AHC: Make Missouri 100 percent pro secession.

ben0628

Banned
With a pod between the state's founding and 1861, how do we make it so the vast majority of Missouri supports secession?
 
Would have to limit German immigration to Missouri. Or have the Germans assimilate as southerners, southern sympathizers
 
With a pod between the state's founding and 1861, how do we make it so the vast majority of Missouri supports secession?

The state cedes St. Louis (and some nearby German counties) to Illinois. No, not very realistic, and anyway all it would do would be to practically eliminate the Republican Party in Missouri; there would still be a substantial number of Democrats and Cosnitutional Unionists who would oppose secession (as was true in other Upper South states).
 

Wallet

Banned
The state cedes St. Louis (and some nearby German counties) to Illinois. No, not very realistic, and anyway all it would do would be to practically eliminate the Republican Party in Missouri; there would still be a substantial number of Democrats and Cosnitutional Unionists who would oppose secession (as was true in other Upper South states).
Without St. Louis, does Missouri have enough people to be a state?
 
With a pod between the state's founding and 1861, how do we make it so the vast majority of Missouri supports secession?
Whatever else is managed for the white population, it's going to be hard to get the majority of the slaves and free blacks in favour of secession.
 
the bulk of slave owners live where the rivers are... the area between Jefferson City and St Louis (Missouri River Valley) and the Mississippi area south of St Louis and a small patch near Springfield

the rest of Missouri is either 1) Rocks (the Ozarks) and even now is cattle/pig farming only, or 2) the Great Plains, well known for not being cotton land
So geography really matters here. The Germans were pretty critical for securing St Louis, but the Ozark small farmers and the people settling the Great Plains had no particular love (or economic need) for slavery and the rich folks who had them.

So 100% is about as likely as making Kentucky or Tennessee 100% pro secession.
 
Support for secession corresponded almost perfectly with percentage of slaves (not slaveholder a) in a region. With a few variations, such as has been mentioned with German immigrants being strongly anti-slavery.

So the simplest way of increasing Missourian support for secession is having more slaves present. Slavery was profitable in Missouri, but more profitable in better cotton-growing areas, so it's hard to raise the percentage of slaves much in Missouri without messing about with cotton growth.

A possibility would be a much higher total number of slaves in the USA, but this would also have much wider ramifications than just Missouri.
 
Top