US ends slavery in 1783?

Chris

Banned
What might happen to the US democragics and consitution if the US was to have good reason to end slavery after the revolution?

I propose a POD in which the british attemets to raise slave revolts in the south work much better, cripplining the slave holders and reducing their power, while creating armed bands of ex-slaves in the nation. This should warn people about the danagers of keeping a seriously dissatified collecion of people in the nation and provide some incentive to end slavery on the US terms.

So, what might happen?

Chris
 
Alleghenny exile

There has always been a great deal of prejudice against black people in America. Maybe they get sent across the mountains to the Mississippi rivershed, or across it to the Louisiana territory, or south to Florida?
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
OTOH maybe they get accepted as just another ethnic group. Slavery in Revolutionary times was declining and definitely not the 'peculiar institution' of antebellum fame. Slavery, unless under the very exceptional circumstances existing in the Roman empire or the Antebellum South, is an inefficient way of obtaining labor and generally an expensive luxury for the rich.

There weren't that many to begin with and the majority were house servants or even skilled laborers rather than field hands. They didn't live much worse than most lower class 'wage slaves' and had some more assurance of survival in hard times Rebellion was out of the question for them in any case because they were so outnumbered; and if they had revolted why would the colonials then give them land they wanted themselves?

I propose another POD, the French decide for one reason or another (maybe they want to reinvade Canada or even try their luck in India again) to send only money and equipment to Washington. The colonials, short of manpower but rich, decide on a Mameluke strategy; buying the slaves from the slaveholders to replenish the Continental ranks. The slaves are promised freedom if they fight well or just given it after the war as the Congress would really have little use for them and it is doubtful the slaveholders would buy them back. They enter the mainsteam of American society under much better circumstances and remain a pleasant novelty in most places they find themselves, since their numbers are not great enough to cause fear of competition. Perhaps numbers find Army life to their liking (it resembles slavery, No?) and they become a military class.
 
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Faeelin

Banned
IIRC, there was discussion of limitting it to the east side of the appalachians. That might cause it to die out early on.
 
I think the easiest way to eliminate slavery in early America is not in 1783 but by delaying the invention of the cotton gin for a decade or two.
 
Slave nos. during ARW

hey guys IIRC, I read that the proportion of blacks in the American colonies by 1783 was actually quite high- some 1 in 5 of the population, and the highest proportion of Africans in America ever.
 
The Northwest Ordinance Bans Slavery, IIRC this failed by one vote.
1789 the consitution bans importation by 1801 and frees slaves by 1805.
 
Maybe a state is set aside for africans somewhere in the South - kind of like the black homelands of South Africa.
 
Indentured Servants?

Just make the war last longer and more slaves would have been freed by the British. The number of freed slaves was doubling every year as more of them learned of the reality of freedom.
A better Revolutionary army, but with no French, Spanish, and Dutch help, you get a longer war.
Maybe the Brits take DelMarVa peninsula as a base and move the slaves there after they lose more of the land around the cities they controlled like Charleston and Savannah? A food supply area. Same with Long Island to feed New York City. Both the peninsula and the island would be relatively easy to defend against the Colonials.
Also, they could bribe the Indians to offer sanctuary for slaves running the other way and helped onwards to New Orleans. The Indians wanted slaves, but they wanted guns more.
If Britain had had even a few steam boats on the Mississippi they could have got enough guns to the Indians to really give the Colonials fits. It would have been cheaper than the armies they kept sending.
Say they keep Long Island and New York City, Savannah, Charleston, New Orleans, St. Petersburgh, the Delaware peninsula, Halifax, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island. The colonials can't take the fortified cities, and with nearby food sources, they can't starve them out either, the slaves keep leaking away and joining the British, and finally the colonials strike a deal with the slaves to stop the war.
Britain loses it's bases on the mainland and the freed slave dominated Long Island and DelMarVa agricultural areas. They keep Newfoundland for naval stores and fish.
Say 1776 to 1786. Ten years with the freed slave population doubling every year, as fast as they can grow enough food for the next years batch of freed slaves, with the surplus population moved to New Orleans or St. Petersburgh and away from the colonials?
 
Chris said:
What might happen to the US democragics and consitution if the US was to have good reason to end slavery after the revolution?

Well, one cause sectional conflict is removed, obviously. I don't see it having too much effect on the Constitution, except obviously there is no need to include the fugitive slave clause. Given your proposed point of departure (greater and more successful slave revolts in support of the British during the Revolution), I have serious doubts that the freed slaves would have been allowed to stay in the United States. These "Afro-Tories" would be no more welcome in America than the OTL Tories were after the Revolution, and probably the British would be forced to evacuate them, as they did the majority of the Loyalists, after the war. And I doubt that those few who were allowed to remain would be granted any citizenship rights. They would doubtless live under a system of "Jim Crow" segregation, just as blacks did in the Northern States before and after the ACW and in the Southern States after the ACW in OTL.

Would there still have been an ACW? In my view, probably, but probably not in the 1860s. The two sections would still have developed distinct regional cultures (the population composing them would have been different...primarily English and German in the North, a lot more Celtic in the South...and the geography of the South is simply better suited to agriculture than that of the North, which would have meant the North still industrializes a lot faster), and the really central issue of the war...the relationship of the States to the Federal Government, and the right of secession...would be unresolved. In OTL we came perilously close to secession (and probably war) at different times over a number of issues unrelated to slavery. Sooner or later, a State was going to exercise it's right of secession, and a war may well break out over this as in OTL.
 
Eli Whitney

In the late 18th century, there was a lot of talk of ending slavery because it was not very economical. It cost a lot of money to feed and house a slave, and the profit from agricultural labor wasn't all that good. It seemed that it would be better to simply hire farm workers, who only require a small wage to do the same job. This changed because of Eli Whitney, who invented the cotton gin. The cotton gin allowed cotton to have its kernel removed rapidly and mechanically. Cotton was an important product of the time, and eventually contributed to an economic boom in the South because of this device. Slaves then became economically useful, since they could harvest lots of cotton without wasting hours removing the kernel.

So, just have Eli Whitney invent the cotton gin years later. (Eli Whitney made some other inventions, so I'd rather not kill him off entirely.) By that time, a Constitutional ammendment ends slavery, with ready consent from the slaveholding states. This changes history quite remarkably. Not only is the Civil War eliminated, but so are all the state compromise controversies.
 
Adamteus -- Very good thoughts except why is a constitutional amendment necessary? The individual states will outlaw slavery though I expect in the South a gradual phaseout with compensation to the slaveowners would be popular. Again the ever popular misconception that nothing gets done unless the Federal government does it.
 
There was two Slaverys in the US.-One the Plantation system whe all know and love [from GWTW & those Shirley Temple movies]. The Plantations were Factories, with owners, Office people, foremen [overseers] & workers.
OTOH there were the Farms, Worked by the owners family -with the help of several slaves [usally a family or two]. In the same way that small farms are worked today. So WI the Farm system had been the Dominant form. It is easier, to free 2-3 workers who will have to have a job [stay and work] than a whole Plantationful of laborers who will immediatly want to get far away.
any thoughts on this :)
 
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