AHC: How can you get a Northern Secession?

As it says on the tin.

How can you get a group of northern states to leave the United States as opposed to a group of southern states?

A secondary question, what could be some names for the new nation?
 
Simple, get a heavily pro slavery person who wants slavery in the entire union get into power, and the northern slave haters will likely take power and declare independence
 
You could get the ball rolling by getting several pro-South laws passed, such as low or zero protective tariffs, low support of government-sponsored railroads, or other anti-industrial, anti-capitalist (essentially) laws.

It's also important to note that secession was more than just an economic decision; the South felt like it was under moral attack from the North and its abolitionists. If you look at actions and publications from the time, the South adopts a gradually more harsh, even extremist, tone towards the North and abolitionism.

I think in addition to anti-Northern legislation, there needs to be some sort of moral attack that the South makes on the North that "catches on" with Northerners and makes them feel like they need to defend their "way of life" from assault. I don't know what that would be though.
 
As it says on the tin.

How can you get a group of northern states to leave the United States as opposed to a group of southern states?

A secondary question, what could be some names for the new nation?

This would be the likely result if Lincoln didn't win the 1860 election. It's very likely that the Supreme Court would have ruled in Lemmon v. New York that free states had no right to prohibit slaveholders from bringing their property (i.e. slaves) into them, or to deprive slaveholders of their property (i.e. emancipating slaves.) This would probably have occurred in around 1862-64 timeframe, if not pre-empted by the Civil War.

The end result of such a ruling making the entire nation into slave states would almost certainly be the secession of most of the North and parts of the West from the Union.
 
New England worked on this in 1815. Get Sherbrooke and Strong to agree to a separate peace before word of the treaty of Ghent gets back to the US and there you go.
 
During the War of 1812 there was talk of New England breaking from the Union and forming their own nation.
 
This would be the likely result if Lincoln didn't win the 1860 election. It's very likely that the Supreme Court would have ruled in Lemmon v. New York that free states had no right to prohibit slaveholders from bringing their property (i.e. slaves) into them, or to deprive slaveholders of their property (i.e. emancipating slaves.) This would probably have occurred in around 1862-64 timeframe, if not pre-empted by the Civil War.

The end result of such a ruling making the entire nation into slave states would almost certainly be the secession of most of the North and parts of the West from the Union.


Depends why Lincoln loses.

If it were just a case of losing a couple of swing states by the odd percentage point, then no - they'd just wait for 1864 and hope for a better result - which Lemmon might give them.

To remount my current hobby horse, it might be different were the defeat caused by having a different electoral system, either using a district plan or (even worse) a proportional one for Presidential Electors and perhaps for the HoR as well. This could well preclude the election of a purely northern candidate for the indefinite future, and could conceivably generate a "No Union With Slaveholders" campaign.

Even then though, it's only a maybe. The manufacturing states would be seceding from their main market, and the north-western ones from their access to the Gulf. And I'm not sure how much practical effect an adverse Lemmon ruling would have. After all, Southerners had not brought many slaves even into places like New Mexico where the law already allowed them to. Would they really start bringing them north in any numbers? It might have more effect in theory than in practice.
 
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