AHC: Have a sizable portion of the US secede in order to outlaw slavery

I'm thinking a portion large enough to spark a protracted Civil War, roughly equivalent to OTL Confederacy.
 
I believe a timeline exists where William Henry Harrison lives and supports the Prigg VS Pennsylvania case, causing the North - which notably had the manpower and industry to take with them the Territories outlawed to slavery or likely to be settled by Northerners - to secede to form the Federated States of America.

You thus have a FSA that exists largely above the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and the 36'30'' parallel.
 
Tilt the 1860 election enough that the electoral college is hung. There's probably enough of a possibility of a deadlock in the House that Breckenridge could become Acting President in March which might be enough for the North to secede.
 
Tilt the 1860 election enough that the electoral college is hung. There's probably enough of a possibility of a deadlock in the House that Breckenridge could become Acting President in March which might be enough for the North to secede.

How the heck are you going to do that?
As pointed out in the thread https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=333109
And who's to say that a unified Democratic ticket would still be able to defeat Lincoln?

Remember, even if you combined ALL of the non-Lincoln votes together into one hypothetical candidate, Lincoln STILL would have won despite winning less than 40% of the popular vote against a "candidate" that would have won over 60%. That kinda blows your mind but it's mathematically true...Lincoln basically campaigned in only half of the country, and his vote totals showed that. It was the electoral college that saved him in the end, and even a unified Democratic ticket probably wouldn't have been able to defeat him.

(post by 1.36)


OTL, even if the Democrats had united under a single candidate and said single candidate got every vote that each of OTL's three got, Lincoln would still win.

So. You have to make massive massive changes for the election to go to the House. You'd have to have a radical fire eater as the Republican candidate AND you'd have to get the Democrats more united.


And why do you say Breckinridge would be come acting president? He was a presidential candidate, not a vice-presidential one.

And the vice-presidential vote in the Senate is a straight up/down choice between the top two candidates. So one would surely win. No?
 
And during the OTL Civil War, West Virginia seceded from Virginia basically because it wasn't their war, because they didn't have the same interests.

And I've read that western Tennessee almost seceded from the rest of Tennessee.
 
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