Pre-War America and the American question: a book organized rant

This blog is dedicated to a rant about pre-war America in the Fallout universe and how it's divided. E pluribus unum.

Chapter 1: The American Question

In order to better understand what I'm going to discuss later in this blog, we're first going to need to establish what exactly the American question is. This question has lingered since the foundation of America and was the basis for the first two political parties, and it was even the reason for the American Civil War. Even when for some, this question may be answered, for others, it is a contentious debate that decides legislature and action for entire regions of the country.

So you may be wondering to yourself, what is this question that haunts the very pillars of the American Union?

Well, the question is: "Is the United States of America a union of 50 countries, or is it just 1 country with 50 provinces?"

While this question may have a simple response for many of you, this question was a point of debate among the founding fathers, the famed George Washington said in his farewell address "The name of AMERICAN, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.", which clearly displays Washington as a staunch federalist¹, but other founding fathers, such as Samuel Adams, discussed the ideology as the following "If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." Mister Adams' call upon patriots is analogous to calling upon states to operate as countries in case the union becomes corrupt. Famous patriot Patrick Henry said "We are come hither to preserve the poor commonwealth of Virginia, if it can be possibly done: Something must be done to preserve your liberty and mine: The Confederation; this same despised Government, merits, in my opinion, the highest encomium", which is perhaps one of the more blatant ways to describe oneself as an anti-federalist².

¹a federalist is someone who s the Union as a single country, the central government more important than the states

²an anti-federalist is someone who doesn't the central government being more important than the states and wants states to hold more power

The American question was originally answered in absolution on November 15th, 1777, when the continental congress decided that the United States of America shall forever be a union of 13 countries. This answer came with flaws, however, and the government of the United States was unable to operate as a singular entity and was unable to properly represent the states adequately. Clearly, the American question had to be reevaluated, and the Union revised. A group of delegates met in Philadelphia in September of 1787, and the American question was answered yet again, but this time, the nation will be 1 country. The 13 independent states were reasonably distraught over this and demanded that answer be altered to maintain their independence, which it had. This new Bill of Rights, which was ratified in 1791, slightly altered the answer to the American question and left it ambiguous. The states were independent, but the federal government equally so.

In conclusion, the American question of whether America is 1 country or several, it was answered as 1 country made up of several countries.

The American Civil War once again contested this answer to the American question, with the Confederation stating it must be multiple countries, while the original Union under President Lincoln pushed hard to establish the country as only 1. It is thanks to this conflict that it is so widely known that the United States is but 1 country, and its states are not as important as the Union.

Chapter 2: State Annexation

The purpose of this second chapter is to illustrate how new states in the Union are meant to be akin to independent countries.

So, the American Union has now been established as an equal relationship; the states are independent within a single independent country. If states are meant to be independent countries, how does this new Union of countries it the swaths of land befallen to it?

Virginia had a very simple answer, it was the home to the first British settlements in America. Therefore, American land that doesn't belong to other states must belong to Virginia. Other states contested Virginia's claim, stating that no state should be unfairly bigger and the Union agreed. New land granted to the United States was to first be a simple neutral territory until some of that territory maintained a high enough population and started to develop a new nationality, then it may become a new state within the Union.

Most states have since entered the Union in this way, having been given to the US or purchased, such as Florida or Alaska, but 3 states, Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii, were independent countries that ed the United States, further illustrating the USA's purpose to unite states in a union, identical to its name.

The Oregon Historical Society published in 1930 an article called "Designs for a Pacific Republic, 1843-62," which detailed how even one of America's founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, believed that the west coast of North America would one day be populated by a "great, free and independent empire" made up of Americans.

In conclusion to this chapter, each new state is meant to be as independent and individual as its 13 predecessors.

Chapter 3: 13 Commonwealths

Incorporation in Fallout

Initially, there was never a plan for the 13 commonwealths, which makes sense given how they conflict with American history. When asked why the first Fallout game featured a flag with only 13 stars, Tim Cain gave the response: Leon [Leonard Boyarsky] said he used that flag because it looked cool and he didn't want to use a standard American flag with 50 stars. Eventually, he planned to make up something about 13 super-states or something, but he never did.". There have been theories that the 13 star flag was used because a 50 star flag would not have rendered well in the pixelated engine, but I have not found evidence to corroborate with this. In fact, the opposite is shown in Fallout 2.

Fallout 2 demonstrates how poorly the 13 Commonwealths were implemented, as they were nearly forgotten. There are only 3 US flags shown in the entirety of Fallout 2, 2 50 star US flags, and 1 13 star US flag... but a Betsy Ross version from 1777.

Flushing out Lore

While Black Isle Studio's Fallout 3 (Van Buren) was meant to flush out the 13 Commonwealths introduced in Fo1 and ignored in Fo2, development issues resulted in the task of flushing out the lore to Bethesda.

Quickly, I'd like to actually acknowledge this fact, many Fallout fans act like Bethesda has the worst lore ever, and Fo1/Fo2/FoNV are the only canon Fallout games, but Bethesda had a choice, they could have ignored there ever being a 13 star flag in Fo1, they could have even argued that the 13 star flag in Fo1 is a military flag while the 50 star flag is standard, but no. Bethesda made a choice to pick up the legacy and continue the tradition ed by Fo2.

Back to the discussion at hand, Fallout 3 brought back the 13 star flag from Fo1, albeit with a slight modification; the flag features a fine symmetrical circle of stars, while Fo1's did not. Fallout 3 never featured any other flags besides the 13 star flag, but Fallout: New Vegas introduced officially³ the first ever 14 star flag. In what context would FoNV replace the 13 stars for 14? The Survivalist's Rifle that was constructed in the newly acquired Canadian territory has 14 stars. It doesn't take a genius at that point to assert that the 14 star flag includes a star for Canada, which is important because some fans have a misconception that the modern flag has 14 stars for 13 Commonwealths plus the federal government. The federal government has never been officially represented as a separate star before, and given the American question, it'd be controversial if there was an additional star just for the federal government.

³unofficially the flag in Fo1 had 14 stars, but it was never fully revealed, and many talks among developers imply it was intended to only have 13 stars

Map of America

Anyway, if the United States was divided into 13 Commonwealths, what would that look like, and how would they work? While no answer has been definitively given, the 2004 unofficial J.E. Sawyer's Fallout Role-Playing Game gave a glimpse at what this could look like.

In Josh Sawyer's canon, commonwealths were created in the 21st century as an intermediate level of government between states and the federal government. However, Sawyer's canon is not Fallout canon, and both of these details were proven false in Fallout 4, where it can be found that the 13 Commonwealths were created in 1969, shortly before the Space Race ended, and at the very least, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts lost autonomy due to the New England Commonwealth replacing it. I would assume that every US state lost sovereignty to its commonwealth, although this is technically not proven.

Josh Sawyer's map for commonwealths is perfectly fine if commonwealths were just an intermediate form of government, and US states still existed as independent entities, however, commonwealths are meant to replace US states as shown in Fo4. Still, Sawyer's map is not canon, so it doesn't matter. Until recently.

The Fallout TV show made Sawyer's map canon.

Now, with the background of how US states are supposed to be structured like countries, one can immediately notice an issue with these 13 Commonwealths; they correlate very little to actual social differences. Sawyer obviously made the commonwealths based on region, as the names of each commonwealth correlate to where they are in America. The location in America doesn't truly matter for an individual state, making these state replacements much worse for sovereignty.

This map could be fixed a little bit by properly naming based on culture, but it doesn't fix the map's awkward and arbitrarily drawn borders.

There are several better ways to divide the US. These are some other ways I would.

Chapter 4: Texas

The only state that was given a commonwealth named after itself is Texas, which kind of makes sense because Texas is the second largest state in the US, but many of the new commonwealths are much bigger than Texas, even with the addition of Arkansas. In case you're curious, here's the sizes of commonwealths:

Northwest 2,585,755 km²

Southwest - 526,647 km²

Four states - 1,099,657 km²

North - 1,017,027 km²

Plains - 920,752 km²

Texas - 833,353 km²

Midwest - 889,623 km²

Gulf - 565,767 km²

East Central - 329,906 km²

Southeast - 376,230 km²

Columbia - 142,918 km²

Eastern - 352,372 km²

New England - 186,447 km²

So, while Texas isn't the smallest Commonwealth, it's still impressive. After calculating all the sizes of commonwealths, I lost my train of thought with Texas, lol. I guess my point is that it's weird to have 3 commonwealths with real names; Texas, Columbia, New England, and then the other 10 are only geographically named.

Outro: US flag years

I guess my rant is finished, I'll end this blog with the most common US flags in Fallout and their years of usage.