DBWI Jacob White is not hanged

May 13th 1859 Atlanta Georgia


Jacob White was a young 20 some thing who had inherited a plantation from his dead father, weather it was a fever, madness or devine revelation Jacob claimed that an angel came to him and showed him his family showed them burning in hell and warned him that unless he freed his slaves this too would be his fate.

But in georgia during the time freeing your slaves like that was techically illegal, so Jacob wrote to an abolitionist group and then marched north into Ohio and officially freed every one of his slaves then he returned home frantically warning every one around him that if slavery was not ended then Atlanta would burn.

This upset some very important people and he was tried and excuted for breaking what was considered by many to be an unjust law, and many who supported the law thought that the punishment was excessive, but in front of a small crowd Jacob White died, his body photographed by an abolitionist newspaper and the story took off like wild fire, soon after John brown would conduct his harpers ferry raid and the country would go into a civil war.

And true to his prediciton Atlanta did burn.

Many people say that Jacobs death was the event that tipped things and made the civil war envitable, other people say that the conflict between free state and slave states was going to cause a civil war no matter what.

But what if Jacob had never had his vision, or if the jury wasn't a kangaroo jury, or if they had simply decided not to hang him. How would history change?
 
To be honest.....probably not all that much, except that there wouldn't be that famous plaque honoring him in Atlanta, and a few towns & other communities like Jakestown, Okla., Whitesboro, Mo., Whitesville, Kan., Jacobsburg, Ind., and Jake's Corner, Calif. would probably all have different names, assuming that they are still founded. Biggest change I can think of, is that this probably butterflies the birth of Congressman Anthony Lee White of Alabama(that'd be a real shame, though, he was one of the most progressive Southern Democrats in the '70s).

Otherwise, even without Jacob White, the Civil War would have happened pretty much on schedule, largely as per OTL.
 
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