Southwest Ordinance bans Slavery

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 banned slavery in the western lands north of the Ohio.

What if the Southwest Ordinance on 1790 did the same for the southwestern lands of what is today Kentucky and Tennessee?
 
The Southern representatives wake up, splash some cold water on their face and gulp down a cup of coffee to try to handle the horrible moonshine hangover they must be having right now and either head back home to organize the documents to secede from the Union, try to convince the rest of Congress to annul the Ordinance, or rush down to the docks to purchase tickets for the first ship to Europe they can find.
 

althisfan

Banned
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 banned slavery in the western lands north of the Ohio.

What if the Southwest Ordinance on 1790 did the same for the southwestern lands of what is today Kentucky and Tennessee?
Kentucky went straight from being an integral part of Virginia to being a state. It was never part of the Territory South of the Ohio (Southwest Territory) which was only Tennessee. This would result in Kentucky being a slave state with non-slave to the north and south, and only Virginia to the east a slave state on its borders.
 
Kentucky went straight from being an integral part of Virginia to being a state. It was never part of the Territory South of the Ohio (Southwest Territory) which was only Tennessee. This would result in Kentucky being a slave state with non-slave to the north and south, and only Virginia to the east a slave state on its borders.

It wouldn't, because in that situation NC would hold on to TN until it was ready to go directly to statehood, as KY had done. GA would do the same with the areas that later formed the greater part of AL and MS. So the Ordinance would affect only a small area, which would probably be divided between the last two states when they were admitted. So in the end, no change to speak of.
 

althisfan

Banned
It wouldn't, because in that situation NC would hold on to TN until it was ready to go directly to statehood, as KY had done. GA would do the same with the areas that later formed the greater part of AL and MS. So the Ordinance would affect only a small area, which would probably be divided between the last two states when they were admitted. So in the end, no change to speak of.
I'm confused. What is the territory of the Southwest Ordinance if you are saying Tennessee is going straight to statehood? Tennessee and only Tennessee was the Southwest Territory. The Southwest Ordinance did not, ever, affect or come into play in Alabama or Mississippi, and Georgia couldn't hold on to their western territories until statehood, because Georgia needed the US Federal govt to give money and take responsibilities for the court cases over the Yazoo fraud. If you say the Yazoo doesn't happen, then Georgia just holds their territory forever, they never give it up, which ends up giving us a state of West Florida.
 
I'm confused. What is the territory of the Southwest Ordinance if you are saying Tennessee is going straight to statehood? Tennessee and only Tennessee was the Southwest Territory. The Southwest Ordinance did not, ever, affect or come into play in Alabama or Mississippi, and Georgia couldn't hold on to their western territories until statehood, because Georgia needed the US Federal govt to give money and take responsibilities for the court cases over the Yazoo fraud. If you say the Yazoo doesn't happen, then Georgia just holds their territory forever, they never give it up, which ends up giving us a state of West Florida.

Sorry, I was thinking of the area that later became the southern portions of AL and MS. If we're only talking about TN, then of course it won't ever become a Territory if that is likely to involve abolishing slavery.

As to AL and MS, on further thought it probably doesn't matter too much what the law says. If the history of the NWO is any guide the slaveholders would soon poke loopholes in it, and, once admitted, those two states are virtually certain to legalise slavery, whether they had it before or not.
 
What if the Southwest Ordinance on 1790 did the same for the southwestern lands of what is today Kentucky and Tennessee?
As others have pointed out, Kentucky was never a territory, so slavery remains legal there.

For Tennessee and points south (if others are affected by similar ordinances), then slavery will just be there illegally, as it was in those parts of the Northwest Territories settled by Southerners (say hello, southern Illinois and southern Indiana).

The settlers of the southwest will consist of two groups:
(1) slaveholding Southerners; and
(2) Southerners who want to become slaveowners.

As such, slavery will be made legal twenty minutes after the new states are admitted, if it's not already made legal in their founding constitutions.

Slavery in the American Southwest is one of those things that are overdetermined by 1783. A change in the Southwest Ordinance isn't going to remove it.
 
Kentucky went straight from being an integral part of Virginia to being a state. It was never part of the Territory South of the Ohio (Southwest Territory) which was only Tennessee. This would result in Kentucky being a slave state with non-slave to the north and south, and only Virginia to the east a slave state on its borders.
But banning slavery in Kentucky at the moment of its statehood was very seriously considered IIRC. There was little slaveholding there at that point I think, and several prominent people felt it was fine like that. If slavery is banned in what was going to be Tennessee, Kentucky would likely follow in this timeframe.
 
But banning slavery in Kentucky at the moment of its statehood was very seriously considered IIRC. There was little slaveholding there at that point I think, and several prominent people felt it was fine like that. If slavery is banned in what was going to be Tennessee, Kentucky would likely follow in this timeframe.


Yet slavery was nearly legalised in Illinois after it attained statehood. And Kentucky almost certainly has more slaves then IL. Even if admitted with a gradual emancipation law in place, how long before it gets repealed?
 
What makes this unlikely is something often forgotten today--the rather tenuous hold of the US government on the loyalties of the Southwest (recall all the real and alleged conspiracies to separate the region: Blount, Wilkinson, Burr...):

"The interests of southern slaveholders and their representatives in Congress of course prevailed in 1790. But it is doubtful that the antislavery sentiments that permitted re-passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1789 had disappeared by 1790. Instead, Congress's willingness to accept North Carolina's conditions and quickly establish a government for the Southwest reflected the weaknesses of the federal government in its western borderlands, weaknesses that greatly amplified the influence that westerners could exercise over the federal government.5 Despite constant pleas and complaints, the national government had done little to address the concerns of white settlers in the Southwest, including access to the Spanish-controlled Mississippi River and protection from Indian attacks. Banning slavery would only increase the contempt many white settlers in the Southwest felt toward the far-off federal government. Congress knew better than to ban slavery in a region where the federal government lacked power, authority, and popular support. Pressing North Carolina or settlers in the Southwest to accept Article VI seemed futile at best, pernicious at worst." https://books.google.com/books?id=KI9QZCnKSNgC&pg=PA11
 
Yet slavery was nearly legalised in Illinois after it attained statehood. ...

& There was a effort in Indiana, by Harrison and his fellow Virginian emmigres, to slip slavery in. But Harrison's crowd were soon nuetralized by mass of Yankee and other settlers who swept the frontier westwards.

I don't know about the Illinois territory but the settlers in Indiana included the small but powerful Quakers who were the seed and root of the Abolitionist movement.
 
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