Carter Monaghan

Carter Monaghan of Southern Vandalia.

Carter Monaghan is the nineteenth Governor-General of the Confederation of North America, having served since September 1966. He is the second Negro to serve as governor-general, and the sixth person to succeed to the office following the death or resignation of his predecessor.

Monaghan had served (and may have been serving, Sobel doesn't say) as Governor of Southern Vandalia when newly-elected Governor-General Perry Jay selected him to be Minister of Finance in February 1963. Following Jay's vitavised surprise announcement of the successful detonation of the C.N.A.'s first atomic bomb and of his own resignation on 1 September 1966, the People's Coalition caucus in the Grand Council met the following day and chose Monaghan to succeed Jay.

After his investiture as governor-general on the morning of 3 September, Monaghan and Jay met in the governor-general's office. According to Jay, he told Monaghan, "I've left you one problem, and that can be summed up in a single word. It's Mercator." Monaghan's first year in office was spent continuing Jay's policies, tightening his grip on the People's Coalition, maintaining good relations with the United British Empire, and keeping close watch on the United States of Mexico.

In 1967 James Volk published The Bomb Myth, which argued that the atomic bomb would act as a deterrent to war. Monaghan rejected Volk's thesis, saying that "It may be true that no sane and reasonable man will use the bomb. But who is to say sane and reasonable men do today, or will in the future, control the destinies of countries? We must have every safeguard at our command, and one is a strong deterrent force." Thus, Monaghan insisted on pursuing the C.N.A.'s military expansion. Domestically, Monaghan supported Jay's policy of phasing out the National Financial Administration by 1970.

Monaghan was nominated for his own term as Governor-General by the People's Coalition at its 1968 convention, and in the 1968 Grand Council elections he maintained Jay's 80 seat majority in the Grand Council. Had the Jay Amendment been passed, and the vote been given to the candidates directly instead of to councilmanic candidates, Monaghan would have received 52.8 percent of the votes. 

The major event of Monaghan's second term so far has been the discovery of a Mexican spy ring centered on the C.N.A.'s atomic weapons research facility in Michigan City. The announcement of the spy ring in late January 1969 led the two countries to break relations and close their borders, and by 1971 guerrilla activity began to take place along the Arkansas River.

A major demonstration program by the P.J.P. was crippled by the disclosure of the Mexican spy ring. The leaders of the P.J.P. rejected the charges as fabrications of the Confederation Bureau of Investigation, and warned of a new era of Starkism in the C.N.A. As of 1971, the P.J.P. calls for disarmament of the C.N.A. and international control of the atomic bomb.

---

Sobel's sources for the political career of Carter Monaghan are Frank Rusk's A Statistical Analysis of the 1968 C.N.A. Elections (New York, 1971); Max Josephson's The End of the Western Era (New York, 1971); the 18 July 1967 issue of the New York Journal; the 22 August 1967 and 7 January 1968 issues of the New York Herald; and a vitavised interview of Jay on 4 June 1969.