AHC: End Slavery in the USA Peacefully and Quickly

[Rhaegar I]

The challenge, if you accept it, is for you to end slavery in the United States relatively quickly and with minimal violence.

A few rules for this challenge.

1. No POD can be after 1787. The earliest you can have is when the Constitution was being written.

2. Be realistic. You can obviously make subtle changes, like some people being a little more willing to end slavery, but nothing massively ASB.

3. Obviously, you are not allowed a Civil War, or for the South to secede peacefully. It has to be a single country at all times.

4. I will be vague on the quickly bit, but try to make it at the latest before the 1860s.

Good luck, and let the Challenge Begin!

 

[Zuvarq]

New form of malaria spreads throughout the southern half of the US, which about a third of slaves are immune to because they have sickle cell.

Because white slaveowners die off and blacks are possibly the majority in the South, slavery is abolished.

No violence, so it's peaceful. While it's also quick.

 

[Zoidberg12]

New form of malaria spreads throughout the southern half of the US, which about a third of slaves are immune to because they have sickle cell.

Because white slaveowners die off and blacks are possibly the majority in the South, slavery is abolished.

No violence, so it's peaceful. While it's also quick.

Interesting idea, thought it kinda borders on ASB.

On the subject; as many of you know, one of Jefferson's rough drafts of the Declaration of Independence had slavery being abolished, thought I it was written out so as not to anger Southern States. Is there a way this clause could have been in here without angering the south (gradual manumission maybe? ). I know this is pre 1787, but I thought it was worth bringing up.

In terms of other alternate histories: I've skimmed through the Hero of Saratoga Timeline, and it has slavery ending peacefully in the 1850's I believe (I'm not exactly sure how, thought I plan to the read t TL soon ).

 

[thekingsguard]

Buttefly away the Cottin Gin for starters. Then have many of the founding fathers speak out against slavery, and support abolition or gradual manumission.

 

[alex costa]

Buttefly away the Cottin Gin for starters. Then have many of the founding fathers speak out against slavery, and support abolition or gradual manumission.

This. The Cotton Gin was in part one of the biggest reasons why Slavery was kept in the USA. Having it butterflied or at least postponed might result in early Slavery Abolition.

 

[Krases]

One way to do it is a more aggressive move by states to nullify federal level slave laws that require those states to return slaves. While this will anger the south, its just not going to be enough to southern states to secede over it.

Another way to put a dent in slavery is to end the Atlantic slave trade earlier. Perhaps quietly end it before the revolution.

I imagine slavery ending peacefully will not be sudden, it will be a series of factors coming together.

 

[Anaxagoras]

Have the single charismatic preacher move back and forth across the South, giving such eloquent sermons against slavery that even the slave-holders are transformed into abolitionists and happily free their slaves.

Sorry, that's the best I can come up with.

 

[Deleted member 40957]

On the subject; as many of you know, one of Jefferson's rough drafts of the Declaration of Independence had slavery being abolished, thought I it was written out so as not to anger Southern States. Is there a way this clause could have been in here without angering the south (gradual manumission maybe? ). I know this is pre 1787, but I thought it was worth bringing up.

This was actually a draft of the Northwest Ordinance. Jefferson wanted to ban slavery in the territories and in any future territories, not states where it was already established. But it's a good PoD - it failed very narrowly.

The problems would probably have started when Louisiana was annexed; the French colonists would likely have been very PO'd at having their slaves taken away under territorial law.

 

[Tripwire]

Probably entirely plausible if the cotton gin wasn't invented. Have abolition and gradual abolition take hold and states further and further to the South, rather than stopping dead at the Mason-Dixon line like it did OTL. As far as I am aware, gradual abolition was something entirely debatable in southern states in the first couple decades of the country's existence. That was before the profits from it exploded.

 

[mightfly]

I would see if there is a way to have a greater wealthier black power rise nearby and encourage/influence the USA to give up slavery because of the potential conflict with its neighbor. Sorry Haiti won't cut it without major expansion, and Great Britain tried this but was a hated enemy so who'd listen to them.

 

[St. Just]

You need a cocktail of factors:

Alternate industry for the South- early small-scale industrialization, so that they aren't shackled to European goods and Northern finance.

No cotton gin.

Perhaps a charismatic abolitionist movement- certainly fits with the Second Great Awakening.

Cotton weevil everywhere. You get a few cotton weevils, tobacco diseases and what not, and the entire slave economy is wiped.

 

[Dirk_Pitt]

Well my story involves ASBs but it's really not necessary. In my story time travelers convince Eli Whitney to take his cotton gine further by adding it to a steam-powered tractor. This adds the effect that not only does slavery not just stays on it's prior trajectory of destruction but it is sped up by the early mechanization.

In this scenario I figure that plantation slavery would persist until around the 1830s. Household servants might persist for longer. Without further interference this might just evolve into low paid service. When such household appliances are developed, like the vacuum and dish washer, this will eventually fall away.

People of 2012 might have living memory of household servants, though the concept would have died decades ago.

 

[amphibulous]

You need a cocktail of factors:

Alternate industry for the South- early small-scale industrialization, so that they aren't shackled to European goods and Northern finance.

No cotton gin.

Why? The cotton industry manages perfectly well after the CS.

 

[Tripwire]

Earlier boll weevil. Hmmm, that's a good one, didn't think of that. Late 1790s, early 1800s, the cotton crop is destroyed, the price of slaves hits rock bottom. Suddenly southern plantation owners may not be as financially interested in keeping massive amounts of slaves around. Abolition might start looking good to them. The planters would likely switch back to tobacco, but that's not nearly as profitable as cotton was. This could lead to a massive weakening of the planter class as compared to the growing other Southern social classes.

 

[Elfwine]

Earlier boll weevil. Hmmm, that's a good one, didn't think of that. Late 1790s, early 1800s, the cotton crop is destroyed, the price of slaves hits rock bottom. Suddenly southern plantation owners may not be as financially interested in keeping massive amounts of slaves around. Abolition might start looking good to them. The planters would likely switch back to tobacco, but that's not nearly as profitable as cotton was. This could lead to a massive weakening of the planter class as compared to the growing other Southern social classes.

Not sure that the boll weevil hitting in the period would be crushing though. Was cotton the dominant crop at that point?

 

[Socrates]

This was actually a draft of the Northwest Ordinance. Jefferson wanted to ban slavery in the territories and in any future territories, not states where it was already established. But it's a good PoD - it failed very narrowly.

The problems would probably have started when Louisiana was annexed; the French colonists would likely have been very PO'd at having their slaves taken away under territorial law.

Slavery was banned in the Northwest Ordinance. Do you mean the Southwest Ordinance?

 

[Æsir]

The problems would probably have started when Louisiana was annexed; the French colonists would likely have been very PO'd at having their slaves taken away under territorial law.

As that provision was written, would it apply if the populated parts of Louisiana were admitted as a state immediately as California and Texas were?

 

[Tripwire]

Not sure that the boll weevil hitting in the period would be crushing though. Was cotton the dominant crop at that point?

The profitability of slavery and cotton took off at the same time. The boll weevil would ideally hit just before what would have been the cotton boom, or just after it starts.

 

[mightfly]

How about combining three ideas?

Another anti slavery economic power arises nearby and is a major cotten exporter thanks to the steam cotten gin bringing prices down and the boll weavile hits the USA earlier at the same time?

 

[President Sam Houston]

The boll weevil does seem to be the best way to peacefully accomplish the abolition of slavery. The boll weevil first entered the US from Mexico in 1892, and moved from Texas eastward until all cotton growing areas were affected by the 1920s. As a result, the cotton based economies throughout the south were decimated. However, the silver lining was the diversification of agriculture in the South, seen in the peanut crop and other crops.

So if the boll weevil could start its migration through the South 80 years earlier, it could stop the rise of the cotton plantation culture of the Mississippi delta right in its tracks. Coupled with cotton's intrinsic quality of quickly depleting the soil, any profits in cotton would completely evaporate, as there would be no new fields that could be opened for the expansion of growing cotton throughout places like Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Instead, settlers moving into these new states would include almost exclusively the subsistence farmers that occupied the less desirable lands in OTL. Without the large cotton farmers being able to move their plantations west, the plantation culture and slave culture never develops in the west, outside of the sugar plantations in Louisiana.

As the years go by, Alabama, Mississippi, much of Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, all resemble Indiana and Illinois in the make up of the settlers. Slavery is pretty much confined to tobacco and sugar growing regions in Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Louisiana. When abolition movements really take hold, there is little political forces within the slaver class to oppose it, and so slavery is peacefully abolished around the time that the British abolish slavery.