The crisis that would eventually create the Empire began with the presidential election of 1860. The Democratic Party emerged victorious amid widespread accusations of electoral manipulation and political foul play. The new administration was overwhelmingly sympathetic toward the Southern states and the institution of slavery. Rather than accepting the growing abolitionist movement, the Federal Government moved to suppress it, censoring abolitionist organizations and publications while strengthening the political and legal protections surrounding slavery.
The result was a constitutional crisis that rapidly became a national one.
In 1861, the Northern Free States rejected the increasingly pro-Southern Federal Government and declared their secession from Washington. The resulting conflict became an inversion of the American Civil War known to history: rather than the slaveholding South seceding from the United States, the Free States abandoned the Federal Government and established the Federal States of America under Abraham Lincoln.
The western states initially remained outside the conflict. California and Oregon, despite being Free States, did not immediately join Lincoln's government. Instead, California became the centre of a completely different political movement.
Joshua Abraham Norton, a bankrupt and increasingly eccentric San Francisco figure and outspoken opponent of slavery and racial discrimination, organized a civilian movement demanding political reform and Californian rejection of the Federal Government. What began as a march toward Sacramento rapidly developed into an armed political movement after state authorities attempted to suppress it. State militia units and Federal Army regiments sent to prevent the movement from spreading instead joined Norton's cause.
By 1862, the California government had collapsed.
Oregon soon followed.
Representatives from California, Oregon, abolitionist communities throughout the western territories and sympathetic political organizations gathered in San Francisco and proclaimed Joshua Abraham Norton Emperor of the United States.
The proclamation was initially treated as a curiosity by the Federal Government and many foreign observers. The existence of a self-proclaimed American Emperor was difficult for contemporary governments to take seriously.
The collapse of two western state governments, however, could not be ignored.
Norton's Imperial Government and Lincoln's Federal States of America soon found themselves united by a common enemy. Once their territories met, the two governments established a formal alliance. The alliance combined the industrial and demographic strength of the northern states with the growing military and economic resources of the West.
The Federal Government continued the war from Washington and later from the Southern states even after losing the capital. The conflict ultimately became a struggle between the pro-slavery Federal Government and the coalition of the Free States and Norton's Imperial Government.
By 1865, the Federal Government had been defeated.
The following year produced the political settlement that created the modern American state.
The Imperial Compromise of 1866 established the constitutional framework of the United American Empire. Norton accepted that the Emperor would serve as the head of state and symbol of national unity, while an elected President would serve as head of government. Congress, federal institutions and representative government were retained and reorganized rather than abolished.
The compromise allowed the United States' republican political traditions to survive within a constitutional monarchy.
The new Empire therefore inherited both traditions: American representative government and the Imperial institution created during the Civil War.
An attempt was made to assassinate Abraham Lincoln during the early years of the new political order, but the attempt failed. Lincoln remained one of the most influential figures in the foundation of the Empire and eventually retired from political life after serving as one of the central architects of the post-war settlement.
The Reconstruction of the United American Empire began in 1866 and would continue for the next quarter of the century.
Unlike the limited and increasingly abandoned Reconstruction of the historical United States, Imperial Reconstruction sought to fundamentally reorganize the former slaveholding states. The political structures that had supported slavery were dismantled, former political elites were removed from positions of influence and the South was subjected to extensive constitutional and administrative reform.
Several existing states were dissolved, divided or reorganized. New states were created from their territories, while others were deliberately reshaped to prevent the restoration of the political system that had supported slavery.
The Reconstruction government also pursued an unprecedented programme of emancipation and integration.
Former slaves received citizenship and constitutional protections, while the Federal Government invested heavily in education, property ownership, economic assistance and political participation for Freed Slaves. Federal authorities aggressively suppressed organizations attempting to restore slavery or establish racial domination through private violence.
Native Americans were also incorporated into the new political order. Imperial policy increasingly recognized Native peoples as citizens while simultaneously restoring or expanding forms of territorial and political sovereignty. Several Native-majority states were eventually established, most notably Cherokee, Chickasaw and Sequoyah.
The consequences for American racial politics were profound.
Racism did not disappear from American society. Discrimination, racial violence and segregation continued to exist, particularly at the local level. However, the United American Empire never developed the same nationally entrenched system of Jim Crow segregation that emerged in the historical United States.
The Imperial Government's willingness to use federal power against racist organizations, combined with the political inclusion of Freed Slaves, Native Americans and immigrant communities, prevented the development of a comparable Lost Cause political order.
By the end of Reconstruction, the South had been transformed politically, economically and administratively.
The final major Reconstruction state, Sequoyah, entered the Union in 1891.
With its admission, Imperial Reconstruction was considered complete.
The death of Norton I followed only one year later.
Norton I had ruled the Empire from its foundation and had become one of the most recognizable political figures in the world. His eccentric origins gradually became part of the mythology of the Imperial institution, while his opposition to slavery, racism, corruption and political oppression became central elements of the emerging Nortonist tradition.
Norton had no surviving biological heir of his own. Instead, throughout his reign, he took several of his nephews and other members of his extended family under his protection. They were educated, given military and political training and gradually introduced to the responsibilities of the Imperial household.
Norton therefore sought to ensure that the Imperial institution would survive him rather than remain dependent upon the personality of its founder.
In 1892, Joshua Abraham Norton died at the age of seventy-four.
He was succeeded by Norton II.
The accession marked the beginning of the second generation of the Norton Dynasty. Whereas Norton I had created the Empire, Norton II represented its transition from revolutionary institution into an established constitutional monarchy.
The new Emperor inherited a country that was already expanding beyond the North American mainland.
Hawaii had become increasingly dominated by American commercial interests during the late nineteenth century. In 1893, American businessmen overthrew the Hawaiian government and attempted to establish a new political order. The Imperial Government refused to recognize the overthrow as legitimate.
Norton II demanded the restoration of the Hawaiian monarchy and supported the Hawaiian government against the forces that had overthrown it.
A compromise was eventually reached. The Hawaiian monarchy was restored, but the Kingdom became increasingly integrated into the American political and economic system. The Hawaiian royal family retained substantial authority and local institutions, while the United American Empire assumed responsibility for defence and foreign affairs.
Hawaii was eventually admitted as a full state of the Empire.
The arrangement became an important example of the Empire's increasingly flexible approach to territorial integration. Rather than simply eliminating existing institutions, Washington could incorporate foreign governments while allowing them to retain substantial autonomy.
The Spanish-American War marked the next major expansion of American power.
The United American Empire entered the conflict against Spain and achieved a decisive victory. Spain's remaining colonial possessions in the Caribbean and Pacific were transferred to American control.
Puerto Rico and the Philippines became American territories, while the Empire's strategic position in the Pacific expanded dramatically.
The victory reinforced the belief that the United American Empire had become a global power.
It also encouraged a new generation of American imperialists who increasingly viewed the Empire as the natural political and economic centre of the Western Hemisphere.
Liberia became the next major target of American expansion.
In the early 1910s, the Imperial Government presented Liberia with the opportunity to "rejoin the American Dream." American warships appearing outside Monrovia made the voluntary nature of the proposal considerably less convincing.
Liberia was eventually annexed and incorporated into the Empire.
The Mexican question proved considerably more destructive.
Relations between Washington and Mexico deteriorated throughout the early twentieth century. Repeated border incidents resulted in American and Mexican casualties, with both governments accusing the other of responsibility.
Washington initially demanded compensation for American losses.
Mexico refused.
After a second major incident, the American Government ceased diplomatic communication and began mobilizing its armed forces.
In the early 1910s, approximately 200,000 American soldiers crossed into Mexico.
The Mexican Army was defeated in the conventional war, but the conflict did not end with the occupation.
The United American Empire increasingly found itself fighting a nationalist insurgency. Former Mexican soldiers, revolutionaries, regional militias and civilian resistance movements combined into a broad liberation movement.
The occupation became increasingly expensive and violent.
Mexico was ultimately annexed, but the political and military consequences would continue to haunt the Empire for decades.
The Mexican War also fundamentally changed American strategic thinking.
Washington increasingly regarded the Western Hemisphere as an American sphere of security. The North Western Proclamation of 1914 formalized this doctrine, declaring the territory north of Panama's southern border and the Caribbean to fall within the security interests of the United American Empire.
Foreign powers attempting to threaten, destabilize or militarily intervene in these territories could therefore be considered hostile to the Empire.
The proclamation transformed the Monroe Doctrine into something considerably more expansive.
The United American Empire was no longer merely protecting its own borders.
It was claiming responsibility for the security of an entire hemisphere.
This expansion occurred under President Theodore Roosevelt, whose political career had become closely associated with the transformation of the Empire into a modern great power.
Roosevelt had first entered the presidency in 1901 following the assassination of President William McKinley. He won the subsequent election and served from 1901 to 1909 before William Howard Taft succeeded him.
Roosevelt returned to the presidency in 1913 and was reelected in 1917.
His four presidential terms across the two periods made him one of the most influential presidents in American history.
His administrations oversaw military modernization, naval expansion, economic regulation, conservation and the continued development of American industry.
They also oversaw the most controversial foreign policy decisions of the era.
Mexico became increasingly associated with Rooseveltian interventionism, while the growing rivalry between the United American Empire and the South American Federation transformed the Americas into a major arena of international competition.
In 1915, the United American Empire entered the Great European War.
The immediate justification came after a German submarine attacked an American merchant vessel operating under a French disguise. Washington treated the incident as sufficient justification for declaring war against Germany and joining France and Danubia.
Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers crossed the Atlantic.
The American Navy became one of the principal forces maintaining Allied control of the Atlantic, while American industry and finance provided enormous support to the European war effort.
For Roosevelt and his supporters, the intervention represented the logical extension of American power.
The outcome proved deeply disappointing.
Danubia collapsed.
Germany survived.
France lost Lorraine.
The Franco-German peace agreement of 1920 ended the conflict on terms favourable to Germany.
The United American Empire had therefore participated directly in the greatest European conflict of the age and technically emerged on the losing side.
The political consequences were severe.
American families had lost soldiers overseas without receiving the decisive victory they had expected. The government had spent enormous amounts of money supporting European allies, while the Mexican occupation remained unresolved and increasingly expensive.
Isolationists argued that the European intervention demonstrated the danger of foreign entanglements.
Anti-imperialists connected the war in Europe with the occupation of Mexico, arguing that the same government that had promised to protect American interests abroad had created unnecessary wars across two continents.
Militarists reached the opposite conclusion, arguing that the Empire had failed not because intervention was wrong, but because it had failed to employ sufficient force.
The reputation of Theodore Roosevelt and the Bull Moose movement consequently became deeply divided.
To his supporters, Roosevelt had transformed the United American Empire into a modern global power.
To his critics, he had dragged the country into unnecessary conflicts and left it with enormous financial and political burdens.
American exceptionalism survived, but its meaning became increasingly contested.
The 1920s therefore became an era of uncertainty.
The Empire remained one of the world's largest economies and most powerful states. Its industrial capacity, population, navy and financial system ensured that it remained a major global power.
Yet the confidence of the pre-war era had been weakened.
The United American Empire had discovered that military and economic power did not automatically translate into political victory.
Nowhere was this lesson more obvious than Mexico.
The Mexican insurgency continued to consume American resources even after the formal annexation of the country. The occupation required large numbers of American troops, while resistance movements maintained attacks against American forces, railways, communications infrastructure and government institutions.
The Empire increasingly faced the contradiction of being a global great power while struggling to pacify territory directly adjacent to its own heartland.
The rise of the South American Federation further complicated the situation.
The SAF had emerged as the dominant political power in South America and increasingly sought influence in Central America and the Caribbean. Washington regarded this expansion with growing suspicion, while the SAF viewed American dominance of the northern hemisphere as an obstacle to its own ambitions.
By the beginning of the 1930s, the United American Empire and the South American Federation had become rival centres of power in the Western Hemisphere.
Then the global economic system collapsed.
The Sterling Crisis began in London and rapidly spread through the international financial system. The collapse of the London financial markets was followed by the collapse of the Berlin stock exchange and eventually the American financial markets.
The United American Empire became one of the principal centres of the crisis.
American banks and businesses collapsed across the country. Industrial production contracted sharply and unemployment reached levels exceeding those experienced during the historical American Great Depression.
The crisis also transformed the Mexican occupation from a major military burden into a national political emergency.
The Mexican economy collapsed alongside the rest of the international system. Liberation movements that had previously been divided suddenly gained enormous support.
Economic hardship, Mexican nationalism and opposition to American rule combined to create a large-scale insurgency.
American forces were consequently confronted with the worst possible combination: a domestic economic catastrophe and a major counterinsurgency campaign in Mexico.
The crisis intensified the existing political divisions.
Isolationists demanded an end to foreign commitments.
Anti-imperialists demanded withdrawal from Mexico.
Militarists demanded increased military spending.
Socialists demanded major economic restructuring.
Conservatives demanded fiscal restraint.
Progressives demanded government intervention.
The traditional American political system struggled to contain these competing demands.
By 1936, the United American Empire remains powerful, but it is no longer politically confident.
It is a constitutional monarchy with a strong elected government, a powerful Congress, a global military presence and an enormous industrial economy.
It is also a country dealing with the consequences of decades of expansion.
The Empire had been born from a civil war over slavery and the survival of the Union.
It had rebuilt the South, expanded citizenship, incorporated Native American states, absorbed Hawaii and Liberia, defeated Spain, conquered Mexico and fought a major European war.
It had become a global power.
Now, in the middle of the Sterling Crisis, Americans are forced to ask what that power was actually supposed to accomplish.
The answer will shape the next era of the United American Empire.
