Jack of Harts

Large States like Old California and Old Texas ran into a number of interesting problems during the Second Great Depression. They were host to some of the largest cities in America on the one hand, and some of the largest stretches of sparsely populated ranch and farmlands on the other. There were few places in America where the divide between cityfolk and countryfolk was more pronounced than those two old States. The truly interesting bit is just how amazingly different their breakups were. They helped create a fundamental transformation of the very idea of Statehood in America, but simply acknowledged the new effective power structure that had developed during the decades leading up to that time. History repeats itself, and it did so in both California and Texas. You can see the results of that into Jack’s time. Yes, they have more Federal Senators, but that was a happy coincidence. According to them. Other changes were far more radical.

The Indian Nations commanded real political and practical power during the Second Great Depression. Many called for full independence from the United States of America, and there was little the reduced Feds could do to stop them. But most believed a more measured option was appropriate. Whether they liked it or not, our worlds were intertwined far more than in the past, and fully divorcing themselves from America would result in even more chaos. So when the States moved to reform the Federal government, the Indian Nations sent their own representatives to the Constitutional Convention. Most were quickly accepted by the State delegations they nominally belonged to, though some fought for their own separate acceptance. Despite their lack of official Statehood. Constitutional scholars continue to point to their acceptance by the convention as a major point for challenging the reformed Constitution that came out of it, but court cases based on that did not succeed in the decades that followed.

One of the more interesting aspects of the various State divorces that occurred during the Second Great Depression concerned the matter of infrastructure. Many cities were vastly powerful concentrations of industry and knowledge, but most of them relied on the rural areas around them to survive. And not just for food. That is a common trope that is not entirely true. Many cities also require power stations to survive that are outside their borders. Nuclear power plants. Major hydroelectric dams. Coal plants. Power made the cities bright and shiny, and they relied on power transmission lines traveling sometimes hundreds of miles over farms and ranches. City folk drove from place to place on highways built in the middle of territory once owned by middle class Americans. Most cities required major installations outside their own borders to survive, and they did not take kindly to said installations seeking to leave them behind. Many cities took to the courts to stop the secessions. Others took more direct action. Those situations rarely ended with everybody happy or, far too often, alive. It would be decades before all the ramifications of those various actions and disagreements came to light.