a territory following the victory of France over Spain and the United States' subsequent seizure of Florida and Cuba. For much of its early time in the United States, it was in contention between the French Empire and US - both saw the small island as a strategic commercial center in the east Caribbean, and it was near the French territory of Haiti. During the 1830's and 1840's, Puerto Rico's sugar cane industry flourished to the point where it contributed to 90% of the island's economy. Slavery boomed there up until the Free Child Amendment of 1870, and soon immigrant workers became the norm.

During the lean economic times of the 1910's and 1920's, Puerto Rico's stable but poor lifestyle plummeted to new lows. Richard Holly's seminal novel San Juan detailed the story of a native Puerto Rican family dealing with the steep depression on the island, and their relationship to a struggling middle class white family that had owned the banana plantation they had once worked on.

Even through the boom of the 1930's, Puerto Rico remained one of the poorest states in the Union, relying on the growing tourist industry in San Juan (called "Poor Man's Havana") and factories built on the island for the cheap labor and corrupt local and state officials. It wasn't until the gradual flocking of rich retirees in the 1960's and 70's to San Juan's beaches and the formation of the Sun Belt that Puerto Rico reentered the national scene, long a forgotten state. Now a tourist haven and a booming warm-weather state, Puerto Rico is a state on the rise; case in point, it has doubled its population, GDP and standard of living index since 1970. Still, even today, there are severe class schisms in Puerto Rico, with no solid middle class and a history of severe corruption in the local and state government.

Statistics
Statehood: 1858

Capital: San Juan

Population: 4,567,445

Largest City: San Juan 553,965 city proper; 2,256,987 metropolitan area (est. 2009)

Nickname: The Caribbean State

Governor: Sonia Sotomayor