alternatehistory.com

29 October

By now highly exasperated with a treaty negotiation that has taken two and a half months and kept him from helping with a major constitutional crisis at home, the Prussian representative sits down with the Union and Confederate representatives (in separate meetings) to point out a few details of politics.

Among his key arguments for the Union are that it would be in the interest of the Union to make the British feel secure about Canada as this way they will be inclined to keep talking for longer instead of jumping straight to war, and that the United States could earn considerable clout with the British (and make the British opinion of the Confederacy harden) by adopting compensated emancipation shortly after the peace - something that would be cheap, as almost the entirety of the Union's slaves would be in the ceded areas, and something Seward happens to be ready to hear.
To the Confederacy, on the other hand, he stresses that they should allow the Union to choose between two or three options for what area of land to retain after the peace treaty (including the upper Delmarva) and not get too greedy and try to take everything. He also makes the point that being in the good terms of the British is essential for the newly formed nation.


30 October

Bismarck's discussions have had a salutatory effect on the speed of the proceedings, and the remaining border agreements start to be resolved with considerable speed. A treaty is taking shape by the evening, though questions of ratification (for example, whether the State of Missouri, the State of Maine, the State of Michigan, the State of New York and the States of Maryland need to ratify the treaty in addition to the two national governments of the Americas) do crop up.

The treaty as sent for ratification is roughly as follows.



US-British section

The boundary between the United States of America and British North America shall be as follows.

An area of land sufficient to allow the construction of a railroad from Quebec City to Frederickton shall be purchased by the British Empire from the State of Maine. The rail line shall be constructed as far north as practical, and the land more than twenty miles south of the rail line may be repurchased by the State of Maine once ten years have elapsed.
The northern bank of the Black River from the mouth to the town of Great Bend and the area north of the line Great Bend - Fort Covingdon shall be ceded to provide a defensive buffer for the St. Lawrence.
In addition the islands of Drummond, Neebish, Sugar and Isle Royale in the Great Lakes will be ceded to the Canadian provinces.
The area adjoining Lake of the Woods north of the 49th Parallel shall be ceded to British North America.
The Rosario Strait shall be the boundary between the Washington Territory and British Columbia, and Point Roberts shall be part of British Columbia additionally.
The United States grants the Right of Search to the British Empire.

US-CS section

The United States recognizes the independence of the Confederate States.

The boundary between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America shall be as follows.

The area of the Delmarva Peninsula that is part of the State of Virginia shall be retained by the Confederate States.
The Chesapeake Bay and lower Susquehanna navigation shall be shared between the nations.
The eastern terminus of the border shall be at the intersection of the Mason-Dixon survey line and the Susquehanna river, and the border will then follow the Mason-Dixon line west to the Ohio River.
The border will be the Ohio River from this point to the confluence with the Mississippi, which will then be the border downriver until the 37th Parallel.
The border shall then continue westwards from this point to the 114th line of longitude, at which point the border will follow this line until the 36th Parallel, which shall be the border from here to the Pacific.

The United States will not pay an indemnity to the Confederate States but will continue to assume the portion of Federal debt which would be assigned pro rata to the seceding states. Individual state debt is a matter for the state in question, with debt held by or to the State of Maryland being handled by the Confederate State of Maryland and debt held by or to the States of California and Missouri being matters for the Union States by those names.


Considerable additional text considers specific cases, and the document also contains a clarification of the rules on contraband and specifies that outgoing non-war commercial goods are explicitly not contraband (this clarification was added due to the controversy of cotton seizures as compared to the continuing Union grain export - one of the Russians notes grimly that had the British blocked the grain export as the Union did the cotton export, then the Union's government would likely have already collapsed for want of revenue.

The date of activation of the treaty provisions is specified as being two months after the last of the contending powers has ratified it, or six months after the conclusion of the conference if two powers have ratified it and one has not - whichever is sooner.



3 November
The text of the Treaty of Havana arrives in Richmond and in Washington via the telegraph (in the latter case passing through the Confederacy, in code). It leaks almost immediately, and leads to wild jubilation in the Confederate capital and considerable disquiet in the Union capital (which will now have to move, as it will be surrounded entirely by Confederate territory!)
Amid the political chaos, Lincoln has some calculations done on the cost of the compensated emancipation Seward recommends.

Delaware contains roughly 1,200 slaves, the section of Maryland which is to be retained by the Union about 15,000, and Missouri - largest remaining slave state in the Union - close to 70,000. These numbers are approximate, and drop a little below this once population movements have taken place, but the total of ~85,000 is used to calculate the required amount of cash - the sum of Six Millions of Dollars comes to about $70 per slave, which is high enough to be plausible but low enough to annoy.
Since post-treaty the United States would consist of eighteen free states and three slave, however, the prospect of a constitutional amendment to make slavery illegal is a very real possibility (though the motive would be as much to retain farmland for whites as anything - the less savoury side of the Free Soil movement is that they would rather blacks be somewhere else).