WI persistent opposition to the USA

Galba Otho Vitelius

What would have happened if large parts of American society opposed key parts of the 1775-89 settlement and they remained politically active?

I refer to the Tories (supporters of the crown during the War of Independence) and the anti-federalists. Pretty much nothing was heard from either group after they were defeated. The Tories seem to have gone to Canada and Britain, and the anti-federalists seem to have made their peace with the Constitution, backing the more states rights faction of the ratifiers, instead of campaigning to de-ratify.

What if this had not been the case? You usually don't see losers slink off so quietly. There was a major jacobin rebellion in Britain forty years after 1688. In Latin American, monarchists, decentralists, and outright secessionists remained a political force and caused trouble through the 1860s. I'm not sure why the USA was so different, but what if it wasn't?
 

Mike Stearns

I think I can answer that question with one word: The frontier. Don’t like the Americans, or their democracy? Go west and you’ll find a virtually empty continent.
 

VictorVanBakker

Well Britain was never really interested in reclaiming America after the war, so most Tories either left for or kept quiet about it (and they had good incentive, remember tar and feathering?). You would need a revanchist Britain in order to give Loyalists any hopes to continue.
 

Maoistic

Banned
VictorVanBakker said:
Well Britain was never really interested in reclaiming America after the war, so most Tories either left for or kept quiet about it (and they had good incentive, remember tar and feathering?). You would need a revanchist Britain in order to give Loyalists any hopes to continue.
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What was the war of 1812 for?
 

ManintheField

Banned
Galba Otho Vitelius said:
What would have happened if large parts of American society opposed key parts of the 1775-89 settlement and they remained politically active?

I refer to the Tories (supporters of the crown during the War of Independence) and the anti-federalists. Pretty much nothing was heard from either group after they were defeated. The Tories seem to have gone to Canada and Britain, and the anti-federalists seem to have made their peace with the Constitution, backing the more states rights faction of the ratifiers, instead of campaigning to de-ratify.
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People reconciled and adapted, for the most part. A lot of Federalists were ex-Tories or their descendants. A lot of Democratic-Republicans were ex-antifederalists or their descendants.

You need to give people a reason to not reconcile and that's actually kind of hard to do.
 

TyranicusMaximus

Only a few thousand Loyalists fled to Canada or the Caribbean. The remainder may have remained loyal to the crown but their children and grandchildren would have grown up in the US and it would have been their home as much as it was for the descendants of Patriots.

They would need a reason to maintain a separate identity and since they're predominantly English-speaking Protestants like most other American citizens that's going to be VERY hard to change.
 

Maoistic

Banned
Galba Otho Vitelius said:
The Latin American model would indicate a monarchist movement as opposed necessarily to one advocating a resumption of British sovereignty.
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Pretty sure outside of Brazil, Haiti (which started as a republic) and Mexico (which also started as a republic), all Latin American countries were anti-monarchic republics, even if dictatorial ones throughout the 19th century.
 

VictorVanBakker

Maoistic said:
Pretty sure outside of Brazil, Haiti (which started as a republic) and Mexico (which also started as a republic), all Latin American countries were anti-monarchic republics, even if dictatorial ones throughout the 19th century.
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Mexico began independence as the first Mexican Empire under Iturbide.
 

teg

Maoistic said:
GTHOH.
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What's that supposed to be all about? Stearns isn't parroting the line about America being an undisturbed wilderness that just happened to be empty or any of the other suspect stuff, just that there weren't enough people to stop disaffected groups heading west if they so chose. There were as few as 600,000 Native Americans in the United States and a lot of those probably lived in the east, I haven't found any precise figures on where they were living. Even if it was somewhat higher, that isn't enough to defend an area larger than western Europe.

As for the OP, would perhaps another route to take be George Washington failing to reconcile the Continental Army at the end of the war of independence? I think that might be the best route because such a movement would have a permanent power base as opposed to some of the others which have been suggested in this thread.

teg
 
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Maoistic

Banned
teg said:
What's that supposed to be all about? Stearns isn't parroting the line about America being an undisturbed wilderness that just happened to be empty or any of the other suspect stuff, just that there weren't enough people to stop disaffected groups heading west if they so chose. There were as few as 600,000 Native Americans in the United States and a lot of those probably lived in the east, I haven't found any precise figures on where they were living. Even if it was somewhat higher, that isn't enough to defend an area larger than western Europe.

As for the OP, would perhaps another route to take be George Washington failing to reconcile the Continental Army at the end of the war of independence? I think that might be the best route because such a movement would have a permanent power base as opposed to some of the others which have been suggested in this thread.

teg
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He pretty much is when he says that it's a "virtually empty continent", sure except for the 1 million Native Americans who live there. Also, the numbers are fine to defend from settlements, the problem came in facing armies with industrial technology, but even empires like Burma, Vietnam and Qing China were defenceless against that.
 

teg

Maoistic said:
He pretty much is when he says that it's a "virtually empty continent", sure except for the 1 million Native Americans who live there.
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I don't think that is a fair interpretation of what Stearns is saying. I'm certainly not suggesting that the fact the Native Americans had been devastated by European diseases and warfare justified the seizure of their land and the destruction of the pre-Columbian civilizations.* I don't believe it is fair to believe that Stearns is suggesting that either. Furthermore, we are discussing how to establish a persistent opposition to the constitutional settlement of the 1780s within the borders of the United States. It doesn't seem unreasonable to argue that the frontier was one of the factors which needs to be eliminated or otherwise accounted for this to occur, because the frontier means dissatisfied groups can move west because the land to the west does not have enough people to keep them out.

Also, the numbers are fine to defend from settlements, the problem came in facing armies with industrial technology, but even empires like Burma, Vietnam and Qing China were defenceless against that.
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That isn't really supported by the historical record. Even before the US developed an industrial economy in a meaningful sense of the word, there had been large scale settlement west of the Appalachian and ethnic cleansing/genocide of the Native American populations there. Furthermore, even without the direct support of the US government, settler groups were often able to defeat Native Americans forces, for instance the Mormons were able to defend their settlements in Utah without significant support from the federal government. Assuming greater resistance to the United States leads to an exodus of opposition groups, let's say the planter aristocracy is much more entrenched than in OTL and manages to seize control of the Midwestern states soon after they are settled, then I think it is likely that these settlers would have more resources at their disposal than the Mormons. That said, they would have likely grown much more slowly than the US supported settlers, which in turn raises the question of why the United States would ignore the frontier. The Mormons fled very far west but eventually the federal government caught up to them. I think for a frontier based opposition to work, you need a foreign backer like a revanchist Britain to keep the United States hemmed in east of the Mississippi at least and ideally east of the Appalachians.

teg

*Estimates for the pre-Columbian population of the continental United States range from about 2 million to as high as 18 million. For comparison, the population of the Roman Empire only fell from 70 to 50 million between 250 and 400 AD, which was still enough to cause long lasting societal and economic decline. Also, am I the only person who finds it very weird that given how obsessed Americans seem to be with post-apocalyptic narratives, that there seems to be either none or very little literature (either academic or fiction) which draws attention to the fact that the Native American societies in the centuries after the arrival of the Europeans are probably the closest we have got to a post-apocalyptic civilization? (Even as a deconstruction of the racial basis of many American post-apocalyptic narratives like the Walking Dead.)
 

Colonel Zoidberg

Kaiser_Wilhelm said:
The British weren't exactly the ones who started that war, nor did they want a war with the Americans
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I understand that the War of 1812 was more about the Americans being pissed off at the British (not without valid reason) than the British having any sort of ambition in North America. The British still had forts or something in the US, and throughout a war with France, British ships captured American ships bound for France and impressed many Americans into the British navy on grounds that the Americans had deserted the British navy (an assumption that was way off base and gathered far more innocent Americans than deserters.)
 
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