Articles of Confederation Part II

The Articles of Confederation were generally considered as a failure because of tariffs and other conflicts between states. What if the Constitutional Convention failed for some reason? Let's consider a gunpowder plot or equivalent.
1. The states disintegrate as a nation and the country doesn't even try to be united.
2. Military conflict between states over disputed territory breaks out.
3. The US navy is semipiratical, enforcing tariffs on imports and exports for financing as states issue writs of marque and reprisal on each other.
4. Britain and France are too busy fighting each other to interfere.
5. The transappalachia region forms it's own states and everything is up for grabs in terms of free land to homesteaders.
6. Slaves and indentured servants run away and cross state lines, and are not retrieved.
7. Money can be gold, silver, copper, or whatever. The area that becomes Michigan goes with copper. Missouri goes with silver. Most of the rest with gold.
8. Louisiana becomes independent as a result of a US raid while France is busy someplace else, followed by massive US immigration.
9. Patents do not exist on an interstate basis. Whitney does not invent the cotton gin. Slavery continues to die out.
10. The US government can only function with unanimous consent, which never happens, especially when the transappalchia states show up and are admitted, or refused.
11. Free trade (except for the small tariffs enacted by the Navy for financing) makes America popular as a trading partner to everybody in Europe.
12. New York still builds the Erie Canal and becomes the major entrepot, as in OTL.
13. Washington DC never becomes important. Philadelphia is still the defacto capitol.
14. Slavery is abandoned around 1810 when the last fugitive slave is captured in Mississippi, and then the bounty agent is murdered by a person or persons unknown.
 
wkwillis said:
The Articles of Confederation were generally considered as a failure because of tariffs and other conflicts between states. What if the Constitutional Convention failed for some reason? Let's consider a gunpowder plot or equivalent.
1. The states disintegrate as a nation and the country doesn't even try to be united.
2. Military conflict between states over disputed territory breaks out.
3. The US navy is semipiratical, enforcing tariffs on imports and exports for financing as states issue writs of marque and reprisal on each other.
4. Britain and France are too busy fighting each other to interfere.
5. The transappalachia region forms it's own states and everything is up for grabs in terms of free land to homesteaders.
6. Slaves and indentured servants run away and cross state lines, and are not retrieved.
7. Money can be gold, silver, copper, or whatever. The area that becomes Michigan goes with copper. Missouri goes with silver. Most of the rest with gold.
8. Louisiana becomes independent as a result of a US raid while France is busy someplace else, followed by massive US immigration.
9. Patents do not exist on an interstate basis. Whitney does not invent the cotton gin. Slavery continues to die out.
10. The US government can only function with unanimous consent, which never happens, especially when the transappalchia states show up and are admitted, or refused.
11. Free trade (except for the small tariffs enacted by the Navy for financing) makes America popular as a trading partner to everybody in Europe.
12. New York still builds the Erie Canal and becomes the major entrepot, as in OTL.
13. Washington DC never becomes important. Philadelphia is still the defacto capitol.
14. Slavery is abandoned around 1810 when the last fugitive slave is captured in Mississippi, and then the bounty agent is murdered by a person or persons unknown.
Some of those are interesting ideas, but I think that Virginia would have something to say about new states to its west.
 
Wendell said:
Some of those are interesting ideas, but I think that Virginia would have something to say about new states to its west.
If Virginia wants to fight the pioneers across the Appalachians, then let them come and have their barns burned by Daniel Boone, Davy Crocket, and my many times great grandfather. Without the US army to back them up, why would anyone care?
Vermont is what happens when the US army doesn't show up to attack the homesteaders. Vermont stared down New York and Massachusetts combined and the Kentucky people would have done the same. Well, I think my Browder relatives in Kentucky would have shown my Gentry relatives in Virginia where to get off. Could by my Gentry relatives could have run off my Browder relatives from their farm...but I doubt it. The Gentrys that came over the hills were interested in their own farm, not stealing some one else's farm. And they sure as hell weren't going to steal your farm for some one else to benefit. You want the farm, lock, load, and come looking for trouble.
You understand, that's what the fuss was about. Who got the money from selling the farmlands? New York, or Massachusetts, Virginia or Kentucky?
That's why the homestead act was so important. You got the land without having to have lots of money to buy several square miles at a time. You just staked 160 acres and started clearing wood. Young people could do it with just a wagon and some tools and some money to buy the first year's groceries. Not much money, either. It went a lot farther on the other side of the mountains.
 
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