Reformed United States Of America

The **Reformed United States**, officially the **Reformed United States Of America (RUSA)**, is a transcontinental country in North America. The RUSA shares borders with Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. It Consists of 46 states and multiple other territories.

### Inhabitants

100+ Million

Indigenous peoples have inhabited the Americas for thousands of years. Beginning in 1607, British colonization led to the establishment of the Thirteen Colonies in what is now the Eastern United States. They quarreled with the British Crown over taxation and political representation, leading to the American Revolution and proceeding Revolutionary War. The United States declared independence on July 4, 1776, becoming the first nation-state founded on Enlightenment principles of unalienable natural rights, consent of the governed, and liberal democracy. During the 19th century, the United States' political philosophy was influenced by the concept of manifest destiny, as the country expanded across the continent in a number of wars, land purchases, and treaties, eventually reaching the Pacific Ocean. Sectional division surrounding slavery in the Southern United States led to the secession of the Confederate States of America, which fought the remaining states of the Union during the American Civil War (1861–1865). With the Union's victory and preservation, slavery was abolished nationally by the Thirteenth Amendment.

By 1900, the United States had established itself as a great power, becoming the world's largest economy. After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. entered World War II on the Allied side. The aftermath of the war left the United States and the Soviet Union as the world's two superpowers and led to the Cold War. During the Cold War, both countries engaged in a struggle for ideological dominance but avoided direct military conflict. They also competed in the Space Race, which culminated in the 1969 landing of Apollo 11, making the U.S. the first and so far only nation to land humans on the Moon. With the Soviet Union's collapse and the subsequent end of the Cold War in 1991, the United States emerged as the world's sole superpower. In 1999, the Black Mesa Incident occured causing mass chaos and the Xen Crisis. The next 20 years were filled with chaos and warfare. By 2020 the US was a shadow of it's former self. In 2023 the US collapsed and rising from it was the RUSA.

The RUSA is a Federal republic.

## Etymology

The first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" dates back to a letter from January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan to Joseph Reed, George Washington's aide-de-camp. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort. The first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in *The Virginia Gazette* newspaper in Williamsburg, on April 6, 1776.

By June 1776, the name "United States of America" had appeared in drafts of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, prepared by John Dickinson and of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson.

A citizen of the United States is called an "American". "United States", "American", and "U.S." refer to the country adjectivally ("American values", "U.S. forces"). The word "American" rarely refers to topics or subjects not directly connected with the United States.

## History

### Pre-Columbian period (before 1492)

It is generally accepted that the first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and arrived at least 12,000 years ago; however, some evidence suggests an even earlier date of arrival. The Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000 BC, is believed to represent the first wave of human settlement of the Americas. This was likely the first of three major waves of migration into North America; later waves brought the ancestors of present-day Athabaskans, Aleuts, and Eskimos.

Over time, indigenous cultures in North America grew increasingly sophisticated, and some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture in the southeast, developed advanced agriculture, architecture, and complex societies. The city-state of Cahokia is the largest, most complex pre-Columbian archaeological site in the modern-day United States. In the Four Corners region, Ancestral Puebloan culture developed from centuries of agricultural experimentation. The Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American indigenous peoples. This grouping consists of the peoples who speak Algonquian languages. Historically, these peoples were prominent along the Atlantic Coast and into the interior along the Saint Lawrence River and around the Great Lakes. Before Europeans came into contact, most Algonquian settlements lived by hunting and fishing, although many supplemented their diet by cultivating corn, beans and squash (the "Three Sisters"). The Ojibwe cultivated wild rice. The Haudenosaunee confederation of the Iroquois, located in the southern Great Lakes region, was established at some point between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.

Estimating the native population of North America during European contact is difficult. Douglas H. Ubelaker of the Smithsonian Institution estimated a population of 93,000 in the South Atlantic states and a population of 473,000 in the Gulf states, but most academics regard this figure as too low. Anthropologist Henry F. Dobyns believed the populations were much higher, suggesting around 1.1 million along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, 2.2 million people living between Florida and Massachusetts, 5.2 million in the Mississippi Valley and tributaries, and around 700,000 people in the Florida peninsula.

### Colonial period (1492–1763)

The Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, sent by France to the New World in 1525, encountered Native American inhabitants of what is now called New York Bay. The Spanish set up the first settlements in Florida and New Mexico, such as Saint Augustine, often considered the nation's oldest city, and Santa Fe. The French established their own settlements along the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico, notably New Orleans and Mobile.

Successful English colonization of the eastern coast of North America began with the Virginia Colony in 1607 at Jamestown and with the Pilgrims' colony at Plymouth in 1620. The continent's first elected legislative assembly, Virginia's House of Burgesses, was founded in 1619. Harvard College was established in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 as the first institution of higher education. The Mayflower Compact and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for representative self-government and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies. Many English settlers were dissenting Christians who came seeking religious freedom. The native population of America declined after European arrival for various reasons, primarily from diseases such as smallpox and measles. By the mid-1670s, the British had defeated and seized the territory of Dutch settlers in New Netherland, in the mid-Atlantic region. In the early days of colonization, many European settlers experienced food shortages, disease, and conflicts with Native Americans, such as in King Philip's War. Native Americans were also often fighting neighboring tribes and European settlers. In many cases the natives and settlers came to depend on each other. Settlers traded for food and animal pelts; natives for guns, tools and other European goods. American Indians taught many settlers to cultivate corn, beans, and other foodstuffs. European missionaries and others felt it was important to "civilize" the Native Americans and urged them to adopt European agricultural practices and lifestyles. However, with the increased European colonization of North America, Native Americans were displaced and often killed during conflicts.

European settlers also began trafficking African slaves into Colonial America via the transatlantic slave trade. By the turn of the 18th century, slavery had supplanted indentured servitude as the main source of agricultural labor for the cash crops in the American South. Colonial society was divided over the religious and moral implications of slavery, and several colonies passed acts for or against the practice.

The Thirteen Colonies that would become the United States of America were administered by the British as overseas dependencies. All nonetheless had local governments with elections open to white male property owners, except Jews and Catholics in some areas. With very high birth rates, low death rates, and steady settlement, the colonial population grew rapidly, eclipsing Native American populations. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest both in religion and in religious liberty. Excluding the Native Americans who lived there, the Thirteen Colonies had a population of over 2.1 million in 1770, about a third that of Britain. Despite continuing new arrivals, the rate of natural increase was such that by the 1770s only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas. The colonies' distance from Britain had allowed the development of self-government, but their unprecedented success motivated British monarchs to periodically seek to reassert royal authority.

### Revolutionary period (1763–1789)

The American Revolution separated the Thirteen Colonies from the British Empire, and ensuing American Revolutionary War represented the first successful war of independence by a non-European entity against a European power in modern history. By the 18th century, the American Enlightenment and the political philosophies of liberalism were pervasive among leaders. Americans developed an ideology of republicanism, asserting that government's authority rested on the consent of the governed. They demanded their "rights as Englishmen" and "no taxation without representation". The British insisted on administering the colonies through a Parliament that did not have a single representative responsible for any American constituency, and the conflict escalated into war.

In 1774, the First Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, passed the Continental Association, which mandated a colony-wide boycott of British goods. The American Revolutionary War began the following year. The Second Continental Congress, an assembly representing the United Colonies, unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 (annually celebrated as Independence Day). The Declaration stated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Stephen Lucas called it "one of the best-known sentences in the English language", with historian Joseph Ellis writing that the document contains "the most potent and consequential words in American history". During the British Colonial era, slavery was legal in all of the American colonies, composed a longstanding institution in world history, and "challenges to its moral legitimacy were rare". However, during the Revolution, many in the colonies began to question the practice.

In 1781, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union established a decentralized government that operated until 1789. In 1777, the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga resulted in the capture of a British army, and led to France and their ally Spain joining in the war against them. After the surrender of a second British army at the siege of Yorktown in 1781, Britain signed a peace treaty. American sovereignty became internationally recognized, and the new nation took possession of substantial territory east of the Mississippi River, from what is present-day Canada in the north and Florida in the south.

As it became increasingly apparent that the Confederation was insufficient to govern the new country, nationalists advocated for and led the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, where the United States Constitution was authored and ratified in state conventions in 1788.

### Early national period (1789–1849)

The U.S. Constitution is the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in force today. Going into force in 1789, it reorganized the government into a federation administered by three branches (executive, judicial, and legislative), on the principle of creating salutary checks and balances. George Washington, who had led the Continental Army to victory and then willingly relinquished power, was the first President elected under the new constitution. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase almost doubled the nation's area. Tensions with Britain remained, leading to the War of 1812, which was fought to a draw. Spain ceded Florida and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819.

Regional divisions over slavery grew in the proceeding decades. In the North, several prominent Founding Fathers such as John Adams, Roger Sherman, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Benjamin Franklin advocated for the abolition of slavery, and by the 1810s every state in the region had, with these emancipations being the first in the Atlantic World. The Missouri Compromise (1820) admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and declared a policy of prohibiting slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36°30′ parallel. The outcome *de facto* sectionalized the country into two factions: free states, which forbade slavery; and slave states, which protected the institution; it was controversial, widely seen as dividing the country along sectarian lines.

In the South, the invention of the cotton gin spurred entrenchment of slavery, with regional elites and intellectuals increasingly viewing the institution as a positive good instead of a necessary evil. Although the federal government outlawed American participation in the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, after 1820, cultivation of the highly profitable cotton crop exploded in the Deep South, and along with it, the use of slave labor. The Second Great Awakening, especially in the period 1800–1840, converted millions to evangelical Protestantism. In the North, it energized multiple social reform movements, including abolitionism; in the South, Methodists and Baptists proselytized among slave populations.

In the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand further westward, some of them with a sense of manifest destiny. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase almost doubled the nation's area, Spain ceded Florida and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819, the Republic of Texas was annexed in 1845 during a period of expansionism, and the 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. As it expanded further into land inhabited by Native Americans, the federal government often applied policies of Indian removal or assimilation. The Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that forcibly resettled Indians. The displacement prompted a long series of American Indian Wars west of the Mississippi River and eventually conflict with Mexico. Most of these conflicts ended with the cession of Native American territory and their confinement to Indian reservations. Victory in the Mexican–American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest, with the U.S. now spanning the continent. The California Gold Rush of 1848–1849 spurred migration to the Pacific coast, which led to the California Genocide and the creation of additional western states.

### Civil War and Reconstruction (1849–1865)

Irreconcilable sectional conflict regarding the enslavement of those of black African descent was the primary cause of the American Civil War. With the 1860 election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, conventions in eleven slave states—all in the Southern United States—declared secession and formed the Confederate States of America, while the federal government (the "Union") maintained that secession was unconstitutional and illegitimate. On April 12, 1861, the Confederacy initiated military conflict by bombarding Fort Sumter, a federal garrison in Charleston harbor, South Carolina. The ensuing Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest military conflict in American history resulting in the deaths of approximately 620,000 soldiers from both sides and upwards of 50,000 civilians, almost all of them in the South.

Reconstruction began in earnest following the defeat of the Confederates. While President Lincoln attempted to foster reconciliation between the Union and former Confederacy, his assassination on April 14, 1865 drove a wedge between North and South again. Republicans in the federal government made it their goal to oversee the rebuilding of the South and to ensure the rights of African Americans, and the so-called Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution guaranteed the abolishment of slavery, full citizenship to Americans of African descent, and suffrage for adult Black males. They persisted until the Compromise of 1877. Influential Southern whites, calling themselves "Redeemers", took local control of the South after the end of Reconstruction, beginning the nadir of American race relations. From 1890 to 1910, the Redeemers established so-called Jim Crow laws, disenfranchising almost all blacks and some impoverished whites throughout the region. Blacks would face racial segregation nationwide, especially in the South. They also lived under constant threat of vigilante violence, including lynching.

### Gilded Age, Progressive Era, and World War I (1877–1929)

National infrastructure, including telegraph and transcontinental railroads, spurred economic growth and greater settlement and development of the American Old West. After the American Civil War, new transcontinental railways made relocation easier for settlers, expanded internal trade, and increased conflicts with Native Americans.

Mainland expansion also included the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. In 1893, pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and formed the Republic of Hawaii, which the U.S. annexed in 1898. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were ceded by Spain in the same year, by the Treaty of Paris (1898) following the Spanish–American War. Neither the Foraker Act (1900), nor the Insular Cases (1901) accorded US citizenship to Puerto Ricans. One month prior to American entry into World War I, citizenship was extended to Puerto Ricans via the Jones–Shafroth Act (1917). In November 1903, the US acquired a perpetual lease of the Panama Canal Zone via the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty after providing naval aid preventing Colombia from putting down the rebellion which led to the creation of an independent Panama. The logistics of the November uprising were prepared in New York. American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the end of the Second Samoan Civil War. The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917.

Rapid economic development during the late 19th and early 20th centuries fostered the rise of many prominent industrialists. Tycoons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie led the nation's progress in the railroad, petroleum, and steel industries. Banking became a major part of the economy, with J. P. Morgan playing a notable role. The United States also emerged as a pioneer of the automotive industry in the early 20th century. In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe supplied a surplus of labor for the country's industrialization. Electric light and the telephone drastically changed communication and urban life.

The American economy boomed, becoming the world's largest. These dramatic changes were accompanied by significant increases in economic inequality, immigration, and social unrest, which prompted the rise of organized labor along with populist, socialist, and anarchist movements. This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which saw significant reforms including health and safety regulation of consumer goods, the rise of labor unions, and greater antitrust measures to ensure competition among businesses and attention to worker conditions. The Great Migration beginning around 1910 also brought millions of African Americans to Northern urban centers from the rural South.

Rapid economic development during the late 19th and early 20th centuries fostered the rise of many prominent industrialists. Tycoons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie led the nation's progress in the railroad, petroleum, and steel industries. Banking became a major part of the economy, with J. P. Morgan playing a notable role. The United States also emerged as a pioneer of the automotive industry in the early 20th century. In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe supplied a surplus of labor for the country's industrialization. Electric light and the telephone drastically changed communication and urban life.

The American economy boomed, becoming the world's largest. These dramatic changes were accompanied by significant increases in economic inequality, immigration, and social unrest, which prompted the rise of organized labor along with populist, socialist, and anarchist movements. This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which saw significant reforms including health and safety regulation of consumer goods, the rise of labor unions, and greater antitrust measures to ensure competition among businesses and attention to worker conditions. The Great Migration beginning around 1910 also brought millions of African Americans to Northern urban centers from the rural South.

### Great Depression, New Deal, and World War II (1929–1945)

The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of radio for mass communication and the invention of early television. The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. After his election as President in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal economic policies. The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.

At first neutral during World War II, the United States began supplying war materiel to the Allies in March 1941. A total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to $719 billion in 2021) worth of supplies was shipped in 1941–1945, or 17% of the total war expenditures of the U.S. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to militarily join the Allies against the Axis powers, and in the following year, to intern about 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans. The U.S. pursued a "Europe first" defense policy, with the Philippines being invaded and occupied by Japan until the country's liberation by the U.S.-led forces in 1944–1945. During the war, the United States was one of the "Four Policemen" who met to plan the postwar world, along with Britain, the Soviet Union, and China. The United States emerged relatively unscathed from the war, and with even greater economic and military influence.

The United States played a leading role in the Bretton Woods and Yalta conferences, which signed agreements on new international financial institutions and Europe's postwar reorganization. As an Allied victory was achieved in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war. The United States developed the first nuclear weapons and used them on Japan in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945; the Japanese subsequently surrendered on September 2, ending World War II.

### Cold War (1945–1990)

After World War II, the United States financed and implemented the Marshall Plan to help rebuild and economically revive war-torn Europe; disbursements paid between 1948 and 1952 would total $13 billion ($115 billion in 2021). Also at this time, geopolitical tensions between the United States and Soviet Russia led to the Cold War, driven by an ideological divide between capitalism and communism. The two countries dominated the military affairs of Europe, with the U.S. and its NATO allies on one side and the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact satellite states on the other. Unlike the US, the USSR concentrated on its own recovery, seizing and transferring most of Germany's industrial plants, and it exacted war reparations from its Soviet Bloc satellites using Soviet-dominated joint enterprises. The U.S. sometimes opposed Third World movements that it viewed as Soviet-sponsored, occasionally pursuing direct action for regime change against left-wing governments. American troops fought the communist forces in the Korean War of 1950–1953, and the U.S. became increasingly involved in the Vietnam War (1955–1975), introducing combat forces in 1965. Their competition to achieve superior spaceflight capability led to the Space Race, which culminated in the U.S. becoming the first and only nation to land people on the Moon in 1969. While both countries engaged in proxy wars and developed powerful nuclear weapons, they avoided direct military conflict.

At home, the United States experienced sustained economic expansion, urbanization, and a rapid growth of its population and middle class following World War II. Construction of an Interstate Highway System transformed the nation's transportation infrastructure in decades to come. In 1959, the United States admitted Alaska and Hawaii to become the 49th and 50th states, formally expanding beyond the contiguous United States.

The growing civil rights movement used nonviolence to confront racism, with Martin Luther King Jr. becoming a prominent leader. President Lyndon B. Johnson initiated legislation that led to a series of policies addressing poverty and racial inequalities, in what he termed the "Great Society". The launch of a "War on Poverty" expanded entitlements and welfare spending, leading to the creation of the Food Stamp Program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, along with national health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid. A combination of court decisions and legislation, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1968, made significant improvements. Meanwhile, a counterculture movement grew, which was fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War, mainstream experimentation with psychedelics and cannabis, the Black Power movement, and the sexual revolution. The women's movement in the U.S. broadened the debate on women's rights and made gender equality a major social goal. The 1960s Sexual Revolution liberalized American attitudes to sexuality and eventually spread to the rest of the developed world, and the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City marked the beginning of the modern gay rights movement in the West.

The United States supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War; in response, the country faced an oil embargo from OPEC nations, sparking the 1973 oil crisis. The presidency of Richard Nixon saw the American withdrawal from Vietnam but also the Watergate scandal, which led to his resignation and a decline in public trust of government that expanded for decades. After a surge in female labor participation around the 1970s, by 1985, the majority of women aged 16 and over were employed. The 1970s and early 1980s also saw the onset of stagflation.

After his election in 1980, President Ronald Reagan responded to economic stagnation with neoliberal reforms and accelerated the rollback strategy towards the Soviet Union after its invasion of Afghanistan. During Reagan's presidency, the federal debt held by the public nearly tripled in nominal terms, from $738 billion to $2.1 trillion. This led to the United States moving from the world's largest international creditor to the world's largest debtor nation. The collapse of the USSR's network of satellite states in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of the country itself in 1991 ended the Cold War with American victory, ensuring a global unipolarity in which the U.S. was unchallenged as the world's sole superpower.

### Contemporary period (1990–1999)

Fearing the spread of regional international instability from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, in August 1991, President George H. W. Bush launched and led the Gulf War against Iraq, expelling Iraqi forces and dissolving the Iraqi-backed puppet state in Kuwait. During the administration of President Bill Clinton in 1994, the U.S. signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), causing trade among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to soar. Due to the dot-com boom, stable monetary policy, and reduced social welfare spending, the 1990s saw the longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history.

### Black Mesa Incident and the Xen Crisis (1999-2006)

The **Black Mesa Incident**, also referred to as the **Lambda Incident**, was a catastrophic event resulting from an experiment carried out by the Anomalous Materials department at the Black Mesa Research Facility. The insertion of an especially pure Xen crystal into the Anti-Mass Spectrometer triggered a rare quantum event known as a Resonance Cascade, which ruptured the space-time continuum and allowed extradimensional beings from a realm known as the Borderworld to teleport into the facility.

Black Mesa personnel who had survived the initial incident attempted a resonance reversal using an orbiting satellite to seal the tear. The attempt failed and it was deduced that a powerful being was deliberately holding the rift open. The survivors quickly realized the presence of the aliens was not an accident, and were in fact the vanguard of an invasion.

The United States government dispatched a military expeditionary force to the facility to contain the invasion and silence witnesses, however, they suffered heavy casualties and were compelled to quickly withdraw. The ensuing desperate conflict between the survivors and increasing numbers of alien creatures led to the government authorizing the facility's destruction with a nuclear device, which destroyed the facility and eradicated the invasion.

Prior to the facility's destruction, Black Mesa scientist Gordon Freeman had been teleported to the Borderworld by the Lambda Team, where he successfully killed the creature coordinating the invasion and holding the rift open. Freeman's whereabouts would remain unknown for decades, as he disappeared immediately after these events.

Though Freeman's actions halted the invasion, the portal storms that occurred as a consequence of the incident continued to intensify, ultimately causing chaos and warfare throughout the world. In 2000 over 15.7 Million people died due to hostile creatures from the portal storms.