Brilliantlight
Banned
What would have happened if instead of a revolt in the South you had a South that recognized that Lincoln won a fair election and they can hope for better next time?
No ACW
- Thread starter Brilliantlight
- Start date
David S Poepoe
Banned
What is possible would be the passage of the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution. If the Southern states don't revolt they certainly won't give Lincoln any oppurtunity to issue some sort of blanket emancipation. Slavery will have to be settled some peaceful means, if thats possible. This doesn't counter the extended growth of the Western states and their gains in Congressional representation.
Last edited:
Brilliantlight
Banned
tom said:
The South could have started playing real politics, trading favors like normal interest groups instead of making threats. It was time to start making deals not starting a war.
Brilliantlight said:
The South did that for 40 years prior to the war. Ever hear of the Missouri Compromise? The Compromise of 1850? It was only after, in the 1854 Kansas Nebraska Act, the Northern-controlled Congress set aside by legislation the compromises the South had previously made with the North that things started to go downhill and ended up in war.
True, the compromises were bound to be put aside sooner or later... the north was simply growing it's population in leaps and bounds, while the south increased much more slowly. The north would soon have had all the federal political power in it's hands. Since the north was becoming more and more antislavery, the compromises made in the first half of the century were not going to be held up for long... the population differences simply made it impossible to admit one slave and one free state together each time.. plus, the remaining US territories were completely unsuited for slavery anyway.... the south had simply run out of room to make more slave states. It's hard to see how any more compromises could be worked out....
Brilliantlight
Banned
David Howery said:
In other areas. It could go something like this: Have the government compensate the owners of slaves a certain amount of money per slave while freeing them. Lincoln tried that but in this time line it works. Maybe more cash or maybe the North also pays for some north-south roads along with east-west roads.
Actually, it was the South which was increasingly extreme and unwilling to compromise. From the disastrous Dred Scott decision which destroyed many concessions that the North felt they had paid for fairly, to the violence in Kansas because the South was determined to have the state without bothering to provide an actual population, it was the South which increasingly demanded more and gave little or nothing. The ultimate was in 1860 when extremists hijacked the Democratic Party, split it into three separate factions and handed Lincoln(39% of the vote) the presidency.
What would have happened if, based on the Democrat's voice in the Senate, an extremely sympathetic USSC, etc. the South had stayed? Well, they forfeited the territories, the Fugitive Slave Act, the border states that stayed in, and many other things the moment they left without any guarantee of winning so these things will still stand. They can almost certainly block Lincoln's major legislation, from the Homestead Act to the Transcontinental Railway and there will, of course, be no Emancipation Proclamation. The four USSC judges who resigned will stay on, so no hope for Lincoln there. Likely Lincoln is remembered as a one-term president of little more importance than Buchanan or Pierce.
And about 20 years later, when there really is a chance for the US government to outlaw slavery, the South is even more outclassed.
What would have happened if, based on the Democrat's voice in the Senate, an extremely sympathetic USSC, etc. the South had stayed? Well, they forfeited the territories, the Fugitive Slave Act, the border states that stayed in, and many other things the moment they left without any guarantee of winning so these things will still stand. They can almost certainly block Lincoln's major legislation, from the Homestead Act to the Transcontinental Railway and there will, of course, be no Emancipation Proclamation. The four USSC judges who resigned will stay on, so no hope for Lincoln there. Likely Lincoln is remembered as a one-term president of little more importance than Buchanan or Pierce.
And about 20 years later, when there really is a chance for the US government to outlaw slavery, the South is even more outclassed.
Brilliantlight
Banned
Grimm Reaper said:
Agreed, which means a South that was more willing to compromise will get more results.
Brilliantlight
Banned
tom said:
I think that could happen but the South was doomed to fall further and further behind the North due to its overdependence on slavery.
Most of Texas is just as unsuited to slavery as New Mexico and Arizona are. That's one of the main reasons, after nationalism, that they did not split. At most they could have created two states that could support slavery in the long run, but they would have been some of the smallest states in the South. Worse, it would mean creating one or more large free states to the west and south in the process, cancelling out the whole thing.
Net effect: 1 more slave state + 1 more free state
Net effect: 1 more slave state + 1 more free state
Admiral Matt said:
Not true...Even New Mexico Territory, as unsuited as it might seem to slavery, allowed slavery (in New Mexico, it tended to be Mexicans holding Apaches and Navajos as slaves rather than Anglos holding blacks, but the effect is the same). There is no reason why Texas could not have been divided into several slave States, even if a lot of Texas seems unsuitable for slavery.
I would also dispute whether most of Texas was actually unsuitable. Here in Arizona and in New Mexico, which are both much more barren than Texas, there are large cotton farms (indeed, Arizona is one of the largest producers of cotton in the U.S., larger than most Southern States are today). If it can be done here, it could have been done in Texas.
But all that would do is delay the inevitable. There is still a LOT more territory for the North to organize as free states than there is for the South to organize as slave states, and the balance of power is going to shift in favor of the North.
Texan slave cowboys
Weren't many of the blacks in Texas used as slave cowboys on the cattle ranches which were run there which were so much a part of the local economy (instead of the cotton and rice plantations in other parts of the South) ? Weren't alotta OTL black cowboys like Bill Pickett and Nat Love originally born into slavery conditions where they had the opportunities to develop their riding and animal husbandry skills ?
Weren't many of the blacks in Texas used as slave cowboys on the cattle ranches which were run there which were so much a part of the local economy (instead of the cotton and rice plantations in other parts of the South) ? Weren't alotta OTL black cowboys like Bill Pickett and Nat Love originally born into slavery conditions where they had the opportunities to develop their riding and animal husbandry skills ?