AHC: Conservative North, Liberal South

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make the American South a beacon of liberalism and the North a strongly conservative bloc by 2013. Bonus Points if most of the OTL CS States have legalized gay marriage.
 
A more complete Reconstruction could lead to a more left-leaning South. Maybe have Northern politics more dominated by the great aristocratic families, and have Southern politics dominated by various left-leaning populist groups?
 
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make the American South a beacon of liberalism and the North a strongly conservative bloc by 2013. Bonus Points if most of the OTL CS States have legalized gay marriage.

I'm not sure if a complete reversal compared to OTL is even plausible, let alone anything but rather Herculean in scope.
I think about the only hope you'd have is if the CSA manages to survive but undergoes a Communist revolution about 30 years or so after it's independences and then falls into the hands of the U.S. at some point...the results? A highly left-wing and populist South which has come to terms with it's past and rejected it's revival(no Jim Crow, possibly?) and a very laissez-faire & anti-Communist Midwest with perhaps a strong leaning towards Fundamentalism added in in some places; the West might be dominated by small government libertarians, with moderates in place in New England as well as N.Y., N.J., and Michigan, too. Or that's how I'd see it, anyhow.

A partial reversal, though, is definitely a lot easier, I think.
 
The thing is highly left and populist doesn't mean liberal. A highly populist South is easy to come up with with the right POD during reconstruction, of course this would be populist in favor to the working whites. You could also see a highly fiscally conservative North appear with the right changes in the gilded age. And with attitudes stirred the right way you can make exaggerate these tendencies if you have a reason for the North and South wanting to be as different from each other as possible.

I want to assume the liberalism in the OP means social liberalism, which is much more harder for it to come about. But not impossible if you find ways to alter immigration patterns. Keep the North Puritan and the South open to immigration and urbanization.

Lets say for some reason the eerie canal never gets built, the importance of New York as the port of access to the America interior is weakened. Baltimore rises as an alternative, as does New Orleans; NYC would still very important but the other two would be picking up much more slack. In the case of NO, it could result in much heavier traffic through the Mississippi River than OTL, and urbanization along its banks. Have Birmingham develop as an industrial center earlier, and your adding traffic through the Tennessee River. As a result of this Southern economy grows and diversifies. Attitudes towards keeping a plantation style economy change, and by the mid 1800s more Southerners are open to the idea of ending slavery. Some investment and you can see shipyards in the gulf growing in importance as well.

On top of this add some Latin-American / caribbean immigration into the South through NO, and Mobile AL, to keep this new industry going. Ibero/Caribbean attitudes of race, which while still racist can be much more fluid, influence Southern attitudes. As a result Irish and Italian immigration ends in the south later on. (This will then change attitudes regarding alcohol and other politics).

Then shift political attitudes to delay the Civil War. End of the day only, the very deep south and a political alliance made of the plantation owners rebel. So much so that it would not be called a Civil War but a slaveholder's rebellion. A good amount of Southerners stay loyal, and the rebels are easily singled out afterwards. The loyal Southerners try to build an identity away from the rebelling slaveholders and politicians. Post-rebellion southern politics are dominated by reformers and liberals.

After the rebellion have a useful reconstruction that allows blacks to have a strong economic base (40 acres and a mule type of deal). This allows them to stay in the South. All of this results in a much more populous and economically dynamic south.

Meanwhile in the north trade in the great lakes has suffered, anywhere outside the coast is mostly the breadbasket "king corn" and "king wheat". Have the silver/long depression in the late 1800s be more sever. Like in OTL it will affect mostly the farming and mining mid-west, but here it kick starts a populist/conservative political attitude in the Great Lakes states and midwest, which outside the coast cities really screws up any progressive development.

The difference between the North and South, will really be seen in the early 20th century during the prohibition era. The North, particularly the protestant and rural west bans the sale of alcohol. Meanwhile in the South, particularly the coast - which harbors some hedonistic tendencies at this time - alcohol is seen as part of life. In fact burbon, in the upper south, and rum, in the coastal south, is seen as an integral of their cultural identity. Consumption goes up only to contrast northern attitudes.
 
I like how railroad construction is essentially ignored here when treating the Erie Canal as so vital.

I don't think you're going to get the South significantly more industrialized than OTL just because there's no Erie canal - or the rest of this.

Populist South? Possibly. Fiscally conservative north? Possible. Liberal South? Not without extreme cultural changes. Puritan North? Already fading if not faded by the American Revolution, let alone the Erie Canal.
 
A major Slave revolt (prehaps supplied weaponry, by aggressive black anti-slavery groups in north) doing ACW, or after a stalemate where CSA survived as an independent entry, in which the popular leaders of the revolt have socialistic thoughts about equality and labor rights?
 
this is geographically impossible considering the climate has an enormous effect on how the early colonies develop.
New England has harsh winters, rocky soils, and an abundance of fish. It is destined to have an economy more focused on shipping and manufacturing than slave based agriculture. The south is perfect for big cash crops and therefore destined to have lots and lots of slaves.
Just maybe New England could secede and become a super conservative theocracy
 
This is what's going to happen in my TL, to a certain extant. But then again, the nation that comprises over a good chunk of what became the US in my TL isn't the United States. So go figure.
 
The easiest way is to have the CSA gain independence for a while than have a Communist revolt followed by a US reconquest. A lot of European radicals come over during the Communist era to help with the revolution. They have a great influence on the South afterwords.
 
What if the Constitution keeps the slave trade legal for thirty years, rather than twenty years, meaning African Americans have a large majority in the South. A higher degree of racial panic caused by this means there's more angst with immigration from Southern Europe, and firm limits are put in by the middle of the 19th Century, restricting immigration to being from northern Europe.

The north thus remains much more rural, without the big industrial cities. In the south, African Americans manage to assert control after the Civil War, and much of the white overclass flees north.
 
What if the Constitution keeps the slave trade legal for thirty years, rather than twenty years, meaning African Americans have a large majority in the South. A higher degree of racial panic caused by this means there's more angst with immigration from Southern Europe, and firm limits are put in by the middle of the 19th Century, restricting immigration to being from northern Europe.

The north thus remains much more rural, without the big industrial cities. In the south, African Americans manage to assert control after the Civil War, and much of the white overclass flees north.

A higher African-American population is likely to make it more conservative not less. Worried people tend to be more cautious and conservative when they are worried.
 
A higher African-American population is likely to make it more conservative not less. Worried people tend to be more cautious and conservative when they are worried.

I dunno, John. I suppose that certainly could happen, but I'd suspect that the majority of Southern African-Americans would tend to swing left in times of tension, not rightwards(Northerners might be a different story, though).
 
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make the American South a beacon of liberalism and the North a strongly conservative bloc by 2013. Bonus Points if most of the OTL CS States have legalized gay marriage.

Georgia stays free and slavery is gotten rid of in the South instead of the North in the 1790s and the 1800s.
 
I dunno, John. I suppose that certainly could happen, but I'd suspect that the majority of Southern African-Americans would tend to swing left in times of tension, not rightwards(Northerners might be a different story, though).

But the black population's feelings on the matter are likely to be dealt with as OTL, if not more so.
 
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