The State of Alabama was a political entity established in January, 1984, located in the northern portion of the former U.S. state of Alabama. It was established as a successor to the former state of Alabama.
The capital is in Florence, and it consists of the former U.S. Congressional Fifth District and portions of the former U.S. Congressional Fourth, Third and Seventh Districts. It also claims former Alabama south to Tuscaloosa, although locals have disputed that claim for decades.
Alabama was one of the three original states in the Confederate States of America when it was founded in 1985. A town adjacent to Florence, Muscle Shoals, became the capital of the CSA. Alabama seceded from the CSA in 1999, hastening that country's demise.
It maintains relations with the other former states of the Muscle Shoals-based CSA, as well as with East Tennessee, Blue Ridge, Piedmont and the nations of the Dixie Alliance.
Florence is home to the University of Alabama (known as the University of North Alabama pre-Doomsday). The university's football team plays at Tom Braly Municipal Stadium, which seats 13,015 spectators. American expatriate businessmen living in Mexico and the ANZC have helped fund building of a new, 40,000-seat stadium near the Florence campus. To be named the Paul Bryant Memorial Stadium, construction is scheduled to be finished by 2011.
History[]
Post-Doomsday[]
As with virtually every other surviving portion of the former United States, the event known for years locally as World War III - and worldwide as Doomsday - took the region completely by surprise.
Florence, a town in the northwestern corner of the state of Alabama, took the lead in establishing order throughout the region and providing aid to any refugees who found their way into the area, particularly from Huntsville.
Only a few scouts returned from an expedition sent towards the city of Birmingham; most of their number had succumbed to radiation or to attacks from raiders and cannibals. Birmingham was confirmed destroyed, but the college town of Tuscaloosa survived and, like Florence, maintaining order and helping refugees from Birmingham.
By December, the need arose to establish a more formal government to rule the known surviving portions of Alabama. Led by former state senator Bobby Denton, representatives from Florence, Muscle Shoals and other nearby cities declared the State of Alabama on January 18, 1984, with its capital in Florence.
The new Confederate States[]
A number of factors led to the formation of a more liberal, non-racist, multicultural Confederate States of America in 1985. Alabama was one of the founding states, and played a prominent role in national affairs until the country's slow dissolution in the 1990s. Alabama leaders permitted the new CSA to establish its capital in the town of Muscle Shoals, across the river from Florence.
Tuscaloosa[]
By 1986, relations had been established with Tuscaloosa, and there was discussion of extending the formal state borders there and using it as a base to explore the southern portion of former Alabama. Two factors greatly affected that: lingering radiation from nearby Birmingham, and increasing attacks on roads connecting Alabama and Tuscaloosa.
After Tuscaloosa's mayor was killed in a raider attack on March 7, 1986, his successor began to push for formal union with Alabama. Consultations with local attorneys led the new mayor to believe that emergency powers developed in the wake of Doomsday gave him the power to unilaterally decide the city's political fate, without even a referendum. He did so, and Alabama's House and Senate voted to readmit Tuscaloosa County into the state on March 26 (and formalize Lamar, Fayette and Marion counties as state 'territory').
Local discontent over the "new" Alabama's CSA affiliation was muted by increased and improved shipments of food and supplies between the two regions; survival still trumped politics. But a University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) report on the likely affects of fallout and radiation on the region - and the reaction of Alabama state leaders - led to a break between the two regions that exists to this day.
In May, the Governor, acting out of concern for the survival and health of Tuscaloosa residents, ordered the city and area towns, villages and farms to be evacuated, including every bit of salvageable material, to north Alabama.
Only 30 percent of the local population agreed to the relocation.
The local black population, already incensed over Florence's association with the Confederate States, rebelled, and were joined by much of the University of Alabama student and teacher population and by local whites who were loyal to the United States.
The Governor tried to fight a war with the locals for a few weeks. Realizing the state's ability to fight the war was hampered by raider attacks on the National Guard traveling to Tuscaloosa, and eventually that most of the people there didn't want to be associated with the Confederacy, the Governor relented. Trade of essential products - whenever possible - was kept open by gubernatorial decree.
Ray Perkins[]
One of the people who made the trek north was Ray Perkins. Perkins was the head football coach at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa when WWIII changed everything. He was a highly influential leader in Tuscaloosa post-DD, and the leader of the faction who argued that relocation north was best for the entire region.
Perkins became active in state politics in 1987, and his popularity helped carry him into the governor's office in the early 1990s. His actions helped mute any remaining sentiment to 'invade' Tuscaloosa, and his insistence on expanding on trade with a now-independent Tuscaloosa helped smooth over disputes greatly (but not totally) between the two sides.
Secession from the CSA[]
As the CSA began to fracture under the numerous factions that came to dominate national politics, Alabama state leaders came under the opinion that they could start their own nation. Frost, who had beaten Perkins in 19xx for a second term, led the way on the initiative. Despite pleas from advisors not to, the Alabama state government began secession proceedings in the fall of 1998.
In reaction, Congress, mainly on the strength of pro-Confederate Alabama and Georgia Senators and Representatives and Tennessee's contingent, passed a series of bills aimed at granting the national government more power.
The measures were not to the liking of Georgia, however, which recalled its Senators and Representatives and replaced them with ones who favored a less powerful central government. Attempts to reverse the bills passed in the fall of 1998 and winter of 1999 became bogged down as senators and representatives from the various states squabbled and argued over every possible detail.
The squabbling overshadowed the third and final Presidential campaign. Dick Jordan, the mayor of Florence, ran against token opposition from Tennessee and Mississippi. He won the November elections with 79 percent of the vote and with only 42 percent of eligible voters going to the ballot. He began his short term January 20, 1999, just over two weeks before he would have become ineligible to be President.
Alabama was not deterred by Jordan's election. The legislature voted to secede, and Frost signed it into law on February 4, 1999. However, Muscle Shoals seceded from Alabama that same night; the CS Government recognized Muscle Shoals from that point on as the capital of Alabama (Jordan reaffirmed his oath to the Confederacy and his resident status as an Alabaman allied with Muscle Shoals). Jordan ordered troops from the local Army of Alabama, along with Tennessee and Mississippi Army troops sent to assist, to defend Muscle Shoals. Despite a lot of bluffing from the CS and Alabama (Florence) armies, neither side came close to actual fighting.
Muscle Shoals would be permitted to use local Alabama roads for travel and trade with other CS states.
Jordan tried valiantly to keep his country from falling apart, pleading with senators and representatives from all remaining states to not give up on the nation.Still, the various states began seceding from the Confederacy. Two states, Tennessee and Mississippi, did not; they sent not only notes of confidence in the government from their respective governors, but troops to help protect Muscle Shoals and the capital from possible incursions by Alabama.
But with Tennessee dealing increasingly with bandit attacks on its various towns, and Mississippi becoming more reliant on Alabama, President Jordan and the CS Congress decided to pull the plug on the "Confederate experiment". A 90-day plan to wind down the central government and merge its functions into the remaining states was enacted, although the Constitution had no provision for such an act.
On July 2, 1999, legislatures of the three remaining states voted to secede from the CSA. On July 4, a special session of Congress paved the way to allow Muscle Shoals back in. By November 4, the mall where the government once operated stood as a mostly-empty museum, maintained by the Muscle Shoals government itself.
Florence's newly elected mayor Sam Pendleton asked Muscle Shoals leaders to join with him to help form a new nation, to be called the CSA (if popular opinion preferred) or the USS (Union of Southern States, a name championed by many African-Americans and progressive whites). He was politely declined by Muscle Shoals' leadership, and feelers sent out to the other Confederate states were met with the same response. None of the former states had any desire to rejoin together as a country anytime soon after the "Confederate experiment" had failed. As far as the former leaders of the CSA were concerned, the country was dead and gone forever.
The past decade[]
The state continued to trade and develop relations with the former CSA states and Tuscaloosa.
One of the last acts of the old CSA was a resolution to resolve the 'bandit problem once and for all', and the former CS states banded together in 2000 to do just that. Their initiative was helped by the gradually declining numbers of bandits as they killed each other off, were killed by citizens and local patrolmen in self-defense, or gave themselves up to local officials to integrate into society.
With the bandit problem resolved, Alabama decided to attempt to restore relations with Tuscaloosa. A formal union was still out of the question, but the two regions agreed to full trade. Tuscaloosa also finally agreed, in 2004, to transfer all assets of the University of Alabama to the former University of North Alabama campus in Florence. This was a formality as the assets had been largely moved north in the 1980s.
Expeditions with the Mississippi government based in Corinth led to discoveries of a survivor state in southern Mississippi, along with two very different survivor groups in former Alabama. Later on, relations with survivor states in former Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina were established.
The news of the existence of the League of Nations reached Florence in 2009, along with the known history of the world since Doomsday, including the relocation and dissolution of the provisional U.S. government.
American expatriate businessmen living in Mexico and the ANZC, after finding out that Alabama and Tuscaloosa had survived, visited the region in July 2010. Their actions resulted in funding for the 40,000-seat Paul Bryant Stadium near the UA campus in Florence, as well as long-term restoration of the campus (and football stadium) in Tuscaloosa. The Paul Bryant Museum, dedicated to the popular Alabama football coach who died months before Doomsday, is to open in Tuscaloosa in September.
Currently, there is a small movement to reform the Muscle Shoals-based CSA. However, there is larger sentiment to rejoin the United States.
American Spring[]
More to come....
Economy[]
More to come...
Law and government[]
More to come...
Military and law enforcement[]
More to come...
Education[]
The University of Alabama at Florence is the state's only officially sanctioned university. Formerly known as the University of North Alabama, many assets of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa were transferred here on a gubernatorial order.
The Department of Education oversees secondary education statewide. Schools were placed under the authority of their respective towns after Doomsday, and remain to this day; the Department of Education sets general guidelines in regards to teaching, but each school system largely governs itself. Education is mandatory until age 16, though in recent years most students go on to complete their junior and senior years and many go on to the UofA.
Culture[]
Sports[]
Football and baseball were the only sports played at some level by the majority of the population after Doomsday. High school football has become especially popular over recent years; Alabama's all-star team won three Confederate national titles in the early and mid 1990s.
However, prep football's popularity has quickly been surpassed by that of the revived University of Alabama Crimson Tide football program. Playing its home games in 10,000-seat Bayly Stadium in Florence, the football program competes in the Southeastern Conference. Mexican entrepreneurs who graduated from the UofA in Tuscaloosa have pledged to help build a 40,000-seat stadium near the campus to be renamed Paul Bryant Stadium, after the successful and popular Alabama football coach who died mere months before Doomsday.
Basketball and bowling are the most popular indoor sports. Golf and tennis are played by the more affluent.
The arts[]
More to come...
Music[]
Muscle Shoals civic leaders have recently begun promoting the town as the "new Nashville" and pitching it to everyone as the successor to the destroyed city of Nashville, Tennessee, as the unofficial capital of the country music industry.
The idea was hatched as former President Hall began restoration of the famed Muscle Shoals recording studios, with an eye towards attracting regional and North American musicians to record albums. A loosely organized, often wild local country and rock music scene had developed in Muscle Shoals and Florence since the mid-1980s. In fact, the former Confederate capital had developed a good reputation as "Music City CSA" (playing on Nashville's Music City USA monicker).
Once an outlandish idea, the proposal has progressed as far as detailing locations for recording studios and corporate headquarters.
More to come...
Media[]
The Alabama Times-Daily serves the entire state, publishing on Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. It also publishes a special weekly section for readers in Tuscaloosa.
BAMA Radio went on the air February 7, 2011, on the 95.5 and 107.1 FM and 1070 AM frequencies. Based out of Florence, BAMA Radio carries news, weather, University of Alabama and high school football, basketball and baseball, and farm reports, as well as pre- and post-Doomsday country music and southern gospel.
To help grow the audience, its owners from Kentucky began giving away inexpensive, but durable, radio sets to the public. Those with sets can receive stations from Tennessee and the CK, as well as 50,000-watt stations from across North America.
Demographics[]
More to come...
International relations[]
Alabama has solid relations with all of the former Confederate states other than Jackson, as well as the other nation states in the former South.
Officials are talking with the League of Nations and also plan to meet with representatives from the Dixie Alliance and the United States government in western North America.
Pamphlets, presumably written and published by a previously unknown group called 'Citizens of the Southron', were found around Corinth in late August 2010 asking 'Is the time right for a Union of Southern Republics, stretching from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic, from the Ohio River to the Gulf of Mexico?'. The group subsequently opened offices in Corinth and Tupelo, and representatives told interested bypassers (and law enforcement) the group was interested in the Southern states joining together "like South America".
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