AHC: Make Slavery in the USA Abolished Peacefully

If Virginia successfully ends slavery (not sure how likely that is), then would this lead to a domino effect? Even if only the Upper South (the tobacco growing states) ban slavery, this leads to a majority of Free states.
I actually had the same thought. It came quite close around 1830 (Within a few votes). There is some thought that Turner's rebellion swung votes (although I am not sure how accurate this is). One could imagine if Virginia abolishes then the rest of the upper south does too. At this point you could imagine slavery being confined to the deep south and being in a political minority everywhere (i.e. minority in the senate etc). At this point some type of compensated emancipation around 1850-1870 might work.
 
Plenty of Ministers of the Gospel (Methodists included) owned slaves.

Yeah, but Methodists were probably the most abolitionist religious group after Quakers (idk about Mormons). Now there's an interesting thought, though. Calhoun visits Philadelphia in 1830ish and meets with a Quaker minister who converts him to Quaker abolitionism. Would that do it iyo?
 
Yeah, but Methodists were probably the most abolitionist religious group after Quakers (idk about Mormons). Now there's an interesting thought, though. Calhoun visits Philadelphia in 1830ish and meets with a Quaker minister who converts him to Quaker abolitionism. Would that do it iyo?


Any thoughts on where he'd move too, given that an abolitionist (or even a Free-Soiler) would have no political future in SC?
 
Yeah, but Methodists were probably the most abolitionist religious group after Quakers (idk about Mormons). Now there's an interesting thought, though. Calhoun visits Philadelphia in 1830ish and meets with a Quaker minister who converts him to Quaker abolitionism. Would that do it iyo?

As a Unitarian, I think my lot were pretty rock solid on opposing slavery.
 

WhoaHeavy

Banned
Massive cotton and other cash crops failure. Something akin to the Irish potato famine, or the same disease that mostly destroyed the cotton industry in the early 1900s. With a few lost harvests keeping slaves become economically unsustainable and emancipation just makes more economic sense.
 
Massive cotton and other cash crops failure. Something akin to the Irish potato famine, or the same disease that mostly destroyed the cotton industry in the early 1900s. With a few lost harvests keeping slaves become economically unsustainable and emancipation just makes more economic sense.

When would this ideally occur?
 

WhoaHeavy

Banned
When would this ideally occur?
After Egypt becomes the big cotton producer for the UK, so there really is absolutely no benefit to just keep trying. So mid 19th century, just before the OTL civil war. That way the triple threat of foreign markets, failing crops and polictical pressure can just make the rich plantation owners concede to the abolition of slavery.

Of course, this relies on things beyond any humans control. The North wasn't exactly able to manufacture diseases in those days.
 
After Egypt becomes the big cotton producer for the UK, so there really is absolutely no benefit to just keep trying. So mid 19th century, just before the OTL civil war. That way the triple threat of foreign markets, failing crops and polictical pressure can just make the rich plantation owners concede to the abolition of slavery.

Of course, this relies on things beyond any humans control. The North wasn't exactly able to manufacture diseases in those days.

hey if the Mongols could use biological warfare 500 years earlier the North could in 1850s
 
Not in SC. Whatever might be true in the Border States, in the Lower South coming out against slavery would be instant death politically.
Possibly even literally.

Anyone here know any good source for on the size and popularity of abolitionist in the US during the 19th century?
 
Possibly even literally.

Anyone here know any good source for on the size and popularity of abolitionist in the US during the 19th century?

Not really. I know in general terms that they weren't popular until toward midcentury, even in the North. Istr that one got lynched in Ohio as late as 1837. But Free-soil sentiment, as distinct from abolitionism, started well before that.
 
Note: I was saying it was possible, not that it was a realistic idea.

What the Mongols did is not practical as a method of biological warfare, and it os unlikely to be the Mongols' intention.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...t_true_that_before_invading_a_city_or_castle/

However, there's a great deal of debate about 1. What the Mongols would have intended with this, and 2. If this was the mechanism, intentional or not, by which plague entered Caffa and by extension Europe. The short answer to 2. is that rats camped with the besiegers are another likely entry vector, and in any case Caffan refugees sailing to Genoa and Venice were likely only one of many avenues by which plague was transmitted to Europe. It's worth spending more time on the answer to 1. ,as it might give some insight into whether this practice was common for the Mongols.

The European view of disease at the time was a sort of vague, triple-barrel combination of divine punishment, miasma (bad smells), and direct person-to-person (note the reference to people being infected "at a glance"). The Mongol belief system was likely similar to that described in a paper titled "Diseases and their origins in the traditional worldview of Buryats : folk medicine methods" by Marina Sodnompilova and Vsevolod Bashkuev. Their anthropological study argues that the traditional folk medicine view of disease is an abnormality that comes as a result of a human disturbance of the spirit world, for example through violating a taboo.

So while the Europeans inside the city walls might have viewed this as an attempt to spread disease, the Mongols were likely more concerned with two other problems. First, the high mortality of the Black Death causes issues with the disposal of huge numbers of corpses. Second, the unsuccessful siege, now struck by this tremendous pestilence, was clearly inauspicious. It's a bit of conjecture, but the Mongol besiegers, angry with their opponents and fearful for their lives, might well have thought they could deflect the spirits which were punishing them onto the Caffan defenders instead, and use that "distraction" to get away.

With this worldview in mind, there's not much reason the Mongols would have made body catapulting a common practice. They were far more masters of psychological warfare than biological, and firsthand accounts generally reflect the terror the Mongols inspired in their opponents. If they had launched corpses on a regular basis, we would have other sources that would have mentioned it. Though they besieged a huge number of cities across Asia, I can't think of another instance in which they were said to have hurled dead bodies over the walls, even when they suffered mightily from disease during their invasions of Vietnam.

Moreover, boll weevil only entered USA from Mexico in 1892 and it only reached Alabama in 1909. It is also pretty difficult to breed and deploy incests with the technology in that era.
 
Maybe limit the spread of slavery state and then our number it in the USA senate and House and strangle it from there
well Santa Anna could win and deprive the South of Texas at least, possibly more. or one could prevent the Louisiana Purchase somehow. Without it creating new slave states is tricky, and the political weight probably swings towards the north..
 
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