New Reality Seeds

[GreatWyrmGold]

Inspired by this video and using this map as a referene, I made a (crappy) map of a hypothetical southern USA after a theoretical split between "black" and "white" America.

Spoiler:  

http://i64.tinypic.com/11al3eq.png
"Chattahoochee" is the name of a river. Given how many US states are named after rivers, and how few other ideas I had for that state's name...

I kinda got bored of filling in lines after I did the border states, so...everything to the north and east of the given states is allohistorical, most stuff to the West is unorganized territory which has yet to be stated.

Anyways. How would dividing up the USA like this affect it?
It's...let's say 1866. The Union has finally defeated the Confederacy, with Lincoln being assassinated with a heavily pro-segregationist vice president. Over his first year or so in office, he managed to convince Congress and other key Union politicians that the creation of a semi-separate nation for blacks was necessary to keep the peace.
The South signs a treaty designed by the Union, which had already approved of VP's plan. A band across the southeastern United States was turned into the Negro Confederacy (later renamed the Austratlantic American Confederation; I'll be using this name from here on out, for obvious reasons). This band includes many of the most slave-heavy regions of the south.
Border details:

Spoiler:  

The Confederate states (aside from Texas, who surrendered early in this timeline) all lost at least a little land to the new Confederacy, with South Carolina being entirely annexed by it and northern parts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia being combined into the state of Jackson. The borders within the new nation were shuffled a bit, too; three of the states (Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina) remained mostly the same, though with a few new counties from surrounding areas of the Confederacy. Alabama loses its northern half but gains Florida's panhandle, and the rest of the Confederacy's land is divided between East Virginia, Savannah, and Chattahoochee.

The future AAC had some restrictions built into its Constitution. First, the Confederacy could pass no law restricting free trade and travel between itself and the USA. Second, all parts of the American Constitution were automatically considered part of the AAC's Constitution, unless the AAC specifically passed an amendment which contradicted it. Third, the AAC was required to join any war that the USA was in (and vise versa). Throw in some miscellaneous military and trade provisions, and it isn't hard to see why some criticized the AAC as being more of an American protectorate than a sovereign nation.

What next?
1. An exodus of whites out of the AAC and blacks into it. Duh.
2. The future AAC holds elections. While its population is mostly black, its elected representatives are disproportionately white. Wealth is still extremely helpful in getting elected, after all, and most of those blacks were slaves just years or months prior. The main parties are the Republicans (of course), the States' Party (an offshoot of the Democratic Party which is more appealing to former slaves), and the Negro Party or NP (a radical pro-black party focused on bringing black people a standard of living comparable to the local whites).
3. You know that pseudohistorical claim that the Reconstruction was trying to punish the south? It would have to be at least partly true in this alternate history. Moreover, the South would naturally be royally ****** at having so much of their land "taken and given to blacks" (even though there was no transfer of private ownership until AAC whites started selling their property). Of course, losing half a dozen senators and a whole gaggle of citizens (with the corresponding representatives) meant they weren't going to have much clout in Congress, so this would mostly boil over into grassroots movements and the like, not to mention tensions at the AAC border.
4. Florida would suffer from a serious population issue; its blacks would want to move to Chattahoochee, and some of its whites would likely want to move out of the exclave. This low population would lead to labor shortages, which would in turn lead to an economic downturn and improved working conditions for the working class. This, in turn, would attract people to the state, fueling an economic revival. Combine this with a bit of a shipping rivalry with Savannah (Florida would take its first steps with all the boats it would likely have carrying people who had to go to Florida but didn't want to go through the AAC), and Florida has a decent chance of ending up ahead of the rest of the nation in the long run.
5. The Klu Klux Klan would arise in the US South, as in our timeline, but would have even more power (since more of the South's grievances would be legitimate). Combined with paramilitary groups (like OTL White League and Red Shirts), the South might need to be put under martial law to keep order. This would most likely strengthen the South's anger and resolve. A nervous AAC begins militarizing their border near the most turbulent places, toeing the line of a prohibition against fortifying their borders.
6. Elsewhere in the AAC, internal problems are simmering. The black people of the nation dream of true equality, with the NP thriving on and promoting this dream, but the wealthy elites were mostly white when the nation was formed and they haven't let many blacks into the club. This leads to its own problems, which the Gilded Age only compounds. Moreover, when the US Congress is slow to collaborate on rail lines which would connect the American West to the AAC, many feel that it's just more old white guys trying to keep black men from achieving their potential. This leads to the development of extremely (sometimes violently) radical splinters off the NP and their supporters. That, in turn, leads to reactionary...erm...reactions from the white elite in and near the AAC.

So, we have a late-19th-century America with a smaller semi-independent nation in it, and tensions between the two due to internal tensions within each. Sounds like a good place for adventure, especially if we throw in something fantastical somewhere near the border.

The history of the USA and its place in the world in the 20th century depends heavily on how all those tensions get resolved. The AAC might get re-annexed (with or without going back to the old borders, depending on how many people are still alive who remember them). This would, of course, lead to all sorts of new tensions to be resolved by the next generation, as the sons of pre-War elites try to return to the land their fathers sold cheaply decades prior and the black underclass chafes at their dreams being ground to dust. Perhaps some form of Marxism catches on in the AAC, leading to them and the USA growing further apart. If that doesn't happen and the USA gets comfortable with semi-autonomous protectorates, they might try to turn various lesser neighbors (especially Caribbean islands) into the same, propelling its nascent imperialism beyond the borders of the continental US. Perhaps the USA is too busy with internal problems to help either side in the war, or perhaps its struggles ignite an internal arms race which strengthens them, letting the "American Century" start early. Or perhaps the AAC (possibly with other American protectorates) breaks ties with the US during World War I, bringing war to the New World and shattering one of the greatest advantages letting that century be American.