AHC: Avoid the Civil War

Yes. I understand their difference. And slavery is really bad, it should be ended.

I just do not understand why would they go to a war because of that.

Just like I would not approve of child labour/ or other social issues, does it mean I would approve of going to war because of that?

And why the North feels so concerned? Is it of their business to interfere in the matters of the South? (I am not sympathizing with the South, I am just questioning as an outsider).

if anything, the North was JUSTIFIED in interfering with the South: Lost Causers and Neo-Confederates always call it "the War of Northern Aggression" and say it was about "states' rights". which states' rights, you ask? TO OWN SLAVES, to make the very idea of free states null and void (thanks, Roger Taney; it lifts my heart to know you're being gnawed on by Satan for your betrayal of your fellow humans), and to give themselves an overwhelming electoral majority for a population THAT THEY DIDN'T EVEN CONSIDER HUMAN. and let's also not forget that THE SOUTH attacked Sumter for the HEINOUS crime against humanity of BEING RESUPPLIED WITH FOOD

sorry for the text-based shouting; i just feel REALLY strongly about this and have argued with so many Lost Causers (or, rather, the same ones over and over on Historum) that i've garnered quite alot of information for the argument proving that the South was in no way justified in its rebellion, especially since they got off easy--iirc, NONE of their leadership was executed after the war, which is alot more than can be said of most other failed rebels in history
 
if anything, the North was JUSTIFIED in interfering with the South: Lost Causers and Neo-Confederates always call it "the War of Northern Aggression" and say it was about "states' rights". which states' rights, you ask? TO OWN SLAVES, to make the very idea of free states null and void (thanks, Roger Taney; it lifts my heart to know you're being gnawed on by Satan for your betrayal of your fellow humans), and to give themselves an overwhelming electoral majority for a population THAT THEY DIDN'T EVEN CONSIDER HUMAN. and let's also not forget that THE SOUTH attacked Sumter for the HEINOUS crime against humanity of BEING RESUPPLIED WITH FOOD

sorry for the text-based shouting; i just feel REALLY strongly about this and have argued with so many Lost Causers (or, rather, the same ones over and over on Historum) that i've garnered quite alot of information for the argument proving that the South was in no way justified in its rebellion, especially since they got off easy--iirc, NONE of their leadership was executed after the war, which is alot more than can be said of most other failed rebels in history


Thank you for your reply.

I am not a lost causer (I am not even American!) though I am aware of them. I just cannot remind myself of another war which is caused by an 'internal social issue' (I am not talking about 'external' because they can be a only a plausible casus belli).

But still, there are a lot of horrendous social issues in the world (at that time) and it might cause a divide in a country. But I don't see any war would be resulted from them. Maybe slavery is the worst 'social issue', but its still not too convincing.

Yeah, I also think that the treatment of the rebels is quite lenient.

I am raising this question as I am not sure if it is a war about 'slavery', which begs the OT's question.
 
I am not too knowledgeable about American's history. So please forgive me if I asked silly questions.

So if the people in the North respect the slaves very much that they think slavery is totally unacceptable, I assume most of them are African-American (please tell me if it is an acceptable term here), why does it take nearly 100 years to give them more respectable Civil rights? (but still just 'more' respectable) So to free them from being non/sub-human to second class citizen? Of course it is an improvement.

So slavery is not fine, but second class people is fine. And they (North) fight a war for that? And they claim they fight for them? So what's the intention of the North? I am really puzzled.
 
I am not a lost causer (I am not even American!) though I am aware of them. I just cannot remind myself of another war which is caused by an 'internal social issue' (I am not talking about 'external' because they can be a only a plausible casus belli).

But still, there are a lot of horrendous social issues in the world (at that time) and it might cause a divide in a country. But I don't see any war would be resulted from them. Maybe slavery is the worst 'social issue', but its still not too convincing.

I am raising this question as I am not sure if it is a war about 'slavery', which begs the OT's question.
well technically, any civil war is caused by "internal social issues", even if some of them have an external factor towards them (for Russia, it was the Tsar not only being an awful ruler but also being married to a German princess while the country was at war with Germany)

as to the last part of your post, like i said, the war technically WAS about states' rights. it's just that the only states' right the Confederate leadership cared about was the right to own slaves. Lincoln hadn't even taken any measures to limit the expansion of slavery into other states and/or territories when the South rebelled, though that had been his platform during the election and, for the first time, the North had enough LEGITIMATE electoral votes to negate all of the, for want of a better word, cheater votes that the South got via the Three-Fifths Compromise* and mark 1860 as pretty much the first time the election didn't go to a slaver or a doughface (a Southerner in every way except that he was from the North)

*since you say you're not American, i'll clarify in case you don't know: after the Revolution, the South had a very small population of freedmen compared to the North and, being the spoiled brats that they were, the Southern representatives flat-out refused to go along with the rest of the country unless they were compensated by counting 3/5 slaves in their states as part of the population--remember, most ethnic Europeans didn't even consider black Africans and other groups that were enslaved human beings at this time--so that it would be "fair" (in fact, it gave them disproportionate representation)
 
Thank you for your reply.

I am not a lost causer (I am not even American!) though I am aware of them. I just cannot remind myself of another war which is caused by an 'internal social issue' (I am not talking about 'external' because they can be a only a plausible casus belli).

But still, there are a lot of horrendous social issues in the world (at that time) and it might cause a divide in a country. But I don't see any war would be resulted from them. Maybe slavery is the worst 'social issue', but its still not too convincing.

Yeah, I also think that the treatment of the rebels is quite lenient.

I am raising this question as I am not sure if it is a war about 'slavery', which begs the OT's question.

So some background-Slavery in the US was always a state-by-state issue; there was never a point in American history except maybe between Dred Scott(in the sense of 'the court case in the eyes of many northerners gutted anti-slavery legislation for good) and the outbreak of war where making slavery legal or illegal in all states was on the table. So slavery was legal in a limited number of states, illegal in a less-limited number, and contested heavily. The federal government could however at least in principle require new states being added to the union to ban slavery; the Northwest Ordnance notably banned slavery in all new states created out of those territories. So conflicts over slavery were less about "can it be legal or illegal in the US" and more about "What territory it can be permitted in?" with Southerners(and their Northern supporters, or "doughfaces") and anti-Slavery northerners jockeying to get states admitted slave or free.

Anyhow, now that that's out of the way-yes, it was over slavery because the Southern political elites had over the 19th century basically gone from "slavery is a necessary evil" to "slavery is a positive good" and become more and more a society that relied on slavery, sought to expand and protect it by addling slave states(up to and including annexing Latin American territory for the sole purpose of adding new slave states) in order to maintain a chokehold on the legislature and attempting to neuter abolitionism more generally, and simply could not tolerate anything that even smelled like a threat to the 'Peculiar Institution". It didn't help that they were in more or less constant paranoia over potential slave revolts, meaning that abolitionism was seen as a direct threat to social stability. So it was rather more than a 'social issue' on the order of say, child labor; it was an existential question in American politics and political discourse.
 
Simply put, I'm afraid you can't avoid a Civil War over slavery, with any POD after 1850.

One plausible alternative may be to find some way to have the *North* secede.....which would be tough to pull off that late in the game, though not impossible; what if the Supreme Court, somehow, decided to open *all* territories to slavery, perhaps as part of an ATL *Kansas-Nebraska Act?

The North seceding sound like an interesting scenario. Has anyone ever tried to write a TL based on that premise before?
 
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