How long can the Civil War be delayed?

It wasn't a serious TL anyway, but a wank, as said. That's why a big problem like slavery could be solved with one short talk, and afterwards, Lincoln easily kicks out Nappy III and Maximilian from Mexico, which becomes a part of the US...
 
The devil would be in the details there though; for example, let's say a slave is born free to a slave parent. Who's going to pay for his upkeep? The Master shoulden't have to, they might very well argue, and the parents don't have any resources of their own by which to care for the child. I suppose you could impose an "apprenticeship" program in which children are obliged to work until their majority. Another detail would be that slaves in the old age are likely to get booted out in this case, or would their masters tell their children that they'd either be obliged to continue working in order to pay for their older family's room and board or (with no capital/land of their own) take care of their older parents? Or are we going to be giving land to the newly-freed slaves?



Define the last part of this statement. Because unless you get some concreate gurantees, all you've told the South is they can get what they want by throwing a temper tantrum. How long until they threaten to secede unless the Feds go to war with Mexico or Spain to get more land, for example? Or support Southern-lead filibusters? Or pull back any objectionable raise to the tariff?



This amendment would never get past. The prospect to your average voter: of taking on a larger tax burden so money can be given to large planters so that they can let loose a bunch of low-skilled, low cost competition for jobs, is going to go over horribly. Exepect the new Republican voter base to either jump back to the Northern Dems or establish a kind of proto-Populist party in response.

Lincoln (almost) proposed this amendment* just before he released the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862; this wouldn't have been a prewar event but would have at the time (in theory) been viewed as a possible end to the war. Under these circumstances the northern population may have embrace the cost albeit reluctantly.

I realize that does not work with the OP's timing but I only posted it as a reply to how Lincoln intended to pay for his gradual emancipation with compensation had he been able to get it, by floating a bond debt (deficit spending).

The amendment had no chance because the South, at the time, was winning the war and could no longer be bothered with bartering a 'conditional peace.' It must of look to them that the brass ring was within reach.

* It seems more like Lincoln floated this as a trial balloon then actually proposing it to Congress. It also included a clause for congressional financing for the relocation of the Freedman outside the country. You can also see shades of the Emancipation Proclamation to come.

The Second Article [Excerpt]:

"All slaves who shall have enjoyed actual freedom by the chances of the war at any time before the end of the rebellion, shall be forever free; but all owners of such who shall not have been disloyal shall be compensated for them at the same rates as are provided for States adopting abolishment of slavery, but in such way that no slave shall be twice accounted for.

"Congress may appropriate money and otherwise provide for colonizing free colored persons, with their own consent, at any place or places without the United States."
 
That's OTL. All but the most radical of Republicans were willing to entertain the Crittenden amendments.
Entertain doesn't mean the same as passing.

Lincoln himself pointed out it literally was going against the Republican Party's own platform in so many ways, and was being dictated to by a minority who had lost a fair election, no less.

About the only "bones" it tossed up North was to ban slavery north of 36'30, which basically means that in exchange for a few border states and Virgina, literally the entire Southern Hemisphere is now open for slave states.

All of it.

Oh, and also equalizing the Fugitive Slave Law, IE, actually making it so they won't just declare anyone arrested a escaped slave and be done with it.

Wow, and in return for that, we get.....

No ability to interfere with Slavery in any other way shape or form, no allowance to ever alter that state of affairs, and basically once again, has the Republicans making all the concessions, just when they got into power.

Pray tell, how exactly is this supposed to be palatable?
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Had the North been willing to accept a provision (by legislation or court decision) that slavery could be abolished only via a constitutional amendment, and not by mere legislation or judicial action, the South may have hung around a little longer to see if they could regain some clout within the federal government.

That's OTL. All but the most radical of Republicans were willing to entertain the Crittenden amendments.

Entertain doesn't mean the same as passing.

Lincoln himself pointed out it literally was going against the Republican Party's own platform in so many ways, and was being dictated to by a minority who had lost a fair election, no less.

Observe that what most in the North would be willing to support was the Corwin Amendment (guaranteeing slavery forever in those states where it already existed), and the South rejected that. It literally passed Congress after several states had already seceded (and thus didn't even vote in favour)! Lincoln himself was explicitly willing to endorse it. The Crittenden Compromise was another thing altogether, and guaranteed slavery everywhere South of the Missouri Compromise Line (including any future states or territories). This in addition to mandating some more pro-slavery legislation. Virtually nobody in the North supported that, but conversely, the South was apparently willing to accept the Crittenden Compromise as a resultion to the crisis. The problem, then, is that either side was willing to support a compromise, but they both refused to support the compromise the other was willing to accept. (It should be noted that both "compromises" where absurdly pro-slavery, and weren't actually real compromises at all.)

In any event, as I've often said: there is literally no way the North will ever accept the Crittenden Compromise, but if the South could be convinced to support the Corwin Amendment, that would be the end of the secession right there. The North would go for that without much hesitation, albeit with clenched teeth, and war would be averted. And slavery would be enshrined in an eternal Constitutional clause, impossible to be removed by any future Amendment (the whole idea would be to render any Amendment of that gist unconstitutional a priori.) So enjoy slavery forever, folks! It's going to be like Apartheid, but worse!

Under those circumstances, slavery can last into the 20th century. Increasingly a more impossible thing to maintain, but equally impossible to end. One can easily imagine the Supreme Court at some point just reasoning that any clause that impairs the right of Congress to alter the Constitution is itself unconstitutional (it has been argued in OTL that this is actually the case, and that the Corwin Amendment would eventually be ruled unconstitutional). Naturally, there are also ways in which civil resistance and foreign embargoes just make slavery impossible to maintain, and it gets abolished with the consent of the remaining slave states. But suppose it doesn't. Suppose that the Supreme Court renders "Corwin" unconstitutional, somewhere in the early 20th century, and the Slavocrat elite of the Deep South attempts a secession at that point?

It would be a very short Civil War, but it would be taking place in the 20th century. How's that for a major delay?
 
In the few decades or so leading up to the Civil War DC did pretty much anything to keep the South from raising to much of a fuss. The Missouri Compromise, The Kansas-Nebraska Act, The Fugitive Slave Act, Dredd Scott. All in an attempt to keep the country from tearing itself apart. In the end however, it failed and the resulting five year long war killed more Americans than every other war before or since. However, could the War Between The States be delayed any more than it was? To the 1870s even? 80s? Godforbid the 1890s?

WI Fremont wins Pennsylvania in '56 and with it, the presidency? The South would have found itself with a free soil (northern) dominated federal government four years earlier. Bleeding Kansas would still bleed, but Dred Scott ad Harper's Ferry and all the fervor they caused wouldn't have happened.

Would the South under these circumstances have considered a concession of expansion (to the 'frontiersman' Fremont) in exchange for a guarantee of protection? (The same offer Lincoln would try to float four years later.)

The gist of the argument is that Fremont, to the South, would not have appeared as abhorrent a situation as Lincoln would four years later. As hard as he tried in 1860 Lincoln, in southern eyes, could't shake himself free of the abolitionist label; Fremont was more western than northern (the frontiersman) and wasn't personally carrying that label in '56, only free soil.
 
WI Fremont wins Pennsylvania in '56 and with it, the presidency? The South would have found itself with a free soil (northern) dominated federal government four years earlier. Bleeding Kansas would still bleed, but Dred Scott ad Harper's Ferry and all the fervor they caused wouldn't have happened.

Why would Dred Scott not happen? The make-up of the SCOTUS is the same in 1857. Nor is it al all obvious that John Brown wouldn't have gone ahead.
 
Why would Dred Scott not happen? The make-up of the SCOTUS is the same in 1857. Nor is it al all obvious that John Brown wouldn't have gone ahead.

With working compromises on the table (Fremont/Southern Senators) Taney would not have been pressured (by Buchanan) to write such a omnibus opinion, trying to solve the entire slavery issue in one go. It is likely he would have just denied Scott citizenship and refuse jurisdiction (and not have addressed the issue of slavery in the territories.) Dred Scott would have slipped down to the level of Strader v. Graham for controversy, still being important to the abolitionists but of no concern to the free soilers.

With Brown, Fremont (unlike Buchanan) would have stepped up and delivered frontier justice (hanged Brown himself) not leaving it to Virginia to prosecute the case under state law, thus Fremont would have made the raid appear to be a national and not just a sectional concern. Brown's raid (if it still happened) may have proven an opportunity for Fremont to prove to the South he would indeed protect them/slavery.

I believe with both issues: Dred Scott and John Brown's raid you have to place a big part of the blame on James Buchanan. With Scott he pushed the Court into making a decision it probably should have avoided and with Harper's Ferry he failed to show the South that the federal government could/would protect their interests. I guess the two events would have still happened, but IMO they would have played out differently.

I need to correct myself elsewhere: earlier I stated that if Fremont won Pennsylvania he would win the election, not so (my bad), but he would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives; at another time that would be an interesting situation to explore.
 

samcster94

Banned
With working compromises on the table (Fremont/Southern Senators) Taney would not have been pressured (by Buchanan) to write such a omnibus opinion, trying to solve the entire slavery issue in one go. It is likely he would have just denied Scott citizenship and refuse jurisdiction (and not have addressed the issue of slavery in the territories.) Dred Scott would have slipped down to the level of Strader v. Graham for controversy, still being important to the abolitionists but of no concern to the free soilers.

With Brown, Fremont (unlike Buchanan) would have stepped up and delivered frontier justice (hanged Brown himself) not leaving it to Virginia to prosecute the case under state law, thus Fremont would have made the raid appear to be a national and not just a sectional concern. Brown's raid (if it still happened) may have proven an opportunity for Fremont to prove to the South he would indeed protect them/slavery.

I believe with both issues: Dred Scott and John Brown's raid you have to place a big part of the blame on James Buchanan. With Scott he pushed the Court into making a decision it probably should have avoided and with Harper's Ferry he failed to show the South that the federal government could/would protect their interests. I guess the two events would have still happened, but IMO they would have played out differently.

I need to correct myself elsewhere: earlier I stated that if Fremont won Pennsylvania he would win the election, not so (my bad), but he would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives; at another time that would be an interesting situation to explore.
Can Kansas join as a slave state in order to delay it?
 
Can Kansas join as a slave state in order to delay it?

The people of Kansas don't want it, so the whole dispute being settled either way is going to rile up feathers (Since you need to let it in Free to have Popular Sovergeinty hold any weight as a compromise stance). It might be possible to strike a bargain with the Mormons though in order to get an agreement both sides can work with: bring in Deseret as a Slave State to balance Kansas as free. That buys a little time
 

samcster94

Banned
The people of Kansas don't want it, so the whole dispute being settled either way is going to rile up feathers (Since you need to let it in Free to have Popular Sovergeinty hold any weight as a compromise stance). It might be possible to strike a bargain with the Mormons though in order to get an agreement both sides can work with: bring in Deseret as a Slave State to balance Kansas as free. That buys a little time
Did many Mormons have slaves?
 
Did many Mormons have slaves?

They did subscribe to the Hammite idea of innate black inferiority, and Brigham Young advocated for slavery as the natural will of God. Granted, they didn't have many actual slaves, but it was practiced and legalized...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_in_Relation_to_Service

I'm sure if they had better access to a supply they could find a place to work a fair supply of slaves. In the mines, for instance, or harvesting salt.
 
As always, David T has multiple PoDs:

Avoiding a secession crisis after Lincoln's election is unlikely but not impossible. The key is to get South Carolina--as in 1850-51--to hesitate to secede (for fear of isolation) unless some other state goes first. And it is possible that no other state *will* go first if South Carolina doesn't. For how this might come about, I will recycle an old post of mine:

***

Could secession have been avoided after Lincoln's election? The usual answer is that *at the very least* South Carolina was sure to secede. And yet, even in South Carolina, there was one very prominent politician who *privately* did not regard the South's prospects in the Union as hopeless, even after Lincoln's victory: US Senator James Hammond. In a letter to Alfred Aldrich just after Lincoln's election, Hammond stated "I do not regard our circumstances in the Union as desperate." True, Hammond preferred a Southern Republic if he could be sure that the other southern states would follow South Carolina in seceding, but he had no confidence they would do so. For that reason, he did not want South Carolina to secede until other states had resolved to do so--advice that *if made public* and followed, could have doomed secession, given that even *with* South Carolina's prior secession, the victories for "immediate secessionists" in the Deep South state secession convention elections were often quite narrow.

Hammond explained why he thought staying in the Union was safer for South Carolina than attempting "go it alone" secession: "the South...can, when united, dictate, as it has always done, the internal and foreign policy of our country." (Note that Hammond is here admitting one of the Republicans' main allegations--that the South, far from groaning under northern oppression, had hitherto dominated the country.) Hammond explained that "at the North, politics is a trade." The spoilsmen "go into it for gain." (This was a typical South Carolina aristocratic view of the "mobocracy" which was seen as prevalent in other states, and especially in the North.) For that reason, no Yankee has "ever been twice elected President." Mr. Lincoln's administration will also break down "before it can accomplish anything detrimental", for its "antislavery agitation" will "not gain them spoils and power." (Quoted in William W. Freehling, *The Road to Disunion, Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant 1854-1861,*, p. 405) https://books.google.com/books?id=AsjRsGPOXKMC&pg=PA405

Indeed, with delayers in control of both houses of the South Carolina legislature, and with Aldrich having Hammond's letter in his pocket, things looked bleak for the South Carolina ultras. But then came the "incredible coincidence" I described at http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/8b15a54b3f1a3dbd "A railroad had just been completed linking Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C. As the South Carolina legislature deliberated, leading citizens of the two cities took part in a celebration. The Georgians, carried away by the emotion of the moment, pledged their state's support for secession. Suddenly convinced that other states would follow, the legislature moved the secession convention up to December. The 'coincidence,' Freehling argues, changed history. Had South Carolina not taken this step, Unionists might have prevailed throughout the South."

As it was, however, Aldrich decided not to make Hammond's letter public at the secession convention--and Hammond acquiesced. Too much had changed since the letter was written, Aldrich stated. South Carolina was now too overwhelmingly in favor of secession for it to be blocked, and it was therefore better, Aldrich explained, for the state to present a united front to the rest of the world. Had the railroad not been completed just when it was, and had Aldrich promptly released Hammond's letter to the general public, things could have gone quite differently. South Carolina might have decided not to secede until another state did--which might never have happened...

Or it might have. The battle in the Deep South was generally not between secessionists and unionists but between "immediate secessionists" (also called "separate state action secessionists") and "cooperationists." The big question in determining how close secession was to being avoided is to determine whether cooperationism was just an alternate form of secession or--as the immediate secessionists charged--really a disguised from of Unionist "submissionism." The cooperationists claimed that they also favored secession if necessary but that it should be done not by separate state action but by a southern convention which could put final demands to the North and secede if they were not met. One problem with the cooperationists' position is that the more states seceded, the weaker it became. The immediate secessionists could (and did) say, "We are the *true* cooperationists--we are in favor of cooperating with the states which have already seceded!"

If South Carolina had decided to wait for the other southern states, the cooperationists might have prevailed against the immediate secessionists throughout the South. It is easy to say that this would simply result in Secession Later rather than Secession Now. Surely a southern convention would present Lincoln with demands he would not meet--e.g., abandon the Republican position on slavery in the territories. And yet...cooperationism would after all buy time for the Union, and the immediate secessionists were right to suspect this would strengthen the Unionist cause. They felt they had to strike while the South was still panicking over Lincoln's election. If you allow Lincoln to be in office for some time before acting, the panic will subside, southerners will see that slavery had remained unmolested and that the new president was not another John Brown. Even if the proposed Southern Convention would eventually come about, it might be dominated by Upper South moderates whom Lincoln could appease (e.g., by admitting New Mexico to the Union, at least nominally as a slave state, and by indicating his disapproval of Personal Liberty laws).

So, then, a victory by cooperationists in all the Deep South states *might* give the Union a chance. Was such a victory possible if South Carolina didn't jump the gun? I would say that it was because, as I noted above, even in OTL the "immediate secessionist" victories were quite narrow. In Alabama, the secessionists cast 35,600 votes, the cooperationists 28,100. In Georgia, the secessionists won by only (at most) 44,152 to 41,632. In Louisiana, the secessionists prevailed by 20,214 to 18,451. In Mississippi, there were 16,800 votes for secessionists, 12,218 for cooperationists, 12,000 for candidates whose position was not specified or is now unknown. Florida was somewhat more pro-secessionist than, say, Georgia, but even in Florida the cooperationists got about 40 percent of the vote. (My source for these figures is David Potter, *The Impending Crisis.*)

So preventing secession after Lincoln's election is very, very difficult but IMO not *quite* inconceivable.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ncoln-becomes-president.424396/#post-15481060

***

So let's say a secession crisis is avoided. What could Lincoln do to bring slavery closer to "ultimate extinction"? Probably not much, except in the sense of *refraining* from doing some things that a pro-slavery administration might do (e.g., seeking southward expansion). Yes, he might seek to build up the Republican party in the Upper South by the use of patronage, but probably with limited success. After all, his patronage wasn't enough to make the border slave states Republican in OTL; even a state like Delaware where there were few slaves and where Lincoln had received a substantial vote in 1860 went for McClellan in 1864. Lincoln did carry Maryland and Missouri in 1864, but that was largely due to the disfranchisement of pro-Confederate elements. As for the Lower South, Lincoln made it clear that in areas where there were few or no Republicans, he would not attempt to appoint them to office.

What about the slavery-in-the-territories issue? Once Kansas was admitted as a free state, that was pretty much dead so far as the existing territories were concerned. New Mexico might be admitted as a nominal slave state but one with only a handful of slaves. There was even less of a prospect for slavery in territories further north. And Lincoln is not going to get the US into southward expansion.

He will have a chance to appoint some Supreme Court justices--but not as many as in OTL, because with Alabama remaining in the Union, Campbell will presumably not resign. As in OTL, Lincoln would choose McLean's successor, but that would just mean replacing one Republican with another. Replacing Taney and Daniel would make the Court somewhat less proslavery--but still there would still be Campbell, Catron, Clifford, Nelson , Grier, and Wayne. And will a Democratic Senate allow the creation of a tenth seat for Lincoln to fill?

What about the Post Office allowing "incendiary" materials to be mailed in the South? It probably will not make much difference--Southerners will suppress abolitionist mail on their own, by extralegal means if necessary.

Would the very fact that an antislavery party triumphed in the presidential elections have inspired slave rebellions? Unlikely. The slaves could see that local white police power was not shaken.

Looking beyond slavery, what about the tariff? The Morrill Tariff could not have passed if the states that had seceded in OTL had kept their seats in the Senate. (It passed 25-14 with six states and their twelve senators absent: AL, FL, GA, LA, MS, and SC. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/36-2/s512) All the Republicans in Congress, even combined with protectionist Democrats like Bigler of PA, probably could not have gotten a tariff increase if the South had stayed in the Union.

It is true that a couple of more free states could have been admitted to the Union. But its hard to see why this is an immediate danger to the South, given that western states (even when Republicans) tended to be Negrophobic and skeptical of protectionism.

All in all, it is hard to see how Lincoln's victory could pose an immediate threat to the South. This doesn't mean that secessionists were wrong to sense a long-term danger to slavery if the South stayed in the Union. There would be more Republican judges in the future, more Republican states, and eventually there could be a Republican Senate as well as House. More border states might eventually decide on gradual emancipation. More important, a line would have been crossed--a declared antislavery party could gain control of the White House without the South seceding. This, the secessionists feared, would leave the South so demoralized that they would not be able to organize effective resistance to future antislavery steps. So in that sense secession, though a gamble, was not an irrational one if you put the long-term survival of slavery above everything else. What was irrational was the fear of immediate disaster the secessionists fostered among Southerners.

So would Lincoln be re-elected in 1864? It's hard to say. The Democrats would have the advantage of being more united than they were in 1860 once the divisive Douglas leaves the scene. OTOH, one of the major arguments against the Republicans in 1856 and 1860--"if they win there will be disunion and civil war"--will no longer be credible.

Knowing that the formation and--within a few years--the victory of the Republican Party were near, we sometimes fail to realize how desperate the situation in 1853-4 looked to antislavery men. Pierce had won the majority of electoral votes in both the North and South; the Free Soil Party had done very poorly compared with 1848; the Democrats were in firm control of Congress, and many of them made no secret of their desire for southward territorial expansion. To capture the mood of at least some antislavery men in 1854, here is Wendell Phillips:

"The effect of his surrender under this infamous [fugitive slave] law has been, like 'Uncle Tom’ and all such spasms, far less deep and general than thoughtless folks anticipated. We always gain at such times a few hundred and the old friends are strengthened, but the mass settle down very little different from before....

"Indeed, the Government has fallen into the hands of the Slave Power completely. So far as national politics are concerned, we are beaten — there's no hope. We shall have Cuba in a year or two, Mexico in five; and I should not wonder if efforts were made to revive the slave trade, though perhaps unsuccessfully, as the Northern slave States, which live by the export of slaves, would help us in opposing that. Events hurry forward with amazing rapidity: we live fast here. The future seems to unfold a vast slave empire united with Brazil, and darkening the whole west. I hope I may be a false prophet, but the sky was never so dark. Our Union, all confess, must sever finally on this question. It is now with nine-tenths only a question of time."

https://books.google.com/books?id=3gZFAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA411

This letter appears in Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison's biography of their father William Lloyd Garrison. In a footnote, they argue that "These pessimistic forebodings had a solid substratum in the signs of the times. Never was the Slave Power more insolent in its consciousness of strength, or wilder in its delirium of empire. See, for the undisguised purpose of President Pierce's Administration to annex Cuba, Lib. 24: 85, 127, 130, 189, 194; and, for the ancillary intrigue to acquire Samana Bay in San Domingo—-a menace also to the independence and liberty of Hayti--Lib. 24: 157, 159; 25:1, 61. Lieut. Herndon's exploration of the Amazon in 1851, by direction of the Navy Department, had distinct reference to a pro-slavery colonization with an ultimate view to annexation (Lib. 24: 62). On the other hand, see the numerous expressions of the Southern press looking to a restoration of the slave trade (Lib. 24: 149, 173), and in particular Henry A. Wise's letter to the Rev. Nehemiah Adams, D. D. (Lib. 24: 150). “I would,” said the Virginian, “recommend the repeal of every act to suppress the slave trade.” In November, 1856, the Governor of South Carolina sent a message to the Legislature advising the re-opening of that traffic (Lib. 26:193, 194). The unparalleled rise in the price of slaves lay at the bottom of this villany. At the date just mentioned, according to the Richmond Enquirer, male negroes were worth “seven hundred dollars around” (Lib. 27:1. Compare 27:58, 63, 72,79, 87, 175, 183, 186; 28:11, 191, 198; 29: 17, 139; 30: 75, 77, 143)."

Question: how much of this nightmare scenario could actually have taken place? My answer is, maybe more than we think. For example, having "Cuba in a year or two" really was a distinct possibility in 1854. To quote an old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

***
My POD is the "Black Warrior affair" leading to war with Spain in 1854. http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0807810.html It might have done so--there were calls for the suspension of the neutrality act, which would mean unleashing filibusters on Cuba--except that the Kansas-Nebraska Act was pending in Congress, and anti-Nebraska forces raised a violent outcry that the administration was looking for war as a way out of its sectional troubles.

The turning point was probably May 30, 1854. On that day, Senators Mason, Douglas, and Slidell--in short, the Democratic majority on the foreign relations committee--met with President Pierce and urged him to support legislation calling for a suspension of the neutrality act. Instead of doing so, Pierce proposed to his callers "the creation of a three-man commission to go to Madrid to present to the government in all seriousness the desire for Cuba and to warn that probably only cession would stop the filibusters. The three visitors accepted this plan, though far from eagerly. As a part of the arrangement, [Secretary of State William] Marcy was called upon to telegraph to the district attorney in New Orleans that decisive measures were on the way. This was to help him hold the filibusters in line. Pierce also promised that before the session ended he would explicitly ask for a big appropriation, big enough for war purposes, in case the commission was unsuccessful. On May 31, i.e., the next day, Pierce issued a proclamation calling for an observance of the neutrality laws." Ivor Debenham Spencer, *The Victor and the Spoils: A Life of William L. Marcy* (Providence, RI: Brown University Press 1959), p. 323.

The result of Pierce's decision was to kill off the filibuster movement. Its leaders, including Mississippi's ex-governor John Quitman, were even required to give bond for their good conduct. Another result was a more conciliatory attitude toward the Black Warrior incident. By midsummer, as it turned out, Pierce had not dared to send Congress the proposal for the commission, though that body was still in session; and the Senate foreign relations committee decided not to ask for an emergency appropriation, though Pierce had indicated his willingness to do so.

This does not by any means indicate that Pierce had given up on Cuba. Something like the originally-planned commission was eventually created and issued the famous "Ostend Manifesto" http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/Ostend/ostend.html but by that time the Democrats had suffered drastic defeats in elections in the North--due largely to a backlash against the Kansas-Nebraska Act--and even Pierce (let alone the more conservative Marcy) had to repudiate the Manifesto.

So basically my POD for US acquisition of Cuba is *no Kansas-Nebraska Act*. Without this, Pierce and the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress would probably have approved a quick suspension of the neutrality act after the Black Warrior affair. And as I stated in a post a few years ago, organization of Nebraska without repeal of the Missouri Compromise was by no means inconceivable. For a while, even David Rice Atchison, despairing of getting repeal through Congress, was willing to accept this, but when other southerners showed an unwillingness to organize the territory on this basis (giving, among other reasons, their well-known respect for Indian land titles :)) and when his bitter enemy Thomas Hart Benton started to mock him for his retreat, he swore that he would see the territory "sink in Hell" before giving it to the free-soilers. If just a few Upper South senators had gone along with Atchison's temporary retreat, there would have been no Kansas-Nebraska Act as we know it. There might still be a controversy over slavery in Kansas--the Missourians there might still try to establish it, arguing the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and a Dred Scott-like test case would make its way to the Supreme Court--but at least the political explosion of 1854 would be delayed. (Of course another way to have the Kansas-Nebraska bill as we know it not come up is to have the Black Warrior affair happen a few months before it did in OTL--in short, have the US get to the brink of war with Spain *before* the Kansas-Nebraska bill is introduced. The war scare would doubtless delay any decision about what to do about Nebraska.)

Secretary of State Marcy, never a great enthusiast for Cuba (and especially opposed to taking it by force) pretty much summed up the situation in a letter to Senator Mason on July 23, 1854:

"To tell you an unwelcome truth, the Nebraska question has sadly shattered our party in all the free states and deprived it of that strength which was needed and could have been much more profitably used for the acquisition of Cuba." Quoted in Spencer, *The Victor and the Spoils*, p. 324

The South in 1854 was strong enough to get Cuba--or to get the Missouri Compromise repealed in a futile effort to make Kansas a slave state. She was not strong enough to get both, and disastrously chose the Kansas shadow over the Cuban substance. (Of course the real disaster of Kansas for the South was that it led to the rise of the Republican Party. I doubt very much that a war with Spain, provoked by the Black Warrior incident, would be enough to do so, even if it led to the acquisition of Cuba as a slave state. Unlike Kansas, Cuba already had slavery, so slavery would not be extended by its acquisition; it was even argued that acquisition of Cuba would help stem the illegal African slave trade to that island. And in any event, unlike Kansas, Cuba was not a place where northern farmers were planning to settle.)

***

What about "Mexico in five [years]"? See
President Buchanan's Proposed Intervention in Mexico
Howard Lafayette Wilson
The American Historical Review
Vol. 5, No. 4 (Jul., 1900), pp. 687-701
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1832775.pdf?refreqid=excelsior:78ec273d6c9965f652610dbb978dd521

"As early as I858, President Buchanan had foreshadowed a determined policy with reference to Mexico; he declared that abundant cause existed for a resort to hostilities against the Conservative government, but that the success of the Constitutional party appeared to offer hopes of a peaceful adjustment of our difficulties with the country. "But for this expectation, I should at once have recommended to Congress to grant the necessary power to the President to take possession of a sufficient portion of the remote and unsettled territory of Mexico, to be held in pledge until our injuries shall be redressed and our just demands be satisfied."' It was therefore only an unfolding of his schemes when Buchanan adopted the conclusions of Forsyth and McLane as his own, that "Nothing but a manifestation of the power of the government of the United States and of its purpose to punish these wrongs will avail." He therefore took the very aggressive step of asking Congress for power to enter Mexico with the military forces of the government at the call of the Constitutional authorities, in order to protect American citizens and enforce the treaty rights of the United States.


"There was still another influence which caused Buchanan to take this step. He described the Mexican Government as a "wreck upon the ocean, drifting about as she is impelled by the different factions." Under these circumstances the President held that it was our duty as a good neighbor to extend to her a helping hand, and significantly added that, " If we do not, it would not be surprising should some other nation undertake the task, and thus force us to interfere at last, under circumstances of increased difficulty, for the maintenance of our established policy." In the light of later events, it is interesting to note that President Buchanan either had a strong conviction that it was the true policy of the United States to intervene in Mexico, or else he held up before the American people the probable European intervention to justify and excuse his own policy towards Mexico. Later, in speaking of the refusal of
Congress to give him power to use the military forces of the United States in Mexico, he said: "European Governments would have been deprived of all pretext to interfere in the territorial and domestic concerns of Mexico. We should thus have been relieved from the obligation of resisting, even by force, should this become necessary, any attempt by these Governments to deprive our neighboring Republic of portions of her territory-a duty from which we could not shrink without abandoning the traditional and established policy of the American people."3

"...Disturbances on the boundary between our country and Mexico added to the grievances already enumerated, and for these Buchanan had equally drastic measures. In 1858 he advised Congress to
take the necessary steps to assume a temporary protectorate over the states of Chihuahua and Sonora by establishing military posts within these states, in order to restrain the predatory bands of Indians. The next year this recommendation was repeated.

"Both of Buchanan's remedies came to naught because Congress was not prepared to authorize intervention in the domestic affairs of a neighboring state ;3 thereupon he worked out another method of accomplishing the same objects. [i.e., by negotiating the McLane-Ocampo Treaty which would have given extraordinary transit and military intervention rights to the US; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLane–Ocampo_Treaty]

By the late 1850's the sectional controversy had poisoned Manifest Destiny, and so Congress did not authorize Buchanan to seize Mexican territory and did not ratify the McLane-Ocampo Treaty. But again this was possible because the Kansas-Nebraska controversy had reignited antislavery sentiment in the North--something that was just beginning when Phillips wrote his letter. And remember that a protectorate or "temporary" seizure of northern Mexico could be an opening wedge to outright annexation--and that of course any Mexican territories acquired by the US would automatically (until they became states) be "slave" territory under the Dred Scott decision.

I won't go into detail on Phillips' other fears, but there was indeed a movement to reopen the African slave trade. Admittedly, that had little chance of passing in Congress due to opposition not only from the North but the Upper South. But there was still a danger some Deep South states might revive the slave trade in disguise--e.g., the proposal in Louisiana to authorize the import of African "apprentices." As for Brazil, see Gerald Horne, The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade https://nyupress.org/books/9780814736883/ on the interest taken by southerners in the idea of an alliance of the world's two great slaveholding powers.

In short, Phillips' nightmare was not as implausible at the time as it may seem today. Much of its failure to be realized may be due to the blunder of southerners reigniting the sectional conflict by seeking to establish slavery in Kansas--which unlike Cuba or Mexico was a place where northern farmers hoped to settle. (In the end, with all the grandiose talk of southward expansion during the 1850's, all the expansionists got was a scaled-down Gadsden Purchase.)

IMO, for Buchanan to prevent secession, you have to go back to 1857 and ask what if he had insisted on the submission of the Lecompton Constitution to the people of Kansas? FWIW, Allen Nevins argued that "the last good chance of averting secession and civil strife was perhaps lost in 1857." http://www.americanheritage.com/content/needless-conflict

Was Nevins too optimistic in thinking that the Deep South states that threatened secession over Lecompton were bluffing? [1] He has some support in Kenneth M. Stampp. Stampp in *America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink* (all quotes in this post are from that book, unless otherwise indicated) argues that before the Buchanan administration made its support for Lecompton clear, Southern opinion was by no means unanimous on the matter. Yes, there were threats that if Lecompton were defeated because of failure to submit the entire constitution for ratification, the Union would be in danger, but:

"Nevertheless, Southerners, in their reaction to the Lecompton constitution, as in their reaction to the Kansas territorial election, were not nearly as united as Northerners. Some doubted that the fate of the South depended upon the future of slavery in Kansas; others had no taste for the tactics of the Lecompton convention. Whig Congressman John A. Gilmer of North Carolina believed that slavery would have only a brief and feeble life in Kansas in any case; and Governor Thomas Bragg opposed any drastic measures if the constitution should be rejected. Governor Wise of Virginia, in a public letter to the *Enquirer,* took issue with Senator Hunter and called on Congress to demand a vote on the Lecompton constitution before admitting Kansas to statehood.

"The southern press also had its prominent dissenters. In support of Wise, the Richmond *Enquirer* asked whether it was 'in accordance with Democratic principles that the will of a minority should control . . . Can it be claimed that a Constitution expresses the wishes and opinion of *the people* of Kansas, when there are thousands of those people who have never voted even for the men who framed it?' In the Deep South the New Orleans *Picayune* conceded that the free-state party had a commanding majority and argued that southern interests could not be advanced by 'continuing to urge a lost cause.' To attempt to protect slavery 'by artifice, or fraud, or denial of popular rights' would be 'a grave blunder in policy, and a fatal error in principle.' If Kansas were lost to the South, 'let us at least preserve dignity and honor to the end.' The Louisville *Democrat*, showing no sympathy for the many proslavery Kentuckians in the Lecompton convention, could think of no reason for refusing to submit the constitution other than a fear that the people would reject it. 'The policy proposed is a most infallible way to make Kansas . . . not only a free State, but a violent anti-slavery State--a shrieking State after the model of Massachusetts. Such a policy would fill the Black Republicans with ecstasy.'" (pp. 280-281) https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5WF8NCK9YYC&pg=PA280

It was only *after* Buchanan made it clear that he was backing Lecompton (through editorials in the administration organ, the Washington *Union*) that "most southern critics of the Lecompton convention fell into line and agreed that the slavery issue had been fairly presented to the Kansas voters." For the Richmond *Enquirer* the switch was obviously painful; it said that it still believed that it would have been better to submit the entire constitution for ratification, but it urged critics of Lecompton to accept the President's policy in order to avoid "a renewal of civil strife in Kansas, and increasing the bitterness of the sectional conflict." https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5WF8NCK9YYC&pg=PA280

Note by the way that in 1857 Douglas was not yet the great bugbear of the southern Democrats. When he argued after *Dred Scott* that the people of the territories could still in practice keep slavery out by failing to pass laws to protect it, there was (contrary to popular belief, which, as so often, reads *later* sentiments back into an earlier time) actually more praise for that stance from the South than condemnation. Jefferson Davis after all said much the same thing:

"If the inhabitants of any Territory should refuse to enact such laws and police regulations as would give security to their property . . . it would be rendered more or less valueless. . . In the case of property in the labor of man . . . the insecurity would be so great that the owner could not ordinarily retain it . . . The owner would be practically debarred . . . from taking slave property into a Territory. . . . So much for the oft-repeated fallacy of forcing slavery upon any community . . ." (Quoted in Avery Craven, *The Coming of the Civil War*, Phoenix Book edition 1966, p. 395) Davis later unconvincingly tried to downplay the similarity of what he had said to Douglas' position. https://books.google.com/books?id=cmYXZNPwkF0C&pg=PA138

It was only after Douglas broke with Buchanan on Lecompton that Southerners became violently opposed to him (and suddenly discovered that his "Freeport Doctrine," which he had actually expressed long before the debates with Lincoln, was heretical). If Buchanan had come out against Lecompton, Douglas's opposition would attract no special notice; virtually all Northern Democrats and a considerable number of Southerners would after all follow Buchanan in that event. In that case, Douglas would still not be the first choice of most southern Democrats for the Presidency, but his nomination would probably not be considered so bad as to be sufficient cause for splitting the Democratic party by any but the most extreme Southerners. Conversely, he would not be such a hero to *northern* Democrats, and as in 1856 many of them might eschew him in 1860 for a less controversial candidate.

As of 1857, the Democratic party was in reasonably good shape in the North. In two states which Fremont had carried in 1856--Wisconsin and Ohio--it came very close to winning the gubernatorial races. In Pennsylvania, the Democrat William F. Packer easily defeated Republican David Wilmot for governor. I don't think there is any doubt that Lecompton and the Buchanan-Douglas split helped pave the way for the Democratic defeats of 1858 and 1860 and therefore for the ACW. This is not just retrospective wisdom, btw. Many people saw it at the time. At the end of 1857 the Louisville *Democrat* argued that "The South never made a worse move" and that "A blunder, it is said, is worse than a crime; but this is both a blunder and a crime. . . It is calculated to break down the only national party in one section of the Union. A contest for President purely sectional will be the result, and we know how that will end; and then the object of the disunionists will be near its accomplishment." (p. 330)

(One should note however that even without the split caused by Lecompton, the Democrats would face problems in North in the 1858 elections because of the Panic of 1857, whose economic effects really hit hard in 1858. But maybe that damage would only be temporary if the party had not split over slavery expansion.)

Stampp concludes (p. 330):

"Could all of this have been avoided--would the course of the sectional controversy have been significantly altered--if Buchanan had remained true to his pledge and demanded the submission of the whole Lecompton constitution to the voters of Kansas? This is a question no historian can answer. It is doubtful that a firm stand by Buchanan would have resulted in southern secession, because the provocation would not have been sufficient to unite even the Deep South behind so drastic a response. Nor would it have been sufficient to produce a major split in the national Democratic party. Accordingly, without a divided and demoralized national Democracy, Republican success in the elections of 1858 and 1860 would have been a good deal more problematic." https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5WF8NCK9YYC&pg=PA330 (Stampp might have added that Buchanan's policies helped the Republicans not only by splitting the Democratic party but by making Seward's and Lincoln's allegations of a conspiracy to nationalize slavery seem a lot more plausible. Indeed, I am not certain that the "Irrepressible Conflict" and "House Divided" speeches would even have been made if Buchanan had come out against Lecompton.)

Thus far Stampp's conclusion seems similar to Nevins' [2] but the next paragraph (pp. 330-1) introduces a note of caution:

"Yet, contrary to the optimists of 1857, removing the Kansas question from national politics, although eliminating a serious irritant, would not have assured a lasting settlement of the sectional conflict. The possibilities of other crises over slavery were far too numerous. Sooner or later, any one of them, like Lecompton, might have disrupted the Democratic party" and as in 1860 led to the election of a "Black" Republican and subsequent secession. True enough, but who knows? If the Republicans had lost in 1860 and whatever Democrat won that year avoided anything to unnecessarily agitate the slavery issue, it is possible that by 1864 or 1868 or whenever the Republicans finally would get in control of the White House, they would have become so much more conservative that their victory would not have been considered sufficient cause for secession, even in the Deep South.

[1] "The well-informed Washington correspondent of the New Orleans Picayune a little later told just how aggressively the Chief Executive was bludgeoned into submission: 'The President was informed in November, 1857, that the States of Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, and perhaps others, would hold conventions and secede from the Union if the Lecompton Constitution, which established slavery, should not be accepted by Congress'...The same view was taken yet more emphatically by Douglas. He had inside information in 1857, he later told the Senate, that four states were threatening Buchanan with secession. Had that threat been met in the right Jacksonian spirit, had the bluff been called—for the four states were unprepared for secession and war—the leaders of the movement would have been utterly discredited. .." http://www.americanheritage.com/content/needless-conflict

[2] One respect in which Stampp differs from Nevins: he rejects the idea that Buchanan was controlled by a southern cabal. "The conclusion seems warranted that Buchanan's policy, while pleasing to most Southerners, was nevertheless *his* policy, not one forced upon him by others." (p. 285) And one also cannot say that Buchanan's Lecompton decision was a sign of Buchanan's inability to resist pressure; after all, there was plenty of pressure on him by *northern* Democrats to stand by his commitment to full submission of the constitution to the Kansas voters. (p. 284)
 
Also, although I believe it's entirely possible to avoid the Civil War and the longer slavery lasts the more likely it is to end peacefully, a later Civil War is not going to be an easier affair. In 1860, the South contained 15% of the industry within the nation and by the 1910s the South had regained this percentage despite the damages of the civil war; this is all the more incredible given the rapid expansion of industry in the nation as a whole since 1860. In 1860, there was about 9 million Southerners to 22 Million Northerners, meaning the South had about 40% of the population; including the 11 States of the Confederacy plus Oklahoma and Kentucky in 1900 founds the South held about 22 Million out of 54 Million in the remainder of the nation or, again, 40%. So, in a later mashup, you could reasonably expect the South to do as good if not better.
 
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Can Kansas join as a slave state in order to delay it?
I doubt Fremont could/would deliver that to the South. His credibility was in his rugged individualism, the fulfillment of manifest destiny, and that necessitated a free soil stand. The South would have had to give up expansion for protection, no Kansas, no expansion. IMO Fremont was in a political position where he could both champion free soil and still earnestly defend slavery where it existed. Lincoln, 1860 wanted to believe he was in that position, but he was the 'black republican' always to the South.

In 1857 the South may have trusted the western Fremont, they were never going to trust Lincoln.

Of course I actually know jack about Fremont and it could turn out he was raised in an abolitionist family, (for all I know of the man,) which makes everything I offer wrong. But from his public persona ad his known history he seems to be the definitive frontiersman and may have been satisfied with slavery just not expanding west.
 
The rebels ... send a delegation who ... ask [Lincoln] ...whether he'd tolerate slavery if this'd preserve the union. So they make a compromise: Slavery as a state right is written into the constitution, but the slave states give up resistance against laws in northern interests.
Lincoln had already stated that as President, he would have no power to interfere with slavery in a state. Hardly anyone on the abolitionist side thought Congress did, either. (Some of the Fire-Eaters asserted the opposite, as a reason for secession.) But it was of no importance during the crisis.

The Fire-Eaters argued that what Lincoln said meant nothing: he was an abolitionist, part of a great conspiracy to incite slave uprisings that would exterminate the whites of the South.
 
The people of Kansas don't want it, so the whole dispute being settled either way is going to rile up feathers (Since you need to let it in Free to have Popular Sovergeinty hold any weight as a compromise stance). It might be possible to strike a bargain with the Mormons though in order to get an agreement both sides can work with: bring in Deseret as a Slave State to balance Kansas as free. That buys a little time


In 1859, Brigham Young told Horace Greeley that Utah would be a free State as it was unsuitable for slavery.

Iirc the 1860 Census showed about 20 slaves in Utah, but most of those probably belonged to Democratic Territorial officials, who no doubt included several Southerners.

Both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were Vermonters by birth, and almost all the Apostles of the Civil War period came from free states.
 
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