Jack of Harts

Old California was particularly rife with Sanctuaries before the Second Great Depression hit, and they had spread throughout every State in the decades since their inception. They were places people could go to in order to find relief from a law they didn’t like, usually due to political, economic, or religious issues. They actually had much in common with the Mormon, Amish, and Indian communities that we have right now, a place where life was different than elsewhere. Sometimes better. Sometimes worse. It depended on the Sanctuary in question. They represented a major dividing line or crack in American politics and culture, and they formalized the split between many of the cultures that had once seen America as a single melting pot. The Second Great Depression saw the long simmering mutual distrust enflamed by decades of political rhetoric finally boil over. The distinctly American red and blue line left them unwilling to live with each other, and many States simply split up along county, city, or individual farm lines. The Sanctuaries proved central to many of these splits. Some of them died. Others thrived, and it was their representatives that went to the States and the Feds in time to reform the government under more…rational rules.