Crazymachines
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What is the plausibility of a Coup d'état being attempted by pro slavery interests in the US government and military following the election of a radical republican candidate to the presidency (such as Seward or Frémont).
Plausibility check: Pro slavery putsch instead of Secession in the United States
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I don't think the goal here is to avert the Civil War, but to get a different KIND of Civil War (and, lets be honest - a much more 'traditional' one based on how Civil Wars have often worked through history). And a pro-slavery coup would definitely get a very different American Civil War from the one we had in OTL - though I could almost see it leading to Northern succession.
Could the coup be a tipping point too great for the US to ignore it's necessity of a new constitution? I always thought the possibility of a post-civil war constitution is a cool POD, as the convention would absolutely happen on northern terms and the reconstructed southern states would just be forced to accept.
No chance.
Lack of popular support, even in the South. Many of the secondary leaders, the Generals like Lee and Johnston, former government officials like Davis and Breckenridge will defend Slavery and believe in the South's legal right to secede and the illegality of the Lincoln Administration's attempts to compel them to stay.
That is both the legal and moral argument the Confederate cause is based on.
A coup, has none of those things, and will be opposed by all but the most fanatical slave holders. Lee was willing to hang John Brown. He'd hang these people too.
It is possibly the only thing I can think of which might get the South to reconsider its commitment to slavery, though it would probably take awhile.
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I'd argue that this is fairly unlikely. As heated as the politics around slavery were, it's culmination in secession was still a decidedly civil affair. Both sides still strongly adhered to their republican principles and revered the constitution, even in the face of an existential threat. Supporting a coup likely would've been a politically suicidal notion amongst all but the most virulent fire eaters.
Correct. That reminds me some of the older ones including Davis that saw the beginnings of the progressive movement to abolish booze and reorder government we kind of aghast and wrote against it in many private letters. They were by in large not fans of government doing more then the Jeffersonian ideal of protection of so called ‘natural rights’.
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Yeah, but you could say the same about the modern US and many other places. I can certainly imagine a set of circumstances, where there's widespread fraud, two or more competing slates of electors from different states and a charismatic leader to galvanize the action, where the process breaks down. During the end of Reconstruction, these sorts of events happened with alarming frequency. That's obviously in the future from 1860, but George McClellan, IIRC, mused in writing about the need for a military dictator during the war. I can imagine one side or another doing something like this, especially if someone deeply unsatisfactory to many in the Army assumed office. Maybe a real radical gets the VP nod from Lincoln, who himself is assassinated prior to inauguration or shortly thereafter.
Maybe this is the result of a Civil War delayed--if someone like Douglas managed to win in 1860, and survives his term, I could see his presidency easily being a disaster where he would proceed to alienate everyone, as he did OTL. This leads to a more restive, violent, Bleeding Kansas type atmosphere all over the country. Then, if someone more radical than Lincoln wins in 64, who knows ? Maybe, after many years of disorder and the promise of more to come, a group of Southern officers takes matters into their own hands...
I could go on, but I don't think I have to. I don't know that you could get this result with a late PoD, but if you go back far enough, or tweak things enough, you can get there.
I think it's much more likely we see something akin to the 1876 compromise before the military becomes involved or a violent coup is staged. The mere fact that the military never intervened during even the lowest moments of the war, either in the Union and Confederacy, is a testament to how strong republican principles were on both sides. To even use the example you provided, McClellan decided to seek power through legitimate means despite his opinions, running for president as any other citizen would and when he lost he simply moved on without a fuss.
That kind of implies Lee had any kind of scruples whatsoever when it came to protecting slavery. He did not.
That's not true whatsoever. The only problem that Davis and his ilk had was when the federal government got involved with something that might oppose slavery. His government was far more centralized and powerful than that of the supposedly more centralized Union they were trying to leave. States rights was, and always had been, a fraud which the slavers only grasped onto as a means of protecting slavery. This was true going all the way back to Thomas Jefferson.
Agreed 100%. I think you'd first have to exhaust a lot of political discourse to get there, but perhaps with enough disruption you get something extralegal taking place at a national level.
I detest the lost cause narrative and the idea that slavery wasn't the primary cause of secession, but you're doing yourself a disservice by divorcing it from the notion of states' rights and what that meant in the South. The initial push for Southern secession didn't emerge over slavery, it came about during the debate on tariffs in the 1820s and 1830s. That was the period when industrialization began and the Northern and Southern economies began to diverge. As the North gained more financial and demographic power, it's influence on national policy grew and the South felt increasingly underrepresented. At the time this primarily revolved around the tariff. Initially just a means of paying off national debt, by the 1820s it was being used as a tool to protect America's emerging industry from foreign competition. That was good for the North, but hurt the agricultural economy of the South which had to purchase these goods at higher prices due to the lack of foreign imports. Those concerns eventually led to strong states' rights movement in much of the South, with John C. Calhoun as its figurehead. When their concerns weren't addressed for several years at the federal level, they eventually moved on to a more extreme version of the doctrine called nullification, which argued that states weren't beholden to federal law if the state deemed it unconstitutional. Congress eventually lowered the tariff, diffusing the crisis, but only after Andrew Jackson, something of a states' rights man himself and hardly a fan of the tariff, threatened to use force against South Carolina to enforce federal laws. At the peak of this confrontation, Calhoun argued that South Carolina's secession was imminent and that states had a legal right to do so. While that didn't come to be in his lifetime, his political thoughts permeated throughout the South. Jackson correctly surmised that the threat of secession hadn't been extinguished and that these extreme states' rights advocates would move on to another cause in due time, which he predicted would be slavery.
Funny you should mention Calhoun in relation to the tariff because he himself said: “I consider the tariff act as the occasion, rather than the real cause of the present unhappy state of things. The truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick institution of the Southern States and the consequent direction which that and her soil have given to her industry, has placed them in regard to taxation and appropriations in opposite relation to the majority of the Union.”
Ie the tariff issue was ALSO about slavery.
States rights were only invoked in the defense of slavery. And if slavery and states rights conflicted the former won out. Every. Single. Time.
Prior to the outbreak of the Civil War the US Army was small and for the most part widely scattered in many small commands. In these conditions a military putsch is impossible to pull off.
Your own quote actually rather supports my point. You've added your own emphasis, which frames it one way, but the latter portion of the quote is what's revealing. Calhoun is complaining about Southern industry, which yes is agriculture sustained by slavery, creating an economy not compatible with Northern policies. That quote is actually truncated as well. It goes on to say the following:
...against the danger of which, if there be no protective power in the reserved rights of the states, they must in the end be forced to rebel, or submit to have... their domestick institutions exhausted by Colonization and other schemes, and themselves & children reduced to wretchedness. Thus situatied, the denial of the right of the state to interfere constitutionally in the last resort, more alarms the thinking than all other causes.
Calhoun here certainly makes a reference to slavery, but as a whole he's complaining about what he's sees as a constitutional infringement of the states' right to pursue their own interests above that of the federal government, regardless of the reason. He even makes a point of the constitutionality of it being the crux of the matter at the end of the letter. His language regarding the unconstitutionality of federal encroachment on the states should sound familiar. It's the same political philosophy that was used to debate the legality of slavery in the 1850s and 1860s, something most of us are much more versed in than 1830s tariff debates. Calhoun himself, in stating that tariffs are just a vehicle for pushing his extremist views on the constitution and secession, is very much admitting that he was looking for a wedge issue between the North and South. When tariffs were no longer an option, they moved on to slavery, much as Jackson predicted. So you're not wrong that Slavery was the issue that provoked the Civil War, but you're incorrect in assuming it was a topic removed from the discussion on states' rights. In fact that's how it was primarily discussed right up until the 13th Amendment was ratified.
That’s not my point at all. My point is that the only interest in “state’s rights” the south ever had was in regards to slavery, protecting slavery, and expanding slavery. Any issue which threatened slavery if the federal government took it was shouted down by “state’s rights” claims. While any state issue that threatened slavery was trampled by the national government in support of slavery. Slavery alone was the issue. And if states rights was the best way to serve it the south jumped on it. BUT if trampling state’s rights was the best way to serve it then the South ALSO did that.
And that one time in Kentucky arguing that the Alien and Sedition acts violated the first amendment and thus the federal government couldnt enforce it. Admittedly those resolves were written by Virginians who opposed Burrs attempt to create a breakaway of Western states. The second point is right. And also New Jersey trying to pick fights with New York.