Skallagrim
Banned
I have an idea for a really cunning Lincoln:
So secession is argued to be the will of the majority of people. Suppose Lincoln dallies, delays, and lengthens the negotiations with the South while he works with politicians in Washington on a hat trick—an Emancipation Proclamation applied to the states in negotiation. I’ll admit this would be an incredibly hypocritical and realpolitik move, but Lincoln could then argue that the slaves should have the right to decide whether to leave the Union or not as well. Obviously the South would never agree to this—there’s no way they’ve emancipated the slaves this early on, and there’s no way they’d support the Confederacy if they did have a say.
This would still require the North to be aggressors, but they’d be aggressors based on the right of self-determination, undermining the political arguments of the Confederacy. How would the South respond to this, especially since Britain would likely side with the North in this scenario?
There are scenarios where a move somewhat like this would be possible, but you face (at least) three major problems:
-- First one is the fact that negotiations must occur in good faith. Party of that is that they are based on the status quo ante and work towards finding a new status quo. Attempting to impose your will on the other party might be tried, but trying to make your will part of the preconditions is most definitely bad faith. Essentially, Lincoln can't issue that proclamation and negotiate.
-- Second one is more general, and more crucial: he literally can't do it if he's negotiating, because it was done on the basis of war powers. If still negotiating, he just doesn't have that authority, and there is no way Congress backs that kind of move that early on. There was a lot of criticism even in OTL, and that was late in the war, in a scenario where the Upper South had seceded.
-- Third one ties into the second: if negotiations are the way Lincoln goes, the secession wave of the Upper South is prevented. He's got a considerable segment of slave states in the Union. He can't make it about slavery without causing trouble he definitely doesn't want.
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The best possible solution would be to do something that makes the UK (and Mexico preferably) attack the USA simultaneously. They're very abolitionist though, so they need to do it from this angle: "The USA are an expansionist state that aims to threaten world balance, we want to abolish slavery as well but gradually so we don't ruin our economy, and they want to ruin us as we are culturally different than the North so they can consolidate and further invade their neighbors"
Of course, having Britain magically by your side would be great. But it's not happening. At best, very best, Britain eventually decides it's in its interests to trade with the CSA, recognises it, and tells the USA to stop being a bother. (A policy that will then be backed up by naval power if the USA tries to hinder British ships.)
I don't see that happening until and unless the South can do so well that Lincoln gets defeated in '64.
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First of all, I disagree-I think secession can be legal but not unreservedly(ie. there should be a basic standard to uphold-the Scottish independence referendum and the Velvet Divorce would be good models-in the case of a legitimate democratic government, which the US was in 1860 to the closest standard known an reasonable I think at the time, and there should be guarantees of basic human rights and civil liberties to the inhabitants of the seceding territory, maybe even the right of those resident at the time who so desire to retain dual passports, etc) and its' dubious to me that the southern US secession really fits that. That said, I will respond
Let me be clear: I think a hypothetical war to invade the CSA and forcibly end slavery would be just fine and dandy. And for the exact same reason I support secession in basically all cases: because self-determination is sacred to me.
Anyway, that's still not the point here.
1) point taken, although if Lincoln was cunning, evil, and willing to throw slaves under the bus(unlikely IMO) he could bring up the fugitive slave act and point out that well, if they are seceded then they won't surely claim that they have the right to demand extradition(or that they have to negotiate separately and after independence is recognized for extradition rights) and if they demand return under the fugitive slave act then surely they're agreeing that they're still in the US. Also, the point was less to actually get the south on board but to get the north and other states noticing that they intend to contest the South's decision.
The bit about the Fugitive Slave Act could potentially be used to reveal Southern hypocrisy, although that would depend on whether they'd actually be stupid enough to claim extradition based on the Act. I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think they ever did so in OTL. If they did, they were considerably more idiotic than I thought.
2) Point taken.
3) I think this works best in conjunction with 4-if you're uncertain about secession and you don't know that it's really going to happen, you're opening yourself up to risk versus just going for the tax break. This probably may or may not get states on board but it can still create capital flight that undermines the south.
4) Points taken to an extent, but again, Lincoln can just point out that if he agrees to that he's giving away the farm-how does he know that this won't just blow up in his face.
Agreed that you can probably get some capital flight to take place-- though note that most Southern capital is tied into its plantation economy. That's not going anywhere. I also agree that Lincoln is never going to agree to recognise the CSA just to get them to pay up any outstanding private debts etc. -- they goal would be to make it in the interest of other parties (banks, lenders, investers, businessmen, members of the public who are owed money from Southern sources) to just recognise the CSA and in so doing get their money back.