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The Richmond Agreement arose from the efforts of Confederate States President Jake Featherston to regain CS territories lost to the United States at the end of the Great War, specifically Sequoyah, Houston and Kentucky, and to facilitate the remilitarization of the Confederacy. After several months of Freedom Party-led riots in the three states, which in turn caused great political divisions in the United States, U.S. President Al Smith agreed to meet Featherston in Richmond in June 1940.

Featherston obtained a promise from Smith for plebiscites in the three states -- provided the latter won the election in November, 1940. In turn, Smith extracted from Featherston a promise that the plebiscites would be held in a fair atmosphere, that blacks would be allowed to vote for self-determination, that Featherston would not to ask for any more territory, and that any state that changed hands would remain demilitarized until 1965. After defeating Robert Taft and Wendell Willkie, Smith called for a plebiscite to be held on January 7, 1941. Kentucky voted to return to the Confederacy, as did Houston, with it rejoining Texas. However, Sequoyah remained in the Union, due to northern settlers having colonized it and swelled its population with United States loyalists.

Instead of allowing 25 years to pass before sending Confederate troops and barrels into Kentucky and the former Houston, Featherston broke his promise in 25 days. Freedom Party Stalwarts blew up a police station in Frankfort, Kentucky, and blamed it on pro-USA terrorists, inventing an incident for Featherston to use as an excuse to place the Confederate Army on the banks of the Ohio River. In short order, Featherston also demanded the remaining C.S. territory that the U.S. possessed. With the Richmond Agreement shredded, Smith refused to negotiate with his Confederate counterpart and mobilized the U.S. Army.

While failing to avert the war, and providing the Confederates with the strategic territory of Kentucky from which the war was launched, the Richmond Agreement also served to make clear to the complacent US population that war was completely unavoidable and that the Confederacy was in the wrong, helping stiffen the USA's resolve to carry the war through to total victory.

See Also[]

  • The Munich Conference of September 1938, on which the Richmond Agreement is broadly based.
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