AH Challenge: Make Catholicism more dominant in the south

As we all know, most of the south are baptist/protestants while the Catholics, though there are a great deal of them, are nowhere near as prevalent as they are in the North. How would you make it so Catholicism is the dominant religion in the South?
 
As Catholicism is not as rare in South Louisiana, and some parts of Florida as it is in other parts of the south, this is likely due to Spanish influence and in the case of LA - French and Spanish influence.


1. Greater Spanish dominence of the south, to include more states might increase Catholicism.

2. Greater migration of Spanish/French to what is now the continental US, rather than to central/south America.

3. A push for greater colonialism by France or greater population in the French (LA territory)

Just some thoughts.
 
The slave system limited opportunities for immigrants, so most of them went North.

Abolish slavery earlier or make it less widespread and you might have more Catholics in the South.

Even in OTL, you've got the Franco-Spanish influence, plus a map of Irish migration I saw once depicted a stream into New Orleans that was smaller than the one in New York.

(slaves were too valuable for really risky work--for that you hired Irishmen)
 

Skokie

Banned
In the early 18th century, have the Spanish consolidate their holdings in Florida and win a few decisive battles to conquer Georgia. Expel the Protestants, convert the slaves to Catholicism, and start enticing Palatinate Germans, Spanish and Portuguese to migrate to the area to run the plantations. Have the Catholic Church convert and subdue the Amerindians of the interior. Have Florida and Georgia be a haven for runaway slaves. Have a mixed-race, freed, small farmer population grow in numbers and push west and north into the backwoods before the Scots-Irish get there.

The southeast extreme of the US remains Catholic and polyglot. Wars are fought by the US for access to New Orleans, but neither the port nor the Southeast region is ever conquered nor admitted into the union, for fear of papist/foreign/mixed-race "contamination." Instead, the British conquer the region sometime in the early 19th century, and it becomes an extension of their West Indies holdings. They ban slavery as in OTL in the 1830s. South Asian and Indonesian workers are brought in to work the cotton plantations, thus adding to the melting pot. By 1900 the religious demography is 70% Catholic, 10% Hindu, 5% other Christian, 5% Muslim, 1% Jewish, 9% other.
 
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