United States of America (Napoleon's Legacy Universe)

The United States of America is a Federal Democracy located on the Continent of North America. Once a colony of Great Britain, the United States fought a victorious war of independence from 1775 to 1783. By the middle of the 20th century, it has risen to become the most cosmopolitan and economically powerful nation in the world, presiding over the planet's most developed and advanced military and a vast overseas empire. One of the few remaining true democracies, it boasts the highest standard of living and productivity of any country on Earth.

Overview
Government Type: Federal Presidential Republic

Head of State: President [Charlotte Clariston]


 * Popularly Elected for 4-year terms


 * Holds Executive Authority


 * Office holders have no formal ties to any political party

Head of Government: Vice President [John F. Kennedy, Democratic Party]


 * Chairman of Majority Party in Congress, appointed at the beginning of President's Term rather than elected


 * Limited Executive Authority, serves primarily as head of Presidential Cabinet


 * Also holds the position of "President of the Senate", serves as de facto leader of U.S. Congress

Legislature: United States Congress [Senate & House of Representatives]


 * Two Senators per State, appointed by State Legislatures on advice of committee for professional qualifications, no Party affiliation


 * House Representatives accorded to each state based on population, popularly elected


 * Representatives elected on a List System [no voting districts]


 * House of Representatives operates on pluralistic coalition system with many parties, dominated by New Deal Coalition around Democratic Party

Judiciary: United States Supreme Court, 15 Justices

Majority Party:


 * Senate - Democratic Party [80 / 106 seats]


 * House of Representatives - New Deal Coalition,


 * Democratic Party [Coalition leadership, 55%]


 * Socialist Party of America [7%]


 * Catholic Social Party [3%]

Official Language(s): None at Federal Level

National Languages: English, Spanish, French [languages with official status in at least one state]

National Anthem: Battle Hymn of the Republic [Glory, Glory Hallelujah]


 * Link to the Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG2Wv6M4hp0 (this particular version was performed by a Russian or Soviet musical ensemble during World War II --- for a bit of a twist. Plus the footage accompanying it is really good)

Capital: Washington, District of Columbia

Largest City: New York City, New York

Founding: 1783 [Independence declared from Great Britain in 1776]

Current Constitution: 1788 [Last Amended in 1946]

Population: ~230,000,000  [Contiguous Continental U.S. --- includes Canada and northwestern Mexico]

Area: 18,118,057 km^2 / 11,258,038 square miles [Contiguous Continental U.S. --- includes Canada and northwestern Mexico]

Economy: Mixed Economy [Capitalism with some State involvement] - ranked 1st by global GDP and GDP/c

Currency: United States Dollar ($)

Alliance System(s): Paris Axis, U.S.-Japan Friendship Pact, American Empire [colonial empire]

American Civil War / War of Southern Independence
The American Civil War (1861-1869) was a long, disastrous conflict that resulted in 13 U.S. States becoming a new independent country, the Confederate States of America. What started as a Sectionalist feud between Americans perpetuated by armies of citizen-militias became a vicious European-style professional war within a few short years, as French Imperial forces gave military aid to the Union and the United Kingdom backed the South. The results were inconclusive. The Civil War had born itself through two Presidential Terms and, though President Lincoln campaigned for a third one on a platform of "finishing the fight", the Democratic Party - which, by this time, had fallen completely under the control of anti-war "Copperheads" - won, placing candidate George B. McClellan in office on the promise of ending the war "by any means necessary".



McClellan launched final offensives against British and Confederate forces, hoping for a breaktrhough in the West (where the Union had seen more success) but, following Anglo-Canadian occupation of Maine, Emperor Napoléon III of France himself visited the U.S. to help seek a solution to the conflict. The French Monarch was hailed as a hero by the war-weary American public, who saw him not as a failing ally but as a humanitarian committed to ending the now-unpopular conflict. Napoleon III visited President McClellan, whose offices by now had moved to New York City following a British occupation of Washington, D.C., and drug the reluctant President to the peace table. The Treaty of Paris was signed the following year, 1869, giving Franco-American recognition to the C.S.A. Great Britain, which lacked the financial and military resources of the French Empire, reluctantly returned all its occupied U.S. territory.

Post-Secession Period
The Civil War left the United States deeply divided, introspective, cynical and massively in debt to France. The remainder of the 19th Century saw political instability, street violence, rising inflation and constant changing of office between Republicans and Democrats. However, the U.S. government, ever eager to gain the upper-hand over its now-independent Southern cousins, overlooked the Monroe Doctrine and supported a new French puppet regime in Mexico in order to lock the C.S.A. into a two front war in any future conflicts. Despite these hardships, however, both political parties became committed to industrialization and modernization of the American economy, knowing that the country's large population and vast resources would be the key to winning any further wars. By the dawn of the 20th Century, the United States stood on equal developmental footing with its chief ally, the French Empire, and had even acquired a small overseas empire. This was in constrast to the still heavily-agrarian C.S.A., which, for all its rhetoric about Southern Independence and the Southern Way of Life, remained largely dependent (and subservient) to the United Kingdom.

War Resumes
In 1914, Russian-backed terrorists from the Balkan nation of Serbia assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austrian Empire. An outraged Vienna soon appealed to Frankfurt and the parliament of the German Confederation (a dual state ecompassing Germany, sans Prussia, and the Austrian Empire). With the support of France, Confederation Bundeswehr troops invaded Serbia, which quickly triggered a response from the entire Coalition - just as had been intended. The Confederation and France were now at war with the Kingdom of Prussia and its allies, Russia and Great Britain. Hoping to unite it with the rest of Germany, Franco-German forces swiftly invaded the small Kingdom of Prussia. Meanwhile, Russia's mobilization was characteristically slow, but the result was an invasion of France-aligned Europe on a scale no analyst in Paris or Berlin could have predicted. The Great War, the War to End All Wars, had begun, and Europe's allies on the North American continent were swiftly pulled into the fight.

The U.S., seeing the opportunity for which it had long prepared, did as its French Axis allies and struck first. A vast American invasion army stormed across the border into British Canada, taking the unprepared and outnumbered Anglo-Canadian forces by surprise. In the South, meanwhile, the U.S. took the opposite strategy, allowing Confederate forces under general Nathan Bedford Forrest II to strike first. Massive systems of fortifications and trenches had been constructed - a strategy that would soon be emulated against the Russians on German battlefields - to grind down and trap the Southern forces. After a year of war, combined U.S.-C.S. casualties totalled the better part of a million and Nathan Bedford Forrest's grey-clad Southern troops had fallen back to the Confederate border. U.S. forces under overall operational command of General John Joseph Pershing followed right on their heels, determined to prevent the Southern forces from digging in as his own men had at the start of war. The Confederates dug hastily-made defensive emplacements, but the overwhelming U.S. forces could not be stopped, and despite mass casualties the Americans pressed on. Pershing's forces pressed deep into Confederate territory before finally being stopped just outside of Richmond, on the Rapidan river, by Southern trench systems. Rather than concentrate on taking massive casualties to break the enemy defenses - although Pershing was confident in his ability to do so - the American leadership chose to keep the Confederate forces there bottled up while focusing on the Canadian and Western Fronts. By now, the South was feeling pressure from Mexican troops, who had crossed the Rio Grande in Texas. Pershing was transferred to take command of new forces in the West and advance along that same axis, southward through Oklahoma, to press Texas from two sides. It would take two years, the introduction of French and German - and later, domestic U.S. - tanks, the complete military occupation of Canada and many more casualties before the war was won. In Europe, meanwhile, the back of the Tsar's forces was broken at a terrible cost: Germany and Austria lay devestated, millions of Axis troops - and many many more Coalition, particularly Russian, troops - were dead. Despite no Axis soldier ever having set foot in Holy Russia, on the 11th November, 1918, an Armistice was declared. The Treaty of Frankfurt was signed the following year, and an exhausted and tumultuous Europe at last had peace.