Stronger opposition to slavery in the south

In OTL the big slave owners had managed to make it impossible to argue publicly against the principal of slavery by the 1850s, perhaps the 1830s

As I understand it many white people in less prosperous areas did not think slavery helped them, they faced unfair competition.

Could there have been a continued, if likely a small minorirty group opposing slavery have existed in most of the Southern states?
 
The lack of southern abolitionists is simply a falsehood; they were active in the border states in the 1850s and there were probably a few in every state but South Carolina. It's just that regionalism trumps slavery policy in this time period; the southern abolitionists were just as offended as the slaveocrats when Yankees stuck their noses in what the South perceived as in internal matter. They did not want Yankee help and were emphatically not interested in Yankee opinions. Missouri would have been a free state by 1863 if the war had been averted, and it probably would have set off a torrent in Maryland and Delaware, possibly even followed by Tennessee and Kentucky.

Poor whites did indeed feel that slavery hurt their interests, and in the border states were successfully agitating against it. But free blacks would have been perceived as an even bigger threat to those same interests; a standard part of the discussion in the border was the assumption that the slaves would be sold down the river or the freedmen forced to move west to the territories. This was only slightly unreasonable and insane in Missouri or Kentucky - but it wouldn't fly further south, obviously enough.
 
The lack of southern abolitionists is simply a falsehood; they were active in the border states in the 1850s and there were probably a few in every state but South Carolina. It's just that regionalism trumps slavery policy in this time period; the southern abolitionists were just as offended as the slaveocrats when Yankees stuck their noses in what the South perceived as in internal matter. They did not want Yankee help and were emphatically not interested in Yankee opinions. Missouri would have been a free state by 1863 if the war had been averted, and it probably would have set off a torrent in Maryland and Delaware, possibly even followed by Tennessee and Kentucky.

Poor whites did indeed feel that slavery hurt their interests, and in the border states were successfully agitating against it. But free blacks would have been perceived as an even bigger threat to those same interests; a standard part of the discussion in the border was the assumption that the slaves would be sold down the river or the freedmen forced to move west to the territories. This was only slightly unreasonable and insane in Missouri or Kentucky - but it wouldn't fly further south, obviously enough.

Deleware would have been a free state before Missouri as there were few slaves in Deleware. "Bleeding Kansas" radicalized Missouri to a certain extent as well.
 
if you don't have a "Nat turner" rebellion then the south wouldn't have been as militarized and the vote on slavery in VA would have seemed less urgency And could lead to a moderate (for the time) resolution on slavery. and/or you could delay the cotton gin and have slavery continue to lower in value. another option is to have the boll weevil come very early to the deep south.

all of this will weaken the hold that slavery had on the south
 
The butterflying away of the cotton gin seems like the best solution. Slavery would probably still exist in the South, but not to the extreme of OTL.
 
Deleware would have been a free state before Missouri as there were few slaves in Deleware. "Bleeding Kansas" radicalized Missouri to a certain extent as well.

I disagree; Delaware and Maryland had strong abolitionist elements and loose black codes, and the plantation system was dying, but Baltimore was experimenting with industrial slavery. Slavery was changing, not dying, around the Chesapeake. And yes, there probably would have been pro-slavery violence in Missouri, but it was only through impressive gerrymandering that Missouri managed to stay a slave state during the 1850s; after the census of 1860, abolitionists were set to take control of the state legislature and the governor's mansion in 1862. I suspect it will be Missouri's example that poshes Delaware and Maryland, not the other way around.
 
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