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Confederate States of America
Timeline: 1983: Doomsday

OTL equivalent: SW Alabama
Flag Coat of Arms
Flag Coat of Arms
Motto
Deo Vindice (With God Our Vindicator)
Anthem "Dixie"
Capital
(and largest city)
New Montgomery
Language English
Religion Christianity
Ethnic Group Caucasian
President unknown
Population 24,000 (est.) 
Established 1985
Currency Confederate dollar

New Montgomery is a city of approximately 24,000 people, all Caucasian, located along the Tombigbee River in former southeast Alabama, outside the former Bladon Springs State Park and Choctaw National Wildlife Refuge.

It considers itself to be the successor to the 19th-century Confederate States of America and claims the entire southern United States as its territory; in reality, it controls only its city, and the adjacent state park and wildlife refuge. It refers to itself as both the Confederate States of America and the New Confederacy, with New Montgomery as its capital.

History

The city was established in 1985 by Caucasians - mainly white supremacists - looking to reestablish the Confederate States of America. New Montgomery was named after Montgomery, the former capital of Alabama and the 19th-century Confederacy that had been destroyed by a single Soviet warhead on Doomsday. It began as a tent city, but within a few years was a bustling town, the buildings built with materials believed to have been harvested from the state park and salvaged from nearby towns.

1980s

The founders of New Montgomery/CSA are believed to have played a key role in the 1984 collapse of the provisional Alabama state government based in Auburn. They led a group from Auburn that passed through various towns around the region before settling at Bladon Springs in 1985. They were joined by similar groups from Mississippi and southern Alabama, and declared the reformation of the CSA that April. Scouts discovered a survivor community based in nearby Selma; historians among the New Montgomery survivors told the leaders of the importance of Selma to the Confederacy during the 19th-century Civil War. New Montgomery leaders and strategists then began forming a plan to attack and conquer Selma; the leaders' supremacist attitudes also led them to form plans for enslaving - or killing - the African-Americans in the region.

This led to a brutal war against the African-American community of Selma in 1986, a three-month-old conflict which is believed to have resulted in approximately 10,000 casualties on both sides. The sides simply stopped fighting, after realizing that feelings were so strong that both sides had to walk away or "finish it out" and exterminate the remainder of what they thought to be the last survivors of the human race. Since then, a state of war has existed between the two city-states, without any significant conflict between the two sides (resulting in an ongoing cold war).

1990s

New Montgomery has also had skirmishes over the years with Hattiesburg and Natchez, Mississippi, before and after an attempted attack on Hattiesburg in 1992 that turned into a total failure.

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.

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. After the Hattiesburg "war", the CSA leaders decided to pull away and look elsewhere to expand their territory.

The expeditions, lasting from September 1993 through April 1998, were limited by the scouts' ability to travel by foot or horseback. Expeditions are known by Hattiesburg officials to have gone as far north as former Huntsville; as far east as Phenix City, Alabama; as far west as Natchez; and as far south as the Gulf of Mexico.

Scouts who returned from the expeditions north, east and south of New Montgomery came back with side effects believed to have come from direct exposure to radiation, as the men often went directly near or into the blast sites, most notably various forms of cancer. Physicians in New Montgomery debated whether the side effects were from preexisting physical conditions or from direct exposure to radiation, but in 1998 the CSA's ruling council used that as the primary reason to halt exploration of the region, and expansion of the CSA, and concentrate on fortifying New Montgomery and growing its population.

Another reason was, aside from individual survivalists living in abandoned towns, no survivor communities in the region other than Selma, Hattiesburg, Natchez and Portland, Tennessee were ever discovered; the CSA leaders thought it sufficient to declare sovereignty over the entire southern United States (believing that if there were others in the south, they would have made their presence known by 1998 and that saying it ruled the entire south was good for propaganda and public relations purposes).

2000s

Since 1998, New Montgomery has avoided direct conflicts with its neighboring citystates, only making occasional forays to Selma and Hattiesburg for spying purposes.

In 2009, League of Nations scouts encountered the city and tried to quietly observe; they left after judging the area too dangerous to stay or to make contact with officials.

Demographics

The country is 100 percent Caucasian. All minorities, including people of mixed race, are legally barred from entry into the CSA.

Christianity is believed to be the defacto national religion, though it is not named as such in the CSA Constitution.

Most residents are 30 or older; an estimated 1 out of 7 residents are 55 or older. 1 in 5 residents are teenagers.

Economy

New Montgomery is entirely self-reliant. Farms on the outskirts of the city provide the city's food; a primitive meat-processing plant on the east side is believed to provide beef, pork and chicken.

The Confederate dollar is the official currency, though old U.S. coins remain in use. Barter is more commonly used as citizens consider it to be a more reliable form of payment than the CSA Dollar backed by the ruling council.

Culture

What little is known about the city - gathered by LoN scouts and from CSA P.O.W.s - is that it resembles a 19th-century frontier town, dominated by "rebel" flags (the Dixie flag of the old CSA, which is the new CSA's official flag). Various forms of country and bluegrass music are popular, with newer songs taking on a simplistic, nationalistic tone or a racist tone. American football is apparently the primary sport, played on an informal basis.

Government

Intelligence from military and police agents from Hattiesburg and Natchez indicate that the "New Confederacy"/"CSA" nominally holds to the constitution of the orginal Confederate States of America as established in 1861. In reality, the city-state is ruled by a council that has varied in number over the years, from five to 20, and often dominated by three to five members. One oversees the military arm of the government, another the economy, another day-to-day governance of New Montgomery and another the police arm, which enforces the peace in the city and also monitors for dissent.

Over the years, citizens who advocated for better relations with Selma and Hattiesburg were tried and exiled; most have found refuge in Hattiesburg. Some were executed, some simply disappeared.

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