[X] Chainbreakers
The Guns of Old John Brown
- Thread starter notbirdofprey
- Start date
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] The Freedmen's Army
Been awhile finally caught up again
Been awhile finally caught up again
- Location
- Te Ika-a-Māui
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Chainbreakers
I am going to attach the dice rolls I use for determining Fallout sections to this, and do the rolls in public.
JB - roll for John Brown's faction overall success, +80
WR - roll for urban revolutionaries in the northeast overall success, +60
TI - roll for Native Americans overall success, +70
Last edited:
Oh shit
Vote closed
DracoDracul
Transbian Communist
- Location
- Austin
- Pronouns
- She/They
Holy shit, those are some good rolls.
always_confused
Perpetually unwanted
- Location
- SEA
Last roll was 2 points off from hitting the best result.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
What is JB WR TI???
always_confused
Perpetually unwanted
- Location
- SEA
Johnn Brown's faction as a whole, the Urban Revolutionaries in the Northeast and the Native Americans, respectively.
The Final Fallout
"The raid on Harper's Ferry had its goals greatly expanded at the last minute as Brown became aware of additional reinforcements. The target was no longer merely the arsenal and local infrastructure. The target was the very institution of slavery throughout as much of the Shenandoah Valley as was feasible to reach.
Total surprise as achieved. The telegraph office was seized bloodlessly, local leaders were rounded up and temporarily imprisoned within the church, and the train station was taken after a brief skirmish that ended as soon as the station's defenders realized they were facing something beyond ordinarily bandits.
The sentry at Harper's Ferry was asleep when Brown and The Freedmen's Army entered. He was tied up and left in an office while the entire stockpile of the arsenal was systematically looted and the complex itself turned into a fortress. While this was happening, the two other prongs of Brown's plan were being put into action.
First, and in the long-term the most important, was the sending of the Manifesto of Freedom. Composed as partly a dialect with various philosophies of politics, ethics, and economics, partly a mediation on Brown's religious beliefs within the context of the Second American Republic and its false secularity, and partly a political platform with an accompanying call to action, the Manifesto was ordered to be delivered to every Freedmen's Army printer throughout the country with instructions to be sent as widely as possible, the expense to be paid for using several bars of donated gold.
While the principle thrust of the Manifesto's politics was the need to break all chains, most particularly the odious and burdensome chains binding the slave, it also took care to address a variety of political issues, including limits on democratic representation, rural debt, and the growing power of robber barons. It also included instructions to prepare for "peaceful mass action" and the "reaction of tyrants" with instructions for these parts to be modified for specific times and dates.
A number of the earlier runs of the Manifesto were misprinted, leaving these sections unmodified. This was the subject of no small hilarity during the coming days, a time when hilarity would be in short supply.
The second prong was Brown putting his beliefs into direct and immediate action. While awareness was starting to spread due to halted trains, concern regarding the Manifesto, and the presence of mixed-race armed troops, it had not reached particularly far, especially in regards to the plantations around Harper's Ferry, where those who fled typically followed the railroads. As a result, many slaveowners and overseers were surprised in their beds by freshly armed slaves.
While some regrettable violence did occur, especially when slaveowners tried to regain control of what they considered their rightful property, by and large the transition from slave to free was swift and orderly. In most cases, while the slaveowners themselves were often subject to brief trials, their families were allowed to flee with property. Many were even encouraged, as part of a strategy to slow any incoming army and clear the area of civilians who could be caught in battle.
What came after the immediate transition varied. Generally, the newly freed split into three groups. One group would flee, aiming to make it to Canada or at least the North. One group would stay on their plantations, often in the hopes of being simply left alone. And one group would enlist in the Freedmen's Army, taking their oaths on the rifles and comrades with which they had won their freedom.
This third group and any accompanying civilians would retreat into the town of Harper's Ferry, with the aim of letting the first American army to come break itself in the hopes of acquiring heavy artillery, destabilizing the nation, and denuding the enemy army of veteran soldiers.
The second two goals were achieved at some cost, but the the first failed in its entirely, showing the major problem with Brown's leadership - his utter fearlessness and willingness to sacrifice anything of himself, even his life, made him inspiring, but he expected the same from his comrades, and not all had his unique fervor. The simple arithmetic of training and equipment told at the First Battle of Shenandoah."
-Excerpt from A People's History of the Free Republic of America
"My participation at First Shenandoah wasl limited. The first we knew of anything was reports from scared women and children of negro brigands in the valley. An attempt at reaching the arsenal with the telegram was dutifully made, and then a reconnaissance by the cavalry, but we in the artillery heard nothing of either.
So we were ordered to march, and to assume it was a great army we were facing. The Colonel's foresight proved wise on this occasion, as it often would during the long years that followed.
What came next was nothing more than a nightmare. Our officers were slain at great distances, devilish torpedoes made mincemeat of the neat lines of our brave boys. Hundreds died before we could even see our enemy.
Finally, we made it to the arsenal. Trenches had been dug around it, and the dirt piled up into parapets. They hadn't finished, and their were still gaps. That was where our men rushed to, and where they were cut down. The sounds and smells I witnessed are things I hesitate to put to paper, for they were terrors so great they blended into each other, the scream of dying horses melding with the stink of gunpowder.
At the time, I simply did my best to ignore such things and carry on with my duty. Our cannon deployed distantly from the fort, and we loaded and fired as best we could. The brigands we thought we were fighting had many rifles and some clever tricks, but they had nothing which could match a bronze Napoleon. And they knew it.
Their leader, Brown, was a cold bastard, sending the men he commanded to die in waves to reach us and attempt to take the cannon for themselves while the rest of his force began to try and circle around us. It's likely they would have succeeded, if not for the foresight of Cunning Lee.
He had sent some of the attached cavalry out to make like Indians on any rebels they found isolated, and to make sure that they were survivors.
Three waves had charged us and broken, and we were beginning to run low on powder. Our infantry was all but destroyed, having stood manfully in the face of their enemy. And then it seemed that our foe lost heart for facing us instead of retreating to protect those they had abandoned.
We retreated too, for while the cavalry could have some part in bleeding the enemy as they ran, we could not. We simply couldn't move fast enough. So were forced to stand guard in Harper's Ferry and attempt to restore order to a town ruined by the insanity of ideologues."
-Exceprt from Memoirs of An United States Hero
With Brown, forced by the demands of his troops, abandoing Harper's Ferry, the United States Army was able to reoccupy the arsenal, having already retaken the town itself during their approach. However, it had been deliberately ruined. Most of the machinery had been destroyed, the only exceptions being what had been taken, and the weaponry was either sent by wagon up into the Appalachian mountains or distributed to the Freedmen's Army. The gunpowder had similarly been used, seized, or dumped, and even the walls and ceilings of the buildings had been looted for firewood and fortifications.
However, the Freedmen's Army also had their struggles. It's members were brave, and they were used to harder labor for causes they had lesser stakes in. But they were still running on little food and sleep and unused to maintaining contact during a march. Pockets of troops became separated from each other. While the main bodies were all able to keep coordination with each other, all suffered losses, especially since the United States cavalry had survived First Shenandoah by virtue of mostly not being present, and instead slaughtering noncombatanants.
The Freedmen's Army did make it into the Appalachian Mountains after a series of grueling marches, and they had liberated a significant portion of the enslaved people in the area. By any reasonable measure, they had achieved a great victory.
However, Brown and some of his closest advisors were despondent over what they believed to be critical failures. One observer described them as "dooming with such intensity they made everyone else miserable."
It took a reunion with Harriet Tubman for their spirits to be lifted.
With their camps distributed across the Appalachians to avoid straining any of their local allies, they had been somewhat isolated, but she brought two extraordinary pieces of news. Firstly, the various independent brigades of their army had begun raiding to free slaves in conjunction with the Underground Railroad, and had seen smashing success in doing so.
The available armed forces of the United States had been crippled during First Shenandoah, and so while troops were being pulled back from protecting western settlers, the defense of plantations was left entirely to local militias who proved entirely inadequate. Some were not even able to fire a single shot in the name of their liberty to oppress and abuse.
Countless thousands were freed, armed, and organized during these weeks.
The second piece of news was just as glorious, and reported on events in the north of America. Congress had become intensely, bitterly divided, leaving President Buchanan de-facto in charge, except for his utter spinelessness. His Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, and his Vice President, John C. Breckinridge, ran the country instead, in what came to be known as the "Reign of the Two Johns."
They faced immediate and widespread opposition as they issued a call for volunteers, suspended civil liberties in regions threatened by the Freedmen's Army, declared it and its various allied groups a criminal organization, embargoed the economy of Britian, who they held responsible for this "plague of Yankeedom," ordered the seizure of property of free blacks, abolitionists, and free black abolitionists, and unilaterally declared slavery the supreme law of America.
Every measure they could conceive to reinforce slavery, they put into law, and in doing so only ensured its doom. Attempts to seize John Brown's property in the city of Troy were met with armed demonstrations, working-class neighborhoods in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City attacked any who attempted to enforce the new edicts, and various local leaders across the nation condemned and attacked the new regime.
A spark had been ignited, and then thrown into a giant pit of gunpowder. And the resulting explosion echoed around the world.
While the South was busily rallying behind its champions and the West remained effectively neutral due to distance and more immediate concerns, the North was tearing itself apart. Hostility to the Two Johns was nigh-universal, but how to best respond to it was an incredibly divisive issue. However, the organization and determination of the Freedmen's Army Brigades gave them a critical advantage in shaping the narrative and forcing political leaders into uncompromising stances, which widened the rifts within the United States and its component structures.
The successes of the slave raids, and the failures of the United States leadership to rally the nation against the Freedmen's Army, buoyed the confidence of Brown and his circle. Together with their supporters in the Appalachians, and aided by a vast network of spies that stretched throughout the slave states, the raids were increased in pace and intensity. The goal was no longer simply to free slaves, but to thoroughly destroy the capacity of the United States to make war against them.
To this end, bales of cotton and tobacco were burned, foodstuffs were carted off into the mountains, railroad tracks and telegraph wires were destroyed, and scattered fortifications and stay-behind bands established. These volunteer-only teams would be responsible for ensuring any army that tried to march into the Appalachians would be bleeding before they even reached the foothills.
While the Freedmen's Army were able to operated with near-impunity in the mountains themselves, and with great success near them, further away they were constrained by ramshackle logistics and struggles with professionalism. Though large sections of several states saw the vile institution of slavery entirely destroyed, in many cases the slavers forced hundreds into great human chains or onto crowded barges, driving them out of reach of liberation. Meanwhile, every bit of wealth that could be spared by the planters and their political allies was funneled into preparing for war.
As the first snows began to blanket the lower foothills of the Appalachians, the pace of war slowed, and then ground to a halt. The Freedmen's Army went into winter quarters, the planter militias frantically attempted to acquire weapons from any source available, the remnants of the United States Army were riven by disunity and desertion, and supporters of Brown seized power in coups and forced elections in the North.
It was clear the only hope of reaction was foreign aid. And that aid was not forthcoming. The effective implosion of the United States meant that trade in it was becoming an impossibility. Although many planters and state governments attempted to approach Great Britain for assistance, the sudden shortage of cotton supplies and the unrelenting hostility of the Two Johns complicated matters, as did the frantic need of the British government to maintain control over its empire. Though France and Britain, and to a lesser degree Spain and the Netherlands, had an interest in keeping the New World stable for the sake of their general colonization enterprises, none were able to spare the troops or funds needed for intervention, not when a massive pillar of the world economy had been destroyed in a few short weeks.
Those resources were needed in more vital areas, to suppress native revolts, support colonial elites, and prevent internal threats and external rivals from becoming dangers. Riots in Paris and London were put down by force as troops marshaled in Prussia and Denmark.
The winter ended and the war began once more. Slave revolts broke out as disciplined brigades swept down from the mountains, seizing cities and shattering organized resistance. The rioters and revolutionaries in the northern states were finally able to take the cities they had been fighting in, but huge swathes of the country remained under United States control. Meanwhile, a loose alliance of Native American polities staked their claims on the vast heartland of the continent and actively worked to drive out settlers and seize control of scattered fortresses and outposts of the United States control.
All faced severe obstacles, including political disunity, limited supplies of food, currency, and raw resources, and determined enemy resistance. The Meeting at Des Moines, immortalized in painting and historical drama, where the Turtle Island Confederation, the Worker's Republic of American, the Freedmen's Republic of America, and a number of lesser factions, agreed on a formal alliance and a general set of war goals including the defeat of the United States and the destruction of slavery as an institution also unified the disparate opposition forces, who saw trickles of British, French, and Spanish aid prop up their economies and militaries. And while a trickle of volunteer forces and prominent figures did join the Des Moines Alliance, they still suffered from a total lack of foreign recognition, leaving them reliant on smuggling for trade until the defeat of the Mexican Expedition in 1863.
Despite these obstacles, they were still eventually victorious, albeit not as successfully as they desired. A series of military expeditions into the interior of the continent in what was once known as Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota were defeated messily, with a late British intervention stabilizing resultant warlord states. The western coast as formally unified under the Dominion of Pacifica, the Mormon Revolt was crushed, and after five long bloody years, the Second Meeting at Des Moines saw the war ended with a formal treaty.
Now, three powers stand where one once did.
First is the Freedmen's Republic of America, ruled from Atlanta. It touches the Atlantic coast, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Rio Grande. Years of war that often verged on total have devestated much of the countryside, but effective counter-partisan warfare has stabilized the territory, with neo-United States guerillas a dying breed, mostly constrained to the deserts of Texas and the swamps of Lousiana. A single chamber Great Council, led by an elected Premier, runs the country. The right to personal autonomy, to freedom from the tyranny of necessities, and to freedom of conscience are firmly established as preeminent above all other laws and principles in the Freedmen's Charter. John Brown has been elected three times to serve as Premier with the backing of the Freedom Party, the Worker's Party, and Republican Party (Radical). Economically, they are working to industrialize at a steady pace, with strong concessions being made to localist concerns and worker's rights. Standards of living have improved greatly thanks to medical, housing, and literacy programs.
Second is the Worker's Republic of America, stretching from the Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi River. The industrial heartland of America, the blood disruptions of the Great Revolution have still not been fully recovered from, especially with the autonomy compromises made with many figures in the interior of the country. Despite these troubles, infrastructural development and reconstruction have both proceeded apace. The system of compromises made to reconcile a number of populations who chose the Worker's Repbulic only in the face of the Freedmen's Republic while still ensuring they remain harmless has grown unstable, but the country still hangs together, governed from New York City by an ever-changing coalition.
Third is the Turtle Island Confederation, an alliance-turned-nation that is fractious, impoverished, and yet determinedly unconquered and uncolonized. Perhaps the most militant member of the Des Moines Alliance due to the heavy losses they have suffered in decades past and ongoing border skirmishes in several locations, they have prioritized building up an independent military industry and forces to use it, along with widescale cultural preservation and regeneration efforts. Uniquely among the three, they do not have a formal written constitution as yet - there has been a committee to write it with a membership that has changed completely several times.
Although all three powers have serious differences, they maintain trade and military treaties and have a common foreign policy of opposing European influence, reaching out to lesser powers, and supporting revolutionaries. They also have open borders, accepting refugees of all kinds, from philosophers to persecuted minorities.
Total surprise as achieved. The telegraph office was seized bloodlessly, local leaders were rounded up and temporarily imprisoned within the church, and the train station was taken after a brief skirmish that ended as soon as the station's defenders realized they were facing something beyond ordinarily bandits.
The sentry at Harper's Ferry was asleep when Brown and The Freedmen's Army entered. He was tied up and left in an office while the entire stockpile of the arsenal was systematically looted and the complex itself turned into a fortress. While this was happening, the two other prongs of Brown's plan were being put into action.
First, and in the long-term the most important, was the sending of the Manifesto of Freedom. Composed as partly a dialect with various philosophies of politics, ethics, and economics, partly a mediation on Brown's religious beliefs within the context of the Second American Republic and its false secularity, and partly a political platform with an accompanying call to action, the Manifesto was ordered to be delivered to every Freedmen's Army printer throughout the country with instructions to be sent as widely as possible, the expense to be paid for using several bars of donated gold.
While the principle thrust of the Manifesto's politics was the need to break all chains, most particularly the odious and burdensome chains binding the slave, it also took care to address a variety of political issues, including limits on democratic representation, rural debt, and the growing power of robber barons. It also included instructions to prepare for "peaceful mass action" and the "reaction of tyrants" with instructions for these parts to be modified for specific times and dates.
A number of the earlier runs of the Manifesto were misprinted, leaving these sections unmodified. This was the subject of no small hilarity during the coming days, a time when hilarity would be in short supply.
The second prong was Brown putting his beliefs into direct and immediate action. While awareness was starting to spread due to halted trains, concern regarding the Manifesto, and the presence of mixed-race armed troops, it had not reached particularly far, especially in regards to the plantations around Harper's Ferry, where those who fled typically followed the railroads. As a result, many slaveowners and overseers were surprised in their beds by freshly armed slaves.
While some regrettable violence did occur, especially when slaveowners tried to regain control of what they considered their rightful property, by and large the transition from slave to free was swift and orderly. In most cases, while the slaveowners themselves were often subject to brief trials, their families were allowed to flee with property. Many were even encouraged, as part of a strategy to slow any incoming army and clear the area of civilians who could be caught in battle.
What came after the immediate transition varied. Generally, the newly freed split into three groups. One group would flee, aiming to make it to Canada or at least the North. One group would stay on their plantations, often in the hopes of being simply left alone. And one group would enlist in the Freedmen's Army, taking their oaths on the rifles and comrades with which they had won their freedom.
This third group and any accompanying civilians would retreat into the town of Harper's Ferry, with the aim of letting the first American army to come break itself in the hopes of acquiring heavy artillery, destabilizing the nation, and denuding the enemy army of veteran soldiers.
The second two goals were achieved at some cost, but the the first failed in its entirely, showing the major problem with Brown's leadership - his utter fearlessness and willingness to sacrifice anything of himself, even his life, made him inspiring, but he expected the same from his comrades, and not all had his unique fervor. The simple arithmetic of training and equipment told at the First Battle of Shenandoah."
-Excerpt from A People's History of the Free Republic of America
"My participation at First Shenandoah wasl limited. The first we knew of anything was reports from scared women and children of negro brigands in the valley. An attempt at reaching the arsenal with the telegram was dutifully made, and then a reconnaissance by the cavalry, but we in the artillery heard nothing of either.
So we were ordered to march, and to assume it was a great army we were facing. The Colonel's foresight proved wise on this occasion, as it often would during the long years that followed.
What came next was nothing more than a nightmare. Our officers were slain at great distances, devilish torpedoes made mincemeat of the neat lines of our brave boys. Hundreds died before we could even see our enemy.
Finally, we made it to the arsenal. Trenches had been dug around it, and the dirt piled up into parapets. They hadn't finished, and their were still gaps. That was where our men rushed to, and where they were cut down. The sounds and smells I witnessed are things I hesitate to put to paper, for they were terrors so great they blended into each other, the scream of dying horses melding with the stink of gunpowder.
At the time, I simply did my best to ignore such things and carry on with my duty. Our cannon deployed distantly from the fort, and we loaded and fired as best we could. The brigands we thought we were fighting had many rifles and some clever tricks, but they had nothing which could match a bronze Napoleon. And they knew it.
Their leader, Brown, was a cold bastard, sending the men he commanded to die in waves to reach us and attempt to take the cannon for themselves while the rest of his force began to try and circle around us. It's likely they would have succeeded, if not for the foresight of Cunning Lee.
He had sent some of the attached cavalry out to make like Indians on any rebels they found isolated, and to make sure that they were survivors.
Three waves had charged us and broken, and we were beginning to run low on powder. Our infantry was all but destroyed, having stood manfully in the face of their enemy. And then it seemed that our foe lost heart for facing us instead of retreating to protect those they had abandoned.
We retreated too, for while the cavalry could have some part in bleeding the enemy as they ran, we could not. We simply couldn't move fast enough. So were forced to stand guard in Harper's Ferry and attempt to restore order to a town ruined by the insanity of ideologues."
-Exceprt from Memoirs of An United States Hero
With Brown, forced by the demands of his troops, abandoing Harper's Ferry, the United States Army was able to reoccupy the arsenal, having already retaken the town itself during their approach. However, it had been deliberately ruined. Most of the machinery had been destroyed, the only exceptions being what had been taken, and the weaponry was either sent by wagon up into the Appalachian mountains or distributed to the Freedmen's Army. The gunpowder had similarly been used, seized, or dumped, and even the walls and ceilings of the buildings had been looted for firewood and fortifications.
However, the Freedmen's Army also had their struggles. It's members were brave, and they were used to harder labor for causes they had lesser stakes in. But they were still running on little food and sleep and unused to maintaining contact during a march. Pockets of troops became separated from each other. While the main bodies were all able to keep coordination with each other, all suffered losses, especially since the United States cavalry had survived First Shenandoah by virtue of mostly not being present, and instead slaughtering noncombatanants.
The Freedmen's Army did make it into the Appalachian Mountains after a series of grueling marches, and they had liberated a significant portion of the enslaved people in the area. By any reasonable measure, they had achieved a great victory.
However, Brown and some of his closest advisors were despondent over what they believed to be critical failures. One observer described them as "dooming with such intensity they made everyone else miserable."
It took a reunion with Harriet Tubman for their spirits to be lifted.
With their camps distributed across the Appalachians to avoid straining any of their local allies, they had been somewhat isolated, but she brought two extraordinary pieces of news. Firstly, the various independent brigades of their army had begun raiding to free slaves in conjunction with the Underground Railroad, and had seen smashing success in doing so.
The available armed forces of the United States had been crippled during First Shenandoah, and so while troops were being pulled back from protecting western settlers, the defense of plantations was left entirely to local militias who proved entirely inadequate. Some were not even able to fire a single shot in the name of their liberty to oppress and abuse.
Countless thousands were freed, armed, and organized during these weeks.
The second piece of news was just as glorious, and reported on events in the north of America. Congress had become intensely, bitterly divided, leaving President Buchanan de-facto in charge, except for his utter spinelessness. His Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, and his Vice President, John C. Breckinridge, ran the country instead, in what came to be known as the "Reign of the Two Johns."
They faced immediate and widespread opposition as they issued a call for volunteers, suspended civil liberties in regions threatened by the Freedmen's Army, declared it and its various allied groups a criminal organization, embargoed the economy of Britian, who they held responsible for this "plague of Yankeedom," ordered the seizure of property of free blacks, abolitionists, and free black abolitionists, and unilaterally declared slavery the supreme law of America.
Every measure they could conceive to reinforce slavery, they put into law, and in doing so only ensured its doom. Attempts to seize John Brown's property in the city of Troy were met with armed demonstrations, working-class neighborhoods in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City attacked any who attempted to enforce the new edicts, and various local leaders across the nation condemned and attacked the new regime.
A spark had been ignited, and then thrown into a giant pit of gunpowder. And the resulting explosion echoed around the world.
While the South was busily rallying behind its champions and the West remained effectively neutral due to distance and more immediate concerns, the North was tearing itself apart. Hostility to the Two Johns was nigh-universal, but how to best respond to it was an incredibly divisive issue. However, the organization and determination of the Freedmen's Army Brigades gave them a critical advantage in shaping the narrative and forcing political leaders into uncompromising stances, which widened the rifts within the United States and its component structures.
The successes of the slave raids, and the failures of the United States leadership to rally the nation against the Freedmen's Army, buoyed the confidence of Brown and his circle. Together with their supporters in the Appalachians, and aided by a vast network of spies that stretched throughout the slave states, the raids were increased in pace and intensity. The goal was no longer simply to free slaves, but to thoroughly destroy the capacity of the United States to make war against them.
To this end, bales of cotton and tobacco were burned, foodstuffs were carted off into the mountains, railroad tracks and telegraph wires were destroyed, and scattered fortifications and stay-behind bands established. These volunteer-only teams would be responsible for ensuring any army that tried to march into the Appalachians would be bleeding before they even reached the foothills.
While the Freedmen's Army were able to operated with near-impunity in the mountains themselves, and with great success near them, further away they were constrained by ramshackle logistics and struggles with professionalism. Though large sections of several states saw the vile institution of slavery entirely destroyed, in many cases the slavers forced hundreds into great human chains or onto crowded barges, driving them out of reach of liberation. Meanwhile, every bit of wealth that could be spared by the planters and their political allies was funneled into preparing for war.
As the first snows began to blanket the lower foothills of the Appalachians, the pace of war slowed, and then ground to a halt. The Freedmen's Army went into winter quarters, the planter militias frantically attempted to acquire weapons from any source available, the remnants of the United States Army were riven by disunity and desertion, and supporters of Brown seized power in coups and forced elections in the North.
It was clear the only hope of reaction was foreign aid. And that aid was not forthcoming. The effective implosion of the United States meant that trade in it was becoming an impossibility. Although many planters and state governments attempted to approach Great Britain for assistance, the sudden shortage of cotton supplies and the unrelenting hostility of the Two Johns complicated matters, as did the frantic need of the British government to maintain control over its empire. Though France and Britain, and to a lesser degree Spain and the Netherlands, had an interest in keeping the New World stable for the sake of their general colonization enterprises, none were able to spare the troops or funds needed for intervention, not when a massive pillar of the world economy had been destroyed in a few short weeks.
Those resources were needed in more vital areas, to suppress native revolts, support colonial elites, and prevent internal threats and external rivals from becoming dangers. Riots in Paris and London were put down by force as troops marshaled in Prussia and Denmark.
The winter ended and the war began once more. Slave revolts broke out as disciplined brigades swept down from the mountains, seizing cities and shattering organized resistance. The rioters and revolutionaries in the northern states were finally able to take the cities they had been fighting in, but huge swathes of the country remained under United States control. Meanwhile, a loose alliance of Native American polities staked their claims on the vast heartland of the continent and actively worked to drive out settlers and seize control of scattered fortresses and outposts of the United States control.
All faced severe obstacles, including political disunity, limited supplies of food, currency, and raw resources, and determined enemy resistance. The Meeting at Des Moines, immortalized in painting and historical drama, where the Turtle Island Confederation, the Worker's Republic of American, the Freedmen's Republic of America, and a number of lesser factions, agreed on a formal alliance and a general set of war goals including the defeat of the United States and the destruction of slavery as an institution also unified the disparate opposition forces, who saw trickles of British, French, and Spanish aid prop up their economies and militaries. And while a trickle of volunteer forces and prominent figures did join the Des Moines Alliance, they still suffered from a total lack of foreign recognition, leaving them reliant on smuggling for trade until the defeat of the Mexican Expedition in 1863.
Despite these obstacles, they were still eventually victorious, albeit not as successfully as they desired. A series of military expeditions into the interior of the continent in what was once known as Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota were defeated messily, with a late British intervention stabilizing resultant warlord states. The western coast as formally unified under the Dominion of Pacifica, the Mormon Revolt was crushed, and after five long bloody years, the Second Meeting at Des Moines saw the war ended with a formal treaty.
Now, three powers stand where one once did.
First is the Freedmen's Republic of America, ruled from Atlanta. It touches the Atlantic coast, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Rio Grande. Years of war that often verged on total have devestated much of the countryside, but effective counter-partisan warfare has stabilized the territory, with neo-United States guerillas a dying breed, mostly constrained to the deserts of Texas and the swamps of Lousiana. A single chamber Great Council, led by an elected Premier, runs the country. The right to personal autonomy, to freedom from the tyranny of necessities, and to freedom of conscience are firmly established as preeminent above all other laws and principles in the Freedmen's Charter. John Brown has been elected three times to serve as Premier with the backing of the Freedom Party, the Worker's Party, and Republican Party (Radical). Economically, they are working to industrialize at a steady pace, with strong concessions being made to localist concerns and worker's rights. Standards of living have improved greatly thanks to medical, housing, and literacy programs.
Second is the Worker's Republic of America, stretching from the Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi River. The industrial heartland of America, the blood disruptions of the Great Revolution have still not been fully recovered from, especially with the autonomy compromises made with many figures in the interior of the country. Despite these troubles, infrastructural development and reconstruction have both proceeded apace. The system of compromises made to reconcile a number of populations who chose the Worker's Repbulic only in the face of the Freedmen's Republic while still ensuring they remain harmless has grown unstable, but the country still hangs together, governed from New York City by an ever-changing coalition.
Third is the Turtle Island Confederation, an alliance-turned-nation that is fractious, impoverished, and yet determinedly unconquered and uncolonized. Perhaps the most militant member of the Des Moines Alliance due to the heavy losses they have suffered in decades past and ongoing border skirmishes in several locations, they have prioritized building up an independent military industry and forces to use it, along with widescale cultural preservation and regeneration efforts. Uniquely among the three, they do not have a formal written constitution as yet - there has been a committee to write it with a membership that has changed completely several times.
Although all three powers have serious differences, they maintain trade and military treaties and have a common foreign policy of opposing European influence, reaching out to lesser powers, and supporting revolutionaries. They also have open borders, accepting refugees of all kinds, from philosophers to persecuted minorities.
Thank you all for an amazing time.
DracoDracul
Transbian Communist
- Location
- Austin
- Pronouns
- She/They
Great quest. I look forward to the sequel.
Tabascoheath
Unkempt, Evil-eyed Charlatan, and Pseudo-Mystic
- Location
- Your Nearest Orbital Habitat
The British dominion of Pacifica,
- Location
- A haze of forgetfulness
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm happy to contributed my maps to this beautiful little quest
cool
- Location
- Not the asylum anymore
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, not as good a result as the last fallout in raw terms of territory (I do not like Minnesotan warlords), but a larger and somewhat more ideologically coherent WRA, alongside totally discrediting the values of the old US, is worth that price, I believe.
Good to see this quest wrap up so well. Here's hoping the fates of both timelines are blessed.
Good to see this quest wrap up so well. Here's hoping the fates of both timelines are blessed.
- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
What's the joke here? Did they inadvertently reveal predictions of the future?
DracoDracul
Transbian Communist
- Location
- Austin
- Pronouns
- She/They
I'm guessing it's supposed to be one or the other depending on the audience, but was misprinted to have both plus the instructions to switch them out as needed.
Sequel Quest
Just wanted to announce the creation of a sequel quest, where you control the politics of the Freedmen's Republic, starting in 1875.
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
Springtime of Freedom: A Guns of Old John Brown Riot Quest
The year is 1875. Fifteen long years ago, a simple raid on Harper’s Ferry took place. Armed with advanced weapons and unnatural coordination, John Brown and his countless comrades seized the arsenal, the nearby town, and the surrounding plantations. What had been planned as the beginning of a...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com