AHC: The Northern US states secede in the 1850s onwards

What would it take/Is it possible for the states north of the Mason-Dixon line, along with the states around the Great Lakes to leave the Union in the 1850s onwards?
 
What would it take/Is it possible for the states north of the Mason-Dixon line, along with the states around the Great Lakes to leave the Union in the 1850s onwards?

Maybe if, instead of adding on more free than slave states, they added on more slave states to the union, leading to the north being angry about the number of slave states, and wanting to succeed
 

BigDave1967

Banned
Maybe if, instead of adding on more free than slave states, they added on more slave states to the union, leading to the north being angry about the number of slave states, and wanting to succeed

If the northern states secede(imo) look for the southern states to probably forge an alliance with Great Britain. It would make sense seeing how much Great Britain depended on southern cotton.
 
Not really. What reason would they have to leave?

I think that this is why its a AHC ;)

Okay, the standard go-to is a stronger Dredd-Scott decision that effectively overwrites anti-slave clauses in the free states. I'm really not sure how likely this is, however, without some significant changes to the American political culture.

What you really need is a way for the Northern states to feel like a persecuted minority within the Federal government. Perhapse something to keep the northern electorate splintered between multiple parties rather than coalescing into the Republican Party, so the Southern Dems dominate the government even more.
 
Just butterfly the 1860 election somehow to avoid Lincoln winning (and Southern secession), and hold the Union on until the Supreme Court sees the case of Lemmon v. New York. It was widely believed that Roger Taney and the Supreme Court were prepared to rule there that emancipation of slaves in free states was unconstitutional and illegal.

Then you'd get a quick northern US secession (after some attempts at a Crittenden Compromise.)
 
I think that this is why its a AHC ;)

Okay, the standard go-to is a stronger Dredd-Scott decision that effectively overwrites anti-slave clauses in the free states. I'm really not sure how likely this is, however, without some significant changes to the American political culture.

What you really need is a way for the Northern states to feel like a persecuted minority within the Federal government. Perhapse something to keep the northern electorate splintered between multiple parties rather than coalescing into the Republican Party, so the Southern Dems dominate the government even more.

But the Northern states made up a majority of the population. It's a bit tough to feel like a persecuted minority when you have most of the wealth, all of the immigrants, and most of the industry. The 1860 election demonstrated this quite clearly, when Lincoln was elected without winning a single state south of the Mason Dixon Line. New York alone had more people than the entire Deep South combined.
 
But the Northern states made up a majority of the population. It's a bit tough to feel like a persecuted minority when you have most of the wealth, all of the immigrants, and most of the industry. The 1860 election demonstrated this quite clearly, when Lincoln was elected without winning a single state south of the Mason Dixon Line. New York alone had more people than the entire Deep South combined.

I can't imagine the North *as a whole* seceding. What I can just barely see is a serious secession movement in some of the more antislavery Northern states if the Republicans are defeated in 1860. (Say, the election goes into the House and Breckinridge is elected, or a deadlock in the House leads to Lane, as the vice-president chosen by the Senate, becoming president.) The feeling will grow among some northern antislavery men that the "slave power" in alliance with northern "doughfaces" will always dominate the Union, and such sentiment grows further if the administration gets the US into a war in Mexico or the Caribbean, or if the Supreme Court seems to be moving toward legalizing slavery in the North by recognizing the slaveholders' right to "transit or sojourn" with their human "property." *Even then* I think most antislavery Northerners will hope for one last chance to set things right in 1864.

While northern disunionism was not limited to Garrisonians--some other antislavery men occasionally at least toyed with it--it was certainly a minority view, even among Radicals. Consider the views of Massachusetts Radical Henry Wilson (later Vice-President under Grant) when asked to support an 1857 "Disunion Convention" at Worcester: he advised the convention to "leave all the impotent and puerile threats against the Union to the Southern slave propagandists..." http://books.google.com/books?id=Wl38uYb85DgC&pg=PA141 But that was after the Republicans had in 1856 made a strong showing for a new party, and could hope for victory in 1860. If that hoped is dashed, things could change....
 
I'm sorry, Alabama, it's just not working out...

Best,

Exactly. If 80% of the country is leaving, then it's not secession, it's expelling the other 20%.

I can't imagine the North *as a whole* seceding. What I can just barely see is a serious secession movement in some of the more antislavery Northern states if the Republicans are defeated in 1860. (Say, the election goes into the House and Breckinridge is elected, or a deadlock in the House leads to Lane, as the vice-president chosen by the Senate, becoming president.) The feeling will grow among some northern antislavery men that the "slave power" in alliance with northern "doughfaces" will always dominate the Union, and such sentiment grows further if the administration gets the US into a war in Mexico or the Caribbean, or if the Supreme Court seems to be moving toward legalizing slavery in the North by recognizing the slaveholders' right to "transit or sojourn" with their human "property." *Even then* I think most antislavery Northerners will hope for one last chance to set things right in 1864.

While northern disunionism was not limited to Garrisonians--some other antislavery men occasionally at least toyed with it--it was certainly a minority view, even among Radicals. Consider the views of Massachusetts Radical Henry Wilson (later Vice-President under Grant) when asked to support an 1857 "Disunion Convention" at Worcester: he advised the convention to "leave all the impotent and puerile threats against the Union to the Southern slave propagandists..." http://books.google.com/books?id=Wl38uYb85DgC&pg=PA141 But that was after the Republicans had in 1856 made a strong showing for a new party, and could hope for victory in 1860. If that hoped is dashed, things could change....

Unlike secessionist sentiment in the South, talk of secession in the North was limited to a tiny fringe of radicals. And honestly, people in the North just cared less about slavery. It didn't matter to them whether it was legal or not, because they were never going to own slaves. For the vast majority of northerners, it wasn't worth it to leave the country just because some southerners insisted on keeping human beings as property.
 
Exactly. If 80% of the country is leaving, then it's not secession, it's expelling the other 20%.



Unlike secessionist sentiment in the South, talk of secession in the North was limited to a tiny fringe of radicals. And honestly, people in the North just cared less about slavery. It didn't matter to them whether it was legal or not, because they were never going to own slaves. For the vast majority of northerners, it wasn't worth it to leave the country just because some southerners insisted on keeping human beings as property.

I agree that only a handful of Garrisonians favored disunion over the *existence* of slavery. But if there seemed a real danger of its expansion--not just into the territories but into the North--and if southerners and doughfaces seemed always able to defeat opposition, you could see northern disunionist sentiment grow, especially in "greater new England." (Meaning New England and the areas settled by New Englanders like much of upstate New York, the Western Reserve of Ohio, etc.)

FWIW, Louis Filler remarked in his book *The Crusade Against Slavery 1830-1860* that disunionism was not a Garrisonian eccentricity, but a widespread Northern view, and that generations of historians had obscured this fact. One could give several examples: Senator Hale of New Hampshire stated that "If this Union, with all its advantages, has no other cement than the blood of human slavery, let it perish." (Quoted in David Potter, *The Impending Crisis 1848-1861*, p. 45) Senator Wade of Ohio stated in 1854 that "I go for the death of slavery whether the Union survives it or not." (Quoted in Brian Holden Reid, *The Origins of the American Civil War* [London and New York: Longman 1996], p. 147) There was also the willingness of Horace Greeley and others to "let the erring sisters go" peacefully in 1861 (although Greeley placed a great many qualifications on the right to disunion). At various times in the 1860-61 crisis, Charles Sumner, Joshua Giddings, Gerrit Smith and other abolitionists advocated the peaceful dissolution of "this blood-stained Union." (Quoted in Kenneth Stampp, *And the War Came* (Phoenix books editions, pp. 247-8)

I don't think this was ever a majority view, even in the most antislavery New England states. But one could certainly imagine cirumstances in which it could have become important.
 
Top