PC: Western states secede during ACW

No, not to join the Confederacy.

Is it at all possible that during or immediately before the Civil War (like, some time between Bleeding Kansas and the first shots of the war being fired), the states out west (California, Oregon, and Washington) say "to hell with this" and secede from the Union, perhaps taking some territories with them?

Are there any conditions at all that could allow this to happen?
 

Japhy

Banned
1- Washington wasn't a state yet.

2- Yes there was in fact talk about this. In Oregon the largest section of the settled population were former-Southerners so they could be brought in line for it, in California they were a large part as well though they didn't control the means of government, so sentiment for departure is there just like before Sumter it was in New Jersey, Maine and New York City.

The problem is transferring that sort of talk into action, as it collapsed after Sumter.
 
Oregon did seriosuly consider it, it was'nt until agitators from back East came in and started painting them as pro-Confederate that support waned.
 
2- Yes there was in fact talk about this. In Oregon the largest section of the settled population were former-Southerners so they could be brought in line for it, in California they were a large part as well though they didn't control the means of government, so sentiment for departure is there just like before Sumter it was in New Jersey, Maine and New York City.

Oregon voted for Lincoln in 1860, albeit narrowly. The most populated portion of the State, then as is now, the Willamette Valley, I believe had a larger New England origin population, although there were many Southerners---especially in the Rogue Valley and Klamath country to the South.
In any event the Secessionists were easily shouted down. Pro-successionist circles during the war were thoroughly infiltrated by spies and South-leaning newspapers shut down. The Oregon volunteer militias were reliably pro-Union and keeping tabs on Southern sympathizers were as much of their mission as suppressing Native Americans.
There was a huge influx of Southerners into Oregon after the ACW which shook up demographics quite a bit.
 
I'm looking more for the Western states/territories deciding that they'll jump ship and do their own thing rather than be drawn into a war, rather than seceding because of Southron sympathies.
 
For more Hispanic settlers need a more stable Mexico or one side either Liberals or Conservatives are totally crushed during one of the many wars. That being said they could always flee outside of the country
 
As of the 1859, pro-slavery Democrats appear to have been in control of the governments of California and Oregon, and indeed one of Oregon's Senators would become Breckenridge's running mate. Kick off the secession crisis and the start of the Civil War a year or so earlier, and this becomes plausible.

Maybe John Brown decides on an assassination plot rather than the OTL Harper's Ferry raid, identifying the Democratic leadership in general and President Buchanan in particular as the key villains upholding slavery (particularly for Buchanan's role in pushing SCOTUS to rule as they did in Dred Scott). Brown and his sons simultaneously assassinate Buchanan, his VP, and the Democratic President Pro Tem of the Senate, leaving the Republican Speaker of the House (William Pennington) next in line for the Presidency. The bloody and suspicious circumstances, in addition to the stronger political position of Southern sympathizer in the west in 1859, might lead to California and Oregon throwing in with the Southern states, or at least breaking loose and refusing to support Pennington's government.
 
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