AHC: Peaceful End to Slavery

With a PoD anytime after 1789, have the United States abolish slavery before 1900 without having to fight a civil war.
 
i don;t think the Southern slavelords would allow ANY kind of end to slavery that wasn't forced. and what would be the difference, anyway? they'd just move on to sharecropping and bitch and moan about it for a hundred and fifty years like IOTL
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Pretty much...

i don;t think the Southern slavelords would allow ANY kind of end to slavery that wasn't forced. and what would be the difference, anyway? they'd just move on to sharecropping and bitch and moan about it for a hundred and fifty years like IOTL

In 1862, Lincoln offered Delaware slaveowners compensated emancipation. Delaware, of course, had the smallest enslaved population of any state commonly recognized as such.

The slaveowners turned it down.

The issue is, of course, that absent a war over slavery, the US (federal) government could not "abolish" anything, either as a war powers act or as constitutional amendment in the aftermath of such a war.

Abolition had to be a state by state movement in the US (as it was in the New England and mid-Atlantic states, historically); once the wealth generated by slavery and mechanized cotton production began to become apparent in the early 1820s or so, there was no way the southern elite was going to part with it.

What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe is a very good, and very accessible, synthesis of the era; well worth reading.

Best,
 
In the 1790s, when anti-slavery sentiment there was likely at its highest, the Virginia legislature enacts a gradual abolition bill, whereby all children born to slaves are now free, as was done in several other states. This leads to a slow aging and decline of the slave population. States like Kentucky and Maryland follow suit. Without Virginia on their side, the pro-slavery elements lose a great deal of political influence and population, and no civil war occurs because the Deep Southern states can't hope to win a war on their own. As abolitionism grows in strength, a Constitutional amendment to ban slavery gains momentum and is eventually ratified.

The POD has to be earlier than the proliferation of the Cotton Gin or it won't work.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Yep, it is a very narrow window; and the

The POD has to be earlier than the proliferation of the Cotton Gin or it won't work.


Yep, it is a very narrow window; and the issues are the more than simply economic.

As perverse as it is, there were a lot of elite decision-makers in the South who had all sorts of justifications for the mastery/slavery culture, and the reality is the South was a slave society, with all that means...not quite Haiti before the revolution, but closing in on it.

It's worth recognizing - as Lorri Glover does in Southern Sons - that the generation that led and fed what became the "sectional crisis" in the antebellum era were literally the sons of the revolutionary generation, and they had their share of separatist concepts above and beyond those based on cotton gin/plantation wealth-generating slavery.

Wilkinson's conspiracy is an early example of it; the 1832 Nullification Crisis a later one.

Best,
 
Last edited:
economics would seem to be the only way to get it done... you'd have to make it so cotton and tobacco aren't very profitable for mass/slavery production. Which seems to be about impossible.
 
In 1862, Lincoln offered Delaware slaveowners compensated emancipation. Delaware, of course, had the smallest enslaved population of any state commonly recognized as such.

The slaveowners turned it down.

The issue is, of course, that absent a war over slavery, the US (federal) government could not "abolish" anything, either as a war powers act or as constitutional amendment in the aftermath of such a war.

Abolition had to be a state by state movement in the US (as it was in the New England and mid-Atlantic states, historically); once the wealth generated by slavery and mechanized cotton production began to become apparent in the early 1820s or so, there was no way the southern elite was going to part with it.

What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe is a very good, and very accessible, synthesis of the era; well worth reading.

Best,
If Virginia and Kentucky emancipated slaves early on, you could get an emancipation amendment passed. It would take a while. And might require the creation of e.g. East and West Dakota as well as North and South, say, but it's certainly possible. The amendment would be much, much looser than OTL's, probably freeing everyone born after the ratification of the amendment, and not legislating anything like equality.

Why do you think it requires a war?
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Define "early on"

If Virginia and Kentucky emancipated slaves early on, you could get an emancipation amendment passed. It would take a while. And might require the creation of e.g. East and West Dakota as well as North and South, say, but it's certainly possible. The amendment would be much, much looser than OTL's, probably freeing everyone born after the ratification of the amendment, and not legislating anything like equality.

Why do you think it requires a war?

Define "early on" "a while" and "anything like equality," and then ask why anyone would even consider that a option worth considering?

Why do I think it required a war?

Because of the dominance of state level politics in the southern US by economic elites whose money derived from slavery, and their consequential dominance of the US senate and house.

The soutern elite went from radical republicans fighting to overthrow autocratic government in the 1700s who were willing to say publicly that slavery was moral and economic folly (Washington, Jefferson) to absolute tradition-bound conservatives ready to fight to the death to defend a slave society where white supremacy was absolute (Davis, Stephens), and in fact there were southern elites who were willing to openly discuss white slavery as an economically beneficial system (Fitzhugh and his boon companions).

And that happened in the space of one generation, from the founders to the fire-eaters...

And even after emancipation, that same battle was fought - in that same part of the country - with violence for the next century, and with legalisms almost everywhere else.

You really believe that could all be legislated away, even in theory, before 1900?

Best,
 
How about this idea:

The South had a big political problem nearing the 1860 election, they were losing political power to the more populous and industrial North. For this problem a couple of possible solutions were presented. Obviously there were the fire-eaters whose premise was that the North and South were too different culturally and politically, which meant the South shouldn't bother staying in a Northern-dominated Union. There were also compromisers who wanted to make some sort of constitutional arrangement to ensure that Southern rights were protected (Crittenden compromise). There were others like De Bow who argued that the Southerners should attempt to diversify their economy to be able to compete with the North.

The problems with these were:

1). Obviously the fire-eater solution couldn't work if the North was committed to keeping the nation together. The South would have to pull off some pretty amazing victories to last in the civil war with them.

2). The Crittenden Compromise and other proposals were so incredibly pro-Southern that it was impossible to get them through Congress. The problem is that the South wanted guarantees that future territory could be open to slavery and the North was adamantly opposed to that. I severely doubt that such a compromise could have been possible by the 1850s.

3). The South I think was too divided to attempt to diversify. There was an attempt to plant a seed in Birmingham for some industry, but that was shot down by the farmers. This might be possible with a long ranging POD though.

What if the South decided to get really creative? Some reformer with a plan pitches to the Slave Power an idea that 'frees' the slaves but circa Russia effectively enslaves the former slaves to their former masters with debt to 'buy' their freedom. On top of this maybe pass a few laws similar to the Black Codes, which restrict where blacks can move, vote, work, etc. So effectively slavery by another name. This way the South would get more congressional representation with the former slaves being counted as more population and Southern society hardly changes. I could see this idea getting laughed at at first, but maybe getting serious attention during the tense 1850s. When 1860 comes and a Republican is elected with only a handful of popular votes from the South, the South gets serious about their waning power and a pilot program of the idea is tried in say, Virginia, and when Virginia society doesn't collapse, the Southern states pass similar plans one by one until South Carolina is the last to do so in 1895.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Certainly creative, and "slavery by another name" was

Certainly creative, and "slavery by another name" was pretty much what resulted in much of the south post-reconstruction anyway, but...there's an awful lot of white supremacy pathologies that will have to be dealt with, and very little liklihood that umpteen decades of mastery/enslaved society can be legislated away absent a lost war...

I mean, it was not, historically, anyway - that took another century, in a lot of ways.

And you're asking for it absent the events of 1861-65.

Human nature being what it is, seems unlikely.

Best,
 
Top