DBWI USA abolishes slavery

Like many Americans, I find the continued legal existence of slavery in the United States really embarrassing, though at least it was confined to fifteen states. This seems to be a Western Hemisphere thing, as all the European countries abolished it, but in persists in parts of the US and in Latin American countries such as Cuba and Brazil.

However, given that abolitionists were active as far back as the nineteenth century, suppose they had gotten it abolished in the US. There was a Liberty Party but it confined itself to limiting the spread of slavery, where it actually was successful. While the two major parties have preferred to avoid the issue, the Whigs have always had sort of an abolitionist wing.

Presumably the nineteenth century is the best time for this POD, before the US became such a dominant power that it started putting pressure on other countries to legalize the practice.
 
It would not be good, at least not for a while, unfortunately. Brazil was a rising power at this time; it could have allied with some of the southern states and broken American hegemony over the Continent, while in itself not being strong enough to fight off European powers. I know that South Carolina was rowdy about secession during the 1830s. If they US tried to do it early, Brazil and the South could have fought against Abolition--and maybe even won. Though I know that Georgia would be a pain, since it was an abolitionist stronghold and was the first Southern state to illegalize slavery, not long after Deseret was admitted as a slave state.

However, the longer time went on, the more free states were admitted to the union. Maybe stop vast Mormon settlement and the ultimate legalization of slavery in California, and that would be a good start to have slavery be illegal in America. Once illegal in America, the Latin nations would follow suit. It might even have eliminated the Servaunt system in Panbonapartist France when it arose, or if it does.
 
Hopelessly ASB

Abolition would never have had a chance. They would have had to have a war or something. And if that happened who knows what. Maybe the Ottoman Empire would have fallen and never have conquered Persia.
 
Like many Americans, I find the continued legal existence of slavery in the United States really embarrassing, though at least it was confined to fifteen states. This seems to be a Western Hemisphere thing, as all the European countries abolished it, but in persists in parts of the US and in Latin American countries such as Cuba and Brazil.

However, given that abolitionists were active as far back as the nineteenth century, suppose they had gotten it abolished in the US. There was a Liberty Party but it confined itself to limiting the spread of slavery, where it actually was successful. While the two major parties have preferred to avoid the issue, the Whigs have always had sort of an abolitionist wing.

Presumably the nineteenth century is the best time for this POD, before the US became such a dominant power that it started putting pressure on other countries to legalize the practice.

OOC: TBH, while I honestly don't mean to rain on your parade.....the USA retaining slavery to the present day, without the rise of some sort of dictatorship a la What Madness is This?, is so completely implausible, that it truly is borderline ASB. For one thing, slave labor, per capita, simply just was not as efficient as free labor, not just in agriculture, but in industry, etc., as well(with a few OTL outliers notwithstanding). And, for that matter, the economy can only straggle along for so long being held down by that same system.

Back in August, oberdada made a very good point regarding slavery and economics, that I thought I would share:

I have an idea for another scenario, what about a huge speculation bubble regarding slaves? I don't know if the CSA could survive that long, but imagine a time where the demand for slaves goes up, as well as the prizes, even lower middle class whites start buying one slave or the other, if only for speculation purposes, maybe even on credit and working extra hard to keep up with the payments. Wouldn't that be ironic?

It has happened with houses, so why not with slaves.
Eventually the bubble will burst, a lot of people will be bancrupt or deeply in debt.
The market for slaves could collapse, keeping slaves around just incase the market will recover is not as easy at it is with houses or stock...

So if you can't sell your slave, because nobody is buying, and you can barely feed your own family you'd no choice but to tell him or her to get the hell out.

Maybe some old planter families would keep slaves after that, but that would be an oddity...

And I myself raised a couple of points as well:

Slavery was often fairly profitable for those engaged in it, yes, that much is true. But it's also not at all true that free labor is no more efficient than slave labor; it was, in fact, rather more efficient, per capita, not just with agriculture, but other occupations as well.

And while slave renting might have become a thing, one would still have to deal with fair few problems with slave labor that would be far less common with paid workers, regardless, such as sabotage, intentionally shoddy work, etc.-indeed, even IOTL such incidences were not that rare, even in factories; objectively speaking, it can be easily argued that it's really quite surprising that it wasn't even more of a problem, considering what was happening on plantations, etc.

Furthermore, slavery would, in fact, have eventually become uneconomical, even if the C.S. state and federal governments continually intervened on the system's behalf-particularly where agriculture was concerned, technology would have made maintaining a large farm much easier, with tractors, etc.., becoming fairly common by the 1920s, maybe the 1930s at the latest(right around the same time they did IOTL; combine harvesters followed not much later than that, by about 1950 or so).



This is a scenario that I myself have brought up on a number of occasions, and it makes perfect sense when you really think about it; it is, in fact, an inevitability once the timeline gets long enough.....which in a surviving C.S.A., it's very likely to get there, with the only real difference being how badly the bubble bursts at the end of it all.



That much is very true. Unfortunately, however, the Confederate leadership would likely never come around to that fact unless it were forced upon them somehow; as @Sift Green rightly pointed out, slavery was pretty much already part of a whole way of life, much like Communism in the Soviet Union.

Well.....while it *is* true that slavery might have lasted a fair bit longer without the Civil War-it also goes, without saying, that slavery would not have been able to survive to the present day without some totally artificial force, like a dictatorship, holding it up-so it's a question of when, not if. And that depends on the POD, and, more importantly, what happens afterwards.

For one, I know this has been mentioned, over and over again, but when you look at it, per capita, slavery was just not that efficient compared to free labor, for a very large variety of reasons, and was not even partly immune from the forces that affect the general economy, etc. For example, last month, on another thread, @oberdada brought up an excellent point regarding a possible scenario for a slavery-related economic downturn:



And this just makes perfect sense, when you think about it. Of course, how and when it occurs may depend on the particular circumstances of the TL, but it is true, without a doubt, that on a long enough timescale, the probability of this becoming a reality eventually does reach 100%. So, with that said.....although the Southern conservatives' fanatical devotion toward, and defense of, slavery that existed circa 1860 will almost certainly allow it to survive to some extent past 1880.....without some sort of majorly concerted gov't and/or corporate/big money effort to keep it alive, I can't really see slavery lasting much beyond the first decade of the 20th Century in a wholly intact United States, even if it could take a major economic blowout to do so.

So, yeah. An America much like our own might be able to keep slavery around to about 1900 or so, maybe even as long as just prior to 1920.....and an America that diverged early & radically enough(like New England and/or other free states breaking off) could be able to keep it alive to about the 1940s under certain conditions without going totally beyond Type II plausibility(though it'd be close!), and maybe, just maybe, up to the 1960s-any later than that, though, and we would be rapidly encroaching into Type IV territory a la CSA: The Movie(no offense meant to Kevin Willmott, though).
 
OOC: TBH, while I honestly don't mean to rain on your parade.....the USA retaining slavery to the present day, without the rise of some sort of dictatorship a la What Madness is This?, is so completely implausible, that it truly is borderline ASB. For one thing, slave labor, per capita, simply just was not as efficient as free labor, not just in agriculture, but in industry, etc., as well(with a few OTL outliers notwithstanding). And, for that matter, the economy can only straggle along for so long being held down by that same system.

Back in August, oberdada made a very good point regarding slavery and economics, that I thought I would share:



And I myself raised a couple of points as well:





So, yeah. An America much like our own might be able to keep slavery around to about 1900 or so, maybe even as long as just prior to 1920.....and an America that diverged early & radically enough(like New England and/or other free states breaking off) could be able to keep it alive to about the 1940s under certain conditions without going totally beyond Type II plausibility(though it'd be close!), and maybe, just maybe, up to the 1960s-any later than that, though, and we would be rapidly encroaching into Type IV territory a la CSA: The Movie(no offense meant to Kevin Willmott, though).

Segregation was economically damaging as well. Apartheid crippled South Africa for years. The Holocaust was a huge waste of resources. Hatred trumps economics.
 
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