Confederate States of America (Homelands)

Confederate States of America
Timeline: Homelands
OTL equivalent: Confederate States
Confederate States of America ; Timeline: Homelands ; OTL equivalent: Confederate States
	1861-1969
	Motto: ; Deo Vindice
	Anthem: ; God Save the South;
	The Confederate States in North America
Capital	Montgomery, Alabama ; (1861); Richmond, Virginia (1861-1866); Atlanta, D.C. ; (1866-1969); San Diego, Colorado ; (de facto, 1969)
Official languages	English; French; Spanish
Demonym	Confederate; Southerner (informal)
Government	Confederated presidential republic
Legislature	Congress
Establishment
Area
Population
Currency	Confederate States Dollar

The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States or the Confederacy or simply The South, was a confederated presidential republic primarily located in North America that existed from 1861 to 1969.

The Confederate States had its origins in the American Civil War, fought against the United States of America from 1861-1864. The eleven states that seceded from the Union and formed the main part of the CSA were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The economies of the secessionist states were heavily dependent upon agriculture and a plantation system that relied on slaves of African descent for labor. Convinced that white supremacy and the institution of slavery were threatened by the election of Abraham Lincoln to the U.S. presidency in 1860, the Confederacy declared its secession from the United States. In a speech known today as the Cornerstone Address, Vice President and later President Alexander H. Stephens described the nation's ideology as being centrally based "upon the great truth that the negro [sic] is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition."

From the end of the Civil War through the 1880s, the plantation-based and slave-dependent economy struggled to return to its prewar heights; thousands of enslaved people continued to escape north to the United States, while the factories of the United States and Europe turned away from the raw materials provided by Confederate plantations in favor of alternative sources. In the late 1880s, following a revolt of people who had escaped slavery, the Homelands system was established in 1893, where hundreds of thousands of free Black people were granted limited autonomy in exchange for assuming Confederate debts. Slavery was not officially abolished until 1906, making it the last country in the Western world to do so. Black Americans living in the Confederacy were denied citizenship for the duration of the country's history.

The Third World War (1938-1947) saw North America emerge as a key front in the war, with the fighting between the Confederate States and the United States being the bloodiest conflict in the history of the Western Hemisphere. From 1943-1969, the Confederate States was under the rule of John G. Crommelin, who governed the country as a one-party state under the National States' Rights Party; de facto until 1965 and de jure thereafter. The Crommelin era was marked by rapid industrialization, militarization, and political paranoia, with his actual and perceived opponents targeted through mass arrests or execution. After the opposition Constitutionalist Party was banned in 1965, opposition leaders would found the Congress of Liberty in Europe, into which the American National Council and the Homelands Self-Governance Council in Exile would be merged.

In 1968, the People's Republics War, beginning in Cuba under Fidel Castro, expanded to the continental Confederacy and ultimately toppled the Crommelin regime. In 1969, the People's Republics of America encompassed both the former Confederate States and the United States, reuniting the two countries for the first time since 1860. After the People's Republics dissolved in 1984, the two formerly independent countries remained unified as the United States of America.

By the time of its dissolution in 1969, the Confederacy consisted of seventeen states, encompassing some 3,063,694 km² (1,903,691 mi²), and counted over 68 million inhabitants within its borders. Agriculture remained a significant part of its economy throughout its existence, which in later years included oil production and refining, filmmaking, and military production and research. From the end of the First World War, the Confederate States was considered one of the two Great Powers in the Western Hemisphere, and through its military strength - primarily with its navy - it exercised hegemony in the Caribbean.

History[]

American Civil War: 1861-1864[]

In February 1861, the first seven secessionist states met in Montgomery, Alabama, to form a new government. The first Confederate Congress was convened on February 4th and adopted a provisional constitution. On February 8th, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi - formerly a U.S. Senator and Secretary of War - was nominated President. Georgia Congressman Alexander Stephens, who had publicly supported unionism as late as 1860, was chosen as Vice President. The new government began seizing federal properties, prioritizing armories and military installations. In May 1861, the capital was moved to Richmond, Virginia, at Stephens' urging; this was done both to encourage other border states to join the rebellion, but also because of the city's infrastructure and industrial capabilities.

On April 12th, 1861, after President Abraham Lincoln refused to give up Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, Davis ordered General P.G.T. Beauregard to open fire on the fort. The Civil War had begun.

First Battle of Bull Run Kurz & Allison — *First Battle of Bull Run*
Chromolithograph by Kurz & Allison, 1889

President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to help put down the rebellion, and assembled an army of 35,000 men - the largest ever seen in North America up to that point - under the command of General Irvin McDowell. McDowell's men believed that the war would be a short one, with the Confederate capital of Richmond in their hands within six weeks. At the Battle of Bull Run on July 21st, however, disaster ensued as McDowell's army was completely routed and fled back to the nation's capitol. Major General George McClellan of the Union was put in command of the Army of the Potomac following the battle on July 26th, 1861. Despite pressure from Lincoln, McClellan did not move until March 1862, when the Peninsular Campaign began with the purpose of capturing Richmond; it was initially successful, but in the final days of the campaign, McClellan faced strong opposition from Robert E. Lee, the new commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. In the Seven Days Battles (June 25 - July 1), Lee forced the Army of the Potomac to retreat. Lincoln recalled McClellan to Washington and appointed Henry Halleck as General in Chief, while McClellan's men were placed under the command of John Pope.

In August, Lee fought the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas) and defeated John Pope's Army of Virginia. Pope was dismissed from command and his army was merged with McClellan's. The Confederates then invaded Maryland, hoping to obtain European recognition and an end to the war. The two armies met at Antietam on September 17th, single bloodiest day of the war. The Union victory allowed Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that all slaves in states still in rebellion as of January 1st, 1863 were freed. Slavery would eventually be permanently outlawed in the United States upon the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

In the West, both the Union and the Confederacy faced significant victories and defeats. In the opening months of the war, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston won victories at Fort Tejon and San Pedro, organizing southern California as the C.S. Territory of Colorado. Additional Confederate victories at the Valverde (February) and Glorieta Pass (March 1862) secured the Arizona and New Mexico territories for the secessionists. Confederate insurrections in Missouri were put down by the federal government by 1863, despite the initial Confederate victory at Wilson's Creek near Springfield, Missouri. Following the Union victory at the Battle of Perryville (October 1862) Confederates were driven from Kentucky for two years. A Union victory at Vicksburg (May-July 1863) split the Confederacy in two, down the Mississippi River. Union General Ulysses S. Grant's late war victory in the Red River Campaign (March-May 1864) led to the surrender of Edmund Kirby Smith's 43,000-man army, the largest such Confederate surrender of the war.

Robert-E-Lee-by-Sievers — Monument to Robert E. Lee, Gettysburg Battlefield

Militarily, the Union could not follow up its victory at Antietam. The overly cautious McClellan failed to pursue the Confederate army, and Lincoln dismissed him from command in October and replaced him with Ambrose Burnside. Burnside attempted to invade Richmond from the north, but the campaign ended in disaster at Fredericksburg when Burnside ordered waves of futile attacks against an entrenched Confederate position. Burnside was replaced himself by General Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker in January 1863, but he proved unable to stop Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson at Chancellorsville in May. Lee's second invasion of the North, however, began disastrously. Hooker was replaced by George Meade, who won a quick engagement at the Battle of Gettysburg four days later but who failed to pursue Lee's army, letting him continue his invasion of Pennsylvania. The Battle of Chambersburg on July 24th was inconclusive, and Lincoln was assassinated on August 15th, 1863, leaving Vice President Hannibal Hamlin to succeed him. With his death, Lincoln became a martyr for the Union, personifying the grief and sorrow many felt in the war.

Hamlin retained Halleck as General in Chief for a time, before replacing him with Hooker in January 1864. Hooker made his headquarters in the field and moved to drive Lee from Pennsylvania, who had invaded for a third ad final time. Following the Second Battle of Chambersburg (April 8th) and Battle of Carlisle (April 14th), Hooker's army was in a precarious position. The six-day Battle of Harrisburg (April 20-26) proved to be a turning point, as Lee captured Pennsylvania's state capitol and forced the surrender of Hooker's 80,000-men Army of the Potomac.

Lee's army marched south to threaten Washington D.C. directly, beginning the long Siege of Fort Stephens. The siege forced Hamlin's government in the surrounded capital to sue for peace. Armistice was declared on July 13th, 1864, and the Treaty of Washington was signed on October 6th 1864, bringing the conflict to an end.

Independence and Liberty Hall Era: 1864-1874[]

Economy[]

At the time of its founding in 1861, the Confederate States had an agrarian-based economy dependent on slave-worked plantations, chiefly for the production of cotton for export to the textile mills of Europe and the northern states. When the Union blockaded Confederate ports in 1861, exports of cotton fell 95% and the Confederacy had to restructure itself to emphasize the production of food and munitions. By the time the Treaty of Washington was signed in 1864, the Confederacy's already-weak transportation and financial infrastructure had been left in ruins.

In the immediate years after the war, the government faced a massive debt from supplies and livestock seized from citizens with certificates that were to be paid off after a peace treaty was signed. President Jefferson Davis resisted calls to pay immediately, waiting to let the effects of French financial aid and resumed trade with the North to boost exports, while a monetary reform act was passed in an attempt to curb inflation. These efforts were modestly successful for a time, but the Confederacy’s economy lagged behind where it stood in 1860 and the gains from the slow recovery were wiped out during the Panic of 1871.

As the economy dragged and fell into a depression, many slaveowners found it increasingly expensive to keep the enslaved in bondage, often selling them to more wealthy plantation owners or sending them to work in the growing cities or towns. Manumission was subject to heavy regulation or outright forbidden throughout the Confederate States. As such, slaveowners who could no longer afford a slave would simply evict them in an act of forced maroonage; if they were unable to flee across the border to the north, they sought refuge in forests, hills, deserts, and for tens of thousands, the Great Dismal Swamp.

Davis and Stephens[]

Davis-Stephens-1861-electoral-ticket — Electoral ticket for Davis and Stephens, 1861

Davis and Stephens began their terms cordially, but their relationship soon deteriorated as the war progressed. Stephens became more outspoken in his opposition to the administration, culminating in a March 1864 speech to the Georgia Legislature, excoriating the Davis administration for its support of conscription and suspension of habeas corpus.

In the winter of 1864-1865, Davis went on a national tour of the new nation; this provided a significant boost to his visibility and popularity, as he had rarely been seen outside of Richmond for the duration of the war. Stephens largely looked out for Davis' interests in his absence instead of his own ambitions, and the relationship between them steadily improved. Davis and Stephens were nominally independent, but like most Southern leaders, had been members of the Democratic Party before the war. In 1866, the two men - along with other Confederate political leaders - met at Stephens' Liberty Hall home in Crawfordville, Georgia to discuss the future politics of the new country; in what became known as the Liberty Hall Compromise, a new Democratic Party would be formed with Stephens as its presidential nominee, while Davis would become Secretary of War. Other allies of Davis, such as Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin and Treasury Secretary Christopher Memminger, would remain in their positions. Stephens would go on to win the presidency in the 1867 election against Zebulon B. Vance, Governor of North Carolina and nominee of the newly-formed Constitutionalist Party.

In 1866, a 10 mi² national district was created around the city of Atlanta, to become the permanent national capital; this would be organized under the name "District of Calhoun." Atlanta, D.C., would be largely under the purview of Congress, with an elected Mayor and City Council, until a territorial government was organized in 1948.

By 1870-1871 the relationship between the two men had once again fallen apart; Davis urged Stephens to intervene on the side of the British during the Fenian War, while Stephens refused, fearful that the weak Southern economy couldn't sustain another war with the North. After the failed annexation of Santo Domingo, Stephens fired Davis and Benjamin in 1871, in what would become known as the Cabinet Crisis. While a compromise was eventually reached, allowing some Davis allies (but not Davis himself) to remain in the cabinet, the rival factions in the Democratic Party could no longer maintain a unified front.

Second Party System: 1874-1904[]

Longstreet Administration[]

In the presidential election of 1873, the Democratic Party was deeply divided: Stephens supported Senator James Lawrence Orr, while Davis supported Stephens' own Vice President, Louis Wigfall. Wigfall handily won the party's nomination, but would go on to lose the general election to the Constitutionalist ticket of James Longstreet and George B. Crittenden.

Longstreet embarked on a series of reforms intended to revive the stagnant economy, root out corruption, and reconcile the South with the North. His administration campaigned on building schools, establishing a bimetallic standard, and constructing improvements of the coasts and overland transportation; while the Confederate constitution forbade Congress appropriating funds for overland improvements "intended to facilitate commerce," Longstreet argued that improvements were part of his duties as Commander in Chief, in making preparations for defense. This started the tradition of placing responsibility for roads and public construction under the Department of War, to complement the Department of the Navy's authority over waterway and coastal construction. Another innovation of the Longstreet administration was appointing Moxley Sorrel as the first Secretary of Administration, with responsibility of managing the growing government bureaucracy.

As President, Longstreet made an informal deal with Northern government officials and business leaders: Northern philanthropists would help fund construction of schools and libraries throughout the South, in exchange for his administration not contesting the freedom of slaves who had escaped north. This enraged his opponents and provided a boost in public support for them, now organized under the States’ Rights Democratic Party banner. In response, he supported legislation increasing the size of the Home Guard, militia organized to catch runaway slaves and to serve as local police. In 1875, Longstreet signed controversial legislation creating a national register of prices for people sold into slavery and legalizing manumission.

South Carolina Dynasty[]

Senator Wade Hampton III, States' Rights Democratic, would be elected President in 1879, starting the period known as the South Carolina Dynasty. Named for three Presidents from South Carolina - Hampton (1880-1886), Johnson Hagood (1886-1892), and Benjamin Tillman (1898-1904), this period was largely marked by agrarian conservatism, moralism, and machine politics.

Lee-at-prayer-meeting-Christ-in-camp — A depiction of Robert E. Lee attending a camp prayer service during the Civil War, from J. William Jones' *Christ in the Camp*, published 1887. Such hagiographic works became particularly common during the 1880s-1900s.

The Third Great Awakening, which started in the mid-1850s, had sparked a series of Christian revivals in the Confederate States Army in 1863. This in turn led to widespread interest in religion among the public; movements such as Pentecostalism gained widespread traction, while preachers such as J. William Jones and Adolphus Worrell reached millions across the country. Worrell’s translation of the New Testament would eventually become ubiquitous throughout the South. During the Civil War itself, the conflict had been seen as one for the preservation of slaveowning society; but by the 1880s it had become a holy war for the salvation of Southern whites in popular imagination.

The temperance movement, largely driven by women and evangelical revivalism, grew in support during this era. In 1881, President Hampton promoted and signed legislation creating a national alcohol dispensary program, requiring all liquor sold within its borders to be bottled and dispensed through state-run facilities. The dispensary program was a realigning issue in Southern politics, bringing prohibitionists and temperance supporters into the States’ Rights Democratic Party, while driving Catholics and German immigrants into the Constitutionalist Party fold.

In 1885, growing Confederate fears of a slave rebellion coincided with develop the Dismal Swamp Canal on the North Carolina - Virginia border, leading to the forced removal of the Great Dismal Swamp Maroons. The event - known today as the Maroon Rebellion - was the first armed internal conflict in the Confederate States, temporarily pitting the Virginia militia against national Confederate States forces. The clandestine operations of United States "torpedo runners" additionally marked the first military action between the two countries since the American Civil War, albeit indirectly. The conflict ignited outcry in the Union and alarm within the Confederacy, culminating in a rapid change to the Southern plantation economy and racial hierarchy. It propelled Virginia Governor William E. Cameron to the presidency (1892-1898), who would go on to strike a deal with Booker T. Washington to create the Homelands, providing a system of self-governance for the growing numbers of Freedmen and Maroons within Southern borders.

The South Carolina Dynasty additionally saw the first successful expansion of Confederate territory since independence, with delegates attending the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 and securing the purchase of the District of Sassandra from France. The Confederate diplomatic corps grew, as they attempted to gain equal footing with the United States in Europe.

Reformers' Era: 1904-1916[]

Towards the end of the 19th century, a widespread movement of social activism and political reform swept across the Confederate states, largely driven by middle-class society women and Christian ministers. Reformers targeted political machines and the landed aristocracy of the South, additionally promoting the abolition of slavery for a variety of economic or moral reasons.

Atkinson Administration[]

Portrait of William Yates Atkinson — President William Yates Atkinson, (1904-1907)

Former Georgia Governor William Yates Atkinson was elected President in 1903, on a campaign of broad reforms and abolition. The Confederate constitution prohibited Congress from passing any law against slavery, thus requiring any abolition to be the result of a constitutional amendment. Amendments to the constitution could only be proposed by constitutional conventions in at least three states, then ratified by two thirds of the states: Georgia, Virginia, and Cuba were the first states to call for an amendment.

By the start of the 20th century, chattel slavery had become prohibitively expensive for all but the largest plantation owners and the wealthiest members of white society. In its place, a system of sharecropping - where landowners and merchants provided land and supplies on credit, in exchange for the sharecropper using their share of the crop to pay off their debts - became the reality for many rural Black people outside of the Homelands. The burgeoning white labor and grange movements campaigned against this system as undercutting the price of their own labor. On September 29th, 1906, Louisiana became the last of the eleven states required to adopt the Third Amendment to the C.S. Constitution, formally prohibiting chattel slavery throughout the Confederate States. The CSA was the last country in the Western world to formally outlaw slavery, eighteen years after the Lei Áurea emancipated all enslaved people in Brazil. Still denied citizenship, Black people in the South were considered “dependent nationals” of the Confederate States.

During his tenure, Atkinson additionally promoted public school funding and increased pensions for Confederate soldiers and widows. He was additionally the first Confederate President to visit the United States, meeting President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington, D.C.

Atkinson was assassinated by a delusional job seeker on August 8th, 1907, on the steps of Thompson's Hotel in Atlanta. He became the first of only two Confederate Presidents to be killed or die in office.

Hunt Administration[]

Atkinson's Vice President, George W.P. Hunt of Arizona, was the first President to represent one of the western states. He championed the reformers' movement, supporting such as women's suffrage, secret ballots, income tax, free silver coinage, and compulsory education. He was also an opponent of capital punishment and a supporter of organized labor. He often boasted that he “wore no copper collar,” referring to the powerful mining interests that dominated in the western states.

In 1908, Hunt began a sweeping reform program of direct primaries, the initiative, referendum and recall, and legislation that put controls on campaign spending and lobbying. He often feuded with Congress, even when it was held by his own party, and even called for a reduction in the number of Congressional seats and the establishment of a unicameral legislature, but failed on both of those efforts. The Fifth Amendment was adopted during Hunt's administration, granting women the right to vote in federal elections. The Fifth Amendment would be the primary subject of the 1913 Louisiana Supreme Court case Coghill vs. Louisiana, in which the Black educator Mary Dora Coghill sued for state citizenship and the right to vote; her claim to suffrage would be denied, but it formally allowed the état de blancheur standard (lit. state of whiteness) in Louisiana, carving out a legal status comparable to citizenship for all free Black people who met the standard, regardless of whether or not they had white ancestry. The case would serve as a precedent for the similar estado de blancura standard in Cuba, established the following year.

Hunt was re-elected in 1909 with a coalition of coalition of immigrants, workers, farmers, and small business owners, becoming the first and only President to be re-elected before the passage of the Seventh Amendment in 1948; the constitution forbade Presidents to seek re-election, but as he had come into office through the death of his predecessor, he was eligible to seek a full term of his own accord. In 1911, Hunt secured passage of legislation creating the Competition and Consumer Commission and the Department of Labor and Commerce. The National Interstate Reserve Bank (NIRB) was additionally established during his administration.

Hunt took an active interest in American affairs, working to improve relations with the United States and throughout Latin America. He visited the United States just as his predecessor did, visiting Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Wilmington, Delaware. He further cemented the Confederate alliance with Colombia, which would later prove crucial during the First World War.

While Confederate society was still agrarian or ranching-based by far, urbanization and industrialization increased significantly during the early 20th century. Cities like Birmingham, Alabama, and Memphis, Tennessee, emerged as major industrial centers.

World Wars and Global Power: 1916-1943[]

First World War[]

Americas-1916-Homelands-TL-5 — Alliances in the Americas, 1916; Entente in red, Allies in green

Alliances-Europe-WWI-Homelands-2 — Alliances in Europe, 1915; Entente in red, Allies in green

The First World War began in the Balkans, when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its share of the spoils of the Balkan War of 1912-1913, attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece. The Bulgarian invasion broke of the short-lived Peace of Sarajevo and triggered a network of European alliances and military pacts, leading to war among the Great Powers in June 1915. On one side was the French-led "Entente" and on the other was the British and German-led "Allies."

In April 1916, a secret diplomatic communication from the French foreign ministry to the Confederate States was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence; the telegram proposed a formal military alliance between the Confederacy and France if the United States entered the war, where the South would receive Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri in compensation. With tensions reaching its boiling point, the United States declared war on both France and the Confederate States on May 6th, 1916; Italy, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, and the rest of the Entente declared war on the United States shortly thereafter.

Stretching over 3,400 miles (≈5472 km), the inter-American border was the longest theater of operations in the war. While the war east of the Mississippi River developed into trench warfare, operations west of the river were more mobile, as trenches proved inefficient over the long distances. The war saw the widespread use of new technologies and innovations, including airplanes, aircraft carriers, wireless communication, and tanks.

Naval warfare was a significant factor in the global war; navies on all sides were influenced by the U.S. naval strategist Alfred Mahan, who argued possession of a blue-water navy was vital for global power projection. While the North and the South had been in a naval arms race since the aftermath of the Maroon Rebellion, Southern naval capacity and production outpaced that of the Union. The United States was able to secure significant victories in the Pacific naval theater and by keeping the Panama Canal open to the Allies, but Confederate naval strength was crucial in exercising control of the Caribbean and in the Colombian theater of the war.

The First World War severed communications and travel between the North and the Black population of the South, living in the Homelands system. Understanding the certain destruction of Black communities if he chose a side in the conflict, Homelands President Robert Russa Moton issued a Proclamation of Neutrality in December 1916, stating that any person living on the Homelands who attempted to join the Northern war effort would be punished under the Homelands court system and then handed over to the Confederate courts. Nevertheless, over 14,000 Black men would escape north and joined the Union forces, while several hundred would join the Southern war effort. After the Confederate defeat at the Battle of Nashville in 1917, Vardaman considered conscripting Black men for the war effort; Moton successfully argued against the plan, instead offering the use of Tuskegee and Amarillo as munitions factories.

The First World War was a significant turning point in the political, cultural, economic, and social climate of the world. A series of treaties ended the war among the powers, the most well-known being the Treaty of Potsdam. The war ended with borders largely status quo ante bellum, but the heavy cost of the war and its immediate aftermath sparked a series of revolutions and uprisings, leading to the Second World War only two years later. The Seventh Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1918, declaring that French (in addition to English and Spanish) was an official national language of the Confederacy; this was done to promote further good relations with France.

Second World War[]

From 1918-1922, a wave of political unrest and uprisings, mainly socialist or anti-colonial, swept across Europe and the world in the midst of upheaval caused by WWI. In Russia the Czar was overthrown during the Russian Revolution of 1918, followed by the Russian Civil War. Many French soldiers mutinied in 1917 and refused to engage the enemy; in Bulgaria in 1918, troop mutinies likewise forced the Bulgarian Tsar to step down. A coup against Emperor Napoleon V of France in 1919 led to the creation of the French Workers' Republic, while the forced abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany triggered a civil war. The civil wars in Russia and Germany, combined with the nationalist coup against Charles IV of the Triple Kingdom broke the fragile postwar peace, leading to the Second World War in 1921.

President Vardaman offered the use of Confederate troops and naval forces to aid the French imperial government and their allies, and in March 1921, Confederate troops landed in France. The goals of the intervention was partly to stop the collapse of governments to the revolutionaries, and, to a lesser extent, support some of the troops that had become trapped within Bolshevik enclaves.

During this conflict, the Confederacy militarily occupied portions of the French colonies in West Africa, as well as French territories in the Caribbean. These were later administered as overseas military districts, held in putative trust for the French Empire. The CSA would continue to administer these territories well after Napoleon V had declared himself Emperor of the Algerians in addition to his claim as Emperor of the French.

The conflict would end in 1922, with the Washington Peace Conference. Although metropolitan France had fallen, the republican and nationalist alliance had prevented Bolshevik governments from establishing themselves in Germany and Hungary.

Great Depression[]

The stock market crash of Thursday, October 21st, 1926, plunged the United States and the world at large into the Great Depression. Unemployment soared in the Confederate States, and crop prices fell sharply.

President Alfredo Zayas came into office in 1928, largely on a platform of correcting the Depression. He signed legislation empowering the President to reduce the gold backing for dollars and to print bills backed by silver alone when cash became tight, building on efforts taken during the Trammell administration. Zayas additionally signed legislation establishing the National Emergency Relief Administration, which aimed to alleviate household unemployment by creating new unskilled jobs in local and state government, as well as legislation creating parity prices for common agricultural products.

In June 1928, Zayas met with Robert Russa Moton in Atlanta, where they reached a corollary agreement to the Atlanta Compromise; the Homelands would restructure the Confederate debts they held in an effort to lessen the damage of the Great Depression, while the Homelands would gain the authority to establish a more expansive form of self-government. Homeland residents would additionally be able to work in Southern factories, with labor rights signed under contract.

While Zayas' administration was broadly popular, the President himself rarely left Atlanta, contributing to public perception of aloofness. In the 1934 election, Los Angeles Mayor John Clinton Porter defeated Vice President Albert H. Roberts, running on an eclectic platform that one later journalist would term “xenophobic Protestant populism.” He opposed the loosening of prohibition under Zayas and launched a public campaign against vice, tying gambling and alcohol to immigration and crime. Porter championed restrictions on immigration, in an putative attempt to keep jobs in citizen hands. While the Depression would continue to drag on for years, the Porter administration would prove largely popular with the Southern public at large.

Third World War[]

World War III began in September 1938, when German forces invaded Poland in tandem with the Soviet Union, leading to a denunciation by the French Workers' Republic. Germany invaded France soon after, and in the resulting Franco-Soviet split, the administration of John Clinton Porter publicly sided with the Germans. However, military intervention would not take place until two years later. On October 20th, 1940, the Confederate States launched a surprise attack on Naval Station Treasure Island San Francisco, in tandem with a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The raids were intended as a preventative measure against the United States Pacific Fleet and achieve victory in a short war before the United States entered the war of its own accord.

The surprise attack had the secondary goal of turning the Second Union public against President Henry A. Wallace before the November election. This backfired when the public instead rallied behind the Wallace administration, and he won re-election to an unprecedented third term in 1940.

The Confederate capture of Panama four months after the San Francisco attack prevented U.S. vessels from traveling between the Pacific and the Atlantic, granting the Confederacy near-hegemony over the Caribbean.

On April 12th, 1943, Confederate President William H. Murray and Vice President John Nance Garner were killed in an air raid on the resort town of Bullochville, Georgia. Navy Secretary John G. Crommelin succeeded him and Murray's death became a rallying cry in the South. Tentative armistice talks held in Mexico City collapsed, and the war continued for another four years.

Crommelin Era: 1943-1969[]

Captain John Geraerdt Crommelin, US Navy, circa in 1947 — John G. Crommelin, circa 1947

Authoritarianism[]

The first years of the Crommelin regime were marked by severe human rights violations; thousands of people in the South were jailed, tortured, and executed. At least seven thousand people were executed during the first six months Crommelin's time in office, and at least eighty thousand more were killed during the next 26 years, as determined by the later Udall Report. At least 400,000 were imprisoned and tortured while, "situations of extreme trauma" affected upwards of one million persons; this figure includes individuals killed, tortured or exiled, and their immediate families. Hundreds of thousands of people fled the country, seeking asylum in the United States, Canada, or in Europe.

German Führer Hermann Göring surrendered to Allied forces on June 17th, 1947, bringing the war in Europe to a close. After the Japanese surrender in August that year, the Confederate States was the sole remaining Axis power left standing. Crommelin soon resumed peace talks with the Allies. The last major military action of the American Front, the Confederate recapture of Bowling Green, was seen as a boost to his administration's hand in negotiations. An armistice was signed in Mexico City on August 9th, 1947, followed by the signing of the Treaty of Oaxaca on September 6th, bringing the war to an end.

The terms of peace was met with both relief and anger from the Third Union public; borders were status quo ante bellum but demilitarized for four miles on each side. The Treaty of Oaxaca was seen as broadly generous to the South, but Northerners welcomed the conclusion to the seven years of war.

In 1965, citing the "collaboration" between the Homelands and Jewish people, Crommelin ordered the Homelands system to be disbanded, with land and public buildings returned to the states. Riots in Tuskegee, Amarillo, Fort Abakia, and other cities were violently put down with the military. Homelands President Daniel James Jr., only months into his first term, was forced to flee with his administration to the United States, where he established a government-in-exile in Philadelphia. Tens of thousands of African Americans likewise attempted to flee across the border.

In 1948, Crommelin secured passage of the Seventh Amendment; he would ultimately go on to be elected to the Presidency for four six-year terms. The States' Rights Party was rebranded as the National States' Rights Democratic Party that same year. He used a variety of tactics to ensure re-election, including placing the states of Cuba and later Alabama under military administration and having the state's electoral votes awarded to him. In 1965, the Crommelin regime banned the Constitutionalist Party, forcing party leaders such as Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater to flee the country; dissidents would later form the Congress of Liberty.

People's Republics War[]

Che SClara — Che Guevara after the capture of Pensacola, Florida, 1964.

In 1952, Fidel Castro, a young lawyer running for a seat in the Cuba state legislature as a member of the Constitutionalist Party, circulated a petition to depose Governor Andrés Rivero Agüero, a member of the NSRDP, on the grounds that it had illegitimately suspended the electoral process. However, the courts did not act on the petition and ignored Castro's legal challenges. Castro thus resolved to use armed force to overthrow Agüero and the entire Crommelin regime; he and his brother Raúl gathered supporters, and on July 26th, 1953, they led an attack on the Moncada Barracks near Santiago de Cuba. The attack ended in failure – the authorities killed several of the insurgents, captured Castro himself, tried him and sentenced him to 15 years in prison. However, negotiations with the Manhattan Republic led to his release him in 1955. Castro and his brother went into exile in the New York City, where they were feted by the Foster government and met the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara. While in New York, Guevara and the Castros organized the 26 July Movement to continue their efforts to overthrow Crommelin. Volunteers from the United States, many of whom served as members of the Red Guard, contributed to the growing communist influence in the movement.

In December 1956, Fidel Castro led a group of approximately 1,500 fighters to Cuba, landing in the eastern part of the island. Castro's men originally established a beachhead, but the Confederate Home Guard soon killed, captured, or dispersed most of them. Castro managed to escape into the Sierra Maestra mountains with approximately 600 surviving fighters, where he began to wage a guerrilla war against Crommelin, aided by arms and volunteers from the Manhattan Republic. Growing anti-Crommelin resistance on the island, including a bloodily crushed rising by Cuban Navy personnel in Cienfuegos, soon led to chaos and increased violence. In 1958, Crommelin declared Cuba under martial law, placing Vice President and Secretary of War Fulgencio Batista in charge of operations.

Castro and the 26 July Movement were dealt a blow with the death of William Z. Foster and the subsequent establishment of the Restored Republic; the French Workers' Republic collapsed in 1958 and the Soviet Union refocused its attention to European affairs, further isolating the movement. In 1959, the 26 July Movement merged with the Central Executive Committee under Jack Shulman, forming the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (IRO); this would ultimately become the precursor of the Communist Party of the People's Republics of America (CPPRA).

In September 1964, Che Guevara led an invasion force of approximately 1,600 men to Pensacola, Florida, successfully capturing the city. A similar force under the command of Shulman soon captured Mobile, Alabama. The invasion occurred shortly before that year's presidential election; Constitutionalist Party nominees Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater called on Crommelin to resign and for peace talks to resume, under international arbitration. Crommelin soon placed Alabama and Florida under martial law, as Cuba had been, and ensured that the states' electoral votes would be cast for him. In January 1965, Crommelin banned the Constitutionalist Party, forcing party leaders to escape to the United States to evade capture. Six months later, the Homelands would similarly be dissolved with its leadership forced into exile. This only emboldened the IRO and other anti-Crommelin forces, which soon found a stronghold in the southern Appalachians. Many of residents of the Homelands fled north across the border to escape the conflict, while others decided to join the armed fight against Crommelin.

The capital city of Atlanta, D.C., fell in February 1969; Crommelin temporarily relocated to San Diego before fleeing to Spain four months later, where he established a government in exile, the Confederate Continuity Government (CCG). Later that year, the cities of Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia fell to the IRO and the People's Republics of America was declared. While some countries recognized the CCG - most notably Spain and Portugal - other countries recognized the People's Republics or the Congress of Liberty as the true representative institution of the South and of Americans as a whole.

Government and Politics[]

Leadership[]

Democratic

Constitutionalist

States' Rights Democratic

States' Rights

National States' Rights Democratic

№	Name	Party		Term	Previous Office	Vice President
1	Jefferson Davis (1809-1891)	.	Unaffiliated	February 22, 1862 - February 22, 1867	Provisional President of the Confederate States (1861-1862)	Alexander Stephens
2	Alexander H. Stephens (1801-1883)	.	Democratic	February 22, 1868 - February 22, 1874	Vice President of the Confederate States (1862-1868)	Louis Wigfall
3	James Longstreet (1821-1904)		Constitutionalist	February 22, 1874 - February 22, 1880	Confederate States General (1861-1873)	George B. Crittenden
4	Wade Hampton III (1826-1885)	.	State's Rights Democratic	February 22, 1880 - February 22, 1886	C.S. Senator from South Carolina (1871-1880)	Isham G. Harris
5	Johnson Hagood (1830-1893)	.	State's Rights Democratic	February 22, 1886 - February 22, 1892	Secretary of the Treasury (1880-1886)	Henry Heth
6	William E. Cameron (1817-1899)		Constitutionalist	February 22, 1892 - February 22, 1898	Governor of Virginia (1882-1886, 1890-1892)	James David Walker
7	Benjamin Tillman (1843-1921)	.	State's Rights Democratic	February 22, 1898 - February 22, 1904	C.S. Senator from South Carolina (1895-1898)	John Brown Gordon
8	William Yates Atkinson (1858-1919)		Constitutionalist	February 22, 1904 - August 8, 1907^D	Governor of Georgia (1894-1902)	George W.P. Hunt
9	George W.P. Hunt (1857-1930)		Constitutionalist	August 8, 1907 - February 22, 1915	Vice President of the Confederate States (1904-1907)	vacant (1907-1909) Joseph Taylor Robinson (1909-1915)
10	James Vardaman (1858-1919)		States' Rights	February 22, 1915 - February 22, 1922	C.S. Senator from Mississippi (1913-1915)	Richard A. Sneed
11	Park Trammell (1862-1947)		States' Rights	February 22, 1922 - February 22, 1928	Secretary of the Navy (1917-1922)	William David Upshaw
12	Alfredo Zayas (1868-1946)		Constitutionalist	February 22, 1928 - February 22, 1934	Governor of Cuba (1921-1928)	Albert H. Roberts
13	John Clinton Porter (1871-1959)		States' Rights	February 22, 1934 - February 22, 1940	Mayor of Los Angeles (1929-1933)	William Francis Stevenson
14	William H. Murray (1869-1943)		States' Rights	February 22, 1940 - April 12, 1943^D	Governor of Sequoyah (1931-1939)	John Nance Garner (1940-1943)^D
15	John G. Crommelin (1902-1999)		National States' Rights Democratic	April 12, 1943 - May 3, 1969	Secretary of the Navy (1942-1943)	vacant (1943-1947) Fielding L. Wright (1947-1956) vacant (1956-1958) Fulgencio Batista (1958-1969)

Political Divisions[]

State		Date	Capital
1	Alabama	March 13, 1861 ratified	Montgomery
2	Georgia	March 16, 1861 ratified	Milledgeville
3	Louisiana	March 21, 1861 ratified	Baton Rouge
4	Texas	March 23, 1861 ratified	Austin
5	Mississippi	March 29, 1861 ratified	Jackson
6	South Carolina	April 3, 1861 ratified	Charleston
7	Florida	April 22, 1861 ratified	Tallahassee
8	Virginia	May 7, 1861 admitted	Richmond
9	Arkansas	May 18, 1861 admitted	Little Rock
10	North Carolina	May 20, 1861 admitted	Raleigh
11	Tennessee	July 2, 1861 admitted	Nashville
-	Missouri	November 28, 1861 admitted*	Neosho
12	West Kentucky	December 10, 1861 admitted as Kentucky	Bowling Green
13	Colorado	July 1, 1866 admitted	Los Angeles
14	Cuba	March 29, 1869 admitted	Havana
15	Arizona	February 17, 1877 admitted	Mesilla
16	Sequoyah	April 6, 1880 admitted	Tulsa
17	New Mexico	March 26, 1892 admitted	Santa Fe
18	Jefferson	April 13, 1906 admitted	Varina
*Missouri's admission to the confederation was voided in 1864

District		Date
National District
1	Atlanta, D.C.	January 1, 1866
Overseas Military Districts
1	Sassandra	December 4, 1884
2	Guinea	August 21, 1922
3	Guyane	August 21, 1922
4	Lesser Antilles	August 21, 1922

Society, Economy, and Legacy[]

Slavery and Black Americans[]

Memorial Corridor at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice — The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, includes several hundred hanging steel rectangles. Each represents a county in the Confederate States and the United States where a documented lynching took place.

From the foundation of the Confederate States, chattel slavery formed the basis of the agrarian plantation system, and thus the whole economy of the South. In February 1861, the Confederacy was the fourth-richest country in the world. However, the American Civil War had devastated the plantation system through the destruction of farmland, railroads, and the emancipation and migration of nearly a third of all enslaved persons. In coastal Virginia and South Carolina, which had been occupied by the United States for most of the war, nearly all enslaved persons were emancipated and settled in the North after 1864. Even until slavery was officially abolished in 1906, the institution comprised a significant segment of the economy.

The financial infrastructure of the country collapsed during the Civil War, and postwar recovery was slow. The economy eventually lagged and fell into a depression, and many slaveowners found it increasingly expensive to keep the enslaved in bondage, often selling them to more wealthy plantation owners or sending them to work in the growing cities or towns. Manumission was subject to heavy regulation or outright forbidden throughout the Confederate States. As such, slaveowners who could no longer afford a slave would evict them in an act of forced maroonage, or sometimes attempt to kill them; if they were unable to flee across the border to the north, they sought refuge in forests, hills, deserts, and wetlands.

Throughout most of Confederate history, the prevailing view of the white inhabitants of the South was that chattel slavery was a positive good, as opposed to a crime against humanity or a necessary evil. They defended slavery as a benevolent and paternalistic, simultaneously a bulwark of civilization and a divinely-ordained institution. Proponents of slavery often attacked the system of industrial capitalism of the North, by contending that the free laborers in the United States were "wage slaves," just as much enslaved as the people held in actual bondage.

The leading sociological theorist of the Confederacy in its early history was George Fitzhugh (1806-1881), who believed that slavery was ultimately a system of social welfare; he argued that enslaved persons had a "guarantee of livelihood, protection and support," and that capable slaveowners would provide their slaves with the necessities of life as part of their moral duty. He believed that it "ultimately made democracy work" and called it "the very best form of socialism." Fitzhugh's sociological beliefs were widely taught in Confederate schools and spread throughout the Southern intelligentsia, reaching its peak of influence during the South Carolina Dynasty (1880-1904).

As slavery became increasingly unprofitable, the paternalistic attitude many whites had remained. Some whites saw slavery as an unjust abuse of the "natural" racial hierarchy, while others argued against slavery on the basis that white laborers couldn't effectively compete with enslaved persons for the same jobs. During the Reformers' Era, a small but growing segment of the population supported abolition on the basis that it was an unjustifiable evil. Segregation - or separation of people of different races - became a prevailing attitude among Confederate whites. As author Edgar Gardner Murphy (1869-1913) wrote in his 1904 book Problems of the Present South, allowing Black children to attend white schools would create an "environment which is constantly subjecting them to adverse feeling and opinion" and result in "a morbid race consciousness without any compensating increase in racial self-respect."

The establishment of the Homelands in 1893 helped to change the white public's perception of Black Southerners, with many viewing it as evidence that Black people could be sufficiently "civilized." However, it coincided with the rise in new segregationist beliefs; many older stereotypes were supplanted by new stereotypes. The Homelands' purchase of Confederate debts became intertwined with antisemitic canards, and "collaboration" between the Homelands and Jewish people would eventually be used as justification for eliminating the Homelands under the Crommelin regime. With the rare exception of people who passed the état de blancheur or estado de blancura standards in Louisiana or Cuba - chiefly those with primarily white ancestry - any free Black persons in the Confederacy were classified as "dependent nationals." For the entire duration of the Confederate States, Black people living within its borders were denied national citizenship.

Postwar Diversification[]

Boll weevil monument in downtown enterprise alabama lccn2010638569tif — The Boll Weevil Monument in Enterprise, Alabama.

The addition of territories in the west - later the states of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Jefferson - led to ranching as a growing sector of the national economy. The need to connect the western states to the eastern states grew the railroad industry, spurring growth in the cities and towns along the tracks. The need for steel and other manufacturing, likewise, led to the growth of cities like Richmond, Memphis, Birmingham, and Atlanta as industrial centers. When the more urbanized middle class began growing in the late 1800s, cultural institutions - such as theatres, hotels, and nightclubs - took root in cities such as New Orleans and Havana.

Ecological changes from the 1890s to the 1930s additionally contributed to economic diversification. The boll weevil - first entering the Confederate States from Mexico in 1892 and infesting all cotton-growing regions in the C.S.; the pest forced farms and plantations to to move away from cotton farming and toward mixed farming and manufacturing.

Commerce in the Caribbean became an important part of the Southern economy, particularly in port cities along the Gulf Coast. For goods being shipped to markets in Chicago, for example, they would often be unloaded in New Orleans and sent north via the Mississippi River, since it was typically cheaper and quicker than unloading those same goods in Union ports like New York. Trade with South American nations and European colonies in the Caribbean additionally grew the Southern commercial fleet, which in turn promoted the expansion of docks, shipyards, and Confederate naval capacity.

Geopolitics[]

The extensive shores of the Gulf Coast made the Caribbean a Confederate Mare Nostrum, vital both for commerce and naval supremacy. Under the doctrine established by Secretary of the Navy and later C.S. President Park Trammell, the Confederacy claimed the Caribbean to be under their exclusive sphere of influence. With the acquisition of the District of Sassandra in 1884, the Confederacy became a colonial power. Future expansion into Africa would occur during the Second World War, which also saw expansion into South America and increasing dominance of the Caribbean, largely at the expense of its erstwhile ally of France.

The Confederacy often competed with the United States for cultural, economic, and political dominance of North America, culminating in the widespread destruction and deaths of the First and Third World Wars. Relations between the two countries, while occasionally warm, were more often cool or outright hostile. After the development of nuclear weapons in the Confederacy in 1949, the country became embroiled in a Cold War with the Soviet Union; during the Restored Republic era of the United States (1957-1969) this became a three-way tension.

Legacy[]

Christy Coleman, former Director of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia, described the foundation of the Confederate States as such:

"At the eve of the American Civil War, the states that will eventually make up the Confederate States of America, combined, have the sixth largest economy in the world. What is at the core of these states' economies? Slavery. It is the largest enterprise. It is where the greatest amount of wealth is held - in human beings and in the products that are produced by them. So they have no reason to think that they cannot support themselves. They have no reason to believe that they cannot have a nation that, at its cornerstone, is these two extremely important ideas to them. And that was: number one, that slavery was the natural position for Africans, and number two, that white folks were superior. They were willing to build a nation on those two cornerstone concepts. And they did."