AHC: More States on the West Coast of the Continental United States

[RyanF]

DISCLAIMER: No adding addition territory to the United States, that's cheating and not the purpose of the question.

Looking at the number of states on the West Coast of the continental US compared with the East its very lopsided with only 3 states on the West Coast compared to the 14 of the East Coast. There are many reasons why the East Coast might inevitably wind up with more states than the West Coast, due to history and geography, but did it have to be so lopsided?

The states on the East Coast are smaller geographically, indeed of the 10 smallest US states 8 of them are on the Atlantic Ocean (those 8 are from smallest to largest: Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Maryland). Of the 3 largest states on the East Coast 1 of them, New York, only connects to the Atlantic along a relatively small sliver of coastline compared with it's total borders. In contrast, the West Coast states are the third (California), ninth (Oregon), and eighteenth (Washington) largest overall. There is no single East Coast state bigger than any one West Coast state.

The East Coast states were also colonised by Europeans over a far longer length of time before even the existence of the United States. Excluding Florida and Vermont, the remaining 12 represent all but one of the original Thirteen Colonies that revolted against UK rule.

The West Coast states were only defined as part of the United States following treaty with the UK (in the case of modern day Oregon and Washington) and war with Mexico (in the case of California) in the 1840s. California was hastily admitted as the then largest US state with its present borders in 1853 as part of a compromise to stave off sectional conflict over slavery, it delayed it by a few years. Oregon was admitted in 1859 as part of another compromise with slavers, opening up the southwestern territories to slavery. Washington was finally admitted in 1889, under borders set by Kaiser Wilhelm I in 1889.

What if there had been more states carved out of either the Oregon Country split at the 49th parallel with the UK or the former Alta California taken from Mexico? So that instead of the East Coast having just under 5 times as many states as the West Coast the ratio is 2:1 or better?

Partition of the State of California has been discussed on and off at varying levels of interest and seriousness since the 1850s. Slavers wanted the Mexican session split along the Missouri Compromise line all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Two attempts were made to trisect (in 1855) or bisect (in 1859) the state due to difficulties in communication and transportation for one state government over so large a territory as well as cultural differences between Northern and Southern California. The 1859 attempt, known as the Pico Act, actually got as far as being submitted to the federal government who did nothing in the midst of leopards eating their face.

There were further attempts in the 20th century to divide California into 2 or 3 states, sometimes in conjunction with another state, but none got very far. The 21st century has seen many proposals for how to divide California, with different motivations and ranging in number from 2 to 6 states, though again none have progressed very far.

Attempts to divide Oregon and Washington are far fewer. Perhaps the most famous for the former being the State of Jefferson, proposed in 1941 and being formed from the secession of the southeastearnmost counties or Oregon and the northernmost counties of California. The movement gained media attention when armed men stopped traffic along the highway in November that year and handed out proclamations of independence. Only half serious (the militia threatened to secede "every Thursday" until their demands were met) the notion was quickly forgotten when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in December. Most proposals to split Washington do so along a north-south axis rather than an east-west one and would not create any new coastal states.

Could one or more of these proposals have come to pass? Or would California being trisected into North, South and Central at any point remove the need for further partition/secession as issues around transportation and governance would have been adequately dealt with by creating state governments overseeing less land and people?

 

[Jackson Lennock]

In 1859-1860, Californios and Southerners tried to establish a Territory of Colorado in Southern California. The California legislature and Governor passed legislation approving of the separation, and 75% of residents of "Colorado" voted in favor of partition. Before Congress could address the issue, the Deep South had already started to secede.

The California State Senate voted in 1965 to split lop off the State's seven southernmost counties from the other 51 to form a new state. It died in the state assembly.

 

[OHC]

The best way to do this is almost certainly to split up California in the 1850s/1860s.

I did a List about the State of Jefferson a while back that used the combined PODs of a) Pearl Harbor being pushed back a few months and b) Gilbert Gable, the self-proclaimed governor, not dying right in the middle of the "uprising." Still a big stretch, of course. From what I understand, state mergers / secessions / whatever have to be okayed by state legislatures and by Congress, so it would need to be a very popular and very annoying movement to get Oregon and California to agree to let them go. (This also means the Oregon right-wingers who want to attach their counties to Idaho are never going to succeed. For their plan to have a chance they'd need to have a Republican state government, but if they could reasonably win a Republican state government, they wouldn't have a reason to secede anymore.)

There is another fun option now that I think about it. One of the early proposals for the Oregon Treaty had the Columbia River as the boundary line, with American control to the south and British control to the north (ie most of OTL western Washington). But it also provided for an American exclave on the northeastern corner of the Olympic Peninsula, around OTL Port Townsend, to give the US access to Puget Sound.

What if this plan went through, and some trading posts and settlements were set up in the "Olympia Territory" - but then later American settlers hopped the border and started moving into OTL western Washington anyway, as they were wont to do? One border war later and everything below the OTL border is American, but the Olympia Territory already has a separate political existence and identity. You could definitely imagine them becoming two different states.

 

[zaffre]

I do have a gut feeling that our 3 / 4 state West Coast is probably on the tail end of things, probability-wise; Polk snagging pretty much all of it at once can't be the most likely outcome. Annex California much later or earlier and the deadlock in the slavery debate that prompted it to be *one* huge state isn't going to be there.

But sticking with OTL borders, I think the most obvious path is to have the Compromise of 1850 negotiations completely break down. Taylor ends up fighting an outright shooting war against the spawn of the Nashville Convention (this isn't terribly likely, but I also don't think it's totally ASB) and when some northern Democrat like David Wilmot ends up taking the reins in the aftermath, the political incentives to boost free states & Democratic states (without upsetting the immediate situation too much) means that Oregon Territory and the Mexican Cession get split up salami-thin instead. You could even get some Crittenden Compromise equivalent that puts a moratorium on new states temporarily, hence the territories keep proliferating.

This is a really interesting scenario, actually. Hmm.

 

[Caprice]

I do have a gut feeling that our 3 / 4 state West Coast is probably on the tail end of things, probability-wise; Polk snagging pretty much all of it at once can't be the most likely outcome. Annex California much later or earlier and the deadlock in the slavery debate that prompted it to be *one* huge state isn't going to be there.

But sticking with OTL borders, I think the most obvious path is to have the Compromise of 1850 negotiations completely break down. Taylor ends up fighting an outright shooting war against the spawn of the Nashville Convention (this isn't terribly likely, but I also don't think it's totally ASB) and when some northern Democrat like David Wilmot ends up taking the reins in the aftermath, the political incentives to boost free states & Democratic states (without upsetting the immediate situation too much) means that Oregon Territory and the Mexican Cession get split up salami-thin instead. You could even get some Crittenden Compromise equivalent that puts a moratorium on new states temporarily, hence the territories keep proliferating.

This is a really interesting scenario, actually. Hmm.

I fear how that West Coast might look.

 

[Indicus]

There were many who wanted to quickly admit the entirety of the Mexican Cession as a single giant state to exclude discussion of slavery from Congress - Zachary Taylor was one of them, and Stephen Douglas vigorously pushed for it. Obviously such a giant state wouldn't last long, particularly with the Mormons in Utah, and I'm not sure what it would do to sectional tensions, but by the time this mega-California is cut up the cultural difference across the Pacific might be more apparent, and population-wise it might be viable to immediately admit more than two states at once along the Pacific.

 

[Delta Force]

There wouldn't really be much point in dividing the West Coast into more states. It doesn't have as many places suitable for large port facilities as the East Coast. You could get one more from California and that's it. Who would want to be a coastal state that can't import or export easily by sea, especially before infrastructure gets better?

 

[Jackson Lennock]

The US could resolve the Texas dispute via diplomacy and potentially secure a purchase of Northern California. The Mexican President Herrera at one point considered a sale of everything north of the 37th parallel. Americans proceed to flood into what's left of Mexican California and war breaks out anyway. Southern California is admitted as two states.

There wouldn't really be much point in dividing the West Coast into more states. It doesn't have as many places suitable for large port facilities as the East Coast. You could get one more from California and that's it. Who would want to be a coastal state that can't import or export easily by sea, especially before infrastructure gets better?

Four states from California is possible. One centered on San Diego, one centered on Los Angeles, one around the San Joaquin River, and one around the Sacramento River.

Maybe a fifth in the "Jefferson" region if portions of Oregon are added to it.

 

[RyanF]

There is another fun option now that I think about it. One of the early proposals for the Oregon Treaty had the Columbia River as the boundary line, with American control to the south and British control to the north (ie most of OTL western Washington). But it also provided for an American exclave on the northeastern corner of the Olympic Peninsula, around OTL Port Townsend, to give the US access to Puget Sound.

What if this plan went through, and some trading posts and settlements were set up in the "Olympia Territory" - but then later American settlers hopped the border and started moving into OTL western Washington anyway, as they were wont to do? One border war later and everything below the OTL border is American, but the Olympia Territory already has a separate political existence and identity. You could definitely imagine them becoming two different states.

Hadn't considered this one either, and I once used that proposal in a thing (albeit with Vancouver Island slapped on as well). It could work, as you say you have the US pouring resources into the "Olympia Territory" to solidify their claim. At the same time, existing US settlements in the parts of Columbia Country between the Columbia River and 49th parallel would see some growth too from overland travellers. Sooner or later, conflict between those settlements and the HBC is bound to happen.

But sticking with OTL borders, I think the most obvious path is to have the Compromise of 1850 negotiations completely break down. Taylor ends up fighting an outright shooting war against the spawn of the Nashville Convention (this isn't terribly likely, but I also don't think it's totally ASB) and when some northern Democrat like David Wilmot ends up taking the reins in the aftermath, the political incentives to boost free states & Democratic states (without upsetting the immediate situation too much) means that Oregon Territory and the Mexican Cession get split up salami-thin instead. You could even get some Crittenden Compromise equivalent that puts a moratorium on new states temporarily, hence the territories keep proliferating.

This is a really interesting scenario, actually. Hmm.

Very interesting, both as an earlier Civil War and the changes it means to border decisions made in the 1850s precisely to avoid that exact thing from happening. Almost like the OTL decision to split the Dakota Territory in two but along the entire Pacific Coast.

 

[Thande]

I was wondering if a California split have been used as an alternative/addition to admitting Nevada under dodgy circumstances as a way to get more votes for the Emancipation Proclamation - but I'd forgotten Lincoln's victory in 1860 there was a narrow plurality so maybe they thought it wasn't worth risking it. The Republicans did win all the congressional seats in 1862 though...

 

[zaffre]

I was wondering if a California split have been used as an alternative/addition to admitting Nevada under dodgy circumstances as a way to get more votes for the Emancipation Proclamation - but I'd forgotten Lincoln's victory in 1860 there was a narrow plurality so maybe they thought it wasn't worth risking it. The Republicans did win all the congressional seats in 1862 though...

Lincoln’s victory was narrow enough that it’s actually the worst he did in any free state in the country. California did end up being considerably more Republican in 1862 / 1864, for sure, but McClellan was the favorite for so much of the campaign that it would have seemed like a very bad gamble to Abe.

So a Confederate victory could very well have led to splitting California, actually, but that feels like using a nuke to hammer in a nail.

 

[RyanF]

Lincoln’s victory was narrow enough that it’s actually the worst he did in any free state in the country. California did end up being considerably more Republican in 1862 / 1864, for sure, but McClellan was the favorite for so much of the campaign that it would have seemed like a very bad gamble to Abe.

So a Confederate victory could very well have led to splitting California, actually, but that feels like using a nuke to hammer in a nail.

Depending on how much more Republican California got in 1862/64, could it be split to provide more Republican Senators for Reconstruction under a different post-war President?

Though I'm imagining even if those stars were to align the government might be more willing to speed up the statehood process of some territories instead.

I'm wondering too now if California was split at some point in the 1850s/60s that along with *West Virginia it might create a contemporary precedent of state cession leading to the splitting of more states whose new entities would vote the right way.