More Slave States

I would like to see a map and a timeline in which more slave states into the Union to be equal to free states. I want to be able to postpone the Civil war as much as possible, but still have the Federal Goverment win and slavery abolished.
Here are some ideas
-South California
-Kanas
-Cuba
-New Mexico
-Republic of Sonora ( after its annex by the U.S)


Bonas if they come in pairs with free states
 
I would like to see a map and a timeline in which more slave states into the Union to be equal to free states. I want to be able to postpone the Civil war as much as possible, but still have the Federal Goverment win and slavery abolished.
Here are some ideas
-South California
-Kanas
-Cuba
-New Mexico
-Republic of Sonora ( after its annex by the U.S)


Bonas if they come in pairs with free states

Hey Mike, and welcome to AH.com.

Cuba and Sonora aren't all that hard to do, btw: just make it so the filibusters are successful in getting what they want....maybe you could put a guy like John Breckinridge in power at some point.
New Mexico is gonna be a bit tougher, mainly because of how it was laid out IOTL; not a lot of farmland existed outside of maybe some of the areas bordering Texas and cotton land in what would be *Arizona wasn't really such until more advanced irrigation in the last century.
Southerh California had some really good fruit land in the LA River basin,so maybe you can get some heavy duty farming done by 1870 or so, with enough settlers.
Kansas will be a lot tougher: there were plenty of Jayhawks to go around and they wouldn't have given the state up without a fight(Hell, Missouri could have rejected slavery before the Civil War itself!). It's doable, but might require a substantially far back POD, I think,
 
First you are going to have to explain how the "Republic of Sonora" and "South California" come into existence and when. I may be wrong, but I believe Mexico formally abolished slavery after Texas independence in 1836, so if the Republic of Sonora fissioned off from Mexico after that without slavery before its annexation by the USA, I think it's unlikely it would become a slave state. I have similar questions about "South California". Also, both Sonora and New Mexico are arid. Can SW states really support the intensive agriculture that makes slavery economically viable? Cuba makes sense poltically and culturally if you can make up a realistic scenario for its seizure by the US in the 1820-1850 period.

I think your best chance would be the following:

- Texas divides itself into several different states immediately after admission to the US (something I believe was legally possible under terms of annexation)

- The Indian Territory (Oklahoma) is formally dissolved as an Indian reservation in the 1840's and opened to white settlement. Since the "Five Civilized Tribes" moved into the territory were already slave-owners and most white settlers moving into the territory in this situation would come from Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri, it would almost naturally be a slave state.

-US purchase or annexation of Cuba, Hispanola, and other European colonies in the carribean where slavery was permitted historically. The problem with these options is that I doubt the USA in 1840 would admit states that are primarily spanish speaking with large mixed-race populations.


.
 
Slavery nearly happened in Indiana and Illinois while William Henry Harrison was the governor of the territory. That effort was stopped by Thomas Jefferson who opposed the extension of slavery into the Northwest. Indiana is not that great a prospect for slavery, but southern Illinois is, and was nearly legalized in 1824.

Southern California would be the next best bet, with the Compromise of 1850 or some variation dividing California into a Free State and a Slave State. Kansas is also a possibility, but that depends on tempering efforts on the part of the North, which overwhelmed the Pro-Slavery forces in Kansas.


Oregon and California could be major slave states.

Oregon I cannot personally see, honestly.
 
I'm not sure about particular states, but a good PoD might be getting a numbers compromise instead of a geographic one.

Make it law that states have to enter in pairs, one slave one free.

The problem comes when a state doesn't have an immediate partner, in that case they'd wait until one appears or perhaps divide themselves if parts of the territory disagree on the slavery issue.
 
I'm not sure about particular states, but a good PoD might be getting a numbers compromise instead of a geographic one.

Make it law that states have to enter in pairs, one slave one free.

The problem comes when a state doesn't have an immediate partner, in that case they'd wait until one appears or perhaps divide themselves if parts of the territory disagree on the slavery issue.
There already was, informally - which is all you're going to get without a Constitutional amendment. Even so, that blew up when California insisted on immediate statehood and categorically refused to be a territory. Denying them statehood would make them very angry.
 
I would like to see a map and a timeline in which more slave states into the Union to be equal to free states. I want to be able to postpone the Civil war as much as possible, but still have the Federal Goverment win and slavery abolished.

Adding more slave states will not prolong slavery. There was no threat of the US Government banning slavery in states where it already existed. Even if every free state voted for a Constitutional Amendment to end slavery, they wouldn’t have had enough votes to end slavery until. Period abolitionists didn’t have the influence to get a single state to vote to end slavery nationwide. Most people in free states did not care what slaveholders did to slaves and abolitionists were unimportant extremists.

That did change – because slaveholders repeatedly, forcibly tried to add more slave states. Slaveholders trampled on state and individual rights; engaged in censorship and voter fraud, assaulted men who disagreed with them even on the Senate floor, packed the courts, and tried to spend the blood and treasure of the whole nation on their own sectional interests. This split the Whigs and then the Democrats as the northern branches of those parties got tired of dancing to the slaveholders’ tune.

Attempts to add more slave states did not delay the Civil War, they accelerated it. Most citizens of free states were not opposed to slavery, they were opposed to slaves competing with them for jobs. Southern political leadership could have convinced most farmers and factory workers that abolition meant free black coming north to take their jobs and guaranteed there would never be the votes to force the end slavery in the slaveholding states.
 
Top