The Boll Weevil infestation in an Independent CSA.

[Snake Featherston]

Because the South holds it? Because by the end of October 1862 a pro-Confederate government is sitting in Frankfort.

Because the CSA taking control of Kentucky pretty much validates the Russelville Convention's government?

Because Kentuckians will go with their own state (that's a good question, their state is taken by the CSA, they still choose home, no matter what country).

There's also a pro-Union government, and the claim of state's rights is torpedoed between the eyes if that means Confederate military occupation is all it takes. In that context the CSA would also put troops in Maryland and claim "Well, ya'll done gave us Kaintuck, now give us this, too. Or we shell Washington City to Rubble."

 

[Spengler]

How do we square this with some very wealthy and powerful free men of color in Louisiana?

Of course, what you're missing is the extreme reaction to the Nat Turner Rebellion across the whole US, not just the south.

Yeah and their reaction to such free blacks was to treat them so poorly that they joined up with the Union when it took over most of Louisiana.

BTW I think people saying african slaves were treated well is really no different than somebody saying the boers in the British concentration camps were treated well.

 

[Reggie Bartlett]

There's also a pro-Union government, and the claim of state's rights is torpedoed between the eyes if that means Confederate military occupation is all it takes. In that context the CSA would also put troops in Maryland and claim "Well, ya'll done gave us Kaintuck, now give us this, too. Or we shell Washington City to Rubble."

Yeah, but looking at the POD which one is sitting in Frankfort, which one was validated by first a convention in 1861, and then put into the State House by the tides of war that also put a new national border on the Ohio River? History books are going to show in TTL that Kentucky was put under "it's rightful flag".

When it comes to Maryland, I don't think the CS could take it, Lee's chance in 1862 was his only, and in TTL all he does is avoid Antietam, and bloodynoses the AotP somwhere else in the state, there was too much of a Union military presence there to outright conquer it, Kentucky is a different story.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Yeah, but looking at the POD which one is sitting in Frankfort, which one was validated by first a convention in 1861, and then put into the State House by the tides of war that also put a new national border on the Ohio River? History books are going to show in TTL that Kentucky was put under "it's rightful flag".

When it comes to Maryland, I don't think the CS could take it, Lee's chance in 1862 was his only, and in TTL all he does is avoid Antietam, and bloodynoses the AotP somwhere else in the state, there was too much of a Union military presence there to outright conquer it, Kentucky is a different story.

No, actually they're going to show that Polk's invasion of Kentucky was a sign the CSA was a faithless, treacherous bunch of dicks that relied on military brute force and had no ability to respect or adhere to agreements. And if simply having troops in Kentucky is all it takes the CSA will put soldiers in Maryland and Missouri and use Kentucky as a precedent to say "Well, you coughed up the one so now let's have the others."

 

[Chris S]

So it abolishes slavery but can't enforce that abolition, and this is a meaningful abolition? Twist that logic a little more there, mate, it might make a perfect infinity-loop. An unenforceable abolition is no abolition at all.

I don't see what this is all about. You quoted the section of the CS constitution yourself which guaranteed the respect for slavery in sojourn. Why the assumption that an individual state, if so inclined, couldn't enforce abolition within its own limits? If in theory "Missibama" declared all slaves held on its soil as being free unless in transit, then in theory the government is actually behind the declaration. If so and some planter comes up from "Texiana" and actually settles in Missibama then all of his slaves become free. And unless this planter plans on squatting in some remote backwater and not selling any of his crop at some point his plantation will have to interact with officialdom or at least come to the attention of it. And it would be pretty hard to argue that he was merely in sojourn with his slaves if they are living in log cabins and out picking cotton in fields.

Like you I doubt any CS state is going to carry out abolition as early as the 1880s or 1890s. But there is little point arguing with Reggie over this point since he's right - it's in the CS constitution. If the CSA didn't envision the possibility then why did they write the constitution in that way to allow for it?


On a slightly different note I would think that for state sponsored abolition to occur in any southern state (as opposed to an unorganized drop in slave prices followed by some slaves perhaps purchasing their own freedom and others simply being abandoned if no buyers can be found and the owner can't afford the upkeep anymore) we would need to have a new party supported by working class whites assume power in the state in question. It could not be the southern Democrats as they would be supported by the planter class. This would be a party that supported both abolition and repatriation (or at the very least expulsion so that planters who didn't want slaves to be freed automatically would have to sell them to planters in other states or move to other states). I can't see such a party gaining enough support to form a state government though until after the full effect of the Boll Weevil infestation has manifested itself on the Southern economy.

 

[Snake Featherston]

I don't see what this is all about. You quoted the section of the CS constitution yourself which guaranteed the respect for slavery in sojourn. Why the assumption that an individual state, if so inclined, couldn't enforce abolition within its own limits? If in theory "Missibama" declared all slaves held on its soil as being free unless in transit, then in theory the government is actually behind the declaration. If so and some planter comes up from "Texiana" and actually settles in Missibama then all of his slaves become free. And unless this planter plans on squatting in some remote backwater and not selling any of his crop at some point his plantation will have to interact with officialdom or at least come to the attention of it. And it would be pretty hard to argue that he was merely in sojourn with his slaves if they are living in log cabins and out picking cotton in fields.

Like you I doubt any CS state is going to carry out abolition as early as the 1880s or 1890s. But there is little point arguing with Reggie over this point since he's right - it's in the CS constitution. If the CSA didn't envision the possibility then why did they write the constitution in that way to allow for it?


On a slightly different note I would think that for state sponsored abolition to occur in any southern state (as opposed to an unorganized drop in slave prices followed by some slaves perhaps purchasing their own freedom and others simply being abandoned if no buyers can be found and the owner can't afford the upkeep anymore) we would need to have a new party supported by working class whites assume power in the state in question. It could not be the southern Democrats as they would be supported by the planter class. This would be a party that supported both abolition and repatriation (or at the very least expulsion so that planters who didn't want slaves to be freed automatically would have to sell them to planters in other states or move to other states). I can't see such a party gaining enough support to form a state government though until after the full effect of the Boll Weevil infestation has manifested itself on the Southern economy.

It can't enforce it because the very nature of the right of Sojourn makes it a meaningless gesture. It won't do it because an independent CSA will have an ever-growing slave population and no idea of how to pay for abolition, much less what to do with that huge slave population. The CSA deliberately rigged itself to make abolition impossible short of a full-fledged constitutional convention, and things like barring admission of free states into the Confederacy make it clear that it was never going to abolish slavery short of either slave revolts or invasion making it do so.

 

[Fiver]

Why the assumption that an individual state, if so inclined, couldn't enforce abolition within its own limits? If in theory "Missibama" declared all slaves held on its soil as being free unless in transit, then in theory the government is actually behind the declaration. If so and some planter comes up from "Texiana" and actually settles in Missibama then all of his slaves become free.

Dred Scott lived in free territories from 1833 to 1838. I doubt the CSA courts are going to be less supportive of that Texiana planter than the US Supreme Court was to Scott's owner.

 

[Chris S]

It can't enforce it because the very nature of the right of Sojourn makes it a meaningless gesture.

I think you need to explain this.

How exactly would a right of sojourn be interpreted as a right to "settle" with one's slaves?

and things like barring admission of free states into the Confederacy

That's not actually in the CSA constitution......

The relevant part about the admission of states says:

Other States may be admitted into this Confederacy by a vote of two-thirds of the whole House of Representatives and two-thirds of the Senate, the Senate voting by States; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State, nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned, as well as of the Congress.

Nothing about free states being barred there.

Maybe you are thinking of this clause:

The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several Sates [sic]; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.

But this deals with territories not states. If Indiana petitioned to join the CSA as long as it was willing to abide by the right of sojourn for slave masters and their slaves there is nothing in the CSA constitution that would have barred it from being accepted provided it could convince the requisite number of original CSA states to admit it.

 

[Chris S]

Dred Scott lived in free territories from 1833 to 1838. I doubt the CSA courts are going to be less supportive of that Texiana planter than the US Supreme Court was to Scott's owner.

The difference though is that Dred Scott brought the case as a slave and legally speaking as a non-citizen (under the racist societal rules at the time) so the Court threw it out. Had Dred Scott's case been brought to the court by a (white) abolitionist in a dispute against Dred's owner, who is to say they wouldn't have ruled in the abolitionist's favour? After all it isn't like a jury hadn't ruled in Dred's favour (a jury in slave-owning Missouri ruled in his favour in 1850).

 

[Snake Featherston]

1) The Right of Sojourn means masters with slaves arrive, stay, buy, and sell same as always. Allowed to stand without any limits it reduces slavery's abolition to a dead-letter by ensuring slave property is always and forever recognized on "free" soil. And with the experiences of Northern liberty laws the CSA will smash any attempts to create *those.*

2) In other words if free states allowed slavery to be fully recognized in a sense that rendered the concept of a free state academic, they were welcome as Confederate States. If they held that the freedom of the person mattered more than the skin color that person has, they were not.

 

[Snake Featherston]

The difference though is that Dred Scott brought the case as a slave and legally speaking as a non-citizen (under the racist societal rules at the time) so the Court threw it out. Had Dred Scott's case been brought to the court by a (white) abolitionist in a dispute against Dred's owner, who is to say they wouldn't have ruled in the abolitionist's favour? After all it isn't like a jury hadn't ruled in Dred's favour (a jury in slave-owning Missouri ruled in his favour in 1850).

Given the US Supreme Court in that decision claimed blacks were never citizens of the USA at any point in its history, there was never any chance it was ever going to rule in favor of Dred Scott at any point.

 

[Chris S]

1) The Right of Sojourn means masters with slaves arrive, stay, buy, and sell same as always. Allowed to stand without any limits it reduces slavery's abolition to a dead-letter by ensuring slave property is always and forever recognized on "free" soil. And with the experiences of Northern liberty laws the CSA will smash any attempts to create *those.*

2) In other words if free states allowed slavery to be fully recognized in a sense that rendered the concept of a free state academic, they were welcome as Confederate States. If they held that the freedom of the person mattered more than the skin color that person has, they were not.

But sojourn means:


Noun:
A temporary stay.


with synonyms like "visit".

You cannot temporarily stay and at the same time be permanently resident with a plantation and title to a piece of land.

It's essentially the difference between someone who is resident in a state but cannot vote in state elections (they haven't resided long enough) and someone who is resident in a state and can vote in state elections.

If a slave owner stayed in a state (which had put an end to slavery) long enough to vote in state elections he would probably have ended up freeing his slaves at the same time.

 

[Chris S]

Given the US Supreme Court in that decision claimed blacks were never citizens of the USA at any point in its history, there was never any chance it was ever going to rule in favor of Dred Scott at any point.

Which is exactly what I said.

If someone else (who would have been considered a citizen by the Court) had brought the suit it might have got somewhere. But we will never know. I'm pretty certain in any independent CSA a similar outcome would be had in any state if a black man (slave or not) brought it, even one which may in the very unlikely event have a government dominated by a working-class white party which might be in favour of emancipation and repatriation.

 

[Snake Featherston]

So, Chris, you are aware that this sojourn was never going to be temporary, and that any attempt to enforce that temporary part is extremely unlikely to work in a Confederacy whose fundamental underpinning, its cornerstone, is in the divinely-mandated right of 2/3 of the population to be idle from the labor of the other 1/3? And you completely and utterly missed my point: the Supreme Court's ruling was to declare blacks were not citizens and had no rights at all under the law, and an abolitionist bringing this won't matter. This will be a direct underpinning of any CSA's legal system thanks to one provision of CS law going to 1861. But then to expect people to realize the CSA really meant everything it said about keeping slavery and white supremacy in terms of how it would have worked as an actual society seems futile.

 

[Johnrankins]

Which is exactly what I said.

If someone else (who would have been considered a citizen by the Court) had brought the suit it might have got somewhere. But we will never know. I'm pretty certain in any independent CSA a similar outcome would be had in any state if a black man (slave or not) brought it, even one which may in the very unlikely event have a government dominated by a working-class white party which might be in favour of emancipation and repatriation.

The ruling also said that Blacks were "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.". Somehow that sounds to me that it wouldn't have made a difference if a White Abolishnist brought the suit. If Blacks have no rights then they have no rights for anyone to bring up.
It also said a parade of horribles "It would give to persons of the negro race, ...the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, ...to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased ...the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went." if they ruled in favor of Scott. Bottom line there was NO way Scott was going to win his freedom while a rabid a pro-slavery Chief Justice of the Supreme Court like Taney sat on the bench.

 

[Johnrankins]

But sojourn means:


Noun:
A temporary stay.


with synonyms like "visit".

You cannot temporarily stay and at the same time be permanently resident with a plantation and title to a piece of land.

It's essentially the difference between someone who is resident in a state but cannot vote in state elections (they haven't resided long enough) and someone who is resident in a state and can vote in state elections.

If a slave owner stayed in a state (which had put an end to slavery) long enough to vote in state elections he would probably have ended up freeing his slaves at the same time.

Except the Dred Scott Decision (Which would certainly be cited) said you could be in a Free State for 5 YEARS and it didn't matter.

 

[Chris S]

So, Chris, you are aware that this sojourn was never going to be temporary, and that any attempt to enforce that temporary part is extremely unlikely to work in a Confederacy whose fundamental underpinning, its cornerstone, is in the divinely-mandated right of 2/3 of the population to be idle from the labor of the other 1/3?

A sojourn that was never going to be temporary is not a sojourn. Temporary residency is only temporary until you qualify for permanent residency and there were definitely laws relating to permanent residency in the states at the time otherwise anybody could simply hop across a state border and vote in State House and State Senate elections in another State just days before the elections are due.

And you completely and utterly missed my point: the Supreme Court's ruling was to declare blacks were not citizens and had no rights at all under the law, and an abolitionist bringing this won't matter.

If I missed your point it is because that isn't what you wrote. Here is what you actually wrote:

Given the US Supreme Court in that decision claimed blacks were never citizens of the USA at any point in its history, there was never any chance it was ever going to rule in favor of Dred Scott at any point.

Where in what you wrote did you say that an abolitionist bringing the case wouldn't have mattered?

And the example I gave (a court in slaveholding Missouri ruled in favour of Scott in 1850) doesn't support the idea that the Supreme Court would never have ruled in favour of Scott having been free if an abolitionist brought the suit. I don't see how it is possible to infer such a possibility from a court throwing out a case (instead of actually ruling on the merits of the case) in OTL and given previous court cases (such as the Amistad case in 1841) where the Supreme Court didn't actually act in the way you intimate that it would.....

This will be a direct underpinning of any CSA's legal system thanks to one provision of CS law going to 1861. But then to expect people to realize the CSA really meant everything it said about keeping slavery and white supremacy in terms of how it would have worked as an actual society seems futile.

Well if you want to think that simply because we disagree on interpretations, then fine, but I've made every effort to back up my interpretations with what was actually written in the CSA constitution. Reality is pretty complex and I have no doubt that the situation at the time was just as complex as any political situation today and rather than it simply being a case where "any case involving a black man will have a predetermined outcome regardless of what is written in the laws of the time" it was more of a case where most cases involving black men would have a predetermined outcome (even in Slavery by Another Name there is an instance of a jury unexpectedly acquitting a black man in the early 1900s after the judge told the jury to find him guilty), but not always and in cases where the the black man is not actually bringing the suit (e.g. the 1841 case) it could well go either way.

 

[Chris S]

Except the Dred Scott Decision (Which would certainly be cited) said you could be in a Free State for 5 YEARS and it didn't matter.

Are you referring to the Dred Scott decision by the US Supreme Court (Dredd Scott v. Sandiford) of 1857 or the Missouri Supreme Court ruling of 1852? Because as far as I know the Dred Scott decision in the US Supreme Court never said "you could be in a Free State for 5 YEARS and it didn't matter" but basically threw the case out because it claimed a lack of jurisdiction as it ruled that African-Americans were not citizens and only citizens could bring cases to the US Supreme Court.

 

[Snake Featherston]

1) Yes, by the strict standard of the word. A standard the CS government had made clear its respect for by its flagrant use of government coercive force to batter down Northern liberty laws in the 1850s. In an all-slave-state union of states this is not going to be any *less* than in cases like Anthony Burns and if anything far more so.

2) You missed my point because that is precisely what I wrote. The USSC denied blacks were citizens, period. It was interested in "settling" the sectional crisis. Period.

3) "there was never a chance."

4) And I've noted what the social values of the time and the CS decision that all US laws where applicable to the Confederacy were to be intact. Dred Scott v. Sanford will be one of them, without question, no matter any hypocrisy.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Are you referring to the Dred Scott decision by the US Supreme Court (Dredd Scott v. Sandiford) of 1857 or the Missouri Supreme Court ruling of 1852? Because as far as I know the Dred Scott decision in the US Supreme Court never said "you could be in a Free State for 5 YEARS and it didn't matter" but basically threw the case out because it claimed a lack of jurisdiction as it ruled that African-Americans were not citizens and only citizens could bring cases to the US Supreme Court.

It did not throw the case out, but rather by claiming blacks were not citizens attempt to make abolitionism and black civil rights illegal throughout the United States. There was a case pending around 1860 that might well have seen Stephen, Roger, Franklin, and James decide to abolish free states altogether. And again, if the USSC *before the war* claimed blacks were never citizens, a Confederacy dedicated to holding blacks as slaves *will* let them be citizens ? Why?