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hey, all. HUGE chain of thoughts in the past hour or so concerning my ASB ATL: if the cotton gin is invented later, then slavery doesn't expand as much and Maryland and Delaware might go abolitionist; if that happens, then there's all sorts of effects on the potential of the Civil War ITTL; what if the Missouri Compromise line is set further north because the Southern aristocracy feels threatened by less-expanded slavery; but wait, there's much more territory in the North ITTL because of previous changes to the TL!

basically, for those of you who don't know already, something that's been part of my ASB ATL since the very beginning has been that nearly all of Canada was annexed by the US following the War of 1812 ITTL. i had never thought to take into account what the effects of there being much more potential Northern territory could be on the issue of slavery and the potential for the outbreak of the Civil War ITTL, so i'd like to remedy that ;) the South would still be the largest population center ITTL and be in power for the earlier part of US history here (and no parts of Canada are even ratified as states ITTL until after the ACW in the current version of the TL).

what i'm asking, really, is what everyone thinks would happen if all of OTL Canada except for Upper Canada and the Labrador Peninsula were annexed by the US (don't worry about the specifics of that, that's an issue for a different time and thread) and, therefore, what would be the effects on slavery in the US? the other major events of US history from this point still occur (the *Mexican-American War, the Gadsden Purchase, etc.). does anyone think that Southern politicians would insist on the northern limits for slavery being pushed further up (without necessarily violating the sovereignty of free states in the process, e.g., if that line would cross through a free state then it wouldn't change anything

and another thing i've wondered is, potentially, could abolition be reversed in a former slave state? it's my observation that the slave states did pretty much everything they could to subvert the rights of free states, and, really, turning a free state back into a slave state is just the next step up from that

i'd really appreciate some input on this
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