Alternate entry of states into the US -a partial timeline

This a partial timeline. This means there is no narrative, explanatory material, or anything, just the bare bones of a timeline that can be added to later.

14. Vermont -1791 FREE
15. Kentucky -1792 SLAVE
16. Tennessee -1796 SLAVE

17. Ohio -1803 FREE
18. Louisiana 1812 SLAVE

19. Indiana 1816 FREE
20. Mississippi 1817 SLAVE

21. Illinois 1818 FREE
22. Alabama 1819 SLAVE

23. Missouri 1836 SLAVE
24. Michigan 1837 FREE

25. Arkansas 1845 SLAVE
26. Texas 1845 SLAVE
27. Iowa 1846 FREE
28. Wisconsin 1848 FREE

29. California 1850 FREE
30. Florida 1850 SLAVE

31. Minnesota 1858 FREE
32. Cuba 1859 SLAVE

33. Oregon 1869 FREE
34. New Mexico 1870 SLAVE

35. Colorado 1876 FREE
36. Arizona 1878 SLAVE

37. Utah 1896 SLAVE
38. Kansas 1898 FREE
 
I don't see Utah as a Slave state. Iirc, when Horace Greeley passed through in 1859, Brigham Young told him that it was certain to be a Free one.

Istr there were a few slaves there, but I thought they were mostly the property of Democratic Territorial officials, some of whom hailed from southern states.
 
I don't see Utah as a Slave state. Iirc, when Horace Greeley passed through in 1859, Brigham Young told him that it was certain to be a Free one.

Istr there were a few slaves there, but I thought they were mostly the property of Democratic Territorial officials, some of whom hailed from southern states.

Agree entirely about Utah. Remember OTL the majority of Mormons came from either the Northern states or from Britain, neither of which had slave-owning cultures. Likewise with the non-LDS arrivals who came in through the mining industry.
 
Agree entirely about Utah. Remember OTL the majority of Mormons came from either the Northern states or from Britain, neither of which had slave-owning cultures. Likewise with the non-LDS arrivals who came in through the mining industry.

Indeed - Both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were Vermonters by birth, though they later moved westward..
 
The Mormon Church allowed slavery though and Mormons owned slaves in OTL; especially after encountering slavery in Missouri which was supposed to be the promise land, and they believe Missouri was the site of the Garden of Eden (which if you've ever been to Missouri...)

In 1838, Joseph Smith answered the following question while en route from Kirtland to Missouri, as follows: "Are the Mormons abolitionists? No ... we do not believe in setting the Negroes free." (Smith 1977, p. 120)
 
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This a partial timeline. This means there is no narrative, explanatory material, or anything, just the bare bones of a timeline that can be added to later.

14. Vermont -1791 FREE
15. Kentucky -1792 SLAVE
16. Tennessee -1796 SLAVE

17. Ohio -1803 FREE
18. Louisiana 1812 SLAVE

19. Indiana 1816 FREE
20. Mississippi 1817 SLAVE

21. Illinois 1818 FREE
22. Alabama 1819 SLAVE

23. Missouri 1836 SLAVE
24. Michigan 1837 FREE

25. Arkansas 1845 SLAVE
26. Texas 1845 SLAVE
27. Iowa 1846 FREE
28. Wisconsin 1848 FREE

29. California 1850 FREE
30. Florida 1850 SLAVE

31. Minnesota 1858 FREE
32. Cuba 1859 SLAVE

33. Oregon 1869 FREE
34. New Mexico 1870 SLAVE

35. Colorado 1876 FREE
36. Arizona 1878 SLAVE

37. Utah 1896 SLAVE
38. Kansas 1898 FREE


Why does Maine not becoming a state mean no Civil War? Can you expound upon your POD for the rest of us, please? How did we get Cuba and no Platt Amendment? Why did Oregon and Kansas take so long but New Mexico comes in sooner? NM is heavily Native American/Mexican compared to other states and racism prevented it from coming in prior to the 1900s; the same but to a lesser degree applies to Arizona especially in 1878 the idea in Congress would be "not enough whiteys" and Kansas would be pissed to lose out to Colorado by 12 years. This entire idea of a timelines seems highly flawed.
 
Much greater adherence to the free state must be paired with a slave state rule. Instead of the Missouri compromise, Congress doesn't split up Massachusetts and Missouri is told to wait. Later Kansas is told to wait. No need for the 1850 compromise, no Civil War, but later on anything that can semi-plausibly be a slave state is dragged in to preserve the balance.

I don't get the objection over Cuba, since adding it as a slave state was a major project in the 1850s.
 
Much greater adherence to the free state must be paired with a slave state rule. Instead of the Missouri compromise, Congress doesn't split up Massachusetts and Missouri is told to wait. Later Kansas is told to wait. No need for the 1850 compromise, no Civil War, but later on anything that can semi-plausibly be a slave state is dragged in to preserve the balance.

I don't get the objection over Cuba, since adding it as a slave state was a major project in the 1850s.

Well... it would require a much earlier Spanish-American War (OTL 1898), and without the Civil War it's possible the US navy and army wouldn't fare well against the Spanish, definitely would butterfly away capturing Manila/Philippines; probably Guam, maybe even Puerto Rico. Asking states that have reached the population requirement, have drafted a constitution, and are ready to join is very hard and has barely ever been successful; Utah is pretty much the only one that has been delayed successfully for a period of time and that was because of religious bigotry against the Mormons masked as objections to polygamy and that's one state you have coming in earlier than OTL. A balanced Senate won't change the fact that the House will continue to be more and more dominated by the industrial north with much larger populations than the South can hope for with a 2/3rd compromise and slave economy; NY will have its OTL antebellum domination of the electoral map for the House and more importantly for President even higher in this scenario; you'll never see a Southerner as Pres or VP ever; you'll see more of the Ohio/NY pairings
 
The problem with the idea is that you're overvaluing individual events (the Missouri Compromise) as causes of the Civil War and undervaluing general trends. The sequence of events in the 1850s - California, Kansas/Nebraska, the Fugitive Slave Act, Dred Scott - would not have gone away if the Missouri Compromise had gone in a different direction. For one, they happened 30+ years later, so the causation has to be more complex. What happened was that the North was growing faster than the South in population, swamping it in the House. Zachary Taylor was the last Southern president until LBJ; the presidents in the 1850s were doughfaces rather than Southerners. Within the North, the fastest-growing region was the Midwest, which had more to fear from the expansion of slavery than New England, for two reasons. First, it had claims to expand to the Great Plains and so did the South (Missouri would've been a point of great contention by the 1830s, but in 1820 there weren't enough people in Illinois who'd care). And second, it was politically younger and not enamored with the century-long compromises the New England and Mid-Atlantic elites had made with the South. Of note, the most intensely anti-slavery parts of the Northern US were not the coastal cities, but the interior: Upstate New York, and the Midwest. At the same time, the Southern economy required the expansion of slavery into new territories, hence the Southerners' attempts to swamp the Great Plains and the Southwest and calls for annexing Cuba.

So let's say the Missouri Compromise goes your way: Missouri gets delayed until Michigan can come in, resulting in a new pairing of free and slave states. By the 1830s, there already are enough Midwesterners that they'd at least try to swing Missouri their way. OTL Missouri never had much slavery, unlike the 50% black Deep South. Presumably the Southerners would win, but the Northerners would remain embittered. Then the new pairing of free and slave states creates some really low-population states, ones that by previous precedent should have remained territories for decades. Finally, the US conquers territory to the south (Cuba) but not the north (British Columbia); 54 40 or Fight was a Northern slogan, complaining that Polk was refusing to fight for territories that would be US free states, only for ones that would be slave states. Presumably, laws on fugitive slaves happen as in OTL, and are most likely harsher given that you're empowering the South more; the North would not be happy, and would be pushing for swamping borderline states. By the 1860s, it would have a solid majority in the House, and a leadership that would flatly not let New Mexico and such in. The constitutional crisis would have happened around the same time as in OTL, give or take 10 years. Might have been a war, might have been something else, but the antebellum political structure would not survive intact.
 
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Alon has reasonable and informed points.

However, in the actual 1860-1 secession crisis various compromise proposals, such as guaranteeing slavery in the Constitution, were floated and did get some traction. IIRC the slavery guarantee or something like it passed at least the (northern dominated) House of Representatives. And the Upper South states did not secede, in fact they considered but rejected secession, until after Fort Sumpter and Lincoln moved to crush the CSA by force.

So I don't think there needed to be the OTL break happening in 1860-1 at all, and even some minor changes to the OTL 1850s events would prevent that. You could even have Lincoln as a Fillmore style Whig President. And once you get past the 1860s, who knows what happens?

The standard practice was for slavery to be abolished legally and peacefully, usually with some sort of compensation for slave-owners. The exceptions are the United States and Haiti. The US is really unique in many ways in its approach to racial questions.
 
The Mormon Church allowed slavery though and Mormons owned slaves in OTL; especially after encountering slavery in Missouri which was supposed to be the promise land, and they believe Missouri was the site of the Garden of Eden (which if you've ever been to Missouri...)

In 1838, Joseph Smith answered the following question while en route from Kirtland to Missouri, as follows: "Are the Mormons abolitionists? No ... we do not believe in setting the Negroes free." (Smith 1977, p. 120)


Since he was in process of moving to a Slave state, it would have been undiplomatic to say anything else. He was probably trying (vainly as it proved) to appease Missourian opinion.

There is no reason to suppose that he would have wanted to set up a Slave state in Deseret had he survived to go there.
 
The thing is, if the only terms with which Utah could have gotten admission to the Union was as a slave state, they would have become a slave state. This wouldn't have even required the Prophet to receive a new revelation.
 
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