Missouri free state

What if after the Louisiana purchase, the US Congress decided to expand the NW Ordinance to the new lands and Missouri ended among the free states? This would butterfly away bleeding Kansas and a lot of tension between North and South. Do you think that even the ACW would be butterflied away? What other consequences would there be?
 
What if after the Louisiana purchase, the US Congress decided to expand the NW Ordinance to the new lands and Missouri ended among the free states? This would butterfly away bleeding Kansas and a lot of tension between North and South. Do you think that even the ACW would be butterflied away? What other consequences would there be?

Maybe we see a bigger push to acquire Cuba then
 
The immediate effect, ignoring the considerable effects on Missouri itself, is that Maine does not get statehood. They want to pair admission of free states with slave states at that point, right? Also no 1820 compromise.

So in 1836-7, Arkansas and Michigan come in, then in 1845-6 Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Then in 1850 you have the controversy over the admission of California. However much people in Maine may want it, there will be no support among southern politicians for creating yet another state in New England at that point.

But Maine may be admitted as a state anyway, as one of the Republican nineteenth century gerrymandering states, along with West Virginia, Nevada, North Dakota, Colorado, and Wyoming, to boost the number of Republicans in Congress and Republican EVs. The Republicans were prepared to count the electoral votes of occupied Louisiana and Tennessee to secure Lincoln's re-election, so I'm sure they would have been happy to split off Maine from Massachusetts to get Lincoln another two EVs.

This assumes that the Civil War is butterflied away due to no "bleeding Kansas", and as stated above the POD gets interesting at this point. The idea of Kansas as a slave state was pretty insane even given the standards of the time, but it probably would be too much even for the fire-eaters if it didn't even border on any slave states. Douglas still wants his railroad, though. Southern politicians for reasons I never completely understood are bent on expanding slavery.

One possibility is that nothing happens. Douglas has nothing to bargain with, so southern politicians block the railroad on general principles. There is no "bleeding Kansas"controversy. This probably means no one pays attention to Douglas being re-elected to the Senate in Illinois. There is probably still a Republican Party, because of the Fugitive Slave Law but its a lot weaker. If Douglas' presidential campaign is not butterflied way entirely, southern Democrats do not object, though the idea that the split caused the Republicans to win is a historical myth. You probably have Seward losing narrowly to Douglas in the electoral college, and by a wider margin in the popular vote, in 1860.

(maybe by 43% to 38% in the popular vote, with the rest going to Bell. Seward wins the OTL Lincoln states, except for California, Oregon, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, so he gets 126 EV compared to 180 for Lincoln, though Ohio and its 27 EV would be winnable for a Seward/ Chase ticket and that would be enough to get Seward over the top. Bell takes Kentucky and Tennessee for 24 EV, with Douglas scraping through with the other 153 EV, though note that Bell wins in any of Maryland, Virginia, or North Carolina, all quite achievable, push the election to the House)

The other possibility is that the fire-eater push things way to far, as they did IOTL, but just find another place than Kansas to do it. In addition to Cuba as stated above, Arizona, New Mexico, and a project to split off southern California and introduce slavery there -which is crazy but no crazier than the Kansas idea- are possibilities.

Dredd Scott either lives his entire life as a free man in this scenario or is not held as a slave in Missouri. This raises similar issues to having no bleeding Kansas. Does the Supreme Court leave well enough alone, or do they find another case to use to butt in on the debate?
 
If Missouri gets accepted as a free state, it would happen if slavery north of a certain line gets banned, just like with the Northwest ordinance. So is this happens, what would be the borders of Missouri and where would be the line dividing free and slave states in the USA in that region of Missouri and west of it?
 
I don't think you can prevent the ACW. It's chief cause was the creation of a country that allowed slavery. Other nations ended the practice without war. I don't think it was possible in this case. I think without bleeding Kansas you would have had an earlier Harper's Ferry and thus an earlier vote of secession in South Carolina.
 
I don't think you can prevent the ACW. It's chief cause was the creation of a country that allowed slavery. Other nations ended the practice without war. I don't think it was possible in this case. I think without bleeding Kansas you would have had an earlier Harper's Ferry and thus an earlier vote of secession in South Carolina.
I'm not entirely sure I follow how that would happen. The Border Ruffians pouring in from Missouri to terrorize Free Soilers was what inspired John Brown, who was basically acting in self defense back in Kansas. Kinda sorta. Anyways, Bleeding Kansas and all that highlighted the violence against whites that pro-slavery militants committed. Not that it is better or worse if violence is against any one group, but as the North was pretty white it did cause some stirring of feelings. Though it also ties into Caning of Sumner, where one Congressman held a senators at gunpoint as the other nearly beat a man to death who had been stuck in a seat and couldn't even defend himself.

Without a slave Missouri I don't see there being a Harper's Ferry expy early. Perhaps we still see secession attempts though, as the South feels they would be losing Senate parity. Might depend who is elected in Missouri, as I did read once that in Illinois early on the Senators were pro-slavery and that there was an 'apprentice' system there.
 
I don't think splitting off Southern California will be all that crazy. You probably get a fairly strong custom of introducing slave states and free states at the same time, I agree with the poster above that Congress is not going to abolish all slavery in the Louisiana Purchase, what they are going to do is pick a line. Maybe a river or something, but probably just a longitude line, somewhere in the 37 to 38 degree range (bisecting OTL Missouri). If you set it where the Ohio River flows into the Mississippi, it will be very close to 37 degrees. The line will bisect California also. So its not unthinkable or crazy at all to imagine that California gets admitted as two states, with the assumption that the lower state will allow for slavery.

However, given the dates of the Louisiana Purchase, before the cotton boom really got going, it may be that Congress doesn't have a clear idea of where slavery would "work" and where it wouldn't. So you may get a more northerly line that in practice turns out to be unworkable, which means you have the same kind of history as OTL, with repeated clashes over slavery in the context of new territories and new states. for example, if they used the Missouri River as their dividing line out to where it turns dramatically north (OTL Kansas City, basically, about 39 degrees north), that would look reasonable enough at the time, but would mean that almost all of OTL Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California would be in the "slave" area, which obviously isn't going to work.
 
What about the fact that there would be no settlement by slave owners and their black slaves? Who would replace them in those areas of Missouri? What populations would settle in Missouri? Would the families of famous Missourians like Mark Twain, Vincent Price or Jesse James still settle in this state?
 
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