AH Challenge: USA the First Country to Abolish Slavery with OTL borders

Out of curiosity, could slavery be abolished in the US/thirteen colonies without a civil war? I mean we all know what happened OTL so would the same thing happen earlier, in the case of the US, or would we see the revolution being tied into slavery, in the case of slavery being abolished during the thirteen colonies?
 
Out of curiosity, could slavery be abolished in the US/thirteen colonies without a civil war? I mean we all know what happened OTL so would the same thing happen earlier, in the case of the US, or would we see the revolution being tied into slavery, in the case of slavery being abolished during the thirteen colonies?

I tentatively think it might have been possible, in the form of gradual emancipation, in the period from the revolution to the boom in cotton production (in other words, the 1790s and early 1800s). The southern states most definitely became more anti-abolition over time. Shortly after the revolution you had at least some prominent southern slave owners freeing their slaves or freeing their slaves in their wills. That virtually never happened 60 years later.
 
What about a cotton blight of some sort starting in the 1770s or so lasting to maybe around 1800? I am thinking of some sort of fungus, microbe or virus that kills cotton plants.
 

Dirk_Pitt

Banned
Well Virginia considered Emancipation in the 1830s OTL, the birthplace of American Slavery. If you butterfly the Cotton Gin you've got a very good start for ending slavery by the 1830s or at least making it an irrelevant issue by then. The upper south might actually abolish slavery by then, at least Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia.
 
The point being made is that the U.S.A. cannot be the first sovereign/independent nation in the world to abolish slavery. This is due to the fact that a few nations (including Portugal, China and Russia [sans serfdom]) had already done so prior to the birth of the U.S.A.

I think the OP is focusing on the Americas here, and specifically those colonies that imported Africans to work as slaves. Slavery in the Americas had a racial character that it did not have in much of the rest of the world, and this undoubtedly complicated the abolition movement.

(BTW, speaking of China, they passed abolition laws many times with limited effect, with the last being passed in 1909. Slavery is thought to have persisted as late as the Communist takeover.)
 
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So let's make Iceland more dependent upon slaves first, then move from there.

Again my point still stands, Iceland is not actually the problem here, it's how early on they abolished it. Butterflies alone will mean subsequent colonial history is nothing like OTL.
 
Again my point still stands, Iceland is not actually the problem here, it's how early on they abolished it. Butterflies alone will mean subsequent colonial history is nothing like OTL.

Fine then, let's have Iceland reconquered by a slaving power.

Let's not have a can't-do attitude here ;)
 
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