More Free States by 1860

How many more Free States could you get by 1860 with luck?

I think you can get Delaware, Maryland (If Baltimore grows faster), Missouri (If St Louis grows faster), Kentucky, Virginia (No Nat Turner Rebellion) and I think that is it. Any others?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I think you can get Delaware, Maryland (If Baltimore grows faster), Missouri (If St Louis grows faster), Kentucky, Virginia (No Nat Turner Rebellion) and I think that is it. Any others?

Baltimore was pretty pro-Confederate, actually. The Unionist areas of the state were in the western part.
 
Baltimore was pretty pro-Confederate, actually. The Unionist areas of the state were in the western part.

Actually, the Baltimore riots were greatly overblown. It also had the largest Free Black population of any US city. It lasted all of one day and was never repeated. In truly strongly Southern areas such as parts of KY there was constant irregular warfare. There was little or none of it in Maryland.
 
There's always whatever you could carve out of Canada, but that requires a more substantial PoD, and could have larger impacts.
 

Japhy

Banned
I've always been a fan of getting Coloradoan Jefferson to be a state in 1860, which is plus one at the price of a different Democrat in the White House.
 
I doubt the Union would not be able to survive a Maryland uprising. This would place the District of Columbia within Confederate territory. Pretty much Lincoln's worst nightmare, that.

After the riots in 1861, Baltimore was placed under martial law and it stayed that way until 1865. The cannons of Fort McHenry and Federal Hill were primed on civilian targets until the war was over, and there were always large numbers of Union troops moving through the city. The city didn't riot only once because they weren't that pro-Confederate - they rioted only once because they had guns pointing at them afterwards.

So yes, Baltimore did have the sentiment to rebel (although this of course wasn't uniform among all citizens), but the Union would do whatever it took to keep the city from doing so. It'd be far better to lose Missouri and Kentucky than Maryland.

In other words, Maryland stays in the Union pretty much no matter what.
 
In any case if Delaware, Maryland, Missouri ,Kentucky, and Virginia are all solid Union states what are the chances of the Civil War breaking and if it does how long does it last?
 
How many more Free States could you get by 1860 with luck?

I think you can get Delaware, Maryland (If Baltimore grows faster), Missouri (If St Louis grows faster), Kentucky, Virginia (No Nat Turner Rebellion) and I think that is it. Any others?

Those states seem pretty much slave statess though I suppose they could become free. In practice maybe but not so sure about law.

With a 1830 POD I think it would be able to make Texas a free state. While I suppose in part slavery was why Texas revolted it was not the only. I can see if America originally does not seem as interested in it and Texas is on the brink of collapsing or being absorbed
by Mexico it just might decide to get rid of slavery to appeal better to European nations for aid and recognition. Then perhaps there can be a falling out of relations and Texas will join the USA by 1860 as a free state if the southern states are not too opposed. Maybe Texas can even be annexed whole or bigger than in OTL. But yeah only big fault I see is the Southern States opposing possibly a free large Texas. If it gets developed enough before being annexed I feel like Texas is more likely to be whole though no guarantee.
 
Those states seem pretty much slave statess though I suppose they could become free. In practice maybe but not so sure about law.

With a 1830 POD I think it would be able to make Texas a free state. While I suppose in part slavery was why Texas revolted it was not the only. I can see if America originally does not seem as interested in it and Texas is on the brink of collapsing or being absorbed
by Mexico it just might decide to get rid of slavery to appeal better to European nations for aid and recognition. Then perhaps there can be a falling out of relations and Texas will join the USA by 1860 as a free state if the southern states are not too opposed. Maybe Texas can even be annexed whole or bigger than in OTL. But yeah only big fault I see is the Southern States opposing possibly a free large Texas. If it gets developed enough before being annexed I feel like Texas is more likely to be whole though no guarantee.

Delaware was virtually a free state OTL, Virginia was contemplating emancipation when Nat Turner's Rebellion broke out and caused many Virginians to think Blacks needed to be under control via slavery. Slaves were being sold further south during this period due to the higher prices they could get through cotton. The main reason all but Virginia were Union Slave States was because slavery was declining in those states as the slaves were being bought by the Deep South at higher prices.
 
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