DBWI AHC American civil war

I'm trying to come up with a timeline where a group of states tries to secede in the nineteenth century but the federal government uses force to keep them in the union. I realize people have done these with New England trying to leave during the War of 1812, but I'd like to try something different. Any plausible suggestions?
 
I'm trying to come up with a timeline where a group of states tries to secede in the nineteenth century but the federal government uses force to keep them in the union. I realize people have done these with New England trying to leave during the War of 1812, but I'd like to try something different. Any plausible suggestions?

You may have heard of William J. Sobel's "Stars and Stripes", perchance? It was an AH classic (now sadly a bit obscure) that had 13 of the Southern States secede in 1861 over slavery.

What's interesting is, this could well have happened IOTL were it not for the Kansas-Missouri Compromise in 1856: slavery was banned in both Kansas and Missouri(and, prior to this, Maryland and Delaware too) but the federal government could not abolish it on the national level without the explicit approval of three fifths of the States; sadly, this kept it alive until the Panic of 1902 threw us into a recession, and even then, there was a lot of resistance, some of it violent.
 
You may have heard of William J. Sobel's "Stars and Stripes", perchance? It was an AH classic (now sadly a bit obscure) that had 13 of the Southern States secede in 1861 over slavery.

What's interesting is, this could well have happened IOTL were it not for the Kansas-Missouri Compromise in 1856: slavery was banned in both Kansas and Missouri(and, prior to this, Maryland and Delaware too) but the federal government could not abolish it on the national level without the explicit approval of three fifths of the States; sadly, this kept it alive until the Panic of 1902 threw us into a recession, and even then, there was a lot of resistance, some of it violent.

Yeah, the fact that people were allowed to own others in some states at the beginning of last century is just appalling.

So much for "Land of the Free", huh?

Anyway, this isn't the place for that.

Well, if the Gold Rush is somehow more intense or comes earlier, and the government does something to hurt the Westerners, I could see the Western states seceding, probably along with either New England or the South so the government in D.C. is distracted.

The Rockies are a wonderful natural barrier, by the way.
 
Hmm. I recall Cassius Clay making a quixotic bid for the presidency in 1860 under the Republican banner. Perhaps if he had somehow managed to win the nomination and then the presidency it would have prompted some of the southern slave states to attempt secession. Some of the rhetoric from the Fire-eaters in the late 1850s to early 1860s was positively apocalyptic...if we were ever going to have a civil war then it would have come sometime in that period. And an abolitionist in the White House (not to mention an outspoken and badass one like Clay) might have pushed them over the edge.

Now, the only question is how Clay wins the presidency.
 
Southern secession? Sorry guys but imma have to call ASB on that. The southern minority practically owned the U.S. government until 1902. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Clay, Scott, Hampton, Carlisle ring any bells? Leave their position of power in D.C. and what, create some Deep South confederation fearing slave revolts at any moment? Absurd.
 
Maybe a scenario where the free states try to leave?
I'm not sure that enough of the free states would consider it. Maybe New England - they seemed to be more uniformly anti-slavery. New York and the "western" (now Midwestern) states had a lot of recent immigrants, and they did not seem to like the idea of freed slaves competing with them for jobs.
 
I don't think that there is any chance that the US would split. Not after their defeat in the Mexican-American war in 1849. That cost them California. And Tejas, while it allowed Slavery was de facto a Mexican Colony. They would fear that the Mexican Republic too much too powerful experiment with two smaller states.
 
I don't think that there is any chance that the US would split. Not after their defeat in the Mexican-American war in 1849. That cost them California. And Tejas, while it allowed Slavery was de facto a Mexican Colony. They would fear that the Mexican Republic too much too powerful experiment with two smaller states.

Point. Now, if the US had won, you might have seen expansion into former Mexican territory and further South, which would have upset the slave states no end - fear of outnumbering.

Mind you, it set the scene for a huge amount of hostility between Mexico and the US for decades. Especially when Mexico started getting rich from Asian trade - the US felt that they should have got in on that but got robbed by the denial of California. Look at the outcry there was in newspapers of the day when the joint Mexican-British fleet opened up Japan...
 
It'd have some interesting ramifications on the development of Canada, that's for sure. I'm having a hard time recognizing a Canada without the black communities of Ontario, much less that big wave of black landowners in the west that you saw settling in the 1880s through to 1914. If we're positing some kind of civil war that could've knocked slavery out earlier, that means a lot fewer years of slaves fleeing to Canada and going west to claim land. You could have a much more homogenously white Assiniboia and Alberta, and you wouldn't even have the Strathcona soul food scene to redeem it.
 
There probably wouldn't have been the Spanish-American War of 1880, or the subsequent Cuban quagmire. That whole thing was started thanks to the slave states wanting to have another state in their corner, and with the rumblings about the Spanish planning to abolish slavery in Cuba...

OK, they let the Cubans vote on independence when emancipation came, and abided by the result. But the occupation of 'Cuba Territory' is directly to blame for the race relations problems that bedevilled Cuba for all those years after.
 
But what if George Washington managed to take Canada in the ARW, couldn't then the slave-owning states end up outnumbered? Then it would be easy to have an abolitionist end up as president.

I do wonder how Canada would end up in such a scenario. I fear that without the French-style forced industrialisation of the comunalist revolutionaries (They forced their population to invest up to a third! of their income in massive factories collectively run by workers, consumer-organizations, bondholders and local government) Canada would be unable to escape the middle income trap, and end up as poor as the rest of the USA (they flood Mexico with enough illegal immigrants to make them vote for mr 'build a wall and make the 'yanquis' pay for it'.)
And even if they still end up as the richest part off Anglophone America they would probally still be less polite then OTL.
 
I think we more or less agree a civil war could have happened between the North and South, but could you have actually called it a war? The North was so industrialized already, the South wouldn't have lasted a year.
 
Perhaps you could have some sort of Franco-British intervention in the Civil War.

They once did it in the backstory of some or other AH mod for Brightest Minute: It somehow ended up butterflying the Franco-Austrian Alliance, allowing the Prussians to bait France in an unfavorable war, then take Alsace and form Germany. Which derailed the first great war in an ahistorical struggle between the entente cordiale and the central powers (clear ripoffs of OTL's entente imperiale and northern powers).
At the start France was a multiparty-republic for over 60! years, Russia was takenover by an obscure marketophobe farleft group and the most implausible of all Germany got turned in a totalitarian dictatorship by pseudo-(ass in not at all) socialist ultranationalist (who hated jews!! and included neo-paganists!!!).
Though I do have to admit their idea to make Japan out of all countries the leader of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere was hillarious.
 
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