End slavery early in the US

Pomphis

Banned
What I mean is if there is a lot of cheap labour before slavery starts no one would start importing slaves.

Okay, but that ship had sailed centuries ago, long before the US was founded.

And this thread is about ending slavery in the US, not about preventing slavery becoming widespread in the americas.
 
What I mean is if there is a lot of cheap labour before slavery starts no one would start importing slaves.

How do you do that? One of the defining aspects of any settler colony is that the land is plentiful and the population is scarce. You'd have to uproot the entire population of England and scatter it across America before the price of labor drops enough to make slavery uncompetitive.
 
Slavery was becoming unprofitable by the 1790s, had it not been for the cotton gin, it couldn't have reached the scales it had.

Slavery was manifestly still profitable during the 1790s, not unprofitable.

The only slave-grown crop which was in decline during that period was indigo, and that was because it had only ever been profitable to grow indigo in North America thanks to British subsidies. Those were lost after the Revolution, and so indigo production collapsed and never meaningfully recovered. (Indigo was still grown by French and Spanish slaves in more tropical regions, but that's another story).

Slave-grown tobacco was booming after the Revolution. In fact, tobacco cultivation was expanding into the uplands of South Carolina and Georgia just after the Revolution, and this was only curtailed when the cotton gin made growing short-staple cotton there even more profitable.

Slave-grown rice was still highly profitable, too, if restricted in the areas it could be grown. Ditto long-staple cotton in coastal areas.

For that matter, slave-grown wheat was also capable of turning a decent profit - a point often neglected. Up to a third of Virginia's slaves were employed growing wheat (and other small grains) during the first half of the nineteenth century, and slaves were also used further west to grow wheat profitably, in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri.

So, in short, without the cotton gin, you're looking at a different pattern of slavery, but not no slavery.

1. Have a boll weevil outbreak.

2. Do something or other to have there not be a cotton gin before the early 19th century. It's a very simple invention and was being worked on by a lot of people, but anything's possible, considering that it eluded humans for so long.

In this universe, slavery is completely unprofitable by 1810 and quickly falls out of favor. There are still some slaves here and there, but the writing's on the wall for it. Nobody bats an eye about a generation later when states start gradual abolition on their own.

In this universe, slavery is still profitably growing tobacco, rice, wheat and hemp. Potentially long-staple cotton as well (I can't remember offhand if the boll weevil attacks long-staple cotton too). And maybe raising cattle, too (something also done in Virginia). Plus sugar along the Gulf coast, assuming there's still a Louisiana Purchase. You may have even made the geographical grip of slavery worse, since without the cotton gin fewer slaves will be sold further south from the Upper South, and thus move west with their owners into Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana and Illinois (as they did OTL into all four).

The South primarily grows food crops,

Which is wrong for two reasons. Firstly because it ignores tobacco, sugar and hemp, and secondly because it assumes that using slavery for food crops is unprofitable. It's not, provided that there's an export market for the food crops. Which there was, for wheat and rice. (Not so much for maize, unless you're distilling it afterwards).

and the cotton boom comes too late to save slavery, due to the mass importation of indentured servants from Europe.

Wait, what? Where in Hades has this sudden boom in indentured servants come from? That had gone out of fashion before the 1810s, precisely because planters preferred slaves to indentured servants. Nothing has been done here to change that, never mind what has changed in Europe to produce a glut of people wanting to emigrate by becoming indentured servants.

Anyway, to return to the original topic, the easiest way to end slavery early in the OTL US is to keep it British territory, though that's probably cheating. If it remains under British rule, while the timeframe of OTL British abolition (1830s) will probably be pushed back by a few years, it can still end slavery without a civil war, and earlier than OTL.

If you want to keep the US (which you probably do), then a good way would be to have the abolitionist movement develop earlier in the UK, and have it then spread to the colonies. This won't be enough to end slavery in itself, but it would mean that in conjunction with the spirit of equality of the American Revolution, it might be easier to have slavery abolished in the aftermath, at least in a few more states. With slave states then outnumbered, that could then lead to an earlier and peaceful resolution of slavery.
 
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How about having the rest of the non European world consider slavery outdated or evil? If there is no ready source of slaves the cost would become too high for it to continue. Unless you propose the US sends an expeditionary army to capture slaves a possibility. If no other group was willing to sell slaves to the slave market in the west( Brazil was a larger importer of slaves) it would have died due to cost. By the way virtual slavery still exists in many non-western countries.
 
How about having the rest of the non European world consider slavery outdated or evil?

Short of alien mind control lasers, that's not happening, unfortunately.

Slavery was a widespread human phenomenon, and having all, or even most, societies eradicate it of their own volition is unrealistic.

Sure, some of them may decide to abolish it, but all of them?

While European imperialism involved a great many evils, the fact that they (eventually) pushed for the abolition of slavery around the world as a good thing.

If there is no ready source of slaves the cost would become too high for it to continue.

Quite true if you're talking Brazil.

Not at all true if you're talking British North America, where the slave population had been growing by natural increase for a long time before the US gained its independence.

Even for the Caribbean, it's not necessarily true. Sugar plantations in the Caribbean had been notorious for the atrocious conditions and short life expectancy of the slaves. The planters never bothered to improve that as long as they had a ready supply of imported slaves to replace the ones who died.

So when the British abolished the slave trade in 1808 (or thereabouts), including the slave trade between islands, they expected that slavery would wither away after that, because the number of slaves would decrease.

What actually happened was that the planters, deprived of the supply of imported slaves, were forced to improve the conditions for their slaves so that they stopped dying so much. This meant that the slave populations stablised, and while it was slightly more expensive than before, was not enough to stop sugar plantations being insanely profitable.

By the way virtual slavery still exists in many non-western countries.

And even, in a few cases, in western countries.
 
Which western countries ? And i mean virtual slavery as indentured servitude as in India and actual as in the Mid East and Africa.
 
How about having the rest of the non European world consider slavery outdated or evil? If there is no ready source of slaves the cost would become too high for it to continue.

Untrue, the US outlawed the slave trade in 1807 yet the domestic slave population continued to grow steadily.
 
Which western countries ? And i mean virtual slavery as indentured servitude as in India and actual as in the Mid East and Africa.

I was referring to illegal sex slavery and other such practices, which are (as far as I know) rare in Western countries, but hardly unknown either. They exist in (for example) the Netherlands, Germany, the USA and Australia, and quite possibly other Western countries too.
 

Pomphis

Banned
How about having the rest of the non European world consider slavery outdated or evil? If there is no ready source of slaves the cost would become too high for it to continue.

No. Slaves can be used to produce new slaves. No importation simply makes already present slaves and their slave children more valuable. The CSA didn´t have restrictions on slave importation because they wanted slavery to wither away, but to protect the value of the slaves already there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_Constitution#Slavery

The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country, other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.[

Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy
 
Which is wrong for two reasons. Firstly because it ignores tobacco, sugar and hemp, and secondly because it assumes that using slavery for food crops is unprofitable. It's not, provided that there's an export market for the food crops. Which there was, for wheat and rice. (Not so much for maize, unless you're distilling it afterwards).
not unprofitable, but less efficient. Several studies done at the time showed that food crops grown by slave labor were way less efficient than those grown by free northern farmers. Wheat, hogs, cattle, you name it. The reason is pretty obvious... slaves have zero incentive to be efficient, while free farmers absolutely have to rely on the sales they make to live. Tobacco, cotton, and rice were the exceptions, mainly because they couldn't be grown in the north, and tobacco and cotton were simply in such high demand/high prices that the inefficiency didn't really matter. So, while slave grown food crops could make a profit, they were outproduced by northern free farmers.

None of which does anything to end slavery early, I suppose. Still, you wonder at just how the situation would shake itself out in the long run...
 
You are changing the goalposts. Neither collapsed because they used slave labor.

They were using the slave-labor of groups slated for extermination and the death rates of those slaves were very high. It was a temporary thing, they weren't spending the money to properly feed and house the slaves that would have created a stable slave population. Nazi slavery could never have lasted long, it was more of a diversion along the way to the final goal of genocide of those groups.

Slavery was manifestly still profitable during the 1790s, not unprofitable.

The only slave-grown crop which was in decline during that period was indigo, and that was because it had only ever been profitable to grow indigo in North America thanks to British subsidies. Those were lost after the Revolution, and so indigo production collapsed and never meaningfully recovered. (Indigo was still grown by French and Spanish slaves in more tropical regions, but that's another story).

Slave-grown tobacco was booming after the Revolution. In fact, tobacco cultivation was expanding into the uplands of South Carolina and Georgia just after the Revolution, and this was only curtailed when the cotton gin made growing short-staple cotton there even more profitable.

Slave-grown rice was still highly profitable, too, if restricted in the areas it could be grown. Ditto long-staple cotton in coastal areas.

For that matter, slave-grown wheat was also capable of turning a decent profit - a point often neglected. Up to a third of Virginia's slaves were employed growing wheat (and other small grains) during the first half of the nineteenth century, and slaves were also used further west to grow wheat profitably, in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri.

So, in short, without the cotton gin, you're looking at a different pattern of slavery, but not no slavery.

In this universe, slavery is still profitably growing tobacco, rice, wheat and hemp. Potentially long-staple cotton as well (I can't remember offhand if the boll weevil attacks long-staple cotton too). And maybe raising cattle, too (something also done in Virginia). Plus sugar along the Gulf coast, assuming there's still a Louisiana Purchase. You may have even made the geographical grip of slavery worse, since without the cotton gin fewer slaves will be sold further south from the Upper South, and thus move west with their owners into Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana and Illinois (as they did OTL into all four).

Which is wrong for two reasons. Firstly because it ignores tobacco, sugar and hemp, and secondly because it assumes that using slavery for food crops is unprofitable. It's not, provided that there's an export market for the food crops. Which there was, for wheat and rice. (Not so much for maize, unless you're distilling it afterwards).

Yes, but slavery for growing non-cash crops simply wasn't nearly as profitable as slavery for growing tobacco or especially cotton. Wheat could be grown in Northern states. So can hemp. Those areas still ended up abolishing slavery. I'd say that in the absence of any abolitionist movement, slavery would continue indefinitely even without cotton, but without it slavery isn't profitable enough to outweigh growing abolitionist sentiment. If slaves aren't concentrated in the South, then in places where slavery is not greatly profitable non-slave owners will greatly outnumber slave owners, and anti-slavery legislative measures will eventually pass. And Dave Howery has a point. The majority of wheat farmers weren't slaves for a reason.
 
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not unprofitable, but less efficient. Several studies done at the time showed that food crops grown by slave labor were way less efficient than those grown by free northern farmers.

There's been quite a few studies on this, and the answer is not at all simple. It depends on the crop, the type of labourer (free farmer or hired labourer), and how effective the slaveowner/overseer was at managing the workers. It also depends whether you're looking at per-hour productivity or per-worker productivity. Not to mention the relative wage which you're paying the worker (if free) or effective wage (capitalised purchase price, food and shelter) for slaves.

The short version is that self-employed farmers (North and South both) worked more hours than any other workers, slave or free. And were, on the whole, more efficient, except for crops which could be harvested via the gang system - more on that below.

But slaves were more reliable, and generally (though not always) more efficient than hired labour. Not to mention being capable of being worked for longer hours than hired labour.

The big advantage of slavery, though, was economies of scale. Not just in labour, but also - which is less obvious - in talent.

In labour-deprived North America, land was cheap, and labour was at a premium. There simply was not enough hired labour around to be relied on - free labourers tended to quit or go on strike. As such, for even a successful free farmers, the problem was that quite simply they could not expand their farms beyond the land they could farm with their own family and a little hired help. Nowhere much to reinvest the profits. They could buy more land, but couldn't operate it effectively without sub-letting or land speculation, and the profits for both were unreliable at best.

Where slaves were around, though, a successful farmer could buy (or hire) a slave. And then, if profits continued to expand with the increased labour, another slave, and then more land if needed, and then more slaves... until they were a successful planter holding a big chunk of land. This gave them both economies of scale and allowed the more efficient farmers to become even more profitable. And (usually) to monopolise the best land.

For comparison purposes: when comparing Southern free-labour farms to slaveowning farms, Gavin Wright found that on average, the slaveowning farms were more profitable. Not always, of course - the top 10 percent of free-labour farms were more profitable than the average of slaveowning farms - but the trend was certainly clear.

Wheat, hogs, cattle, you name it. The reason is pretty obvious... slaves have zero incentive to be efficient, while free farmers absolutely have to rely on the sales they make to live.

It's not true that slaves have no incentive to be efficient. Slaveowners used positive rewards for slaves, not just punishment. Sometimes even paid them in cash bonuses. In rice plantations, if an efficient slave finished their alloted tasks for the day earlier than the norm, then the planters would usually pay them (yes, you read that right) to get the slaves to do other tasks, or just let the slave have the rest of the day off.

But still, yes, self-employed farmers worked longer hours than slaves. Their family members did not always do so. And hired labourers almost never did.

Tobacco, cotton, and rice were the exceptions, mainly because they couldn't be grown in the north, and tobacco and cotton were simply in such high demand/high prices that the inefficiency didn't really matter.

Tobacco and cotton are quite different crops in terms of how they were harvested. One of the big things about cotton was that it was suitable for the gang system, where a group of slaves would work in a gang, at a pace which was faster than what free labourers. Or even most self-employed farmers. But the thing about the gang system was that free labourers absolutely hated it. Detested it. They refused to work in a gang system at any price which was remotely sustainable.

Tobacco, on the other hand, was grown by the task system: give a slave a task, and get them to do it. Once completed, give them another task (usually) or sometimes give them the rest of the day off. Slave labour was still decent in operating tobacco, but it didn't have the advantages of the gang system.

But the thing is that, in spite of the differences, slave-using farms in both tobacco and cotton country still out-competed free farm neighbours. Cotton tended to do so more quickly, though that was a function not just of type of labour, but also the insanely high profit margins generated by cotton in the nineteenth century.

So, while slave grown food crops could make a profit, they were outproduced by northern free farmers.

Not really. One of the big reasons why Midwestern free farmers were so virulently opposed to slavery was because they were worried that they would be out-competed by slave farms and slave labour. They knew full well that slavery allowed slaveowning farmers to become more profitable.

Yes, but slavery for growing non-cash crops simply wasn't nearly as profitable as slavery for growing tobacco or especially cotton.

Food crops can be cash crops. It depends on the crop and whether there is an export market. There was an export market for wheat and rice to be grown as cash crops. There was no such market for maize, and so maize wasn't a suitable cash crop for plantations.

More generally, cotton was certainly the most profitable cash crop available in the nineteenth-century USA. It sucked slave labour out of other pursuits, including both rural (tobacco) and urban (artisans, industry etc).

Tobacco, however, did not have such a clear-cut advantage as a cash crop. In suitable areas of Virginia, there were planters who switched between tobacco and wheat depending on commodity prices. And sometimes switching to cattle, too.

Wheat could be grown in Northern states. So can hemp. Those areas still ended up abolishing slavery.

The reasons why slavery was abolished in the Northern states was due to political reasons, and more precisely because there were few slaves there, and most of those slaves in the northern states were artisans and domestics, not workers employed to grow cash crops. The areas of the North where there were more use of slaves to grow cash crops (e.g. the Hudson Valley) were much more resistant to freeing slaves, although they did not have enough political clout to prevent abolition.

That doesn't stop wheat and hemp from being profitable slave crops in areas where slavery was still legal. Wheat was at times more profitable than tobacco. Hemp was a relatively minor crop, but still quite profitably grown by slaves.

More slaves weren't employed in hemp or wheat due to two factors:

- there was a limited supply of slaves; and
- cotton gave higher profit margins than anything else.

As such, cotton planters outbid other planters or would-be planters who wanted to use slaves.

If the cotton gin is delayed, then there won't be cotton planters bidding on slaves, and the people who will be buying (and using) the limited slaves will be those who can put them to the next most profitable use, which could be wheat, tobacco, rice, sugar, hemp, or even industrial or proto-industrial pursuits (e.g. mining).

I'd say that in the absence of any abolitionist movement, slavery would continue indefinitely even without cotton, but without it slavery isn't profitable enough to outweigh growing abolitionist sentiment. If slaves aren't concentrated in the South, then in places where slavery is not greatly profitable non-slave owners will greatly outnumber slave owners, and anti-slavery legislative measures will eventually pass.

I'm much less sanguine about that. The states which abolished slavery voluntarily did it because, in large part, they didn't have that many slaves to start with.

What percentage of slaves in a region is enough to keep slaveholders actively resisting abolition? A good rule of thumb would be that which predicted support for secession at the outbreak of the ACW: if a given country had 10% or more slaves, it was pro-secession. If it was less than 5% slaves, it was anti-secession. Counties in between 5 and 10% could go either way. In other words, states with 10% of their population as slaves were prepared to secede rather than tolerate abolition.

Now, in 1860 there were about 3.6 million slaves in the USA, out of a total population of about 31 million. In an ATL where the cotton gin is not around and those 3.6 million slaves are spread more evenly across the country, you're looking at just about every state having more than 10% of its population as slaves. I'm not at all optimistic that voluntary emancipation would happen in those circumstances.

Don't forget that a big part of the resistance to abolition in the South came not just from slaveowners, but from free workers who were worried about what the slaves would do once they were freed.

And Dave Howery has a point. The majority of wheat farmers weren't slaves for a reason.

Yes, because cotton planters could outbid wheat planters for the limited supply of slaves.

If there's no cotton gin and the cotton boom has been delayed, then this constraint no longer applies, and wheat farmers can bid for slaves. The available evidence shows that slave labour in wheat was perfectly profitable - sometimes more so than tobacco - and so would-be slaveholders who are farming wheat can compete for available slave labour.
 
1. Have a boll weevil outbreak.

A boll weevil outbreak would not end slavery. Bankrupt cotton farmers would not free their slaves; creditors would force the sale of these valuable assets. This would drive down the price of slaves, expanding the number of people who owned slaves. The lower prices would also improve profit margins for slaveholders.
 
The easiest and earliest PoD is simply for the hereditary slavery system to not develop in English colonies in the first place. Indentured servitude persists much longer and the USA is almost entirely white for most of its history.

After that, the next possible divergence is for the Abolitionist Founders to include a mandatory manumission or free birth clause in the Constitution. Slavery is strangulated under a gradually and constantly narrowing population, whether it is outlawed or not. Full citizenship for black Americans becomes a relevant issue several decades early.

Finally, you could end it early but with a civil war by having the Nullification Crisis explode, and the victorious federal government implementing harsh anti-slavery measures in response.
 
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