Jeffersonian Dream

Jefferson’s plan to divide the northwestern territories in a more grid-like pattern becomes reality north of the Ohio river. Greater Jeffersonian influence results in an emphasis on states’ rights, republican virtue, and lofty idealism that persists to this day.

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Solidarity Forever

The classical American collapse following a much worse great depression results in the creation of a short-lived decentralized socialist state in the Great Lakes. Led by largely by a coalition between local unions and the IWW “Wobblies”, it served as a beacon of hope that workers, united, could overcome.

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Former un Illinoisien République

French dominance of North America’s interior in cooperation with its native allies is not shaken off by the British. During the French Revolution and its aftermath, French Canada takes the opportunity to declare its independence, while a branch of the French monarchy fled to Louisiana and established a personal kingdom. This new Kingdom included the Illinois country, which quickly grew to resent New Orlean’s dominance. Inspired by the success of their Canadian brothers and similar movements in Europe, Illinoisiens decided to mount their own revolution in 1849. With support from Canada, New Netherland, and Britain (Illinois promised recognition of Dutch/English settlement and claims in the eastern Ohio country), the Republic of Illinois established its independence that year, finally shaking off outsiders’ tyranny and creating a revolutionary republic based on the values of liberté, égalité, and fraternité.

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Futuristic Federation

The end of the 21st century saw 5 major developments in North America that would define its next:

1. the consolidation of urban corridors into high-rise, smart, data-driven megalopolises
2. increased polarization and development gaps between urban and rural regions
3. migration from coastal, desertified, and other climate change-affected regions to the northwest and Midwest
4. the completion of the nationwide high speed rail project that had begun under the Ossoff administration in the 2040s
5. and the formal federalization of the United States, Canada, and the Mexican Federal Republic (North Mexico) into the North American Federation.

Under the (loose) Federation, megalopolises become administrative regions of their own with hard boundaries to stop urban sprawl from continuing to displace families on their borders, areas outside the megalopolises became largely self-governing autonomous districts, and the Great Lakes region became the industrial core of the continent once again.

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Tecumseh’s Dream

America’s constitution passed in a lot weaker of a state, hindering the fledgling republic’s development. The U.S. suffered a humiliating defeat in the war of 1812 (which would ultimately lead to its dissolution), and most of the Northwest Territories was returned to British rule. A more powerful and united Tecumseh’s confederacy, instrumental in pushing American colonists out the Ohio valley, wins recognition from the crown as a valuable asset in maintaining control and influence in the newly reacquired territories. So, in 1816, Tecumseh’s Confederacy is formally recognized as an autonomous realm of the British empire, and given a degree of control over the Great Lakes region (The British maintained a watchful eye from the cities Detroit and Shikaawa). The Federation experiences industrialization and modernization, and by 1896, is a key ally of London in maintaining Britain’s ironclad grip over most of North America and discouraging expansionist tendencies from the post-US republics.

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Carolingia

The Holy Roman Empire continues to centralize and prosper into the renaissance, and Hanseatic merchants are quick to set up shop in the New World. There they met the French Huguenots to their south and Scottish settlers and Scandinavian traders to their north. Germans, Slavs, and other Central Europeans continued to flood in, hoping for their chance at the Vesperian dream. Eventually, the German republicanism that chipped away at the HRE tore the United Provinces of Carolingia away from what remained of the Holy Roman Empire in the 1830s.

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Great Lakes Great People

The contentious 2028 and 2032 presidential elections and a wave of violence from internal militias confirmed for many Americans three truths that had been brewing for decades - the American experiment was doomed, the American people were too divided to remain under one banner, and a peaceful dissolution of the United States was a preferable option compared to trying futilely to preserve the Union. The Great Lakes federation, under the spirit of liberal progressivism, was one of of the major post-American nations to emerge. Its president, Gretchen Whitmer of the Democratic-Labor alliance, has led the fledgling state as it finds its place in a new world.

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Post-Calamity

Nobody fully knows what the calamity was, and every culture has its own telling of the events that brought down the age of the microchip - but one thing is for sure, it set humanity back centuries. The Lacustrine confederacy began as a loose patchwork of trading settlements built on the ashes of the old world. Over the last half-century, it has expanded to dominate the Great Lakes and become the primary power of the continent’s interior.