AHC: Independent South Friendly With North

Very true.

Less true. Most abolitionists came to it from a moral place. You can actually see this in, for example, boycotts on goods made with slave labor, such as sugar. This movement began in the US with Quakers, but spread quickly to many others as well. It never got super popular, but that was mostly from laziness on the part of consumers - this was before sugar beets, so boycotting slave goods essentially meant no sugar, as well as no cotton clothing, and no tobacco. Now, it's true that wanting blacks to be free wasn't the same as wanting blacks to be free...and nearby, but to dismiss abolitionist sentiment as being entirely or even primarily economically motivated is just wrong. Even sending free blacks "back to Africa" was often from a place of genuinely wanting to return a people to their home...though here I'll grant that a lot of it was basically a way to get rid of blacks.

I've studied the Northern abolitionist movement in some detail. Basically, there were three main arguments against slavery in this time period:

1 - That slavery is morally wrong.

2 - That slavery offers unfair economic competition for free laborers.

3 - That slavery means having black people in the country (the horrors!).

#1 is the most appealing argument to us today and it had some adherents at the time, but not nearly as many as people now want to believe.
That's why the boycotts failed; most people really didn't care that much about how much Caribbean slaves suffered.

The reality is that #2 and #3 had broad acceptance. If you read a lot of "Free soil" arguments, they can be appallingly racist. "Free", in a lot of peoples' minds, meant being free of black people altogether.
 
The reality is that #2 and #3 had broad acceptance. If you read a lot of "Free soil" arguments, they can be appallingly racist. "Free", in a lot of peoples' minds, meant being free of black people altogether.

The way that Oregon was initially settled was a great case in point of this fact.
 
I've studied the Northern abolitionist movement in some detail. Basically, there were three main arguments against slavery in this time period:

1 - That slavery is morally wrong.

2 - That slavery offers unfair economic competition for free laborers.

3 - That slavery means having black people in the country (the horrors!).

#1 is the most appealing argument to us today and it had some adherents at the time, but not nearly as many as people now want to believe.
That's why the boycotts failed; most people really didn't care that much about how much Caribbean slaves suffered.

The reality is that #2 and #3 had broad acceptance. If you read a lot of "Free soil" arguments, they can be appallingly racist. "Free", in a lot of peoples' minds, meant being free of black people altogether.

While I agree that we do like to emphasize the aspects that we like to emphasize, I think that you're minimizing the moral aspect. While the former Democrat wing of the party was mostly opposed to slavery on economic/social grounds, the former Whig wing came in mostly on moral grounds, as did the Liberty Party (which had low membership but outsized influence due to its members being pretty hardcore).
 
While I agree that we do like to emphasize the aspects that we like to emphasize, I think that you're minimizing the moral aspect. While the former Democrat wing of the party was mostly opposed to slavery on economic/social grounds, the former Whig wing came in mostly on moral grounds, as did the Liberty Party (which had low membership but outsized influence due to its members being pretty hardcore).

I think he's talking more about the population at large rather than the leaders of the political parties: even Lincoln in his debates with Douglous had to clarify that he wasen't asserting the black man was actually equal to the white; merely that he had just as much rights to eat the bread he earned by his labor without somebody else's permission (I.E participate in a Free Labor system) as his poor white counterpart. It was certainly an effective enough tactics to paint the Republicans as "*Bleep*-lovers" that Democratic candidates across the country used it, and the Republicans were wary enough that they kept downplaying the issue when speaking to New Englanders (Focusing on the Tarriff and such instead). For your average Joe on the streets, he may not think its the best thing the black man was in chains, but I doubt he felt strongly enough about it for it to be his primary reason to pick up a rifle and risk his life.

Ultimately, there's a reason when the Fugative Slave Act, Scott vs. Stanford, and slavery's expansion into the territories, not crackdowns in the Southern states, produced the most Northern outrage: it affected white people's political rights and economic opportunities directly. Pocketbook issues (Keeping jobs and property oppritunities for free white laborers like themselves) and security of one's own rights are almost always more salient than pure moral abstractions.
 
Let's see...the North had many powerful people who believed blacks were inferior to whites, believed deportation to Africa/Liberia was a great idea, etc. And also cooperated with the Brazilian Empire and its slavery.

On the other hand, you have a South which at some point will just be very racist instead of extremely racist (i.e. not much more racist than late 19th century/early 20th century Euro-American countries), and can possibly transform itself in the same sense as Japan transformed from a warlike, imperialistic nation to today's Japan.

If it's defeated in a war sure, but otherwise, why? For what reason will it reform? The rest of the West improved because there were strong social forces dating back to the French Revolution in favour of it. The American South had nothing of the sort when taken out of the broader context of the United States. Indeed, it would be institutionally and economically bound to racist forces. The best you could get IMO is a version of OTL South Africa later in the 20th century, but this is unlikely as Whites would be the majority.
 
If it's defeated in a war sure, but otherwise, why? For what reason will it reform? The rest of the West improved because there were strong social forces dating back to the French Revolution in favour of it. The American South had nothing of the sort when taken out of the broader context of the United States. Indeed, it would be institutionally and economically bound to racist forces. The best you could get IMO is a version of OTL South Africa later in the 20th century, but this is unlikely as Whites would be the majority.

But you can point to even Latin America and notice often violent events in the favour of reform or otherwise harnassing the power of populism, such as the Mexican Revolution, Peronism in Argentina, Vargas in Brazil, etc.

Not to mention that getting the CSA defeated in a war (or otherwise really terrified of imminent annihilation by the United States) isn't particularly hard. Any ill-advised conflict with Mexico or Spain, border conflicts with the United States.
 
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