Sunday, December 11, 2016

(Gnome Wars) The American Uncivil War of 1836.

With the cessation of hostilities from the Seven Year's Picnic, the American Confederation of Sovereign States was established as a national government for the former colonies.  The yoke of British mercantilism was removed and many northern gnomes made their fortunes in this new economy.

Within a generation, American politics had become solely dominated by gnomes, with the teddy bears relegated to mostly secondary, almost silent, citizens. 

1836 - The Intolerable Tariffs
Early on, the CSS had formed certain tariffs between individual states and the Gnome nations of the Old World. While this was a solid isolationist policy that kept them out of the Nomepoleonic Wars, the northern states that had made up New Britain dreamt of a more powerful economic system. In subsequent years, they had established secret "Trade Unions" between each other and other nations, to circumvent the "Intolerable Tariffs" that the confederation continued to hang on to.

While the "Union" states focused on trade and money, the southern states loyal to the Confederacy looked western, expanding into the frontier, pushing out the native teddy bears and other races. In doing so, they added military experience and efficient cottage industry might.


Confederates trudging through the Jersey Pine Barrens
Once the secret of the Union states was uncovered by newspaper editor J Charles Calhoun, the southern states were forced to act in retribution, to prevent further international entanglements.   Numerous armies were sent north.


1846 - A Divided Realm
After ten long years, the southern states beat the northern states, but in a case similar to the Teddy Bear natives, the southerners exhausted themselves.  They could not subjugate the North and many soldiers pillaged what they could.  (Re: Battle of York).   The Union could never convert into a war economy, since none of the trade Unionists no one wanted to pay the taxes! 


An armistice between the two sides was signed on the banks of the O-Hello River.   Despite additional agreements over the years, no formal peace treaty was ever signed. It's not unusual on a drunken Saturday night that bullets and shells are fired across the border. 


The Union forces had set up a representative oligarchy, very similar to the shadow rulers that controlled those states during the CSS.   Once they realized a happy workforce was a productive and profitable one, the government showed benevolence towards it's citizens, and industry finally blossomed. 


For the Confederacy, anything short of total victory was a defeat in the eyes of its citizenry.  Lucky for them, their expansion already stretched out to the Mighty Mississipp, which allowed them to heal some of the war wounds, before losing against the Republic of Texas in 1860. 
Northern Cav protecting a train.
One thing that was made perfectly clear when the American gnomes came out was that there was no American form slavery in Gnome Wars.  With this removed, I focused on a economic reason for the war, and with a backhanded applause to the State's Rights camp, it was Northern greed that started the war... and both sides come out weaker in a stalemate. 

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