Conflict over Slavery in a USA without the Louisiana Purchase

So in 1803, Napoleon gets a little testy or something and doesn't sell Louisiana to the USA. It gives it back to spain; Haiti shows that the New World isn't anything but trouble.

A lot of conflict in the US was over the expansion of slavery - Missouri Compromise, Kansas-Nebraska, etc. - if the US is limited to its original Revolutionary War boundaries, what is the conflict over slavery? Is there none at all (well, is it nothing compared to OTL) ?
 
Assuming the free-slave divide is at Mason-Dixon's Line and the Ohio River as iOTL, there'll still be a four-free-state majority assuming the state borders are drawn as iOTL. (It goes down to three if you add Florida, or two with West Florida, or one if you hold Maine in with Massachusetts contrary to their wishes.) So, the South will still be worried about being outnumbered - especially given that their soil will be wearing out eventually. I'm not quite sure how long Louisiana will stay Spanish, given OTL's Texan, Californian, and Nicaraguan filibusters.
 
Assuming the free-slave divide is at Mason-Dixon's Line and the Ohio River as iOTL, there'll still be a four-free-state majority assuming the state borders are drawn as iOTL. (It goes down to three if you add Florida, or two with West Florida, or one if you hold Maine in with Massachusetts contrary to their wishes.)

Even more if the United States win a successful battle against British North America, or British North America revolts and joins the United States.
 
So in 1803, Napoleon gets a little testy or something and doesn't sell Louisiana to the USA. It gives it back to spain; Haiti shows that the New World isn't anything but trouble.

A lot of conflict in the US was over the expansion of slavery - Missouri Compromise, Kansas-Nebraska, etc. - if the US is limited to its original Revolutionary War boundaries, what is the conflict over slavery? Is there none at all (well, is it nothing compared to OTL) ?

Well, there's always the possibility of the South being let go eventually. It actually would make an interesting scenario, and I do recall seeing a scenario like that on DevArt at one point.....:D
 
Well, there's always the possibility of the South being let go eventually. It actually would make an interesting scenario, and I do recall seeing a scenario like that on DevArt at one point.....:D

Why do you think the South'd be let go? IOTL the Northerners were duly outraged.
 
If slavery couldn't expand west, how long would it take for the slave owners to deplete the soil with cotton cultivation?
 
No Louisiana Purchase doesn't mean that the US border is going to stay permanently where it was. It just means that US settlers keep pushing west, whether legally or not. And, for that matter, into Spanish-held Florida.

At some point, either Spain sells Louisiana along with Florida in an *Adams–Onís Treaty, or there's war with Spain. More likely a treaty; those thinly-settled areas were ones which Spain was prepared to dispose of in OTL. (Unlike significantly-settled areas such as Cuba).

So it'll be interesting as to what happens in the USA in the short-term re slavery, but there's also the longer term to consider.
 
No Louisiana Purchase doesn't mean that the US border is going to stay permanently where it was. It just means that US settlers keep pushing west, whether legally or not. And, for that matter, into Spanish-held Florida.
I can understand Florida, sure, since there's just going to be an unmarked land border that people can slowly and quietly drift across without being noticed. With Louisiana though you've got the Mississippi as a territorial marker, it's not as though you can really claim you didn't notice it and just happened to settle on the wrong side of the line. The French or Spanish can just post a nice polite keep out sign and whenever they find anyone on the wrong side of the river without permission deport them back to their side. Sure the US is probably going to be an arsehole and try to steal the place, yay manifest destiny, but they're going to have to do it whilst looking like thieving arseholes. Unless of course you get some sort of Texas-like situation.
 
Prior to the Louisiana Purchase, the concept of manifest destiny was unknown for the most part. As such, I do not think the slaveholding political class thought too much about continuing the expansion of slavery as a means of keeping political power. While they certainly fought hard during the constitutional convention for protections of slavery, they did not get complete protection of the slave trade and saw it outlawed by 1808. Obviously the 3/5 compromise at least kept the white population of the South overrepresented in congress (so that would be seen as a political win). But the Northwest Ordinance which made that new territory free from slavery, could have probably been successfully opposed by the congressmen and senators from slaveholding states, had they had the benefit of hindsight.

In 1803, without the territories brought into the US by the Louisiana Purchase, there were 8 slave states and 9 free states (Ohio admitted in 1802, I think). The territory that would become the states of Alabama and Mississippi were obviously destined to become slave states, since it was being settled primarily with people from slave states. While the the Northwest Territory was being settled by free soilers. In OTL, once Louisiana was purchased, the state of Louisiana became the next state to once again balance free and slave states.

If you cut off the further expansion of the United States, either, Mississippi and Alabama get carved up into more than two states, or it takes a long time before more free states are admitted out of the Northwest territory.

So my gut tells me that without Louisiana, you have faster and denser settlement in Mississippi and Alabama. Since Louisiana was already a developed slaveholding territory (only French/Spanish), I bet you still have alot of Americans immigrate there with their slaves. In addition, freesoilers start filling up Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. There will be numerous efforts to try to continue the balance between free and slave states. Once all territories have been admitted as states (including Florida, if it can be acquired), issues regarding slavery, tariffs, fugitive slave laws, etc., will eventually lead to secession movements probably as early as the 1830s. Then depending on who the President is will determine if there is a war or whether states are allowed to peacefully secede.
 
Prior to the Louisiana Purchase, the concept of manifest destiny was unknown for the most part. As such, I do not think the slaveholding political class thought too much about continuing the expansion of slavery as a means of keeping political power. While they certainly fought hard during the constitutional convention for protections of slavery, they did not get complete protection of the slave trade and saw it outlawed by 1808. Obviously the 3/5 compromise at least kept the white population of the South overrepresented in congress (so that would be seen as a political win). But the Northwest Ordinance which made that new territory free from slavery, could have probably been successfully opposed by the congressmen and senators from slaveholding states, had they had the benefit of hindsight.

In 1803, without the territories brought into the US by the Louisiana Purchase, there were 8 slave states and 9 free states (Ohio admitted in 1802, I think). The territory that would become the states of Alabama and Mississippi were obviously destined to become slave states, since it was being settled primarily with people from slave states. While the the Northwest Territory was being settled by free soilers. In OTL, once Louisiana was purchased, the state of Louisiana became the next state to once again balance free and slave states.

If you cut off the further expansion of the United States, either, Mississippi and Alabama get carved up into more than two states, or it takes a long time before more free states are admitted out of the Northwest territory.

So my gut tells me that without Louisiana, you have faster and denser settlement in Mississippi and Alabama. Since Louisiana was already a developed slaveholding territory (only French/Spanish), I bet you still have alot of Americans immigrate there with their slaves. In addition, freesoilers start filling up Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. There will be numerous efforts to try to continue the balance between free and slave states. Once all territories have been admitted as states (including Florida, if it can be acquired), issues regarding slavery, tariffs, fugitive slave laws, etc., will eventually lead to secession movements probably as early as the 1830s. Then depending on who the President is will determine if there is a war or whether states are allowed to peacefully secede.


If we're going Whigs and Dems, or Dems and Feds, or Dems and GOPs, or any other one-syllable party with an S on the end, it's not necessarily going to be black and white. Lincoln says "no secession". Buchanan, who was Democrat (and Lincoln a Republican) didn't like the idea of secession either, but he didn't call up 80,000 men to fight the South.
 
I can understand Florida, sure, since there's just going to be an unmarked land border that people can slowly and quietly drift across without being noticed. With Louisiana though you've got the Mississippi as a territorial marker, it's not as though you can really claim you didn't notice it and just happened to settle on the wrong side of the line. The French or Spanish can just post a nice polite keep out sign and whenever they find anyone on the wrong side of the river without permission deport them back to their side. Sure the US is probably going to be an arsehole and try to steal the place, yay manifest destiny, but they're going to have to do it whilst looking like thieving arseholes. Unless of course you get some sort of Texas-like situation.

A Texas-like situation is exactly what you'll get. There'll be some outrage about violent French/Spanish removal of pushing good Anglo folk out their homes, and war will happen over it.
 
I meant Texas-like situation of if they invited settlers in to help boost the population and local economy, only for them to revolt at a later point. That at least allows you a fig-leaf to cover your actions. I can't really see how angry the American public can get about people being evicted from a country that they'd illegally moved to and settled in.
 
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