AHS: With a POD no later than 1830, prevent the American Civil War from occurring

Same as above. How might U.S. history have been different if the Civil War could have been prevented? Where might we be now?
 
This is impossible without letting the USA becomes the south playhouse and controlling everything
Definitely’s a challenge! I’m even going to post a James McPherson quote that pre-Civil War the South held both the Speakership of the House and the Presidency the majority of the time, and held a southern majority on the Supreme Court the entire time. So, maybe . . .

1) Polk never becomes president, and instead we get someone else who isn’t gung-ho about war with Mexico. Instead, we just do the Oregon purchase from Britain,

2) Two big-time successful southern industrialists who both compete and inspire a number of independent businessmen to do more than just an agricultural economy. And for bonus points, throw in a few women industrialists!
 
South Carolina actually secedes in 1832, and Jackson crushes the state in a short period of time. That would scotch secession in the cradle as the secessionists would not believe that the US will stand by idly during secession and creates a precedent of use of force to prevent secession.
 
Out of War, a New Nation
U.S. National Archives, Prologue Magazine, Spring 2010

James M. McPherson

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/spring/newnation.html

“ . . . From the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 until 1861, slaveholders from states that joined the Confederacy had served as Presidents of the United States during 49 of the 72 years—more than two-thirds of the time. Twenty-three of the 36 Speakers of the House and 24 of the presidents pro tem of the Senate had been southerners. The Supreme Court always had a southern majority before the Civil War; 20 of the 35 justices down to 1861 had been appointed from slave states. . . ”
Okay, so maybe the South needs half a dozen major industrialists for a true economic renaissance from an economy which had been stagnant and agricultural for far too long.

And then the South might decide to gracefully phase out slavery on its own. Probably over a generation and a half, which is admittedly far too long.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
You can literally do it with a POD in 1861. Leading Southerners realise at the very last minute that accepting the Corwin Amendment (already passed by Congress, and with Lincoln willing to back it in order to prevent war and undo the secession) is a way better option than trying to beat the North in an inevitable war. It thereby becomes forever impossible to alter the Constitution to abolish slavery. It is certainly hemmed in, because no future slave states will be admitted, but the existing slave states are now free to retain the institution forever.
 
South Carolina actually secedes in 1832, and Jackson crushes the state in a short period of time. That would scotch secession in the cradle as the secessionists would not believe that the US will stand by idly during secession and creates a precedent of use of force to prevent secession.
and so the institution of slavery remains for a good long while,

And in truth, dystopian fiction is often the more interesting, I’m sorry everyone, but it just is. :p

For example, Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, and that was largely an accident through the twists and turns of power politics. And so, my U.S. probably keeps slavery later than this.
 
Economics, 10th Edition, Paul Samuelson, 1976, page 783:

"The newer farmlands of the Mississippi afforded a high marginal-product to the slaveowners. . . . . Hence, the Invisible Hand of competition caused the tidewater regions [coastal areas of Virginia, North Carolina, etc] to specialize in the production and reproduction of slaves, for sale to the fertile lands westward [such as Mississippi]."
Here’s an economist guy saying slavery was not phasing out on its own.

True, without Texas joining the nation and without Polk’s war against Mexico 1846-48, slavery would have eventually run out of new land,

But only . . . eventually.
 
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You can literally do it with a POD in 1861. Leading Southerners realise at the very last minute that accepting the Corwin Amendment (already passed by Congress, and with Lincoln willing to back it in order to prevent war and undo the secession) is a way better option than trying to beat the North in an inevitable war. It thereby becomes forever impossible to alter the Constitution to abolish slavery. It is certainly hemmed in, because no future slave states will be admitted, but the existing slave states are now free to retain the institution forever.

Possibly, but I feel that 1861 is too late for them to have that realization. They had spent decades convincing themselves that they would whip the North in any war. To stop at the brink feels like when people say Napoleon happily settling down and abandoning conquest is ASB; theoretically possible, but so against the nature of the person in question it feels extremely unlikely.
 
Avoiding a secession crisis is unlikely but not impossible. The key is to get South Carolina--as in 1850-51--to hesitate to secede (for fear of isolation) unless some other state goes first. And it is possible that no other state *will* go first if South Carolina doesn't. For how this might come about, I will recycle an old post of mine:

***

Could secession have been avoided after Lincoln's election? The usual answer is that *at the very least* South Carolina was sure to secede. And yet, even in South Carolina, there was one very prominent politician who *privately* did not regard the South's prospects in the Union as hopeless, even after Lincoln's victory: US Senator James Hammond. In a letter to Alfred Aldrich just after Lincoln's election, Hammond stated "I do not regard our circumstances in the Union as desperate." True, Hammond preferred a Southern Republic if he could be sure that the other southern states would follow South Carolina in seceding, but he had no confidence they would do so. For that reason, he did not want South Carolina to secede until other states had resolved to do so--advice that *if made public* and followed, could have doomed secession, given that even *with* South Carolina's prior secession, the victories for "immediate secessionists" in the Deep South state secession convention elections were often quite narrow.

Hammond explained why he thought staying in the Union was safer for South Carolina than attempting "go it alone" secession: "the South...can, when united, dictate, as it has always done, the internal and foreign policy of our country." (Note that Hammond is here admitting one of the Republicans' main allegations--that the South, far from groaning under northern oppression, had hitherto dominated the country.) Hammond explained that "at the North, politics is a trade." The spoilsmen "go into it for gain." (This was a typical South Carolina aristocratic view of the "mobocracy" which was seen as prevalent in other states, and especially in the North.) For that reason, no Yankee has "ever been twice elected President." Mr. Lincoln's administration will also break down "before it can accomplish anything detrimental", for its "antislavery agitation" will "not gain them spoils and power." (Quoted in William W. Freehling, *The Road to Disunion, Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant 1854-1861,*, p. 405) https://books.google.com/books?id=AsjRsGPOXKMC&pg=PA405

Indeed, with delayers in control of both houses of the South Carolina legislature, and with Aldrich having Hammond's letter in his pocket, things looked bleak for the South Carolina ultras. But then came the "incredible coincidence" I described at http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/8b15a54b3f1a3dbd "A railroad had just been completed linking Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C. As the South Carolina legislature deliberated, leading citizens of the two cities took part in a celebration. The Georgians, carried away by the emotion of the moment, pledged their state's support for secession. Suddenly convinced that other states would follow, the legislature moved the secession convention up to December. The 'coincidence,' Freehling argues, changed history. Had South Carolina not taken this step, Unionists might have prevailed throughout the South."

As it was, however, Aldrich decided not to make Hammond's letter public at the secession convention--and Hammond acquiesced. Too much had changed since the letter was written, Aldrich stated. South Carolina was now too overwhelmingly in favor of secession for it to be blocked, and it was therefore better, Aldrich explained, for the state to present a united front to the rest of the world. Had the railroad not been completed just when it was, and had Aldrich promptly released Hammond's letter to the general public, things could have gone quite differently. South Carolina might have decided not to secede until another state did--which might never have happened...

Or it might have. The battle in the Deep South was generally not between secessionists and unionists but between "immediate secessionists" (also called "separate state action secessionists") and "cooperationists." The big question in determining how close secession was to being avoided is to determine whether cooperationism was just an alternate form of secession or--as the immediate secessionists charged--really a disguised from of Unionist "submissionism." The cooperationists claimed that they also favored secession if necessary but that it should be done not by separate state action but by a southern convention which could put final demands to the North and secede if they were not met. One problem with the cooperationists' position is that the more states seceded, the weaker it became. The immediate secessionists could (and did) say, "We are the *true* cooperationists--we are in favor of cooperating with the states which have already seceded!"

If South Carolina had decided to wait for the other southern states, the cooperationists might have prevailed against the immediate secessionists throughout the South. It is easy to say that this would simply result in Secession Later rather than Secession Now. Surely a southern convention would present Lincoln with demands he would not meet--e.g., abandon the Republican position on slavery in the territories. And yet...cooperationism would after all buy time for the Union, and the immediate secessionists were right to suspect this would strengthen the Unionist cause. They felt they had to strike while the South was still panicking over Lincoln's election. If you allow Lincoln to be in office for some time before acting, the panic will subside, southerners will see that slavery had remained unmolested and that the new president was not another John Brown. Even if the proposed Southern Convention would eventually come about, it might be dominated by Upper South moderates whom Lincoln could appease (e.g., by admitting New Mexico to the Union, at least nominally as a slave state, and by indicating his disapproval of Personal Liberty laws).

So, then, a victory by cooperationists in all the Deep South states *might* give the Union a chance. Was such a victory possible if South Carolina didn't jump the gun? I would say that it was because, as I noted above, even in OTL the "immediate secessionist" victories were quite narrow. In Alabama, the secessionists cast 35,600 votes, the cooperationists 28,100. In Georgia, the secessionists won by only (at most) 44,152 to 41,632. In Louisiana, the secessionists prevailed by 20,214 to 18,451. In Mississippi, there were 16,800 votes for secessionists, 12,218 for cooperationists, 12,000 for candidates whose position was not specified or is now unknown. Florida was somewhat more pro-secessionist than, say, Georgia, but even in Florida the cooperationists got about 40 percent of the vote. (My source for these figures is David Potter, *The Impending Crisis.*)

So preventing secession after Lincoln's election is very, very difficult but IMO not *quite* inconceivable.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Possibly, but I feel that 1861 is too late for them to have that realization. They had spent decades convincing themselves that they would whip the North in any war. To stop at the brink feels like when people say Napoleon happily settling down and abandoning conquest is ASB; theoretically possible, but so against the nature of the person in question it feels extremely unlikely.

I will readily admit that it's far from likely that the persons in question would be that cool-headed. My point is primarily that if they had been, the war could have been avoided at a very late stage. A slightly less late POD could easily have done the job, which means that the sometimes suggested idea that it was almost inevitable is incorrect. (For instance, another Republican than Lincoln getting elected and being willing to put an offer halfway between Corwin and Crittenden on the table might do the trick, since Lincoln was willing to support the Corwin Amendment in OTL, and the South was willing to go for the Crittenden Compromise.)
 
Mexico, possibly with Franco British support, decisively beats the US in the Mexican American War. They take back Texas and maybe annex parts of Oregon or the Plains.

US in turn becomes too manifest destinied and revanchist for a war to occur.
 
Perhaps this could be where the Jackson suggestion comes into play. Have Jackson put down a Carolinan rebellion with humiliating ease, giving older southerners in the heart of the would be confederacy a fear they didn't have IOTL. They accept the compromise, and slavery gets another 50 years in the USA.

In the long term this ain't going to save slavery. As immigration to the North continues to speed up and no more slave states come in, the free state advantage in population, money and industry is going to become farcically huge. I predict slavery becoming more and more a rich man's privilege, with southern magnates having vast slave populations overseen by a small number of free whites.

With industry overshadowing agriculture, there are going to be attempts made to create a slave based industry, which will necessitate better education for slaves to facilitate machine work. This will stoke class and racial divisions, as poor whites in the South will have fewer opportunities than ever. This could then lead to a Great Migration of poor whites to the North and West.

So a blacker, poorer, more racially divided South with an increasingly archaic governmental stranglehold on any attempt to modernise or reform the situation. It would be a goddamned powderkeg, and if it's not defused before the Progressive era and communist/anarchist movements take off, it would end in a bloodbath bigger than the Civil War, IMO.
 
I do wonder how much a less politically chaotic 1850’s would help in this regard - if it includes, say, no Fugitive Slave Act, no Kansas Nebraska Act, and no sweeping Dred Scott decision.
 
LIncoln defeats Douglas in 1858 (that is, in the state legislative elections, where the choice of the next US Senator had become the only issue, Republicans win enough seats to elect Lincoln instead of Douglas).

Douglas is knocked out of politics, and his wing of the Democrats falls apart.

Lincoln becomes a leading candidate for the Republican nomination in 1860, but Seward remains front-runner. A knock-on is that the RNC is not in Chicago (OTL proposed because Illinois had no candidate), but in Boston instead. Thus the gallery is not packed with Lincoln rooters. Also, Seward's manager Weed is much more aggressive about securing the nomination. Seward is nominated; Edward Bates of Missouri is nominated for VP.

The Democrats, now dominated by Doughfaces and Fire-Eaters, nominate Jefferson Davis, with an outright pro-slavery platform (Kansas to be a slave state, no restrictions on slavery in Territories at all). Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts for VP.

Southern ex-Whigs and northern ex-Whigs who didn't go Republican form the Constitutional Union Party, and nominate John Bell, with Edward Everett for VP.

Seward is seen by many voters as dangerously radical on slavery, and Bates is a former Know-Nothing objectionable to immigrant voters. This costs him a lot of votes in NJ, PA, IN, IL, WI. These votes go to Bell. However, Davis is also too extreme. In the end no candidate has an electoral vote majority. Seward finishes first, Bell second, Davis third.

Election of the President is now up to the House of Representatives, voting by state delegations. The House elected in 1858 decides. Republicans control 15 delegations out of 33 (all free states except CA and OR; OTL, Republicans held all these except Illinois, which was 5-4 Democrat, but ITTL is 5-4 Republican.) Rep. Lansing Stout (D-OR, the state's sole Representative), dies in a rather stupid incident involving a Cheyenne Indian war party, while returning from Oregon for the final session of the 36th Congress. None of the sixteen other delegations will vote for Seward. The House is deadlocked.

Electiion of the VP is by the Senate, voting individually, for one of the top two finishers, i.e. Bates or Everett. Everett is an easy winner. He becomes President as that office is vacant.

Southern panic over the imminent election of an outright anti-slavery President panic goes away.

Everett fights for the admission of Kansas as a free state, which is pretty much a given except among Fire-Eaters by this time, ending that sore spot.

Foreign affairs become "hot", with the U.S. intervening against the French expedition in Mexico, and Spanish reconquest of the Dominican Republic.

---- more later.
 
What if Britain and then other nations place laws in that forbid the import of goods that were produced by slave labor. Wouldn't this aid in lessoning the power of the southern planters / slave holders? Of course this would probably be after the 1830 point, more like 1840's.

Also, what if The Church in the South comes to see slavery as wrong as part of the second Great Awakening in the USA. So the abolitionists are not just the northerners but also plenty of southerners as well, home grown abolitionists. This way, the whole slavery vs anti-slavery argument is not a pure sectional North vs South debate. The north is not seen as agitators or not as big of agitators.
 
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