Changes: Hattiesburg (1983: Doomsday)

Revision as of 20:33, 4 February 2010

Hattiesburg is a city-state located in the southern portion of the former U.S. state of Mississippi.

Hattiesburg was one of the few towns in its region that survived Doomsday. It was the capital of a provisional Mississippi state government that lasted from October 1983 through April 1986, then became an independent citystate that has lasted to the present.

An estimated 133,000 live in Hattiesburg proper and the surrounding region. Its territory extends roughly 30 miles in all directions from central Hattiesburg, but also extends south to former Bay St. Louis on the Gulf of Mexico. Hattiesburg's constitution is based on both the United States constitution and the Mississippi state constitution, with a governor as head of state and a bicameral legislature.

Hattiesburg's economy is agrarian, and like many survivor communities in the former U.S., reflective most of a hybrid 19th- and 20th-century society. Conservatism and Protestant Christianity are heavily influential in Hattiesburg, despite the presence of a small, secular community centered at the University of Southern Mississippi campus.

History

Hattiesburg, as the largest surviving city in southern Mississippi, became the destination for Mississippians and Alabamans looking for refuge from the multiple blasts that hit the region, particularly along the Gulf of Mexico. The civic leaders of Hattiesburg, along with millitary officials from nearby Camp Shelby, officials at the University of Southern Mississippi, local church leaders and the National Guard, worked together to call for calm and help distribute needed food and supplies; this cooperation helped Hattiesburg avoid the fate that destroyed other college towns in the southern and midwestern U.S.

Hattiesburg was named the provisional capital of Mississippi by locals in 1984; the designation was dropped formally in 1989.

Despite potential and significant differences between the Protestants and the secular university leaders, both sides have worked well together over the years. That cooperation was considered key in defusing tensions in the city from Doomsday through 1984, as well as forging an alliance with Natchez that helped bolster the region and eventually foil an attempted invasion of Hattiesburg by New Montgomery in 1992.

Camp Shelby officially became the primary base of the Mississippi State Army in 1984 (as recognized by the Hattiesburg government), and formally passed into control of the city government in 1989.

New Montgomery invasion of 1992

Spies from Hattiesburg and Natchez in the CSA confirmed what officials and military from Hattiesburg and Natchez suspected for some time: the New Confederacy was gearing up for war. The Confederates were outnumbered - especially when factoring in reinforcements from Louisiana - but officials were aware of the atrocities the Confederate leaders oversaw in Auburn. It was known that most of the belligerents had died during the Selma War, but the Confederate Army still garnered a great deal of respect and wariness.

The then-General of the CSA Army, Jefferson Davis Lee, claimed to be a direct descendant of Civil War Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It was said of the general that his loud personality and penchant for exaggeration was in direct contrast to his incmpetence in regards to military strategy. He attempted to convince the other leaders in the CSA's ruling council of the need to invade Mississippi, to expand the New Confederacy's borders and position it better for subsequent invasions of Selma and Natchez. Realizing the CSA didn't have the manpower to mount an invasion nor to occupy the territory, the leaders nixed the plan.

Undeterred, Lee took his case to the people, and shockingly garnered much vocal support for his plan. The other council leaders met privately one February evening, when Lee was celebrating at a local bar, and drew up a plan to allow for Lee's adventure and test the Hattiesburg defenses. If Lee was successful, the "real" Confederate Army could then come in and finish the job; if he wasn't, while the loss of a couple of hundred men was not insignificant, the loss of Lee would be considered a gain for the Confederacy. Daniel Sullivan, a veteran of the Vietnam War, the Auburn Uprising and the Selma War, was promoted to five-star general and tasked with planning Lee's testing of Hattiesburg.

Lee was instructed to send a couple of hundred men into Hattiesburg, ascertain the defenses and then, if possible, attack two key installations in the city while couriers ran back to New Montgomery to send for reinforcements.

Lee took this as the go-ahead to declare war.

After a three-week training period, Lee and his 300 men were prepared to leave for Mississippi on March 20. The night before, Lee famously ordered his lieutenants to find "as many men as possible" to volunteer for the attack. Nearly 2,700 men, many whom were enthusiastic but had seen only the one-month basic training required of all male citizens, responded. They showed up with the best firearms - pistols and shotguns - they could find.

While the council debated on whether to suspend the attack, Lee and his men left. The council declined to send the remainder of the Confederate Army after them, on Sullivan's advice that the Army would be needed for a defense of the city should Hattiesburg decide to attack.

Lee's Army set out for Hattiesburg, using old highway maps and intelligence from CSA scouting trips as a guide. They travelled by day and rested by night, with the men generally remaining enthusiastic despite some questions in regards to how hard he was driving the men and their horses.

On April 2, the forces reached Blodgett, east of Hattiesburg. Lee's lieutenants expected the abandoned town to be the Army's base of operations as they and Lee planned the attack. At 12 noon April 3, with his lieutenants waiting in exasperation (and already beginning to plan some of the attack themselves), Lee walked out of his tent, fully dressed, and ordered his troops to get ready for war. Lee said they were to advance slowly, in a single line, to catch the town by surprise; his lieutenants were shocked, but the enthusiastic troops were more inclined to listen to the general.

The Confederate Army forces left camp at Blodgett around 2:15 p.m. local time. They went south of Petal - not noticing the sentries in the area - and set up camp at 11:45 p.m. April 3 in what they thought to be an abandoned area. While the men slept, Lee and his lieutenants would go over final plans for attack.

Hattiesburg Army officials, meanwhile, were devising their own plans. The spies who managed to escape New Montgomery got to Hattiesburg 72 hours before Lee's men arrived near Petal, giving the Army enough time to respond.

At 4 a.m. Lee himself called reville; as the men awoke out of a few hours of sleep, he loudly announced the "war to expand the Confederacy had begun" and "victory is ours! Now is the time to attack; we will prevail!" Nearby, Hattiesburg scouts retreated to inform their superiors that the CSA Army was on the move;

At 5:23 a.m., Lee sent his men in a straight line over the Hardy Street Bridge, headed into Hattiesburg. Hattiesburg Army forces awaited them 1/2 mile on the other side of the bridge, and behind them (Hattiesburg divisions hid in buildings along Carterville Road and Main Street, east of the Leaf River), allowing the Hattiesburg Army to trap the Confederates in a pincer.

The Confederates were outgunned and outmanned 4 to 1.

Not seeing the Hattiesburg forces ahead, Lee led his Army over the bridge and, once over the river, yelled at his men to "CHAAARRRGGEE". Just 1/3 mile from the bridge the CSA Army began receiving heavy fire from the Hattiesburg forces. Some of Lee's lieutenants yelled for the Army to retreat; as the Army retreated, they received fire from the Hattiesburg forces from Petal. Hattiesburg weaponry - much of which was standard U.S. Army equipment circa Doomsday - overwhelmed the Confederated forces. Seeing opponents with superior weapons, more and more soldiers decided to surrender on the spot rather than die in fighting (or retreat back to New Montgomery). The brief "war" ended in 45 minutes. Lee was captured at gunpoint, then surrendered while being transported to Camp Shelby, surrounded only by Hattiesburg soldiers and Colonel James McElroy.S

Some 1,200 soldiers defected to Hattiesburg on the spot, citing likely court-marshal and execution upon their return to New Montgomery. Lee and the other 1,000 some remaining Confederate soldiers were eventually interned in a P.O.W. camp outside Camp Shelby south of town.

Lee was tried in absentia by the Confederate council, and charged with a variety of offenses, among them a failure to obey orders. He was stripped of his rank and sentenced to death should he ever return to New Montgomery.

1992-2009

The Natchez-Hattiesburg alliance also grew to include several towns in Louisiana near the Mississippi borders and eventually the town of Lake Arthur, in south Louisiana.

In recent years scouting expeditions were authorized to points east, southwest and north. Much of what the scouts found corresponded to what was already known, other than the existence of some type of survivor community in Jackson, Tennessee. The scouts were ominously told by survivalists along the northern Mississippi/western Tennessee border to "stay out of that area, it's not somewhere you want to live". Information from those survivalists, along with the distance to Tennessee, led Hattiesburg officials to decline to pursue further contact with the region.

Scouts also returned with information about survivor communities in Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma; distance was also a factor in prompting Hattiesburg leaders to decline long-distance exploration. Instead, the city worked on strengthening ties with Natchez and Louisiana.

In 2009, League of Nations scouts made "first contact" with Hattiesburg residents who were having a church picnic southeast of the city. The scouts met with Hattiesburg mayor and other city officials; in turn, this led to an official visit from LoN official Brant McAllister in October 2009.

The League of Nations was impressed enough with the organization and influence of Hattiesburg in the region that the LoN opted to make it a regional headquarters. Over the next five years Hattiesburg is targeted to become a military and economic base for the former mid-South, as well as a base for further exploration of the region.

International relations

It is not a member of the League of Nations, although it is considering membership. One complication is that most people, including many in government, consider themselves to be citizens of the United States. There is a small, and growing, movement to connect with the provisional U.S. government in the west, as well as to link up with other survivor states in the south for a similar union; both have been endorsed by the Committee to Reestablish the United States of America.

The CRUSA has been criticized by officials from the LoN and West Texas for attempting to force itself "too soon" on the affairs of a small nation-state just learning of the existence of similar states in the former U.S.

Economy

More to come

Demographics

More to come

Government

Hattiesburg is currently governed via a mayor-council system. The mayor is elected for a term of four years, and can serve unlimited terms. The city council consists of nine members who are elected from one of nine wards, five in Hattiesburg proper and four outside the city. The four non-Hattiesburg wards represent smaller towns and villages that, though independent, for political purposes, are considered part of Hattiesburg. This is leftover from Hattiesburg's status as the capital of the provisional government of Mississippi; then, the mayor acted as the governor, and the council expanded to act as the state legislature.

Culture

More to come

@@ Line 15: / Line 15: @@
 Camp Shelby officially became the primary base of the Mississippi State Army in 1984 (as recognized by the Hattiesburg government), and formally passed into control of the city government in 1989.
-===New Montgomery "invasion" of 1992===
+===New Montgomery invasion of 1992===
-The invasion was a total failure with many comical moments that masked the seriousness of the threat the New Montgomery militia posed to the rest of the region.
 Spies from Hattiesburg and Natchez in the CSA confirmed what officials and military from Hattiesburg and Natchez suspected for some time: the New Confederacy was gearing up for war. The Confederates were outnumbered - especially when factoring in reinforcements from Louisiana - but officials were aware of the atrocities the Confederate leaders oversaw in Auburn. It was known that most of the belligerents had died during the Selma War, but the Confederate Army still garnered a great deal of respect and wariness.
-The General of the CSA Army, Jefferson Davis Lee, claimed to be a direct descendant of Civil War Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It was said of the general that his loud personality and penchant for exaggeration was in direct contrast to his incmpetence in regards to military strategy.
+The then-General of the CSA Army, Jefferson Davis Lee, claimed to be a direct descendant of Civil War Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It was said of the general that his loud personality and penchant for exaggeration was in direct contrast to his incmpetence in regards to military strategy. He attempted to convince the other leaders in the CSA's ruling council of the need to invade Mississippi, to expand the New Confederacy's borders and position it better for subsequent invasions of Selma and Natchez. Realizing the CSA didn't have the manpower to mount an invasion nor to occupy the territory, the leaders nixed the plan.
+Undeterred, Lee took his case to the people, and shockingly garnered much vocal support for his plan. The other council leaders met privately one February evening, when Lee was celebrating at a local bar, and drew up a plan to allow for Lee's adventure and test the Hattiesburg defenses. If Lee was successful, the "real" Confederate Army could then come in and finish the job; if he wasn't, while the loss of a couple of hundred men was not insignificant, the loss of Lee would be considered a gain for the Confederacy. Daniel Sullivan, a veteran of the Vietnam War, the Auburn Uprising and the Selma War, was promoted to five-star general and tasked with planning Lee's testing of Hattiesburg.
+Lee was instructed to send a couple of hundred men into Hattiesburg, ascertain the defenses and then, if possible, attack two key installations in the city while couriers ran back to New Montgomery to send for reinforcements.
+Lee took this as the go-ahead to declare war.
+After a three-week training period, Lee and his 300 men were prepared to leave for Mississippi on March 20. The night before, Lee famously ordered his lieutenants to find "as many men as possible" to volunteer for the attack. Nearly 2,700 men, many whom were enthusiastic but had seen only the one-month basic training required of all male citizens, responded. They showed up with the best firearms - pistols and shotguns - they could find.
+While the council debated on whether to suspend the attack, Lee and his men left. The council declined to send the remainder of the Confederate Army after them, on Sullivan's advice that the Army would be needed for a defense of the city should Hattiesburg decide to attack.
+Lee's Army set out for Hattiesburg, using old highway maps and intelligence from CSA scouting trips as a guide. They travelled by day and rested by night, with the men generally remaining enthusiastic despite some questions in regards to how hard he was driving the men and their horses.
+On April 2, the forces reached Blodgett, east of Hattiesburg. Lee's lieutenants expected the abandoned town to be the Army's base of operations as they and Lee planned the attack. At 12 noon April 3, with his lieutenants waiting in exasperation (and already beginning to plan some of the attack themselves), Lee walked out of his tent, fully dressed, and ordered his troops to get ready for war. Lee said they were to advance slowly, in a single line, to catch the town by surprise; his lieutenants were shocked, but the enthusiastic troops were more inclined to listen to the general.
+The Confederate Army forces left camp at Blodgett around 2:15 p.m. local time. They went south of Petal - not noticing the sentries in the area - and set up camp at 11:45 p.m. April 3 in what they thought to be an abandoned area. While the men slept, Lee and his lieutenants would go over final plans for attack.
+Hattiesburg Army officials, meanwhile, were devising their own plans. The spies who managed to escape New Montgomery got to Hattiesburg 72 hours before Lee's men arrived near Petal, giving the Army enough time to respond.
+At 4 a.m. Lee himself called reville; as the men awoke out of a few hours of sleep, he loudly announced the "war to expand the Confederacy had begun" and "victory is ours! Now is the time to attack; we will prevail!" Nearby, Hattiesburg scouts retreated to inform their superiors that the CSA Army was on the move;
-More to come....
-The turning point of the battle was when, on the morning of April 4, Lee sent his men - who hadn't slept in 20 hours and not ate in two days, armed only with shotguns and pistols - in a straight line headed for Hattiesburg. The spies who managed to escape New Montgomery got to Hattiesburg 72 hours before Lee's men arrived, allowing the Hattiesburg and Natchez military to trap the Confederates in a pincer.
+At 5:23 a.m., Lee sent his men in a straight line over the Hardy Street Bridge, headed into Hattiesburg. Hattiesburg Army forces awaited them 1/2 mile on the other side of the bridge, and behind them (Hattiesburg divisions hid in buildings along Carterville Road and Main Street, east of the Leaf River), allowing the Hattiesburg Army to trap the Confederates in a pincer.
+The Confederates were outgunned and outmanned 4 to 1.
-Outgunned and outmanned 4 to 1, trapped in a pincer 10 miles east of Hattiesburg, Lee told his men to" CHAAARRRGGEE". Seeing opponents with superior weapons, nearly 200 soldiers surrendered on the spot; the brief "war" ended in 45 minutes, with only four men dying on both sides in the initial shooting, and hundreds of Confederate men surrendering on the spot (sometimes waving their underwear).
+Not seeing the Hattiesburg forces ahead, Lee led his Army over the bridge and, once over the river, yelled at his men to "CHAAARRRGGEE". Just 1/3 mile from the bridge the CSA Army began receiving heavy fire from the Hattiesburg forces. Some of Lee's lieutenants yelled for the Army to retreat; as the Army retreated, they received fire from the Hattiesburg forces from Petal. Hattiesburg weaponry - much of which was standard U.S. Army equipment circa Doomsday - overwhelmed the Confederated forces. Seeing opponents with superior weapons, more and more soldiers decided to surrender on the spot rather than die in fighting (or retreat back to New Montgomery). The brief "war" ended in 45 minutes. Lee was captured at gunpoint, then surrendered while being transported to Camp Shelby, surrounded only by Hattiesburg soldiers and Colonel James McElroy.S
-Lee found his way into town, tracked every step of the way by Hattiesburg military. He made his way downtown, stopped and stood on his horse and declared Hattiesburg to be Confederate territory. He then looked backwards and saw only bemused and shocked citizens, and a couple of teenagers in a Dodge Charger painted red, white and blue.
+Some 1,200 soldiers defected to Hattiesburg on the spot, citing likely court-marshal and execution upon their return to New Montgomery. Lee and the other 1,000 some remaining Confederate soldiers were eventually interned in a P.O.W. camp outside Camp Shelby south of town.
-The teens - and police deputies on horseback - chased Lee out of town and straight into the waiting Hattiesburg military, already overseeing hundreds of surrendered Confederate soldiers.
+Lee was tried in absentia by the Confederate council, and charged with a variety of offenses, among them a failure to obey orders. He was stripped of his rank and sentenced to death should he ever return to New Montgomery.
 ===1992-2009===