The Dis-United States of America: A Geography Lesson on the Shattered West

Following the American, Revolutionary War, our first president outlawed slavery. This gave the south a considerable increase in population and more power in Congress. Former plantation owners attempted to implement harsh share-cropping agreements but the newly freed African Americans rallied, organized, and soon were buying the plantations from their former owners. The Civil War still occurred due to disagreements over port fees, tariffs, and such especially when the first generation of free, African Americans rose to power in the South.

All the events up to and during the Civil War led to a weakened USA not being able to hold onto the territories gained in the Louisiana Purchase. Seeing the money that could be made, France retook New Orleans and allied with the South during the Civil War.

Considering themselves so far apart from the original colonies, homesteaders flocked across the center of the country, seeing no need to organize into territories. Likewise, the Scandanavians and Germans of the Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa territories and states proclaimed themselves Deutsche-Navia, seeing themselves having more in common with each other and set apart from those on the east coast.

What is Illinois and West Virginia are hotly contested by those bordering them.

The Lakota people of the northern midwest signed a pact and united under Chief Sitting Bull to form a loose alliance of tribes.

After being forcibly moved to Oklahoma and with the early discovery of oil, the native peoples who had been forced there allied with the tribes of the southwest to form the Free Peoples of the Southwest. Oil has been a boom to them, allowing them to hold firm to these lands. They pushed the Mormon’s north, allowing them to retain Salt Lake, and their State of Deseret that has a loose alliance with the North.

Mexico is creeping back into what we know as the USA, creating strong footholds as far north as Las Vegas and to the once-California coast north of Los Angeles.

Taking San Francisco from Mexico, the Russians look to create a hold farther south while they fight to regain Alaska from the USA after reports of gold are found there. The Russians also want to wrench the gold found from the Mexicans found in and around California as well.

With northern California being so heavily wooded, it’s been unclaimed by any single power.

Great Britain, still bitter over the loss of the 13 Colonies, fighting French radicals in Quebec, and wanting a piece of the gold rush too annexed the northwest, Oregon Territory after signing an agreement with Deseret - even though the USA is angered by this.

Lastly, after the Alamo and Texas being its own country and with the outbreak of the Civil War, Texas retained its independence.

Every border region shown on the map is highly contested. The actual lines vary and are closer to geographic items, like major rivers, where sides are easier to be drawn.