The Fallen Continent: The Pretender States

Like the Roman Empire of old, the late United States of America, although sickly and fraying at the seams, was much-lamented when it was finally gone. Like Rome, it collapsed into many new emerging countries, but also contained an ensemble of rump states and pretender regimes, desperately trying to preserve the old order and claim the mantle of succession for themselves.

The nature of these claims, as well as the factions that make them, varies wildly. Some doggedly insist that they really are the last heirs to the United States, in an inspirational bid to reunite the country and restore it to the world stage. Others cynically cling to the succession as a tool of legitimacy, or to simply dissuade other factions from trying to boss them around. Still others collect them as a Habsburg prince might collect royal titles throughout early modern Europe, adding another impressive office to the dictatorial trophy case.

Some factions can trace a direct line of continuity to the antebellum federal government, however tenuous. Other US claimants were founded by lesser-ranking remnants of the old regime, or by nongovernmental factions altogether. A few claim the succession for ideological or religious reasons, and some claims are entirely arbitrary and founded on nothing less than armed force and a tattered American flag.

There are fifty-three extant factions that claim the political, cultural, or spiritual succession of the United States of America. Of these factions, ten are explicitly named “the United States of America” with no further qualifiers; counting the overseas US exile governments, this number rises to thirteen. There are additionally several defunct US claimant factions, such as the Midland, Walla Walla, and Regenerated governments, whose historic claims to the succession are notable.

A comprehensive list detailing these claimant factions and their specific arguments to the succession follows.

The Presidency was not always disputed. The United States has a clear line of succession that ensures continuity in case of a disaster, and even designated survivors to sit out public events and assume command following a true catastrophe. That line of succession was eventually stretched to its breaking point, but for nearly two years, the chain was unbroken.

Nature of Claim: As U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Tony Battista was tenth in line for the succession of the U.S. presidency on the eve of the Great War.

The first president to take office after the nuclear exchange was Tony Battista, previously Secretary of Commerce under the Clinton administration. The Battista government concentrated in Twin Falls, Idaho, before it was destroyed in a secondary strike three months later. Its accomplishments were limited, its main concern was triage and addressing the most immediately-pressing issues of a nuclear apocalypse. Twin Falls’ main accomplishment was the production and proliferation of nuclear safety maps that designated large swathes of the U.S. as “Nuclear Exclusion Zones.” It was the last universally-recognized government of the United States.

Nature of Claim: Oscar Zinn was elected Speaker of the House and Acting President by the House of Representatives.

While Battista served as little more than a caretaker attempting to put out fires during his brief three months in office, the longer-lived Amarillo government made a more lasting impact. After the loss of Twin Falls, Amarillo became the most prominent remaining stronghold of federal authority, with a large host of Congressmen and federal troops. Invoking an obscure provision of the law allowing them to reduce the size of the voting quorum in case of catastrophic circumstances, the rump House of Representatives voted prewar Texas state senator and provisional US Representative Oscar Zinn as Speaker of the House and Acting President of the United States.

The Amarillo government lasted nine months before it, too, fell to a secondary strike. It accomplished a good deal more than its predecessor in Idaho, as well. The Zinn administration abandoned vast swathes of the country in one great program of triage, allowing government remnants to maintain better control of a smaller area. They slowed the spread of hunger and anarchy, maintained their fraying international relations, and even attempted to coordinate their remaining troops overseas to follow up on the nuclear exchange and destroy what was left of their Old World enemies.

Although a few serious attempts were made to challenge its authority, the Zinn administration was the high water mark of federal power following the Great War. It is typically considered to be the last undisputed government of the United States of America.

Nature of Claim: John Ingersoll unilaterally declared himself Acting President of the United States. Three days later, he forced the other six members of the House of Representatives in Dodge City to vote for him and retroactively confirm his proclamation. One of these representatives later joined Brannigan’s Dodge City government; four of the remaining five were killed on Ingersoll’s orders.

The third U.S. rump government was established in Dodge City, Kansas, the seat of a strong state government and a prominent rationing center designated by the Zinn administration. An even smaller quorum of representatives gathered here, strong-armed by the brazen Texas assemblyman John Ingersoll into electing him Speaker and President. Ingersoll seemed like a strong, decisive candidate to reclaim the country that was by then completely falling apart. The situation was so desperate, in fact, that Ingersoll wrote off Dodge City as untenable and evacuated to Midland, Texas, along with the rest of his administration. Ingersoll stayed in Dodge City for only a few months, and his first administration is typically viewed as the first phase of the Midland government.

After relocating to the Midland and establishing a new power base in the Midland-Odessa Petroplex, John Ingersoll truly came into his own as president. Although he was a competent politician, when given real power he proved to be a complete psychopath. Ingersoll’s already strong sense of paranoia was reinforced by the rebellion of Dodge City, whose token federal remnants challenged him for the presidency. He retaliated with the Great Purge, an intense reign of terror that left its mark on all aspects of Texan society and shredded his credibility as president. Ingersoll was the first president whose legitimacy was seriously disputed throughout the country, and it was during his reign that numerous pretender governments appeared to stake their claim to the succession of the U.S. government.

Following Ingersoll’s death by heart attack, secret police chief Luther Pike took control of the Midland government. He signed a treaty of peace, abandoning Midland’s claims to the U.S. succession in exchange for a ceasefire. Dodge City ignored the dispute over the succession of the State of Texas, which Midland and the Dodge City-aligned government in Perryton both claimed, and permanently froze the conflict. The rump Midland state briefly languished in defeat before they were subjugated by the United States of Aztlan, a Hispanic post-warlord state in southern Texas and northern Mexico. Under Aztlan’s thumb, the Midland government was reorganized as the Midland Special Administrative Region, an autonomous zone within the Aztlan empire.

The last regime with a clear through line to the prewar U.S. federal government was snuffed out, shackled to a foreign power as a client state and petroleum economic zone. The rest of the country now rested on the tenuous claims of dozens of feuding pretenders.

There are winners and losers in the race for the U.S. succession. Some factions that once maintained their claims are no longer in the running, either because they dropped them voluntarily, transformed into a different kind of regime, or disintegrated outright. These are the most notable former contenders.

Nature of Claim: The Regenerated Congress derived their legitimacy from their dubiously democratic elections, the participation of several state governments and state-like parties, and their purported restoration of fundamental American values and return to the original intentions of the Founding Fathers.

Although earlier attempts were made on the grounds of religion and ideology, the Regenerated Congress was the first serious attempt to challenge the federal government on any kind of legalistic basis. Disappointed by Amarillo’s pragmatic centrism and jumped-up by a decade of intense political polarization, hard-right elements of the Republican Party gathered in Hattiesburg, Mississippi to hold a constitutional convention and form their own alternate U.S. government. The so-called Regenerated United States of America in Congress Assembled included delegations from various southern and midwestern states, who together proclaimed the rebirth of the country. The Regenerated Congress didn’t last long before collapsing into infighting, but several successor factions derive their own claims from the legitimacy of their big-tent predecessor.

Nature of Claim: The short-lived Walla Walla government was established by U.S. senators—some from before the war, as well as post-war appointees—who elected one of their own president pro tempore of the Senate and Acting President of the United States.

At the outset of the Dodge City-Midland War, the United States was now faced with the choice of supporting either David Brannigan or John Ingersoll as President of the United States. Rather than involve themselves in a destructive civil war, a party of neutral senators sought to construct an alternative compromise government, in a desperate bid to keep the country from completely unraveling.

The first calls for a new U.S. government were raised by members the US Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forest Committee, which was then based Walla Walla, Washington. They had already denounced Ingersoll as an illegitimate despot when he first attained the presidency, and they held David Brannigan in no higher regard. Joined by defecting senators, they elected the chair of the Forest Committee as president pro tempore of the United States Senate, and thus Acting Vice President, and thus Acting President. While it had been customary for the Senate to elect the most senior member of the majority party as president pro tempore since 1945, the Walla Walla Senate chose to dispense with the tradition and elect someone they considered more capable, rather than 80-year old Idaho senator Mike Crapo, who ordinarily would have qualified at that moment.1

The Walla Walla government achieved extremely widespread recognition, although its claims were far from universally-upheld. Roughly half the country at least paid lip service to Walla Walla, although few were in a position to provide any support. Despite their democratic legitimacy and lofty ambitions, the Walla Walla government suffered from isolation and a general lack of political and material resources. Montana Senator Sheldon Deacon, the general Pooh-Bah of federal forces in Montana and Idaho, deliberately withheld aid from Walla Walla and harbored intentions of usurping the presidency for himself.

Deacon’s plot was of little consequence, as Walla Walla was not long for this world. Three months after its creation, it was destroyed in a secondary strike by the Russian submarine St. Fyodor Ushakov, whose crew still occupy the San Juan Islands to this day. Launched twenty months after the Great War of 2029, the attack on Walla Walla was the very last nuclear strike of the Third World War.

Nature of Claim: In opposition to the authoritarian USA-St. Cloud, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the State of Michigan had an obligation to uphold the constitution and hold national elections. Their legitimacy was subsequently derived from these elections.

The USA-Grand Rapids was fraught with instability and growing radicalism for the duration of its existence. Frequently at odds with the Michigan state government, the USA-Grand Rapids descended into civil war when strongman Eli Rosenblatt made a dishonest bid for the presidency. Both the state and federal government in Grand Rapids were overthrown by their Grand Union Army, who installed President Canaan Whitely (hitherto more of a military commander than civilian statesman) as head of the socialist American Council Republic.

Nature of Claim: Localist elements of the Wisconsin state government in Green Bay overthrew Acting Governor DeWitt and installed a puppet governor to take his place. Acting under the putschists’ orders, the new governor appointed two leading localists to the U.S. Senate. One of the appointees elected the other as president pro tempore and thus Acting President of the United States. This is a common tactic among legitimist warlords with presidential ambitions; it is often referred to as the “Rosenblatt Maneuver” after the Michigan autocrat who first employed the technique.

The Green Bay government was one of the first localist USA claimants. Its founders had no intentions of reuniting the country under their banner, they simply wanted to make it clear to everyone else that no one could tell them what to do. The USA-Green Bay spent the entirety of its existence waging a doomed defensive war against populist rebels and refugees. The populist coalition soon fractured over their extreme political differences, resulting in a communist revolution and the foundation of the American Socialist Federative Republic.

Nature of Claim: As the highest-ranking officer left in the U.S. military, the Vice Admiral of the Pacific Fleet attained the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After the destruction of Walla Walla, the Chairman claimed the title of Acting Commander-in-Chief on the grounds that there was no clear civilian authority for him to follow.

For over a decade, the Kahului government was the main military claimant out of the U.S. pretender states. Compared to the tortured arguments of bureaucratic continuity and democratic legitimacy on the mainland, the militaristic justification of Kahului’s Commander-in-Chief was simple and elegant. Kahului achieved very widespread support from disparate factions on the mainland and was the default choice for military remnants and patriotic conservatives who wanted to sidestep the chaos of mainland pretenders. Yet Kahului was also an attractive option simply because it was so far away from the mainland and thus could not easily project its power or actually force its supporting factions to follow its orders. Many of Kahului’s supporters simply wanted to sidestep the National Question and assert their own local authority by picking a federal claimant that couldn’t do anything to them.

Kahului’s most serious attempt at projecting power onto the mainland also led to its downfall. Its nuclear bluff in the defense of the California Provisional Government against the State of Jefferson led to mass public outrage, which culminated in the Hawaiian Spring and the end of the military government. The new rulers of Hawaii have withdrawn from the quest for national unification and have instead revived the Republic of Hawaii. Many of Kahului’s supporting factions either shifted their allegiance to Elizabeth City or gave up any hope of answering the National Question altogether.

Nature of Claim: President Martha Hunding derived her legitimacy from her prewar congressional office, arguing that she was at least a democratically-elected official.

The USA-St. Cloud never placed much stock on its national legitimacy. The federal remnants that formed the nucleus of government authority in the Upper Midwest followed the train of successors from Twin Falls to Walla Walla, and then Bozeman afterward. Their recognition of Bozeman was always a mere formality, and as soon as Congresswoman Hunding felt it necessary to assert national-level authority over rebellious State of Minnesota forces, she abandoned Bozeman and threw her hat in the ring.

The USA-St. Cloud endured a tempestuous existence before it began the slow process of stabilization. Yet Hunding had only just begun to consolidate her gains when the rise of the ASFR prompted a right-wing military coup, which dissolved the USA-St. Cloud and gave rise to the Provisional All-American Government.

Nature of Claim: Like St. Cloud’s Martha Hunding, the USGIE’s nominal basis of authority was the presidency of Congressman Perry Inhofe II, who spent the Great War in Antarctica at the head of a congressional scientific fact-finding mission. More implicitly, the USGIE derived its legitimacy from the extensive foreign recognition it received from various Southern Hemisphere powers, its financial and diplomatic ties, its shepherding of the wider American diaspora community, and its possession of the USA’s remaining overseas military and economic assets.

Formed from a hodgepodge collection of diplomatic missions, rogue military formations, corporate entities, and Antarctic researchers, all placed under the authority of a rogue congressman, the USGIE was the international community’s pet project to create an agreed-upon U.S. government that could issue U.S. dollars and prop up the Southern Hemisphere’s increasingly-worthless foreign currency reserves. It also shepherded the unwieldy American diaspora community (which was bolstered by millions of desperate boat people), coordinated overseas troops, regulated American corporations and their overseas property, and played policeman to rogue actors like the British Captain Hacker and his H.M.S. Dreadnought.

As the Americans in Brazil and South Africa began to overstay their welcome and the nationalization funds dried up, the USGIE attempted to gain a foothold in North America. The result was the disastrous Nantucket Quagmire, which triggered a course of events that eventually led to the dissolution of the USGIE and its subsequent union with the USA-Elizabeth City. Its successor is the United States of America Abroad, a sovereign quasi-state that serves as the diplomatic arm of the Elizabeth City government.

Of the extant national claimant factions, the most notable ones with the best claims all have ties to the antebellum federal government. Either through Congress or cabinet ministries, these factions have some means by which they assert their authority as the only true successor to the federal government.

Nature of Claim: Prewar counterterrorism agent Sheldon Deacon claimed the presidency on the grounds that President Tony Battista appointed him Acting Secretary of Homeland Security in the Twin Falls government. More implicitly, Deacon derived further legitimacy from his dedicated struggle against the white nationalist insurgents of the Northwest American Republic, and for making Bozeman one of the last strongholds of the prewar Democratic Party. Contemporary President Baldwin’s claims rest on the legitimacy of his predecessor.

Deacon’s claim is fairly straightforward. He was a cabinet member under Battista; as the House in Amarillo was destroyed along with the Senate in Walla Walla, the succession naturally falls to the cabinet. Never mind Palmieri in State College or Brannigan in Dodge City, or the fact that Homeland Security isn’t officially included in the line of succession; Deacon was the Grand Pooh-Bah of federal forces in the Rocky Mountains, and the loyal Democrats of Bozeman would follow him, come hell or high water.

Bozeman has one of the more brutish and solipsistic claims of the federal legacy factions, yet their supporters argue they are straightforward and transparent, and their dedication to upholding the prewar order at any costs is admirable. For the minority populations of the Pacific Northwest, Bozeman is their best hope to defeat the powerful NAR.

Nature of Claim: The Dodge City government’s initial claims revolved around Acting Deputy Secretary of Agriculture David Brannigan and the support of the Kansas state government. Their enduring legitimacy is based on the support of several state governments, numerous smaller supporting factions, and their continued democratic elections.

When John Ingersoll abandoned his first capital of Dodge City, he left the Acting Deputy Secretary of Agriculture behind as a sacrificial lamb for the mob to devour. That man was David Brannigan, who turned the tables on Ingersoll by weaponizing the mob and sending them south to invade Texas. Although Brannigan’s ascension to the presidency was as dubious as his rival and predecessor in Texas, he followed it up with democratic elections (albeit with a vastly reduced electorate that excluded refugees). With mostly free elections, Brannigan enjoyed a democratic mandate that most of his rivals lacked, and several state governments across the Great Plains rallied behind his banner. Today, the Dodge City government is one of the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful in the country. Despite its many flaws, it is perhaps the most democratic as well, and bears the closest functional resemblance to the antebellum Union. This gives it widespread recognition from various polities all across the country, although it lacks foreign recognition on account of its landlocked status and limited access to the outside world.

Nature of Claim: Antebellum Solicitor of the Interior Victor Figueroa was affirmed Acting Secretary of the Interior by Twin Falls. He and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico recognized the string of rump governments until the loss of Walla Walla, after which Figueroa proclaimed his own presidency. The USA-Ponce has since democratized, and bases its legitimacy on its democratic elections, the prior legitimacy of Figueroa’s claim, and its recognition by various foreign states.

Although Ponce’s influence on the mainland is nonexistent, it has a larger population than most American states and nearly all mainland factions. It is also the flagship member of CARICOM, an organization of Caribbean states sharing a free trade zone and a common currency. Although Figueroa’s claims were arguably the most legitimate out of all the cabinet pretenders, they were widely ignored due to his distance from the United States mainland.

Nature of Claim: The State College government is still ruled by the antebellum Acting Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs, who claims to be the Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs and thus the Acting President. Additionally, State College enjoys the support of the Pennsylvania state government, surviving federal remnants from Task Force PHOENIX’s Bald Eagle Sector, and the recognition of a few odds and ends in the Appalachians.

After a political scandal necessitated the resignation of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the Deputy Secretary’s sudden promotion created a vacancy in the cabinet. Former naval lieutenant Joseph Palmieri seemed fit for the job, and was plucked from the Office of Naval Intelligence to fill the gap. He spent the first two years after the Great War hiding in PHOENIX’s subterranean Bald Eagle facility outside State College, Pennsylvania, and did not meaningfully participate in matters of state for two years. Although he was affirmed Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs by Twin Falls, he remained in his bunker and ignored outside matters until the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania approached him with an offer of recognition. Palmieri’s presidency is an ad hoc, despotic, and rather informal affair—State College never even bothered to recognize Walla Walla—and the machinery of the federal government is messily blended with that of the Commonwealth. Nevertheless, Palmieri stepped up as president when a president was needed, and is the only significant contender in the northeastern United States.

A minor point in State College’s favor is their possession of the original Liberty Bell, which they safely recovered from Philadelphia.

Nature of Claim: The Tupelo government bases its legitimacy on the claim of U.S. congressman Richard Coaker, who was sworn in as president by the Chief Justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court and subsequently held elections in which he did not stand to run for office. Continued legitimacy is derived from its democratic elections, support from the Mississippi state government in Tupelo (which is more powerful than its federal overlord), and refusal to participate in the political extremism of the Regenerated Congress.

Tupelo is the smallest of the federal legacy factions; it is also the least interested in national reunification. In fact, Tupelo was one of the last federal factions to claim the presidency, and recognized Midland far longer than most other factions. Coaker only accepted the presidency under coercion from Chief Justice Gantt, who pressured him into taking the office before he handed it over to someone else. The State of Mississippi enjoys its preeminent position as a “union of one” and would prefer things to remain that way, lest another state be admitted and disrupt their special relationship with the federal government.

Although many state governments endured the Great War more or less intact, only one of them attempted to answer the National Question on their own, without any federal remnants present to assist them. Most other state governments either cooperated with federal authorities to create a government, recognized some other government founded elsewhere, or have refused to recognize any national government whatever. The sole exception is the State of Ohio, the driving engine behind the New American Alliance.

A former example might be the defunct Federated States of America, founded by the rogue Superintendent of the Mississippi State Police, but it might be more apt to describe the FSA as a legitimist warlord.

Nature of Claim: The New American Alliance relies on the voluntary participation of its constituent members, including the rightful Ohio state government. Its confederal government, though weak, is democratically elected. Although not all of its constituent members are democratic, the NAA nevertheless has a professional and humane reputation in a desolate land of warlords and gangs.

The NAA wasn’t meant to be a national contender when it was first founded. The State of Ohio simply needed a mechanism to conduct intra-factional diplomacy above the state level when it joined forces with friendly factions in neighboring Indiana and Michigan. Yet years of confederating reforms, as well as military and diplomatic victories, have morphed the NAA into something greater than it was intended for. They still don’t explicitly claim the national succession in the same manner as Dodge City or Mount Pleasant, but they behave and are treated as if they were a national contender, complete with their own vision of a reunited America.

National contenders founded by local governments are just as rare as their state-level counterparts. The only extant example is the USA-Gadsden in Gadsden, Alabama. The State of Texas (Paris) came close to founding a national government, and some in Paris still wish to do so, but for now the remain a pretender to the Texan succession and nothing more.

Nature of Claims: The legitimacy of the USA-Gadsden is largely self-proclaimed, although the government does feature democratic elections and maintains a relatively transparent and non-corrupt apparatus of state, which is unusual for its particular corner of the Deep South.

After overthrowing the tyrannical “Warden’s Government” of Alabama, the people of Gadsden optimistically proclaimed the rebirth of the United States. Its democracy has a lot more flaws and kinks than it would like to admit, but their commitment to republicanism and civil rights stands out in a region of far-right militias and brutal despots.

There are five military factions that explicitly or implicitly claim the succession of the United States. Some claims are purely rhetorical and ideological, while others are labored and legalistic. All rely on the assumption that there is no clear civilian authority to follow, and that only military force can save the shattered country.

Nature of Claims: The US Army reservists of the 174th Infantry Brigade, having defended New York from a Canadian invasion, hold that they are the only force that is actively fighting to defend and uphold the United States.

The FALANX of Potsdam, New York is one of the military factions with an implicit claim. Their entire movement is steeped in radical militarism and solipsistic triumphalism, and may better be described as a militarized society than a traditional military formation. They have little concern for the National Question and its stuffy political quibbling; actions are the only thing that matters, and they’re the only ones sufficiently acting in service to their country. FALANX doesn’t claim to be America’s true heirs, but they do claim to be America’s only rightful stewards.

Nature of Claims: Piggybacking off of the Regenerated Congress, the National Democratic Organization claims to be its only rightful heirs, after the Congress broke up. Their assertions are rooted in fanatical militarism and far-right extremism.

The NDO is less of a political faction so much as it is a mobile death squad, and its claims to national succession are incidental to its formation. The NDO was once a clique of militarists and far-right hardliners within the Regenerated Congress, who rose up in rebellion when the government in Hattiesburg cracked down on them. They’ve kept up the fight ever since, still claiming to be the true successors to the Regenerated Congress even after Hattiesburg itself fell.

Nature of Claims: Blake Carlton, commander of the USA-St. Cloud military, overthrew President Hunding in a military coup, citing Hunding’s inability to lead the country or defend it from the communist forces of Green Bay.

The two legs upon which the PAAG stands are political, banking off the claims of the old USA-St. Cloud, and ideological, through anti-communism and militaristic nationalism. Despite recognizing its legal chain of succession from Walla Walla, the PAAG also blamed the Hunding government for trying to resurrect the same broken system that led to the Great War in the first place. The military-ideological complex that forms the basis of the PAAG is colloquially known as the American White Movement, or the Men of the Cold Summer. They triumph toughness, hardness, stoicism, survival in the face of adversity, American nationalism, Protestant heritage, and resistance to the ASFR’s communist advances.

Nature of Claims: The Elizabeth City claims to be the rightful successors of the Kahului government as the only legitimate military authority that can restore the country. They also boast of their semi-democratic government, widespread foreign and domestic recognition, control over most of the eastern seaboard, close relationship with the United States of America Abroad, colonies in America and on other continents, and numerous civilian and military prestige projects.

The USA-EC probably has the most cards up its sleeve of any national contender. They have the clearest chain of succession from Kahului, power projection into the American hinterland and across the sea, a powerful navy with submarines, airships, and an aircraft carrier, possession of the fabled Plymouth Rock on which the Mayflower Pilgrims landed, and something resembling a democracy. What they lack is a clear connection to the federal or any state government, as their regime was first established by the U.S. Fleet Forces Command in collaboration with a regional administration of North Carolina’s Atlantic counties. The naval government is still trying to hammer out the kinks and strike a permanent and stable balance between military and civilian authority, which will itself need to set a surer course for EC’s economic and social development. But nobody can deny the powerful assets in the naval government’s arsenal. If only one power on earth still called itself the United States of America a hundred years from now, it would very likely be the polity established in Elizabeth City.

Nature of Claims: Similarly to Elizabeth City, the USAIE claims to be the rightful successors of the Kahului government. The USAIE also derives legitimacy from its democratic elections and its widespread foreign recognition. Its multicultural composition helps accommodate its large Spanish-speaking population.

The USAIE is the USA-EC’s less-prominent rival, but it still has some advantages. It is the second-most widely recognized USA claimant faction abroad. Its extensive campaign against Caribbean piracy has earned it some sympathy throughout the Gulf Coast, and its democratic nature looks better than Elizabeth City’s half-hearted liberalization. Although government has since been opened up to loyal Hispanics, the US Army exiles’ initial draconian treatment of the native Cuban population still casts a long shadow on their reputation.

Nature of Claims: Like the USA-EC and the USAIE, the MGUSAP claims to be the true successor of the Kahului government. Founded by the vengeful remnants of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, these exiles rule the island of Okinawa as an integral territory of the United States. Their ideology is stooped in triumphalist rhetoric, ultramilitarism, fervent anticommunism, and a truly bizarre racial ideology aimed at eliminating the native Japanese population and enforcing cultural and ethnic assimilation into the United States through forced miscegenation and mass resettlement programs.

There is no shortage of far-right ideological factions that claim the succession of the United States. Most of them lack real legal frameworks for their claims, but base their legitimacy on their ideological purity (real or imagined). Some of the claims are semi-facetious, while others are real and tortured attempts to reconstruct the shattered nation.

Nature of Claims: Antebellum radio host Tim German, long known for his provocative broadcasts, proclaimed a general patriotic uprising against the United States during the Starving Time. Since that uprising, Americans Awake has continuously carried out a Second American Revolution in German’s name.

Nature of Claims: The American Empire claims descent from the Regenerated Congress, having incorporated its furthest right-wing elements since the disintegration of its successor. The “Invisible” portion of the American Empire also traces its lineage to the antebellum Ku Klux Klan. This descent is mainly traced through the Bayou Knights splinter group, but several other Klan organizations were amalgamated into the wider Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan following the Great War. Its “Visible” government is also descended from portions of the antebellum State of Louisiana that fled east into the Florida Parishes following the Acadian National Revolution.

Nature of Claims: The American Salvation Coalition’s legitimacy is largely self-proclaimed, although they do have loose ties to the antebellum Iowa government, as it was founded by a rogue pre-war state legislator who allied with far-right groups. Its co-founder, a former internet show host, also provides some continuity with the prewar far-right.

Nature of Claims: This outlaw gang’s assertions towards the national succession are semi-serious and entirely self-proclaimed.

Nature of Claims: The Buffalo Republic is only a colloquialism for the state’s actual name, the United States of America (Buffalo). The Wyomingite militiamen base their claims on their adherence to libertarian principles.

Nature of Claims: Despite its formidable presence throughout the American Southeast, the FAR’s claims are almost entirely self-founded. Their ideology is rooted in Spartanist militarism, a warped misremembering of 19th Century Southern society, and Commander Quade’s intense cult of personality. They also have ties to the antebellum militia movement, which largely superseded the greatly-diminished government authorities of Georgia and South Carolina.

Nature of Claims: The George Washington Legion’s claims are self-founded and rooted in fanatical triumphalism and extreme racial prejudice. According to Legion rhetoric, only the Legion is willing and capable of defending the American race from the foreign hordes, and only Chief Crowninshield is able to command the Legion.

Nature of Claims: The Patriotic Association of Liberty or Slavery, a descendant of the antebellum white supremacist society “The Order,” which was itself inspired by the fictional terrorist organization from William Luther Pierce’s Turner Diaries, claims to be the main descendant of the 20th Century American national socialist movement founded by neo-Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell. Their continued existence is characterized by extreme triumphalism and racial hatred, which rivals the George Washington Legion in intensity.

Nature of Claims: Like the American Salvation Coalition, the Secret Patriotic Army was founded by an antebellum internet personality, the editor of the alt-right website “Hoax Watch.” The SPA takes a harder stance than the ASC on far-right issues, but doesn’t go nearly as far as the PALS. Unlike the ASC or PALS, the SPA has no meaningful ties with any antebellum movements or organizations outside of Hoax Watch, and its legitimacy is entirely self-proclaimed.

Nature of Claims: The Union of Sovereign Citizens is the only faction aligned with the Sovereign Citizen movement, which asserts that the antebellum U.S. federal government was illegitimate. There are various theories within the Sovereign Citizen movement as to when the true United States was dissolved; the extant movement in Hemingford, Nebraska believes that it ceased to exist in 1933, when the United States abandoned the gold standard. Acting upon these beliefs, the USC claims to be the last and only remnants of the original U.S. government established by the Articles of Confederation.

Much like their far-right counterparts, America’s far-left factions mostly base their claims on the validity of their ideology, and can generally be regarded as self-founded. Still, a greater number of left-wing factions actually bear a tangible connection to prewar federal authority, which is more than most of the right wing can boast.

Nature of Claims: The American Council Republic is the direct successor of the USA-Grand Rapids, which was overthrown by the Grand Union Army after they signed a ceasefire with Mt. Pleasant warlord Eli Rosenblatt. The Council Republic’s claims are rooted in the prior legitimacy of the USA-Grand Rapids, augmented by their socialist ideology and the republican fervor of the Grand Union Army, which frequently hearkened back to the American Civil War for propaganda purposes. Despite token concessions to labor unions and a socialist party structure, the ACR remains a Red Army dictatorship under the nominal rule of President Whiteley. The ACR enjoys close relations with the ASFR and is progressing towards unification with the republic in Green Bay.

Nature of Claims: The ASFR descends from the revolutionary coalition that overthrew the USA-Green Bay, which fractured along ideological grounds and spiraled out of control into a socialist takeover. The resulting socialist republic is not a military dictatorship, and has transferred state control over to the Revolutionary Socialist Party. The ASFR actually holds the USA-Grand Rapids’ claims with a considerable measure of doubt, and traces their origins only as far back as the Green Bay Revolution, which they celebrate as a Second American Revolution and the starting point of a renewed America. They’ve accomplished a good deal more than any other socialist faction in America, and the existential threat posed by the PAAG has granted Chairman Ian Dillard and the RSP the firm support of the Wisconsin public.

Nature of Claims: The North Bay Revolutionary Committee is one of four left-wing factions in California, another one of which is a national claimant. Although just as self-founded as any other leftist faction, the NBRC can at least boast that it is the most devoted to orthodox Marxist-Leninism out of any American polity.

Nature of Claims: Opposing the NBRC is the People’s Revolutionary Council, the other communist unifier in California. The PRC differs from the NBRC in structure and doctrine; much of its leadership are soldiers who defected from the California National Guard to join the revolutionaries, while the NBRC is almost exclusively made up of revolutionaries and their refugee recruits. Additionally, the PRC is more nationalistic and more closely identifies with the United States as a country. The PRC wants to “socialize” the United States, so to speak, while the NBRC wants a new revolutionary state to succeed it.

Nature of Claims: The Shenandoah Resistance’s claims are half-baked and half-forgotten by their own leadership, but the Shenandoah Valley revolutionaries do entertain the notion that they are the last guardians of the people in a region utterly abandoned by the antebellum ruling powers. They do have loose ties with the Antifa movement of the early 21st Century, making them some of the last inheritors of the antebellum far-left.

Nature of Claims: The SPRA’s bid for the succession, though entirely self-proclaimed by a plucky band of university revolutionaries and rationing board eggheads, are at least rooted in the principles of rational governance and technocratic socialism. The SPRA believes that they are the only organization sane and reasonable enough to bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people, and that they are the natural successors of the United States as such. They additionally enjoy the recognition of the Social Democratic State of Lincoln, although Lincoln’s loyalty to the SPRA is questionable.

As many religious movements claim the entirety of the earth or the universe as is their wont, it would be more relevant to only include factions whose widespread claims pertain specifically to ruling the former United States of America as a political entity.

Nature of Claims: Sitting at the foot of Mount Rushmore, American Allegiance takes the concept of American civic religion to another level. They have quite literally deified the Founding Fathers as the will of Providence made manifest on earth. As the Founding Fathers’ truest heirs, they are naturally the new agents of Providence who must restore the greatest country ever seen on this earth.

Nature of Claims: After struggling through the frigid conquest of the Michigan Thumb, a fanatical messianic Imamate, and a tumultuous Islamic Republic, the exiled survivors of America’s largest Islamic community have at last settled on an Islamic Emirate. The Muslim monarchy (which, unlike the various Islamic Emirates of the early 21st Century, is actually ruled by an Emir as a religious prince) does claim the God-given right to conquer the rest of the United States, but has so far been slow to act upon those claims, preferring to slowly expand into the Michigan hinterland. The rising power of the USA-Mt. Pleasant has recently stoked the flames of Islamic radicalism, however, and the Emirate is growing more interested in actually pressing its claims on the rest of the country, or at least the rest of Lower Michigan.

Nature of Claims: The Christian State is an anomaly: a Methodist polity in a traditionally Lutheran state, and a national claimant that makes little reference to the United States, the Constitution, or the Red, White, and Blue. These Methodist schismatics believe that the Great War ushered in a new spiritual age; following a peculiar school of Christian nationalism, they believe the time is right to sweep away the United States of old and create a new nation in its place, founded upon the Christian faith and nothing else. Despite their bold claims, they are not particularly expansionistic, and believe that the Word of God is better spread without the aid of the sword.

Nature of Claims: The Evangelical American Republic is the only religious faction that makes an earnest attempt to politically tie itself to the old country. They descend from the Christian nationalist faction within the Regenerated Congress, who were mostly concentrated in Oklahoma and Arkansas before the Congress went bottom-up. Ignoring President Richmond’s rigged elections, the Oklahoman candidate Noah Hopkins held his own convention to swear him in as president. Declaring the United States to be spiritually dead, Hopkins proclaimed the birth of the EAR as its redeemed successor.

The EAR lost contact with its Arkansan elements (many of whom eventually defected to the Kingdom of the Ozarks), but it retains a strong position in eastern Oklahoma and still contains elements of the antebellum Oklahoman state government. Its continued claims rest upon the legitimacy of the initial Regenerated Congress, the validity of Hopkins’ claims to the Presidency, the spiritual health of the new republic, and the half-democratic, half-democratic nature of the Council of Churches.

Nature of Claims: The Kingdom of God in America is the largest Mormon faction in the country, although it subscribes to a novel strain of Mormonism developed after the Great War. The KGA actually precedes the Ingersoll presidency and was founded when the federal government was still located in Amarillo. Along with the Northwest American Republic and what would later become the Acadian People’s Republic, the KGA was one of the very first serious challenges to the integrity of the American state.

The KGA itself is rooted in a specific interpretation of the Mormon “White Horse” prophecy, that a messianic figure would one day emerge to save the U.S. Constitution and transform America into a theocracy of the Latter-day Saints. The KGA derives its legitimacy from the supposed fulfillment of that prophecy, the righteousness of the Purified LDS Church over the orthodox LDS, and its unique theodemocratic government.

Nature of Claims: The modern Kingdom of Israel is the champion of the Davidian Adventist movement, a millenarian offshoot of Seventh-Day Adventism that seeks to establish a Davidic Israelite kingdom in the modern era. The most famous instance of Davidian Adventism was the Branch Davidians, which were attacked by the U.S. federal government in the 1993 Siege of Waco, Texas. Yet not all Davidians were Koreshites, and many still lived in or near Waco after the 1993 massacre. After the Great War, a renewed Adventist movement emerged from the wasteland to conquer a portion of central Texas, forming the basis of a modern Kingdom of Israel. This new Israel claims the entirety of the United States as its birthright, although it has nothing more than their own theology and a bit of armed force to back it up.

Nature of Claims: The National Salvation Front isn’t explicitly a claimant to the American succession, but they do truly believe that they have a nation-wide mission to save and purify the United States. The NSF itself is a fairly decentralized organization, and there is considerable debate within the Front as to how far they should go in their quest. Some want a reunified United States of America with a renewed moral character, some want to throw their lot in with the Congress of Southern States or the USA-EC, others want a fundamentalist crusader state, and others still want a Kingdom of God on Earth.

The legitimist warlords that claim the national succession fall within two camps: the true legitimists, and the upstart legitimists. The true legitimists use a legalistic framework to justify their national ambitions, with tortured legal arguments to justify their claims to the throne. The upstarts’ claims are entirely self-founded and employ little to no nuance; most of these claimants have no actual interest in uniting the country, and simply claim the title for the prestige or to send a message that they take orders from no one.

Nature of Claims: What began as an alliance of isolated rural oligarchs suddenly took on national importance when the PAAG overthrew the USA-St. Cloud. Refusing to submit to the new military government, local strongman Ralph Sloan cut all ties with St. Cloud and established the Constitutional Protection Authority as the organ of his neo-feudal rule. The CPA has no real legal basis for its existence beyond “we used to be a part of the St. Cloud government,” but that’s been enough for the northern Minnesota oligarchs to not only accept Sloan’s rule, but also to remain in cooperation even after Sloan’s death.

Nature of Claims: If one follows a certain train of reasoning, the Government of National Salvation is actually the last vestige of the antebellum federal government. The east Texan dictatorship does harbor the last vestiges of the Midland government, at the very least. After local leadership was purged on the orders of the paranoid president, local Ingersoll toadie Baylor Aaronwright took charge of Tyler and its environs. Ever since the death of Ingersoll and the surrender of Luther Pike to Dodge City, some of the last Ingersoll cronies fled to Tyler and helped Aaronwright to construct a fourth-rate rump government.

The GNS is almost universally written-off as an irrelevant and incompetent nowheresville, although a select few Texan factions who stayed loyal to Midland until the bitter end still recognize them. The only other unique aspect of their claims is their possession of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing’s last functional U.S. dollar printing presses, which were rescued from the Fort Worth NEZ by the Dallas Demolition Crew, sold to the Texas Militia, and captured by GNS forces in battle.

Nature of Claims: This tiny statelet in northern New York State levies an easily-dismissed claim to the national succession, thinly-based on their vague populist rhetoric and sham democracy. Despite their socialist-sounding name and red flag, the People’s Republic is not a left-wing polity.

Nature of Claims: The Real America’s claims are entirely self-founded, nor do they themselves take them very seriously. They used to carry more weight when they were the undisputed masters of the Florida Panhandle, but their much-reduced position in the corner of Alabama has diminished their standing.

Nature of Claims: Mississippian strongman Edward Guest initially hoped to participate in the Regenerated Congress, but was ignored by the government and barred from running in the rigged presidential election. Subsequently, Guest proclaimed the “Republic of Columbia” as the successor to the vanquished United States. His legitimacy is derived from his republic’s own constitution—which is surprisingly democratic, despite Guest’s entrenched position as dictator-for-life—and his own, wildly idiosyncratic ideology, complete with cult of personality.

Nature of Claims: The USA-Mt. Pleasant is the quintessential American pretender state. Its the truest of the true legitimists, and the infamous “Rosenblatt Maneuver” is named after the method by which its founding president based his claim. After securing a neo-feudal powerbase in Upnorth Michigan, local strongman Eli Rosenblatt attempted to run for president in the USA-Grand Rapids’ elections. After barred from running on the grounds of corruption, Rosenblatt staged a rebellion and contrived his own claim to the presidency.

Drawing up a random, low-level pre-war state official who was as starving and powerless as any other refugee by that point, he elevated him to the position of Acting Governor as his puppet. In return, the puppet governor appointed Rosenblatt and one his his cronies as Michigan’s two senators. The other senator voted for Rosenblatt as president pro tempore of the Senate, and thus Acting President of the United States.

Throughout his reign, Rosenblatt forged his neo-feudal realm into a vicious totalitarian regime, held together by sheer state terror and mass policing. This process has only been strengthened by his daughter and successor, Hannah Salomon. Despite their dismal reputation, the USA-Mt. Pleasant actually has limited recognition from other factions, mostly distant state governments who need a far-off claimant that will dissuade nearer claimants from imposing on them.

Nature of Claims: The USA-Wooster is a quirky little claimant, led by local strongman Scott Osterman. Osterman is ambitious enough to call his one-town regime a proper national claimant, USA name and all, and backs it up with the assertion that he is actually the bastard son of Tony Battista, Acting President of the Twin Falls government. Osterman does hold dubiously fair popular vote elections to reaffirm his rule, and actually enjoys the genuine love and support of his subjects, but his claims of presidential ancestry are probably fabricated and his legal justifications are close to zero.

While the legitimists might employ some flimsy justifications for their national ambitions, the basic warlords are utterly baseless pretenders. These factions ignore any legal arguments and make no effort beyond flying a red, white, and blue flag and putting a gun to people’s heads. Some of these factions aren’t the worst to live under, but nearly all are wholly extractive and ruthless, and one of them is the single worst faction to live under in the entire country.

Nature of Claims: The All-American Army’s claims are entirely self-founded, but they at least employ a genial pragmatism and folksy charm that the rival Buffalo Republic lacks entirely.

Nature of Claims: Aside from their relative proximity to the barren District of Columbia and their vaguely nationalist rhetoric, America 76’s claims are entirely baseless.

Nature of Claims: America Endures’ claims are entirely self-founded, and mostly employed as a justification to bully neighboring warlords.

Nature of Claims: The Republic of Fredonia’s claims of national succession are something of an afterthought, and even Fredonian leadership frequently forgets they ever made them.

Nature of Claims: This libertarian-esque warband made wide-eyed promises of dramatic reforms when they rebelled against the despotic warlord of Charles City, Iowa. As the rebellion wears on, it’s become clear that they’re just as bad, if not worse, than the old masters.

Nature of Claims: The alleged continuity between “The US Army” of Harlan, Kentucky and the ground branch of the antebellum U.S. Armed Forces is entirely fabricated.

Nature of Claims: This forgotten crevice of Kansas took up the mantle of the United States after the federal and state government left for Dodge City. Similarly to the larger East Kansas Free State further south, the USA-Ottawa hearkens back to the Bleeding Kansas conflict of the 19th Century as a rhetorical device to justify their existence. They increasingly function as an appendage of East Kansas, which itself is starting to believe its John Brown Freestater rhetoric so badly that it’s beginning to entertain national ambitions of its own.

Nature of Claims: Z is a lot of things—insane and sadistic, being chief among them. He’s also the President of the United States, or at least he’s convinced himself that he should be.

Of the few factions that defy ordinary classification, three of them claim the succession or the United States or legal jurisdiction of it in some form, albeit in unorthodox ways.

Nature of Claims: The Trans-Pacific Military District isn’t an American claimant, but it is an entity that claims all of America. Still persecuting the war on behalf of the Russian Empire in Korsakov, Sakhalin, the Russian naval governorate on Washington’s San Juan Islands considers itself to be Russia’s provisional occupation authority in America. They even fired the salvo that destroyed the Walla Walla government in the very last action of the Third World War. The Russian regime has little awareness of the American Liberation Army in the Virgin Islands and wouldn’t much care to answer the question of that entity’s relationship with Russia, but Admiral Sokolov does have strong opinions about the legal status of the American west coast.

In addition to the rightful occupation of enemy territory enabled by the war, the Trans-Pacific Military District also claims the ephemeral 19th Century colony of Russian California on the grounds that American colonist John Sutter never fully paid for Fort Ross at the agreed-upon price. He does consider Alaska as rightfully-ceded territory, however, mostly to facilitate the Russian Empire’s alliance with the Alaskan Empire in Sitka (now New Archangelsk). Yet being the legalist that he is, Sokolov holds that certain properties of the Russian Orthodox Church were never the Tsar’s to sell, such St. Herman of Alaska’s burial place on Spruce Island, and that they now remain the sovereign property of the Orthodox Church in America.

Nature of Claims: Truly one of the most bizarre claimants out there, the American Liberation Army dates back to the Third World War, when the Russians assembled a collaborator legion out of various American odds and ends they had acquired over the years. They joined a Sino-Russian task force in a failed invasion of the American Caribbean, which resulted in the conquest of the Virgin Islands and not much else.

After hectic years of conquest, resettlement, and political jockeying, the collaborator exile army eventually threw off its Russian yoke and established itself as an American polity in its own right. Still, its rhetoric and legitimacy rests on the same claims given to them by the Russian Empire years ago. The product is a sort of contrived right-wing anti-globalism, a “nationalism of all nations” that views Russia and America as equal partners in a new, multipolar world.

Nature of Claims: The United States of America Abroad isn’t a national claimant, per se, but it retains the same position as the USGIE of old, now amalgamated with the USA-EC as its foreign arm. The transition isn’t complete, and the USAA still functions as a quasi-state, an unlanded sovereign entity akin to the Knights of Malta or the Holy See (which, after the destruction of Rome in the Great War, now lacks a Vatican City and relies on the goodwill of its South American host). Still possessing all the diplomatic machinery of the USGIE, the USAA remains the preferred medium for foreign countries seeking to interface with the United States.

Click here to read the master post of the series, with links at the bottom of the page to all other Fallen Continent entries.

Previous Article: The American Pacific
Next Article: The Acting President