AH Challenge: Abolish slavery in the United States without causing a Civil War

If you had an earlier POD, you could have Eli Whitney die before he invents the cotton gin.

Or have a massive slave revolt that puts enough fear into slaveowners they accept freeing slaves and sending them to Liberia.

Conversely, suppose an entrepenuer starts using skilled slave labor more widely in hired out work. More slaves are able to buy their freedom , creating a snowball effect that puts pressure on slaveowners to let their less skilled slaves be bought out as well.

I don't think a slave revolt will want to make the Southrons give up their highly profitable enterprise.

IIRC, manumission was restricted in many states. Not to mention the fact that any increase in the number of free blacks would be seen as a threat by the slaveowning establishment, who would presumably bring an end to the business.

Nat Turner doesn't revolt and kill tons of white people, instead he convinces his owner to free him so he can go continue preaching to other slaves across the South. Seeing this example, [insert random period Virginia politician here] becomes even more firm in his abolitionist sympathies. IOTL Virginia was considering getting rid of slavery around this time, but Nat Turner's revolt scared the hell out of them. Slavery went from the ancient institution it was, where slaves were 'owned' but they were still considered human and they were taught to read so they could read the Bible, to the institution of chattel slavery where nobody wanted to think of them as people that was destroyed thirty years later.

If Virginia engages in a manumission program or something similar in the early 1830's, the rest of the upper South is likely to follow over the course of the 30's and 40's. I don't know about the lower South, though. The Sun Belt was much more dependent on slavery than even the upper South was. However, it's far more likely that the Federal government will eventually get around to banning the practice if it's only occurring in four or five states along the lower Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

Leaving aside the question of whether or not an end to slavery in Virginia would be either permanent or spread to the rest of the Upper South - I don't know enough on this subject to say for sure - if the federal government imposes a ban on the practice before the early 1900s, the Lower South will revolt. Whether or not such an easily crushed insurrection counts as Civil War is a matter for debate.

As an aside, I'm glad that no one seems to be disputing the fact that slavery was the primary cause of the American Civil War.
 
Then someone else would invent a device fairly similar in capability. The moment was right for the cotton gin and the industry was searching for a device to do the job. Given the fact that Whitney made little money off the gin since there was a proliferation of copy cat devices it stands to reason that all that was needed was some time and experimentation by anyone.

But a little more time make do the trick; delaying the invention of the cotton gin might give time for the abolition movement in the Upper South to gain a toehold, rather than being swept away.
 
Okay, someone mentioned the territorial governance measure of 1784 that almost outlawed it in the territories; let's go a setp further. Let's add one more Northern colony.

As an example, let's say that a successful pullback at Brandywine, with a maybe pyrrhic win for Howe if not a loss, leads to American attempts to take Canada again; but they limit themselves this time, to Nova Scotia. So, one extra colony, in addition to the Northwest (taken by Clark before a late 1778 peace), tips the balance in favor of eliminating slavery in ther territories.

Now, if a Constitution of some sort is eventually needed. in the late 1780s, before the cotton gin's invention, could the new nation agree to a gradual outlawing of slavery altogether? They've already figured it won't exist in the territories, after all. They could have a compromise where slaves born after a certain date are free, etc..

Of course, I suppose it's just as likely that the only change would be no slave trade at all. If that much changes. Still, more Northern territory is a help, and this might be feasible without the whole "U.S. takes Call of Canada in the ARW" cliche iof newbies. I think one extra colony can be done, with French help, at least.
 
Leaving aside the question of whether or not an end to slavery in Virginia would be either permanent or spread to the rest of the Upper South - I don't know enough on this subject to say for sure - if the federal government imposes a ban on the practice before the early 1900s, the Lower South will revolt. Whether or not such an easily crushed insurrection counts as Civil War is a matter for debate.

Uh well, Jefferson favored the idea of gradual emancipation and created a constitution for Virginia that would free all slave children born after 1800. So yeah, it kind of would be permanent. And why would the south revolt? Why can't the rest of the south just follow Virginia's example and gradually give up their slaves instead of having to put down constant slave rebellions and lose a lot of lives for an outdated and unprofitable system?
 
Uh well, Jefferson favored the idea of gradual emancipation and created a constitution for Virginia that would free all slave children born after 1800. So yeah, it kind of would be permanent. And why would the south revolt? Why can't the rest of the south just follow Virginia's example and gradually give up their slaves instead of having to put down constant slave rebellions and lose a lot of lives for an outdated and unprofitable system?

Uh well, we were talking about a law passed in the 1830s. Nothing to do with Jefferson. Even if it was, constitutions can be amended. The free can be enslaved. And they might, because slavery was a profitable institution at this time.

Which brings us on to your second point. "Constant slave rebellions"? "Lose a lot of lives"? Look at the facts. There were 250 slave rebellions in North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centures. Less than two per year. The biggest consisted of just a few hundred slaves, and the most deadly to whites - the only people the average Southron of the time cared about - led to around sixty deaths. Not bad for the basis of your economy, especially if, like almost everyone at the time, if you ignore the human suffering.
 
Uh well, we were talking about a law passed in the 1830s. Nothing to do with Jefferson. Even if it was, constitutions can be amended. The free can be enslaved. And they might, because slavery was a profitable institution at this time.

I guarantee you an attempt to re-enslave a free population would trigger a civil war on the spot. It just doesn't work like that.
 
How about a POD where slavery is denounced in the Declaration of Independence? Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin tried to put an anti-slavery clause in the DOI, but wound up taking it out because the souther colonies objected.

This might cause an even earlier split or even the Union not being able to form.
 
I guarantee you an attempt to re-enslave a free population would trigger a civil war on the spot. It just doesn't work like that.

Maybe. But if the author of "Slavery by Another Name" is to be believed, that more or less happened after the Civil War in our timeline.
 
Share-cropping is quite the same thing as reversing manumission.

Actually, the book is about forced convict labour. Free blacks picked up on trumped-up charges - such as changing employers without permission - and forced into de-facto slavery. See the book I mentioned above, along with "One Dies, Get Another".
 
The "Fire Break" scenario.

At first glance, it would seem that there is probably no way to avoid the Civil War bloodbath without recourse to major changes in the TL.

Even if you were to somehow eliminate Eli Whitney and his Cotton Gin...

...The fact is that a practicable Cotton Gin was a much sought-after invention and while Whitney's was the first practicable and successful one there were a number of other inventors pursuing the same invention at the same moment. Unfortunately for this to be our POD, Whitney's invention was not (enough of) a "quantum leap" - even without Whitney we get someone else's Cotton Gin and the concomitant expansion of Slavery.

I think that a more likely and practicable means would be the employment of a "fire break" scenario. Sometimes, when fighting the spead of a large forest fire, the firefighters will start their own (little) fire to forestall it.

In my study of the American Civil War, and the causes leading to it, my Professors often emphasized that the war had two preeminent causes: Slavery...and States Rights!

Therefore, I think that the best chance to avoid the terrifically devastating 1861-1865 conflict is by assuming that the 1832 Nullification Crisis escalates to the point where President Andrew Jackson declares South Carolina in REBELLION.

He then instructs the two US Army Divisions (under General Zachery Taylor and General Winfield Scott's command, respectively) he's already directed for deployment to proceed to Columbia, SC and put down the "Rebellion."

Given that Jackson, a southerner and a "westerner" and a strong nationalist, is also made of far sterner stuff than Franklin Pierce and James Buchanon... And, given that the issue in 1832 is about sectional economic development and States Rights... It then becomes possible to see SC's Rebellion crushed - quickly and effectively. And Calhoun, Ruffin, and the other "Fire Eaters", et. al. captured and likely hung (remember, this is Andrew Jackson we're talking about) as traitors.

Now, if "States Rights" is crushed in 1832-1833, then the concept of "Succession" (as in 1861) has no political basis. The "Peculiar Institution", Slavery, has to now (somehow) withstand the increasing National industrialization as well as agricultural mechanization without its philosophical/political shield.

Possibly Slavery lingers into the 1880's or 1890's with Slave staffed Cotton Mills...

And, maybe, we STILL have a Civil War in 1861. Although if we do, it's now quite possible (without the political underpinning of "States Rights") that Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Texas, and (maybe even) Tennessee don't succeed. We might then have, at worst, a shorter and less destructive rebellion.

Of course if you still get a 1861 Civil War, in these circumstances, it would feature Robert E. Lee, T.J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and J.E.B. Stuart (and many others) in Union "Blue" rather than rebel "Gray."

 
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In OTL Virginia came within a vote or two of manumitting the slaves. At the time there were sizeable, indigenous manumission movements in the other states of the Upper South. At the time, Virginia was by far the preeminent Southern state and the other states of the South, especially of the Upper South, took their lead from her.

Change a vote or two, and you'll probably end up with most of the upper South manumitting slaves. That means Southern nationalism is much less likely to take up slavery as an integral part of their regional culture. The slave states don't make huge crises about adding new slave states to maintain the balance of power because the balance of power is already irrevocably tilted in favor of free states.
 
I've always thought about whether it would be possible to avoid the civil war entirely and still get rid of slavery. And so, your challenge is to abolish slavery in the US sometime in the 19th Century without causing the country to fall apart.

Actually, given the rather unique set of circumstances which led to the Civil War breaking out in OTL, this might be easier to achieve than one might think.

The key factor in bringing about Southern secession in 1860 was one man...John Brown. John Brown's raid, by resurrecting the spectre of a widespread slave revolt, created huge paranoia in the South on the eve of the 1860 campaigning season.

The South watched in horror as John Brown's actions were not met with condemnation in the North...instead, he was lionized in many quarters. The Republican Party officially condemned Brown's actions, but these condemnations were very weak, and were belied by statements made by various Republican politicians. So it appeared that there was now a political party in the North which had no serious issues with thousands of Southern white women and children being murdered in their beds (no, John Brown's men didn't actually murder any women and children in their beds...they were captured and didn't get the chance...but every slave revolt in the past HAD done that, and the people of the South knew that was the likely result of a largescale slave revolt).

Thus, in the 1860 election, the South was not only thinking in terms of political advantage. It was, quite literally, thinking in terms of self-preservation of the very lives of it's people. And so it demanded that the Democratic Party candidate not only be neutral with regard to slavery...which had been acceptable in past elections...but that he be positively a defender of it. Stephen Douglas was not acceptable from that standpoint, and the South walked out of the Democratic Convention and split the party. This gave Lincoln victory in 1860 and set in motion the chain of events which led to war in 1861.

Remove John Brown from the equation, by whatever means (one could posit that the Kansas-Nebraska Act is never passed, and Brown never goes to Kansas, or that Brown is killed in a train wreck on the way to Kansas, or even killed while in Kansas, before he makes contact with the "Secret Six" wealthy Northern abolitionists who funded his insane plan to raid Harper's Ferry), then this hardening of the Southern position at the 1860 Democratic Convention won't occur, and Stephen Douglas will likely be acceptable to the South in 1860. Douglas wins the election, and Abraham Lincoln goes down in history as a footnote...the "also ran" in the 1860 election.

The U.S. stumbles on through the rest of the 19th century, until the double whammy of collapsing cotton prices and the boll weevil hit in the 1890s. Slavery begins to be abolished, State by State, in the first decade of the 1900s. By 1920, it is completely gone.
 
Getting rid of the Kansas-Nebraska Act will also make northerners much less intransigent. Kansas-Nebraska was when the idea of an aggressive Slave Power really took hold in the north.
 
In OTL Virginia came within a vote or two of manumitting the slaves. At the time there were sizeable, indigenous manumission movements in the other states of the Upper South. At the time, Virginia was by far the preeminent Southern state and the other states of the South, especially of the Upper South, took their lead from her.

Change a vote or two, and you'll probably end up with most of the upper South manumitting slaves. That means Southern nationalism is much less likely to take up slavery as an integral part of their regional culture. The slave states don't make huge crises about adding new slave states to maintain the balance of power because the balance of power is already irrevocably tilted in favor of free states.

There is a bit of a hole in your logic here. Most of the profit in slavery for the Upper South was in selling slaves to the Lower South. If Virginia is removed from the market, the price of slaves will rise, raising profit margins for the Upper South, thus intensifying the already high opposition to manumission.

In other words, if Virginia bans slavery, we end up with a distribution of slavery comparable to that of forced convict labour half a century later, which was used intensively everywhere in the South outside of Virginia.
 
But selling slaves was profitable for Virginians also, yet they came very close to voting for manumission (note that the law would have had a period of time before manumission went into effect during which most slaves would have been sold south).

But, even assuming you're right, and only Virginia manumits, I still think it avoids the Civil War.
 
The key factor in bringing about Southern secession in 1860 was one man...John Brown. John Brown's raid, by resurrecting the spectre of a widespread slave revolt, created huge paranoia in the South on the eve of the 1860 campaigning season.

The South watched in horror as John Brown's actions were not met with condemnation in the North...instead, he was lionized in many quarters.

Much like Preston Brooks was not met with condemnation in the South when in 1856 he beat Charles Sumner unconscious on the floor of the Senate while Laurence Keitt held off anyone trying to aid Sumner.

Brooks was sent dozens of canes to replace the one he'd broken over Senator Sumner's head.

The Republican Party officially condemned Brown's actions, but these condemnations were very weak, and were belied by statements made by various Republican politicians.

Abraham Lincoln said that John Brown’s belief that slavery was wrong did not “excuse violence, bloodshed, and treason.”

Salmon Chase said of Brown’s actions –“How rash – how mad – how criminal.”

William Seward denounced Brown’s Raid as “an act of sedition and treason” and said his execution was “necessary and just”.

Remove John Brown and the eloquence he showed after his capture and you reduce the tensions, but there were men in the South who had been pushing for secession long before that. Initial fears of a slave uprising quickly faded when the South realized that not a single slave had joined John Brown’s raiders. Which didn’t mean people weren’t afraid of their slaves – there was the Texas Fire Scare of 1860 and Laurence Keitt’s brother was actually murdered by his slaves.

Thus, in the 1860 election, the South was not only thinking in terms of political advantage. It was, quite literally, thinking in terms of self-preservation of the very lives of it's people. And so it demanded that the Democratic Party candidate not only be neutral with regard to slavery...which had been acceptable in past elections...but that he be positively a defender of it. Stephen Douglas was not acceptable from that standpoint, and the South walked out of the Democratic Convention and split the party.

Actually, the split in the Democratic Party was over the party platform. The South walked out of the Democratic Convention before they began to vote on a candidate.

The Northern Democrats Platform supported slavery. It said it would abide by the Supreme Court’s decision (the same one that had rendered the Dred Scott decision) about slavery in the territories. It called for the annexation of Cuba, long favored by Southern leaders as a way to add more pro-slavery territory. It condemned attempts to evade the Fugitive Slave Law as hostile, subversive, and revolutionary.

That wasn’t enough for the Southern Democrats. Their Platform repudiated Popular Sovereignty and said that the inhabitants of Territories had no right to restrict slavery in the Territories. It also said that Congress had no right to restrict slavery in the Territories.

This gave Lincoln victory in 1860 and set in motion the chain of events which led to war in 1861.

Looking at the electoral vote, Lincoln still would have won handily if the Democratic Party had not split.
 
Actually, given the rather unique set of circumstances which led to the Civil War breaking out in OTL, this might be easier to achieve than one might think.

The key factor in bringing about Southern secession in 1860 was one man...John Brown. John Brown's raid, by resurrecting the spectre of a widespread slave revolt, created huge paranoia in the South on the eve of the 1860 campaigning season.

The South watched in horror as John Brown's actions were not met with condemnation in the North...instead, he was lionized in many quarters. The Republican Party officially condemned Brown's actions, but these condemnations were very weak, and were belied by statements made by various Republican politicians. So it appeared that there was now a political party in the North which had no serious issues with thousands of Southern white women and children being murdered in their beds (no, John Brown's men didn't actually murder any women and children in their beds...they were captured and didn't get the chance...but every slave revolt in the past HAD done that, and the people of the South knew that was the likely result of a largescale slave revolt).

Thus, in the 1860 election, the South was not only thinking in terms of political advantage. It was, quite literally, thinking in terms of self-preservation of the very lives of it's people. And so it demanded that the Democratic Party candidate not only be neutral with regard to slavery...which had been acceptable in past elections...but that he be positively a defender of it. Stephen Douglas was not acceptable from that standpoint, and the South walked out of the Democratic Convention and split the party. This gave Lincoln victory in 1860 and set in motion the chain of events which led to war in 1861.

Remove John Brown from the equation, by whatever means (one could posit that the Kansas-Nebraska Act is never passed, and Brown never goes to Kansas, or that Brown is killed in a train wreck on the way to Kansas, or even killed while in Kansas, before he makes contact with the "Secret Six" wealthy Northern abolitionists who funded his insane plan to raid Harper's Ferry), then this hardening of the Southern position at the 1860 Democratic Convention won't occur, and Stephen Douglas will likely be acceptable to the South in 1860. Douglas wins the election, and Abraham Lincoln goes down in history as a footnote...the "also ran" in the 1860 election.

The U.S. stumbles on through the rest of the 19th century, until the double whammy of collapsing cotton prices and the boll weevil hit in the 1890s. Slavery begins to be abolished, State by State, in the first decade of the 1900s. By 1920, it is completely gone.


Possibly, this the way to end slavery in the south before 1920 or so. If the South wins a war over slavery it will continue until at least 1920 or so.
 
Much like Preston Brooks was not met with condemnation in the South when in 1856 he beat Charles Sumner unconscious on the floor of the Senate while Laurence Keitt held off anyone trying to aid Sumner.

Brooks was sent dozens of canes to replace the one he'd broken over Senator Sumner's head.

Not a valid comparison. Brooks' action, though deplorable, did not threaten anyone except Sumner. Brooks never tried to incite a wave of mass murder across the North. John Brown's raid was an attempt to do exactly that to the South.

Abraham Lincoln said that John Brown’s belief that slavery was wrong did not “excuse violence, bloodshed, and treason.”

Salmon Chase said of Brown’s actions –“How rash – how mad – how criminal.”

William Seward denounced Brown’s Raid as “an act of sedition and treason” and said his execution was “necessary and just”.

Yet Lincoln and Chase and Seward were not the only Republican politicians making statements on the issue. I have personally read some Republican campaign tracts which praised Brown's actions, for example, and others which issued very lukewarm condemnations.

We can argue from here to doomsday about what the Republican leadership really thought about Brown's raid. But the important issue here is not what THEY thought, or even what they said. The important issue is how the South PERCEIVED they thought about it. And a perusal of Southern newspapers of the time will clearly show that it was perceived...whether rightly or wrongly...that the Republicans approved of the raid, and that their policies, as expressed in their platform, would encourage further such incidents.

Remove John Brown and the eloquence he showed after his capture and you reduce the tensions, but there were men in the South who had been pushing for secession long before that.

True enough. And indeed, conventions had been held in the South discussing secession at various times over the years. But public opinion in the South was generally against secession right up to 1860, when suddenly it changed. I would argue that the increased tensions resulting from Brown's raid were the trigger for that change. Nothing you have said disproves that.

Initial fears of a slave uprising quickly faded when the South realized that not a single slave had joined John Brown’s raiders. Which didn’t mean people weren’t afraid of their slaves – there was the Texas Fire Scare of 1860 and Laurence Keitt’s brother was actually murdered by his slaves.

Well, it may be true that people didn't fear an IMMEDIATE uprising after John Brown went to the gallows. But fear of an uprising, aided by extremists from the North, did play a very central role in Southern thinking during the 1860 campaign. Again, a perusal of Southern newspapers and political speeches of the time clearly shows that.


Actually, the split in the Democratic Party was over the party platform. The South walked out of the Democratic Convention before they began to vote on a candidate.

The Northern Democrats Platform supported slavery. It said it would abide by the Supreme Court’s decision (the same one that had rendered the Dred Scott decision) about slavery in the territories. It called for the annexation of Cuba, long favored by Southern leaders as a way to add more pro-slavery territory. It condemned attempts to evade the Fugitive Slave Law as hostile, subversive, and revolutionary.

That wasn’t enough for the Southern Democrats. Their Platform repudiated Popular Sovereignty and said that the inhabitants of Territories had no right to restrict slavery in the Territories. It also said that Congress had no right to restrict slavery in the Territories.

All of which makes one ask, why, all of a sudden, are they adopting such an extreme position? Again, I would argue that the evidence points to fallout from John Brown's raid and it's effect on the Southern psyche at the time. And again, nothing you have said disproves that.

Looking at the electoral vote, Lincoln still would have won handily if the Democratic Party had not split.

That's true, as far as it goes. But it ignores several important factors. The electoral vote split was 169 for Lincoln versus 134 combined for the other candidates...a margin of only 35 votes. Several of the States which went for Lincoln did so by relatively narrow margins, and might have gone the other way if the South was perceived as being less extreme by the North. In Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, where he won with 52.3%, 51.1%, and 50.7% of the popular vote respectively, there were more than enough electoral votes to swing the election. For that matter, Lincoln won New York with only 53.7% of the popular vote, and New York had 35 electors at the time...enough to have changed the result all by itself had it gone Democratic in a hypothetical Douglas v. Lincoln race.

The insistence by the South on the extreme pro-slavery platform at the Democratic Convention, which you mentioned previously, and the fact that they chose to split the Democratic Party over the issue, was a major factor in that perception on the part of Northern voters. Remove John Brown, and the South probably doesn't insist on the extreme platform in the first place...which means the South is perceived as being less extreme by Northern voters, some of whom vote for Douglas instead of Lincoln. Under those conditions, given a united Democratic Party and a straight 2 way race, Douglas most probably wins.
 
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