How possible is slavery in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin before industrialisation?

In OTL slavery was banned in the Northwest Ordinance. But what if it hadn't been? Slavery was obviously highly possible in southern Indiana and Illinois, but what about the other states? Is large scale slavery possible in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin? What crops would be involved?
 
I think at best only Illinois and Indiana, and even then it would be pretty unpopular.

Some in Indiana actually tried to fight a couple times for a pro-slavery constitution even if they got shot down pretty definitively. Had either state ratified slavery, I'd see it at best as only in Little Egypt and southwest Indiana, with relatively few actual slaves in those regions.
 
Even if legalized it would be limited to the southernmost portions and the numbers of slaves would be quite small, as stated above. Most of the settlers of the Old Northwest came from the Mid-Atlantic states (Marlyand, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York) where slavery was virtually non-existent. New settlers would therefore have very few slaves to begin with and would lack the means to purchase more.

The reason slavery existed in the South and not in the North is primarily geographical. Slaves, being primarily unskilled labor, were best suited to large-scale agriculture. The North, with its hilly, rocky, heavily forested terrain, was not suited for that, while the South with its wide coastal plain was. The North, with its preponderance of small farms and factories, had little demand for slaves, while the South with its plantations had a large demand for them. High demand equals higher prices, so slavers sold their cargoes in the South where they could get better prices for them, which created even more of an imbalance in slave populations among the colonies, leading to slavery being a nearly exclusively Southern institution.
 
Ohio, possible, given the Virginian influence on the Southern half of the state. Wisconsin and Michigan? Absolutely not. It was basically New New England.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana could all have slavery due to their large Appalachian populations, who were more or less fine with the institution, though the non-slaveholding Germans and Yankees who settled in Ohio might be able to keep it free.

Wisconsin and Michigan will ever be free as they were settled by Yankees who had become adverse to slavery by that time.
 

birdboy2000

Banned
An idle thought, but one I'm exploring in an ATL I'm currently writing. (but for NaNoWriMo, so it'll need heavy editing before I post it anywhere.) OTL, Virginia had some pretty large claims in the west - it claimed the whole Old Northwest at one point.

That's going to be impossible to press, but if the northwest ordinance shakes out differently and we get that territory partitioned between existing states instead of forming new ones, Virginia's holding onto large portions of Ohio/Indiana/Illinois and Virginia isn't about to abolish slavery any time soon. (Though as settlers flock to western land, there will be some interesting turmoil within Virginia state politics.)
 
Ohio? Never.

Appalachians settled basically the northern riverbank of the state, but the rest of the southern third and all the central portion of the state was settled by Mid-Atlantic statesiders, and the northern third was the Western Reserve, settled heavily by New Englanders.

Furthermore, Cincinnati was founded primarily by New Jerseyans, Columbus and Dayton settled first by Pennsylvanians, and Cleveland and Marietta (in the southeast of the state easily accessed by West Virginia!) by Yankees. Pretty big cities (well, maybe not poor Marietta :p) that are more or less sown with northern influence right from their starts.

Indeed, Ohio was the FIRST state to get the 'Yankee State' nickname out west! So I'd have to say the 'Appalachian-men in Ohio' is pretty overstated.
 
What if we change settlement patterns in some way? If the British government had allowed Virginia planters to move in early, for instance? Is slavery economically feasible in the geography of these states, if we ignore the political culture?
 
There're separate answers for the early settlement period and later. Former first. It's probably best to look at what was going on in Pennsylvania OTL for a model. That's how it would be in Ohio, for certain.

Slavery was quite profitable in Pennsylvania's early iron industry, for example. So profitable, in fact, that slave use actually expanded in west-central PA for decades after the passage of the Gradual Emancipation law. They were still worth it to the ironworks, even knowing that they weren't a long term investment and would end up confiscated/freed/sold within a few years.

Other than that, you aren't going to see intensive use in those states, regardless of ideology. Rather, the deciding factor would be technology - when the early modern plows and combines are invented large grain farms would become practical. At that point large plantations would need hired labor to function. Hired or owned.

Again judging by PA, I'd expect a minority of the well-off to have a hand to help around the farm, as much as a marker of wealth and success as for any economic value. There'd be a strip in the southwest along the Ohio River doing cash crops, and that'd be about it. Obviously this suggests next to nothing will be going on in Michigan and Wisconsin.

Later though, industrialization would kick off in precisely those areas. If slavery is still somehow legal there, and if there's enough slaves to go around given the price of cotton, slave labor would be in huge demand. Then it could really take off.
 
Same as Kentucky. Hemp, IIRC, and tobacco. Don't think there's any cotton country to speak of.

So what about further west? There seemed to be slavery all the way up the Missouri where it was legal. Political situation aside, would it have been feasible economically in Nebraska, Iowa and the Dakotas?
 
What are the circumstances of the continued legality? Do you have a POD worked out?

The anti-slavery enthusiasm of the north was not merely economic - it was also ideological. In Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, emancipation mirrored the French Revolution's equivalent - it was explicitly part of a revolutionary agenda. It took riding a wave of war-borne radicalism to do so much so early in areas where slave ownership was nearly nonexistent.

In Pennsylvania, where the institution was much stronger, the same forces had to act in alliance with a longstanding and disproportionately powerful Quaker abolitionist lobby. Even then a compromise was necessary that extended the institution for generations.

Once that much had happened though, the Free North was nearly inevitable. The combination gave a model for compensated change, a threat of what the radical alternative might be, made the northwest ban easy to pass, almost made a southwest ban pass (one vote short!), and surrounded the northeast with free states. That and created a big population that self identified themselves as growing up in free states (with pride, obviously) and predominated in western migration.

In a very real way, the Revolution created the free states.
 
So what about further west? There seemed to be slavery all the way up the Missouri where it was legal. Political situation aside, would it have been feasible economically in Nebraska, Iowa and the Dakotas?

Not likely up there barring some majorly vicious arm-twisting form Southern elites a la DoD or something. And even in a scenario without New England in the picture(think Vulcan Trekkie's mini-TL), that could still potentially be a catalyst for a long-term slide towards major ideological conflict and eventually, this TL's Civil War.
 
What are the circumstances of the continued legality? Do you have a POD worked out?

The anti-slavery enthusiasm of the north was not merely economic - it was also ideological. In Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, emancipation mirrored the French Revolution's equivalent - it was explicitly part of a revolutionary agenda. It took riding a wave of war-borne radicalism to do so much so early in areas where slave ownership was nearly nonexistent.

In Pennsylvania, where the institution was much stronger, the same forces had to act in alliance with a longstanding and disproportionately powerful Quaker abolitionist lobby. Even then a compromise was necessary that extended the institution for generations.

Once that much had happened though, the Free North was nearly inevitable. The combination gave a model for compensated change, a threat of what the radical alternative might be, made the northwest ban easy to pass, almost made a southwest ban pass (one vote short!), and surrounded the northeast with free states. That and created a big population that self identified themselves as growing up in free states (with pride, obviously) and predominated in western migration.

In a very real way, the Revolution created the free states.

I was speculating what might happen either in a non-revolutionary scenario, where Westward expansion was limited to charters for companies, mainly based out of Virginia. Either that or simply a delayed Enlightenment. That's why I wanted to understand the economics rather than ideology.
 
So what about further west? There seemed to be slavery all the way up the Missouri where it was legal. Political situation aside, would it have been feasible economically in Nebraska, Iowa and the Dakotas?

Moderately successful farmers showing off that they can afford a slave. And the vast majority not even doing that. Small family farms have no economical use to put slaves to.

That changes once machines (not necessarily tractors, horse drawn is fine) start coming in and farm size shoots up, especially from the 1880s or so.

But again, things will look mostly the same unless there are enough slaves to go around. Cotton is so profitable that there really needs to be too many slaves for the cotton planters to use them all, otherwise there'll never be more than a scattering in the north. Boll weevil could do that. Mass cotton plantations somewhere else could reduce the price a bit if something very different is happening in Brazil, Egypt, or India. Eventually it'll come down on its own, as in OTL, of course. Or the slave trade could have continued a lot longer or been at a larger scale.
 
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Mass cotton plantations somewhere else could reduce the price a bit if something very different is happening in Brazil, Egypt, or India. Eventually it'll come down on its own, as in OTL, of course. Or the slave trade could have continued a lot longer or been at a larger scale.

If we assume cotton demand stays the same, how much would the supply of slaves have to increase for King Cotton to have his thirst quenched? Are we talking more ~20% additional slaves or ~200% or ~2000%?
 
If we assume cotton demand stays the same, how much would the supply of slaves have to increase for King Cotton to have his thirst quenched? Are we talking more ~20% additional slaves or ~200% or ~2000%?

I'm almost certain the number would be between the first two, but I honestly don't know for sure. I recommend a PM to Jared, I'm almost certain he could tell you, but you'd be waiting for a post-honeymoon reply....

As a general rule, it would play as a more extreme version of what happened in the slave states. The price of cotton fluctuated. When it went down, slaves drifted north, drifted into cities, toward family farms, lower-price crops, and industrial concerns. Then the price would go up, and suddenly those kinds of people had trouble affording slaves and the process reversed. The only difference would be distance insulating the northern areas. The slaves' involuntary-migrations were gradual in both directions. So cotton wouldn't be down long enough to fill Nebraska, but any slaves that somehow got there in the first place would also be less likely sold down the river.
 
You have to remember that the majority of crops grown in the Upper Midwest throughout their existence are not "cash" crops by definition. They're crops made for sustenance and food, not for clothing. The prime reason that Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, etc... didn't see a large "boom" in agricultural means prior to the 1850's isn't because of their remoteness, but because the soil is extremely rough and is mostly suited for corn, beans and wheat, not cotton and tobacco. This is also in great credit to the weather of the region, as the south is mostly devoid of snow and colder weather and has very few days where the ground freezes in comparison to the north, as cotton and tobacco both require up to 160 continuous days of very hot weather in order to maximize their profitability. It wasn't until the 1840's when agricultural technology finally allowed the areas to become profitable in widespread fashion through both tilling and threshing.

My expertise isn't that great, but having lived in the region and having taken part in farming for a couple years of my life I think it's credible.
 
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