PC: Compromise plan to gradually phase out slavery in the US

It's been said many times that if the Founding Fathers had attempted to ban slavery, the US would have fractured and collapsed. But could it have been possible, instead of banning it on the spot, to adopt a plan to gradually phase it out over a long period of time (perhaps up to 50 years)? I was under the impression that many of the Framers, saw slavery as a "necessary evil" that they couldn't ban because their livelihoods depended on it, and that white supremacism hadn't really developed yet. Would there have been more support for ending slavery if it was a long-term solution instead of an immediate one?
 
This could work if you want it to actually occur in the 20th century (with a 19th century PoD to avert the Civil War). Slavery would be almost impossible to uproot within the US system without such a conflict*, but presumably by the mid 20th century it would be sufficiently abhorrent to the rest of the US, and indeed rest of the world, that a program that does not actually address the issue immediately but which looks good on paper and slowly unwinds the institution. Having it occur in the early 19th century is probably impossible, far too expensive if nothing else.

*the one thing that needs to be avoided is enough non-slavery states being founded to outvote the institution. Possible, but hard IMO.
 
It's been said many times that if the Founding Fathers had attempted to ban slavery, the US would have fractured and collapsed. But could it have been possible, instead of banning it on the spot, to adopt a plan to gradually phase it out over a long period of time (perhaps up to 50 years)? I was under the impression that many of the Framers, saw slavery as a "necessary evil" that they couldn't ban because their livelihoods depended on it, and that white supremacism hadn't really developed yet. Would there have been more support for ending slavery if it was a long-term solution instead of an immediate one?
Nope. You could try, but it would eventually be stonewalled as the next generation of politicians come in. Well... I suppose if you butterfly things like the Haitian revolution and smaller slave revolts you might have a South less paranoid, but still.
 

samcster94

Banned
Nope. You could try, but it would eventually be stonewalled as the next generation of politicians come in. Well... I suppose if you butterfly things like the Haitian revolution and smaller slave revolts you might have a South less paranoid, but still.
One solution would be to, for the compromise, not to actually end slavery, but free the elderly and make VERY circumstantial cases in which someone could not be born a slave. Slavery ends peacefully MUCH later for unrelated reasons.
 
One solution would be to, for the compromise, not to actually end slavery, but free the elderly and make VERY circumstantial cases in which someone could not be born a slave. Slavery ends peacefully MUCH later for unrelated reasons.
Perhaps... but it would depend entirely on how race relations progress, how the South balances against the North in dominance for the Union, and how the economy works. So I suppose it could be possible, but I think it would take the stars aligning for things to go that peacefully.
 
One solution would be to, for the compromise, not to actually end slavery, but free the elderly and make VERY circumstantial cases in which someone could not be born a slave. Slavery ends peacefully MUCH later for unrelated reasons.

Well, the former would be... complicated. On one hand, cutting out those too old to work could be seen as a cost-saving measure if you're dealing with some particularly cruel masters: not being able to save much money of their own and past their working prime, with their families still in bondage, "freedom" in this case would mostly just mean the freedom to curl up and die penniless. However, the fact that the slave system provided care for their old rather than casting them off like the cold, heartless free labor system of the North was one of the more potent slavery apologetic arguments.
 
I don't know. I could see where, if the Founders came up with some sort of system to gradually phase out Slavery, some areas would see that as a deadline and actively work to be ready to have a slave-less economy. Not everyone would, however, and you would likely have areas that dig in their heels and refuse (especially in the Deep South, I'd imagine). However, if the area that is entrenched is much smaller than the OTL Confederacy, it is likely that conflict would be more limited and/or more short-lived. But I agree that a blanket gradual manumission/emancipation would be hard to pull off.
 
I don't know. I could see where, if the Founders came up with some sort of system to gradually phase out Slavery, some areas would see that as a deadline and actively work to be ready to have a slave-less economy.

This was what I had in mind as a result of this. Maybe if states were incentivized somehow to remove it by a certain point?
 
Given that the South insisted on a provision guaranteeing the African slave trade for the next 20 years, I can't see them signing up to any phasing out, however gradual.

OTOH, they did accept the Northwest Ordinance, so they might swallow an extension of it to "territory hereafter acquired" above a certain line of latitude. That would prevent the Kansas-Nebraska Act and (insofar as it related to the Territories) the Dred Scott Decision.
 
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