DBWI: Virginia doesn't outlaw slavery in 1832

Would slavery lasted longer than the 10 years OTL ? It was the first "plantation state" to outlaw slavery. It was followed by Deleware and Maryland in 1833 and Kentucky in 1834. North Carolina and Tennessee followed a year later. Arkansas was admitted as a free state in 1836, the same year that Louisiana and Mississippi outlawed it. In 1838 Alabama outlawed it leaving only Georgia and South Carolina. Georgia saw the handwriting on the wall and finally outlawed it in 1840 while South Carolina was the last to outlaw it in 1842. Would we have start a war to annex Texas or would we have been too worried about the balance between slave and free states? How long do you think it would have taken for Florida to become a state?
 
Florida would have reached statehood status by the 1850s with or without the Southern states leaving the Union and forming the Confederacy. The North always had, and in many states still do, their 'black laws' which exclude the negro from playing any full part in society. Granted, the situation was similar at first in the South as it recovered from the abolishment of slavery and the great expansion of first cotton and then its textile industry.

A war to annex Texas is possible given the geopolitics of the time, but luckily the Texians drifted into the Confederacy's 'sphere of influence' relatively quickly following its war of independence. The new wealth caused by the power looms of Mississippi and Georgia effected everybody, both white and black, and is rightly credited by scholars, even in Harvard and Cambridge, in paving the road to better race relations. While the first negro elected to public office in the South didn't occur until the 1880s, one can only look upon in amazement at how reactionary the United States became by the 1890s and continues to be so.

The War of Southern Independence was fought primarily to end the North's long demands of either treating the negro as a second citizen or deport them to Liberia. Niether US President Henry Clay or his prodigy Abraham Lincoln thought that the negro would be better than a 'slave' to be tied to the factories in Pittsburgh or Detroit. One of the tenants of Clay's American Plan was to provide the negro as a permenantly underpaid long term contract employee to those companies that had government connections.

By the 1840s and 1850s regional rivalry within the then United States was bringing the Federal Government practically to a stand still. The Old Northwest, New England, the South and the Mid-Atlantic states were being played off against one another by the likes of Henry Clay and his business connections. Clay was the first man to practically buy the presidency and that left a lot of ill will with the South. That contested election, which saw the vote thrown to Congress, was undoubtedly the reason that California lost all interest in joining the Union.
 
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OOC: A certain amount of rewriting history is fine but don't go off the deep end. The South never gave a damn about Blacks being treated as second class citizens as they treated them as property.

This is what Jefferson Davis had to say in his first message to the Confederate Congress http://www.auburn.edu/~lakwean/hist2010/doc1861_davisadrs.html" As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves.... Emboldened by success, the theatre of agitation and aggression against the clearly expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress; Senators and Representatives were sent to the common councils of the nation, whose chief title to this distinction consisted in the display of a spirit of ultra-fanaticism, and whose business was not to promote the general welfare or insure domestic tranquility, but to awaken the bitterest hatred against the citizens of sister States, by violent denunciation of their institutions; the transaction of public affairs was impeded by repeated effort to usurp powers not delegated by the Constitution, for the purpose of impairing the security of property in slaves, and reducing those States which held slaves to a condition of inferiority...." This hardly sounds like someone who would give a damn about Blacks becoming second class citizens except for the fact that even second class citizens weren't slaves any more.

Alaxander Stephans said http://www.civilwarhistory.com/_georgia/The%20Cornerstone%20Speech.htm "He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted.The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically.It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind-from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics; their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just-but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails.

I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal."

Robert Toombs said http://civilwarcauses.org/toombs.htm " In 1820, the Northern party, (and I mean by that term now and whenever else it is used, or its equivalent, in these remarks, the Antislavery or Abolition party of the North,) endeavored to exclude the State of Missouri from admission into the Union, because she chose to protect African slavery in the new State. In the House, where they had a majority, they rejected her application, and a struggle ensued, when some half a dozen of Northern men gave way, and admitted the State, but upon condition of the exclusion of slavery from all that country, acquired from France by the treaty of 1802, lying north of thirty- six degrees thirty minutes, north latitude, and outside of the State of Missouri. When we acquired California and New- Mexico this party, scorning all compromises and all concessions, demanded that slavery should be forever excluded from them, and all other acquisitions of the Republic, either by purchase or conquest, forever. The South at all times demanded nothing but equality in the common territories, equal enjoyment of them with their property, to that extended to Northern citizens and their property ~ nothing more. They said, we pay our part in all the blood and treasure expended in their acquisition. Give us equality of enjoyment, equal right to expansion - it is as necessary to our prosperity as yours.

The North understand it better - they have told us for twenty years that their object was to pen up slavery within its present limits - surround it with a border of free States, and like the scorpion surrounded with fire, they will make it sting itself to death. One thing at least is certain, that whatever may be the effect of your exclusion from the Territories, there is no dispute but that the North mean it, and adopt it as a measure hostile to slavery upon this point. They all agree, they are all unanimous in Congress, in the States, on the rostrum, in the sanctuary - everywhere they declare that slavery shall not go into the Territories. They took up arms to drive it out of Kansas; and Sharpe's rifles were put into the hands of assassins by Abolition preachers to do their work. Are they mistaken? No; they are not. The party put it into their platform at Philadelphia - they have it in the corner-stone of their Chicago platform; Lincoln is on it - pledged to it. Hamlin is on it, and pledged to it; every Abolitionist in the Union, in or out of place, is openly pledged, in some manner, to drive us from the common Territories. This conflict, at least, is irrepressible - it is easily understood -we demand the equal right with the North to go into the common Territories with all of our property, slaves included, and to be there protected in its peaceable enjoyment by the Federal Government, until such Territories may come into the Union as equal States-then we admit them with or without slavery, as the people themselves may decide for themselves. " Does this sound like someone who cares about the treatment about Blacks?

John C Calhoun said http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=71 " A large portion of the Northern States believed slavery to be a sin, and would consider it as an obligation of conscience to abolish it if they should feel themselves in any degree responsible for its continuance, and that this doctrine would necessarily lead to the belief of such responsibility. I then predicted that it would commence as it has with this fanatical portion of society, and that they would begin their operations on the ignorant, the weak, the young, and the thoughtless �and gradually extend upwards till they would become strong enough to obtain political control, when he and others holding the highest stations in society, would, however reluctant, be compelled to yield to their doctrines, or be driven into obscurity. But four years have since elapsed, and all this is already in a course of regular fulfilment. But I take higher ground. I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good�a positive good."These were their "movers and shakers". Jeferson Davis was the president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephans was the VP, Robert Toombs was very well known and Calhoun was considered the leading politician in the south at that time.

This makes me think they were likely to pass and enforce "black laws" themselves. They did so right after reconstruction. There would almost certainly would have been no Civil War and Lincoln would likely be unknown. I realize the desire in Southerners to rewrite history, if my anscestors were traitors I would like to rewrite myself. But facts are facts, virtually all of the really big politicians in the South of that time were strongly pro-slavery and that was the biggest reason for the war.
 
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OCC: If its a DBWI then it can go any which way.

To a certain extent but making the South out as big civil righters for blacks is laughable. You should have at least some realism in there. The odds are STRONGLY on the side of the South being about the same as the North as far as civil rights is concerned as slavery didn't last that much longer than in the North as OTL. There is a decent likelihood that it is somewhat behind the North but considerably less so than OTL as it still has to catch up a few decades with the North. There is virtually no likelihood that it would be ahead.
 
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