AHC: How would you decrease slave states and racism?

Hello friends,
After this comment and in relation to an alternative story that I am creating with a United States that includes all Americans.

How can we diminish the power of slave states and reduce racism?

I have something in mind but I do not know if this could be done (optional):

To have more anti-slavery states (as in my AH, the "states" of Canada, Mexico, Central America, Haiti ... would be anti-slavery) and in some pre-1900 POD have Civil Rights laws and some president of color or "Hispanic".

What would you do? the POD should be before 1800 and maximum 1820.


The comment was this:

It wouldn't have happened because the South would have never accepted a constitution that outlawed slavery.
 
I wonder if having a prominent enemy willing to exploit slave rebellions would spur the US more towards emancipation earlier. The Spanish certainly had no problem exploiting slave rebellion in St.Domingue during the French Revolution. Keep them powerful in NA and the US weaker maybe?
 

Schnozzberry

Gone Fishin'
Donor
If you have a POD before the cotton gin is invented, a large scale slave rebellion could spook the southern states into moving towards the end of slavery. Alternatively, while I'm not 100% sure how to do it, but if the poor whites rallied against slavery to break the power of the rich plantation owners, you could see populist movements shutting down slavery over time.
 
Have it that only free men (and women and children) are counted when deciding how many Representatives (and electoral votes) that each state has.
 
What a doozy of a challenge... I could think of a 1751 POD that sill have an ARW but less slavery and racism but... man you picked a time where the slavery rather than being merely an economic exploitation at the expense of the victim but by 1800 was an ideology and way of life
 

Deleted member 97083

Decreasing slave states might not necessarily decrease racism.

That being said, one way to tip the balance away from slave states to free states, would be to have Jefferson's plan for the Northwest Territory fully succeed.

10 free states would be created, causing free states to have a larger majority in the Senate.

wABbLfN.png
 
If you have a POD before the cotton gin is invented, a large scale slave rebellion could spook the southern states into moving towards the end of slavery. Alternatively, while I'm not 100% sure how to do it, but if the poor whites rallied against slavery to break the power of the rich plantation owners, you could see populist movements shutting down slavery over time.

In my AH, there is a rebellion of slaves in Haiti and Jamaica before 1780, one of its "protagonists" is Toussaint Louverture and decide to ally with the Union and form a country together with the others. Does that event facilitate what you have told me?

Have it that only free men (and women and children) are counted when deciding how many Representatives (and electoral votes) that each state has.

Oh, that could be solved if the constitution is rewritten by solving that problem and with what I have said to Schnozzberry. Or do you see something that I do not?

Decreasing slave states might not necessarily decrease racism.

That being said, one way to tip the balance away from slave states to free states, would be to have Jefferson's plan for the Northwest Territory fully succeed.

10 free states would be created, causing free states to have a larger majority in the Senate.

wABbLfN.png

Oh, well, I check that. Thank you :)
 
One way of decreasing the influence of the antebellum South would be for Britain to establish free black colonies in OTL Georgia and South Carolina during the Colonial period. Once the American Revolution occurs as OTL and we reach the Constitutional Convention in 1787, you can then plausibly have only free people counted for direct taxation / House Representation as the North originally wanted.
 
In my TL I have a USA that has a very hardline anti-slavery president in the 1840s that actively works to curb slavery's power (admitting something like 6 new free states into the Union), and something like that could probably be pushed earlier if you wanted to go in that direction, all you need to do is find someone that held those sort of views and give them enough influence to win the presidency.

Of course, the harder anyone pushes against something, the harder others will push for it (the South in the TL as a result becomes led by a Wade Hampton analogue and is much more radical than our CSA)

- BNC
 

Deleted member 97083

One way of decreasing the influence of the antebellum South would be for Britain to establish free black colonies in OTL Georgia and South Carolina during the Colonial period.
What makes you think the British Empire would consider that during the Colonial period?
 
One way of decreasing the influence of the antebellum South would be for Britain to establish free black colonies in OTL Georgia and South Carolina during the Colonial period. Once the American Revolution occurs as OTL and we reach the Constitutional Convention in 1787, you can then plausibly have only free people counted for direct taxation / House Representation as the North originally wanted.


Your excellent idea is the only way I can see-
after racking my brains- that the OP's oh-
so- desirable idea could possibly have been
achieved. Once the Revolution came down the southern states simply were too power-
ful; if they were not appeased they could
destroy the union by leaving it en masse
(as they would finally try to do in 1861
IOTL)& they could not be appeased by
attacking slavery(instead the opposite
would occur). Of course maybe the South
would have felt differently if slavery wasn't
as profitable as it became- but to make it
unprofitable you'd have to butterfly away
the Cotten Gin & that is ASB.
 
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Longer, messier ARW with a loyalist dixie being crushed. Slavery ended in VA/DE/MD and confined to NC/SC/GA and the territories of Florida/Bahamas. That plus a larger 'north' in the form of both states carved out of canada and trans-appalachian areas means it dies by the napleonic wars, before the cotton gin has time to get entrenched.
 
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