United Commonwealth (1866–1921)

United Commonwealth of America
United Commonwealth of America;
	1866–1921
	National flag Coat of arms
	The United Commonwealth (in red and green) as of 1890. Also shown are the Northeast Union, Florida, Acadiana, and part of Canada.
Capital	Chicago
Common languages	English
Religion	Protestant
Government	Federal constitutional republic under a dominant party system (1866–1917) One-party Federalist dictatorship (1917–1921)
President
• 1873–1881	Schuyler Colfax; (First)
• 1920–1921	Amelia Abarough; (Last)
Vice President
• 1873–1877	Hermann Raster; (First)
• 1913–1918	Carson Henderson; (Last)
Legislature	Congress
• Upper house	Senate
• Lower house	House of Representatives
Historical era	Gilded Age
• War of Contingency	1866–1868
• 1880 election	2 November 1880
• Retreat to the Antilles	18 May 1921
ISO 3166 code	UC
Preceded by	Succeeded by
	United States
Continental States
Antilles

For the Continental successor state, see United Commonwealth. For the Federalist rump state, see Antilles.

The United Commonwealth of America existed as a federal presidential republic under the rule of the Republican Party, and later Federalist Party, from 1866 to 1921, until the Continental Revolution led to the victory of the Continentalists and the Great Retreat to the Antilles. In Continental historiography, this period of the United Commonwealth's history is often referred to as the Federalist Era, the Federalist Commonwealth, the American Commonwealth or, less frequently, as the Old Commonwealth. In the Antilles it is sometimes referred to as the Mainland Era.

The United Commonwealth succeeded the former United States after the American Civil War and the War of Contingency in the 1860s with the states that remained loyal to the Union. Geographically, the new country consisted of an agrarian West and an industrial and financial East. Rapid industrialization occurred in the new United Commonwealth states after the devastation of Anglo-American Wars, with the economy booming in the 1870s, known as the 'Reconstruction Era.' The forces of heavy industry and financial capitalism that gained political, economic, and cultural power during the industrialization began to use their immense wealth to dominate the political system over the traditional party machine and the electorate. Investment bankers ensured that civil service reforms were implemented in the late 1870s that made them the primary source of campaign funding for politicians that ran for public office. As a result the Federal government became controlled by big finance and big business around the early 1880s. The business interests completely controlled the Republican Party (which was succeeded by the Federalist Party), but only partially controlled the other parties, as farmers and labor unions discontent with the extreme economic inequality and hardship coalesced around them. With the power and influence of wealthy bankers and industrialists, from the early 1880s the United Commonwealth was in effect a Federalist one-party state.

The oppression of labor, the hardships of farmers, and the growing wealth of the financiers made the country more volatile from the 1890s. Increasingly, Federalist presidents aimed to distract the electorate with foreign adventures. The best opportunity came in 1898 during the war with Spain, when the United Commonwealth led a coalition of Anglo-American countries to defeat the Spanish and annex Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. The rise of the Commonwealth as a world power continued with the intervention in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the diplomatic involvement in ending the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, the intervention in Nicaragua and Honduras in 1907, the global cruise by the United Commonwealth Navy in 1908, and involvement in Mexico in 1916. Meanwhile, on the foundation of the agrarian and labor discontent there emerged a growing socialist movement, which included the Socialist Party of America, the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist Labor Party of America. The Federalists resisted calls for labor reform and workers' rights that existed in all other North American countries by the early 1900s, as they saw it necessary to maintain the Commonwealth's rising power.

Confrontations between workers and the Federal government increased in the 1900s and the early 1910s, which fueled opposition to the authoritarian Federalist regime. In Appalachia coal miners began forming workers' councils to defend themselves from private security forces in 1917, leading to the outright banning of all socialist and social democratic parties by the Federalists. The attempt by Federal troops to restore order to parts of Appalachia under control of the Landonist Party of the United Commonwealth would spark the Continental Revolutionary War. The ensuing conflict led to the defeat of the Federalists by the Continental Revolutionary Army by early 1921, under the leadership of Aeneas Warren and Zhou Xinyue, and the creation of a new Continentalist–Landonist United Commonwealth of Continentalist States (UCCS) in eastern North America after the retreat of the Federalists into exile in the Antilles.

Since 1921 the United Commonwealth of America and the Federalist Party remains in exile in the Antilles in the 21st century, but is not formally recognized by the majority of countries in the world or the League of Nations. The UCCS considers itself to be the successor of the UCA as it existed prior to 1917 and the American Revolution, while claiming the Antilles as its territory.

Background

History

Foundation and post-war reconstruction

The political upheavals of the American Civil War (1861–1865) and the War of Contingency (1866–1868) had seen the financial East and the agrarian West of the United States combine forces against the salve-owning South, followed by a second (successful) secessionist movement after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln led to a military government headed by Ulysses Grant. The new polity that emerged in the American heartland from the states that remained part of the Union reorganized itself as the United Commonwealth of America. The successor government inherited the symbols and the political and legal framework of the previous United States, considering itself to be the continuation of the traditions and system established by the Founding Fathers in the American Revolution. Because of the role of the Democratic Party in the Civil War, the new state was dominated by the Republican Party, which wrapped itself in the American flag and attempted to maintain the Union throughout those conflicts.

The original United States Constitution had been based on the assumption that the political system would be run by a small number of educated and wealthy citizens that knew each other personally and would be able to negotiate among themselves any disputes. The electoral college, the election of senators by state assemblies, and the party caucus of those assemblies having control over appointments to public office reflected that view. The beginnings of mass democracy by the 1840s changed this situation, with the entrenched party bureaucracy giving out political positions and deciding nominations through the party convention. Because of this the politician had to deal with three interest groups: the electorate that gave him the votes to win the election, the party machine that nominated him and provided the civil service appointments for his supporters, and the wealthy industrial and financial groups that provided him with the funding necessary to mobilize the voters. This system was balanced enough and remained functional until the Civil War. But in the 1870s United Commonwealth, the party machine had become so influential that the forces of heavy industry and finance capitalism had to put forward increasingly massive funds to obtain services from the government that they considered necessary (land grants, concessions for exploiting resources, and setting high tariffs).

These forces became increasingly opposed to the spoils system, by which they had to negotiate on an equal level with party leaders, especially as the economic reconstruction led to ever growing profits and influence for their business empire. The period from 1870 to the early 1880s saw the rise of commercial and investment bankers that branched out and provided financing for railroads and heavy industry, dominating the economy as it went through the industrialization that was being promoted by the Republican Party, as they became the main source of funding for industrial expansion. In the process they accumulated a vast amount of wealth, as well as political and social influence. The financial side of this structure, "Big Finance," was dominated by J. P. Morgan out of New York City and the East Coast while the industrial side, "Big Business," was dominated by John D. Rockefeller out of Ohio. Together, Morgan and Rockefeller lobbied for the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act through Congress in the late 1870s, which aimed to close off the flow of campaign contributions from government employees that enabled the party machine to provide politicians with a source of funding independent of business control. At a time when advertising in newspapers and travel by railroad was becoming necessary for a political campaign, even a slight reduction in alternative funding would make the political system far more answerable to Big Finance and Big Business.

The concentration of economic and political power in the hands of Morgan and Rockefeller led to massive inequality in both spheres. Members of this industrialist and financier class lived a lavish lifestyle that was totally disconnected from the working class experience in big city factories or in rural farm towns. By 1890, the top twenty largest corporations in the United Commonwealth together controlled more assets than all others combined, and a few of the largest (such as United Commonwealth Steel and American Telephone and Telegraph) had more assets than several U.C. states. The cycle of market crashes that lasted from the 1870s through the 1900s was in part due to the realization of the financiers that they made more money from issuing and selling securities than they did from producing and distributing goods. They also discovered they benefited from issuing excessive securities or bonds to companies, then after their bankruptcy charging fees and commissions for the reorganization, and then providing more securities. This economic volatility, combined with the monetary policy preferred by the plutocrats of controlling inflation through the gold standard, kept prices for agricultural goods low while the banks and industry charged farmers a high cost for mortgages, railroad services, and interest. The agrarian and labor discontent, the latter produced by the longest factory working hours in North America, would make the United Commonwealth increasingly unstable from 1890.

The 1870s saw the Republican Party split internally between two camps, the right-leaning Loyalists and the left-leaning Unionists, which often prevented the government from functioning. This was useful to Morgan and Rockefeller, who sought to control both factions, as well as attempting to influence the Democratic Party. In 1879, the Unionists left the party and combined with the Democratic side, forming the Unionist Democratic Party. The exodus of the left-progressive wing and the resulting reorganization of the remaining Republicans into the Federalist Party in 1880 led Big Finance and Big Business to give support to the latter, though efforts to control both sides continued. However, the plutocratic oligarchy found it harder to control the Unionist Democrats as their main constituency were the discontented farmers in the West, and the industrial workers and newly-arrived immigrants from eastern and southern Europe in the East. Due to this the bankers were able to more easily pay off delegates and have far more complete control over the Federalists than the Unionist Democrats, and combined with the fact that the Federal government bureaucracy was already dominated by the former Republicans, made them take a one-party view of politics after 1880. This alliance with the Federalists also ensured the passing of the Pendleton Bill in 1883, which cemented the business oligarchy's control over the Federal government.

Gilded age and labor conflicts

The glass works, a famous 1908 photograph of typical factory conditions in the U.C., made by the muckraker journalist Lewis Hine.

As the investment bankers and their industrial allies worked to dominate politics at the Federal level by partnering with the Federalist Party, a wave of populist backlash was beginning to emerge against the country's exploitation of industrial and farm labor. Initially the opposition remained too divided to pose a significant threat to the Big Finance and Big Business control of the political system. The farmers refused to get behind the Unionist Democratic Party because of its role in the Civil War, and they attempted to form various third parties (such as the Greenback Party or the People's Party), but by the middle of the 1890s the discontent had reached a boiling point. They were finally willing to get past the Civil War history and supported a U.C. Representative from Illinois, William Jennings Bryan, who was able to take the nomination at the Unionist Democratic National Convention in 1895. Bryan was a charismatic leader and skilled orator who effectively rallied the forces of discontent, including oppressed labor and farmers, under the Unionist Democrats and for the first time posed a real electoral challenge to the Federalist one-party state, in the 1896 presidential election. Although the plutocratic oligarchy nearly panicked over Bryan, after spending a lot of money they were able to get Levi P. Morton reelected as president. They redoubled their efforts to regain influence over the Unionist Democratic Party, and in the 1904 election J. P. Morgan could sit back with the knowledge that both the Federalist and Unionist Democratic candidates were his associates. From about the turn of the century, the Rockefeller group and Morgan also split the ticket between them, as they did in 1900, because their interests began to diverge.

All the while, the growth of monopoly capitalism and the wealth of Wall Street financiers continued. A Progressive movement emerged in the late 1890s and picked up strength in the early 1900s, as the "liberal" side of the press began publishing work by "muckraking" journalists, who brought to the attention of the country and the world the darker side of Big Business and the living conditions of the working man in the United Commonwealth. As the country industrialized from the 1870s, the average worker lived in the terrible conditions that were somewhat unique even for the Victorian era, including being crowded in unsanitary conditions where disease was common, working 15-16 hours a day for a survival wage, no time for leisure, and no protection from dangerous accidents, only to return to a tiny apartment they shared with several others that lacked even basic necessities. Muckraking journalists like Upton Sinclair brought these conditions into the American Commonwealth's national conversation in a similar way as Charles Dickens' novels had done in England or the works of Émile Zola had in France. This and the wider Progressive movement was made possible by the "liberal" side of the oligarchy, as a split began emerging between Morgan and the heavy industries of Rockefeller. Some of the rich became more idealistic, remembering the social obligations that came with having immense wealth and influence, and supported parts of the Progressive movement, such as by funding liberal newspapers (including the The New Republic). Ideas like increased democracy, women's suffrage, improving working conditions, and having higher wages were promoted by the movement. Despite the achievement of popularizing these proposals, little was done to advance them in practice. The Federalist Party and its backers looked around for ways to distract the public from this, and they found it in the form of foreign policy.

United Commonwealth propaganda promoted the country's leadership of the Anglo-American coalition in the Spanish War as the first step towards reuniting the Union under the Federalists.

President Levi P. Morton stumbled on this solution accidentally, when in 1895 he intervened in the Colombian crisis, a border dispute between Gran Colombia and Great Britain's colonial territory of Guyana. The incident led to the resurgence of the Monroe Doctrine's popularity, which had died out during the Anglo-American Wars as the dissolution of the U.S. initially left no power on the continent that could go up against a European power. But the best opportunity came with the Cuban revolt against Spanish rule around the same time. President Morton, the Northeast Union's Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, and U.C. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge agitated for war with Spain over the brutality of their rule in Cuba, with the help of William Randolph Hearst, who controlled the country's largest newspaper chain. After the Brazorian battleship Brazos mysteriously exploded in Havana harbor in February 1898, within a month the Anglo-American powers had declared war on Spain, to provide a distraction to their dissatisfied public, as well as out of a desire for imperialist glory and to establish the nations of North America as equals to the great powers of Europe. The Spanish–American War led to the United Commonwealth's acquisition of Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, and enhanced the country's prestige as the leading power on the continent. The resulting demand for industrial products caused by the war, as well as the increase in gold production from the mines of South Africa and Alaska around the same time, led the United Commonwealth out of the economic downturn it had been in since "the panic of 1893" and prolonged the existing system for a couple more decades. The Commonwealth went on to play a role in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 by sending troops to China, intervened in the Central American banana republics in 1907, sent its newly-built Navy on a global tour in 1908, completed and opened the Panama Canal in 1914, and was part of the Anglo-American intervention in the Mexican Revolution in 1916.

But even as these events took place a growing socialist movement began taking shape in the United Commonwealth. The rise of international Socialism came as a reaction to the awful conditions of the working classes of North America and Europe in the 19th century, and the 1890s coincided with the end of the First Socialist International after its internal conflict between anarchists and Marxists, leading to the Second International being established in 1889. The anarchists lost prominence after their assassinations of world leaders caused controversy, in favor of those that thought the state could be expanded to forcefully improve the aforementioned economic conditions. Even then, there was division between the more moderate Socialists and the radical Landonists, or Communists. Despite this divide the labor unions and early socialist parties were able to cooperate to advance their cause in the United Commonwealth. The American Federation of Labor, the Knights of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist Labor Party of America became prominent representatives of international Socialism in the United Commonwealth starting in the 1880s. They benefited to a degree from the Progressive Era of the 1890s and 1900s, and at the time the moderate Socialist wing was in control, favoring participation in the political system over the revolutionary views of the Communist-Landonist wing. They were supportive of William Jennings Bryan, but after his defeat the movement became increasingly radical, as the 1896 election and the subsequent takeover of the Unionist Democratic Party by the same Wall Street forces that controlled the Federalists seemed to prove the radical perspective that change within the system was impossible.

Revolution and collapse

One of the mass demonstrations organized by various socialist movements and parties that weakened Federalist control in the Midwest.

There was a brief period between 1897 and 1909 when the masses were able to look past the corruption and oppression of the Federalist regime out of patriotism, to rally behind the banner of defending American interests abroad from European encroachment and spreading the ideals of the American founding to the rest of the Western Hemisphere. This sentiment even survived to a degree the downturn caused by the panic of 1907, which had been precipitated once again by the excesses of the financial oligarchy. However, as the living conditions became more dire the brutality of Federalist rule increased, until a point was eventually reached where violent confrontations between the government and the citizenry became common. The Eastern Field Culling, carried out by Federalist troops in 1905 against Appalachian workers, prompted labor unions and other organizations (which had combined to form the United Labor Front in 1904) to begin organizing workers' councils, and these spread throughout the country from the East Coast to Chicago. Instead of making any concessions to the opposition, the Federalist response was to increase the suppression, almost forcing them to organize against the government. Public discontent with the Federal government reached a peak in the summer of 1916, when President Theodore Attenborough began using the U.C. Army to purge some of the most problematic councils and social democratic groups. These events all combined to turn the morale of the citizenry against the government during the winter of 1916–1917, and a revolutionary atmosphere took hold of the United Commonwealth, into which stepped Aeneas Warren and Zhou Xinyue, the founders of the Landonist Party.

The launching of the Pacification War of Appalachia by the Federalists in the summer of 1917 was the catalyst of the Continental Revolutionary War. In the East, the region of Appalachia quickly became a Landonist stronghold as the popularity of the movement surged among the rural people, while in the Midwest, major cities such as Indianapolis and Detriot saw left-leaning Federalists join with unions and socialist parties to organize massive worker demonstrations, causing logistical problems for the Federal government and army. Warren and Zhou's Landonist Party was initially a small minority, but through their leadership skills, intellectual ability, and charisma, they positioned themselves as the leaders of the growing movement in Appalachia, which by then was a combination of various left-leaning organizations and much of the local public. The Continentalist Party that the two of them established seized power within the Appalachian rebellion and ruthlessly overcame any opposition to their leadership by the fall of 1917. At the same time, propaganda and agitation was used to immobilize much of the public, hindering the Federal government's attempt to create a wartime Army and bring it to bear against the revolutionary parts of the country. Warren and Zhou were able to build up the Continentalist movement in Appalachia to have a leading position by the start of 1918, in part thanks to their secret police, which was made up of fanatical Landonists-Continentalists who were able to systemically root out of the party's all opponents. Dorian Conesus was the head of this organization, the Extraordinary Commission for Eliminating Counter-revolution and Sabotage ("Extra"). The Landonists recruited for the Continental Revolutionary Army from both the masses of urban workers and rural farmers, as well as defecting Federalist troops, by providing them with food and high pay. As the economy collapsed, the Continentalists requisitioned food from the rural areas and distributed it with a rationing system to their supporters, while the Federalists in the cities struggled to feed the population.

From 1917 to 1922 the United Commonwealth was in total political and socioeconomic chaos. General Gregory Warren and the Federalist leadership chose to adopt a defensive strategy as they built up their forces, focusing on holding major cities and railroads while letting the countryside be overrun, as they believed they would be able to restore order there once their Army was brought up to full strength. However, the death of Theodore Attenborough and his replacement with Carson Henderson as the interim president led to disorganization among the Federalists, which hindered the war effort even further. The Federalist command structure broke down into regional cliques as it became disconnected by the growing territory of the Provisional Socialist Commonwealth. Only in the South did the Federalists manage to maintain a semblance of control and order. Foreign powers also sent troops to the United Commonwealth in an attempt to save the Federalist regime from falling to a popular socialist uprising, though their deployment was mostly limited to ports along the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. In the meantime, the Continentalists in Appalachia began coordinating with the socialists in the Midwest and created a more unified command structure. Through this cooperation, most of the Midwest and Northeast were brought under Continentalist control during 1918, and after the besieged urban areas fell to the Revolutionary Army, in 1919 they launched an offensive into the Southern holdouts. As the Continental Revolution picked up strength, simultaneous uprisings by sympathizers of the Continentalists broke out in Brazoria, Superior, Tournesol, and the Northeast Union, with a mixed level of success. The Southern campaign led to the military defeat of the Federalists by early 1921 and the evacuation of their supporters to the Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean, completing the Continentalist Party takeover of the United Commonwealth.

United Commonwealth (1866–1921)

Contents

Background