AHC and WI: US Constitution Less Pro-Slavery

Would NC, SC and GA even dare to go it alone? (Especially with western NC possibly revolting).

At a minimum you'd need VA to avoid a short war of annexation.
 
By being "pro-slavery", I am of course referring to the two most notorious aspects of the document -- the 3/5 Clause and the Slave Trade (or 1808) Clause. How could either (or both) of these elements have been absent or weaker, while still not preventing southern states (like South Carolina) from ratifying the document?

I don't know that either clause makes the Constitution pro-slavery; rather, they are points where it is not anti-slavery.

I'm not sure how the slave trade clause could have been different.

On the "3/5" clause - it is a neutral compromise between those who wanted slaves counted for apportionment of representation, but not of direct taxation, and those who wanted slaves counted for direct taxation, but not representation. It became functionally pro-slavery because Congress never assessed direct taxes on the states.

Suppose the clause had been different - that there was more concern about future Federal expenses, and that Southerners really wanted to minimize their share of these expected tax assessments. They fight to prevent slaves from being counted at all for taxation, and agree that therefore slaves shall not be counted for representation.

In a sense this is the same compromise as OTL - slaves will have the same value for both purposes. However, as in OTL, there are no direct taxes apportioned. This is part because the northern states would bear a larger share, but they have more votes to oppose it.

Long-term - Congress and the electoral college are differently apportioned. For instance, a quick look at 1850 indicates 21 fewer slave-state Representatives and EVs.

However, this would not affect the outcomes of the 1852, 1856, or 1860 elections.
 
The Whiskey Rebellion was in 1791, long after the Continental Congress had been superseded by Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

Still, the OP doesn't stipulate precisely when the PoD should happen (only suggests it be closer to the Treaty of Paris, but only in the sense of nothing beforehand), so AIUI the point still stands even if the legislature is structured differently between then and 1791.

Virginia was 39% slaves in 1790, and only 31% slaves in 1860. Plus Virginia politics was dominated by the big plantation owners of the Tidewater, even more than in 1860, as there was much less settlement beyond the Appalachians.

Then how do you explain Jefferson's platform popularity in Virginia, who was not amenable to the plantation system as developed during the Antebellum era, but espoused precisely that settlement pattern that was still yet to fully form? Virginia was dominated by the Tidewater at that point in time, sure, but said Tidewater planters weren't themselves the hard-charging slaveocrats we've come to know and love by this point, especially since there weren't any real slave codes beyond the House of Burgesses' partus sequitur ventrem decision in 1662. Then there's the fact that free blacks in the Upper South grew from 1% to 10% within less than two decades with no real efforts to stop or halt the manumission process (the 1723 law against manumission having been struck down during the Revolution), which again strikes me not as the act of the slaveocrat.
 
Perhaps it would help if the OP wasn't limited to "change one of these two clauses". For example, I already mentioned the Electoral College's complicity, so maybe the founders adopt the popularly elected President from the beginning? (Though that would have its own complications.) Alternatively, maybe a successful 1784 Ordinance lays the foundation for the founders expressly banning slavery in the territories; or, as a version of that, such a ban might be in effect for the same period as the slave trade's exemption, as a compromise with delegates opposed to said concession. Would that work?

<Virginia>

Virginia's history with slavery is somewhat more complicated than the deep south's, from its origins in seeking to crush rebellion to being feared by its practitioners because it might start one.
 
But isn't plantation agriculture impossible in the West anyway? You're not going to be able to grow cotton in Arizona and New Mexico.

Oh yes, you will be able to, assuming the Southwest went slave/Confederate. Cotton is one of the 5 Big C's of Arizona. The slaves would also be helpful in improving the irrigation systems.
 
I think the clause easiest to change would be the 1808 one. If, say, it was 1798 or 1803 instead, plantation slavery is just that bit less entrenched in Virginia (and to a lesser extent other states) when the slave trade is abolished.
Another POD might be no Georgian legalisation of slavery.
 
I think the clause easiest to change would be the 1808 one. If, say, it was 1798 or 1803 instead, plantation slavery is just that bit less entrenched in Virginia (and to a lesser extent other states) when the slave trade is abolished.

Initially I would have agreed, but I'm wondering now if alternative changes (like limiting slavery, at least initially, from the territories) might be more plausible.

Another POD might be no Georgian legalisation of slavery.

Too early.
 
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