Timeline 1828: A Southern-Less USA

[PGSBHurricane]

Chapter One: All or Nothing

The issue of slavery representation dated back to an amendment proposed to the Articles of Confederation on April 18, 1783, which suggested that taxes would be supplied proportionately to the number of people living there of all ages and sexes, excluding the Indians. The Southern states (Georgia, the Carolinas, Maryland, and Virginia) immediately objected to because the formula would include slaves as property for tax calculations. Benjamin Harrison proposed slaves to count as half a person for a compromise, and several New Englanders proposed three-fourths, but neither was approved. James Madison proposed the three-fifths ratio and was approved by Congress. However, because New York and New Hampshire rejected it, it fell short of the unanimous approval required for amending the Articles of Confederation.

Early during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, it was unanimously accepted that representation in the House of Representatives would be proportionate to state populations. This caused many problems as slaves were not eligible to vote. Delegates from the north opposed to slavery wanted only free inhabitants of each state to count (even if it meant abolishing slavery and giving newly freed slaves the right to vote), while southern slaveholding delegates wanted them included for increased representation in Congress and the Electoral College. The three-fifths ratio was proposed on June 11, 1787, and initially agreed to by nine states and two opposed. This was debated at length between July 9 and 13, and was then shot down by the Convention as a whole. A few southern delegates then proposed full representation for their slave population before the three-fifths ratio was brought back to the table, with the vote split evenly five states to five.

After several weeks of arguing, there remained a firm, contentious split down the middle until one hot day when the delegates from the southern states walked out of the Convention. Those from Georgia and the Carolinas, encouraged by Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, were successful while the Virginia and Maryland delegates, including Thomas Jefferson, were blocked by George Washington and James Madison as they tried to walk out of the Convention Hall. It was then agreed that slaves would not be counted for representation in government. In exchange, taxes on slaves would be two-fifths of that of other property, in order to keep the delegates from Virginia and Maryland from trying to walk from the Convention again. This would not be the end of those two states' general discontent, though, especially Virginia.

Once that was taken care of, Article IX of the Constitution was written. Its first clause prevented Congress from restricting the importation slaves into the United States before 1808 and the abolition of slavery before 1828. With Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina gone, the ratification of the Constitution required seven of the ten remaining states to do so. On December 7, 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the Constitution of the United States. Pennsylvania and New Jersey followed by the end of the calendar year. In early 1788, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maryland followed suit. When ratification passed in New Hampshire on June 21, the Constitution became the United States' official document for governance. Virginia and New York, two of the nation's most populous states, ended up ratifying it later that summer, albeit in the face of considerable opposition. On May 29, 1789, the only remaining holdout state, Rhode Island, was the last state to ratify the Constitution. The United States of America was now prepared for business, with Philadelphia chosen to be its permanent capital.

Note: I will be updating my CSA Victory timeline soon, it's just that I have found it harder to write than other chapters since I'm not particularly a war historian. Sorry for the wait.

 

[Admiral Spaun]

Interesting. Although I do wonder why Rhode Island ratified the Constitution in 1789 instead of 1792 as in OTL. Besides the slave clauses it appears the Constitution is the same as OTL.

 

[Nivek]

Interesting. Although I do wonder why Rhode Island ratified the Constitution in 1789 instead of 1792 as in OTL. Besides the slave clauses it appears the Constitution is the same as OTL.

Maybe that was the deal breaker for them?
@PGSBHurricane Nice POD and concept, nice start buddy

 

[PGSBHurricane]

Interesting. Although I do wonder why Rhode Island ratified the Constitution in 1789 instead of 1792 as in OTL. Besides the slave clauses it appears the Constitution is the same as OTL.

A couple of things. If nine of the ten remaining states ratified the constitution in 1787 or 1788 and there’s only one outlier, it would be pretty awkward to say the least. In our timeline, North Carolina and Rhode Island were holdouts so it made Rhode Island ratifying it in 1790 instead of 1789 look less awkward. It helps that slaves are not counted at all for representation instead of three-fifths of a person and it looks like by 1828 slavery is going to be phased out. So that’s why Rhode Island went in 1789 instead of 1790.

As for the map:
Red = USA states
Green = Northwest Territory
Blue = Southern American Confederation

 

[Thomas1195]

I look forward to see a more progressive USA in this timeline.

 

[Virginia Liberal]

watched

 

[Odinson]

Interesting concept. Watched.

 

[sampleswift]

Did something like that, which I'm trying to continue. This sounds really interesting.

 

[PGSBHurricane]

Chapter Two: Fundamental Order

What exactly happened to the former colonies of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina? The truth is that it was kind of complicated. They had declared independence alongside the rest of British North America in 1776 and participated in the War for Independence. This meant that despite greater loyalty to the British crown than what became the United States, they were not going to open themselves back up to British rule. And they walked out of the Constitutional Convention which means they would not become part of the Union. The only solution left was to figure out how they were going to rule themselves. It was pretty obvious right off the bat that if they tried going their own ways, they would fail. This was especially true for Georgia and North Carolina as it was not nearly as prosperous as South Carolina thanks to the port city of Charleston and the production of rice and indigo as cash crops. So they needed to align with each other for the best possible outcome for all three entities.

The first thing for there to do was set up a government of sorts. But there was a massive struggle over figuring out how to do it. On January 2, 1788, George Matthews, Samuel Johnston, and Thomas Pinckney, the respective governors of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, called for an emergency convention to create a government for this trio of states. The convention first met on May 12, 1788 in Charleston, South Carolina, the largest city in this confederation. The first major issue, like in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States, was how to set up the federal government. This was rather ironic since it was a confederation, but it was decided that the states needed some sort of higher-order to answer to.

It was decided that on a state level, representation at the state legislature would be based on the populace of each town or city. At the union level, though, representation would be equal (three legislators per state) in the upper house with proportionate representation in the lower house, just as was the case with its northern neighbor. Lower house elections would be every two years by the people while upper house would be every four years at the hands of the legislatures. The bicameral body could not approve of any interstate commercial transactions or declare war without approval from the state legislatures. The president would be elected every six years by an electoral college where every state would have three electors for each Senator plus an additional one for every Congressional District. Slaves would each be counted as a full person for government representation but they had no legal rights of their own.

Other than that, their Constitution was similar to that of the United States, with the sole exception of addressing the Atlantic slave trade. Not only was the national government prohibited it from banning it for at least 20 years, it could not do so ever. Due to the entrenched racial and economic systems in the Southern states, slavery would be around indefinitely as far as anyone knew. In any case, the convention came to a close on August 8 after everything was recorded on parchment. Before then, it was agreed upon that once the South Carolina capital was moved to Columbia in 1790, the capital of the newly named Southern American Confederation was to be placed in Charleston. It was an obvious choice after all, it being its largest and most cosmopolitan city and a very important commercial port in its own right. Also in 1790, North Carolina agreed to give up its half west of the Appalachian Mountains. The western part of that state became a territory which later formed its own state called Tennessee, and was the fourth to be admitted to the Confederation right after Georgia and the Carolinas.

As slavery a cornerstone of the SAC, so was racism. With its slave population comprising roughly one-third of the population in the region, locally varying between twenty and fifty percent, there was always a danger of slave uprisings which usually resulted in several blacks alike dead and subsequent harsher conditions for the slaves remaining alive. And that was before the nearing invention of the cotton gin made slavery become even more entrenched afterwards. With everything now in place, was the SAC prepared to challenge the USA as a force on the North American continent? Could a storm brewing abroad do the trick?

 

[Whiteshore]

How would SAC-USA relations develop? Would there be a rivalry or a sense of "we might not be roommates, but we can still be the best of neighbors"?

 

[PGSBHurricane]

How would SAC-USA relations develop? Would there be a rivalry or a sense of "we might not be roommates, but we can still be the best of neighbors"?

It's kind of a one-sided rivalry where the SAC tries to screw the USA over whenever possible but the USA doesn't think of anything about the SAC until it has to (or at least tries not to think of them).

 

[Admiral Spaun]

I could see some SAC jingoism over Florida later on. Especially if the border dispute goes SOUTH. ( puns are fantastic)

 

[traveller76]

I figure the Sac would need to maintain large militias and police forces for slave revolts.

 

[Odinson]

Because most of the south is a different country, would the northern dominated United States recognize Haiti sooner than OTL?

 

[PGSBHurricane]

Because most of the south is a different country, would the northern dominated United States recognize Haiti sooner than OTL?

I wouldn’t say they recognize Haiti’s independence right off the bat but they do it decades earlier than in OTL. That much I will say.

 

[Admiral Spaun]

Louisiana will be interesting going forward. If Nappy doesn't come to power it'll still be technically Spanish but Americans will still settle there because "who's going to stop me". Spanish control would be limited to the Mississippi Delta and coast while Americans would control the interior. I could see a partition or war depending on what direction each side goes.

 

[PGSBHurricane]

Chapter Three: The Wave That Shocked France

In the late 18th century, following France’s alliance with the Thirteen colonies in the American Revolution and extravagant spending by French King Louis XVI had left France on the verge of bankruptcy. This affected everyone from the royal treasury to the peasants and urban poor, and inflicted poor harvests, droughts, cattle disease, and skyrocketing bread prices. Hight taxes failed to provide any relief. The result was several thousand people taking to the streets to loot, riot, and strike. In response to this, Louis XVI’s Controller-General, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, proposed a reform package in the fall of 1786 that incorporated a universal land tax which would no longer exempt the upper class. To garner support and keep down a brewing aristocratic revolt, the king summoned the Estates-General (or Third Estate) in May 1789 for the first time since 1614. Yet, despite the non-aristocratic Third Estate representing 98 percent of the French population, they could still be outvoted by the other two estates thanks to a noble veto. Thus, the Third Estate began mobilizing support for equal representation in government and for abolishing the veto. The nobles on the other hand were adamantly opposed to giving up their privileges from the current system.

As the Estates-General convened at Versailles on May 5, 1789, the public debate over its voting process erupted into intense hostility between the three orders, overshadowing what the meeting was supposed to be about in the first place plus the authority of the man who had originally convened it. By June 17, talks between the estates had stalled and the Third Estate continued meeting alone. There, they formally adopted the title of National Assembly. On June 20, the assembly met at a nearby indoor tennis court and took the Tennis Court Oath, pledging not to disassemble until the achievement of constitutional reform in France. By the end of the month, most clerical deputies and 47 liberal nobles joined them, with Louis XVI grudgingly absorbing all three orders into a new national assembly on June 27.

As the National Assembly worked on a constitution and continued meeting at Versailles, fear and violence consumed the capital of Paris on June 12, with popular insurgency culminating on July 14 when rioters stormed the Bastille fortress to try and secure gunpowder and weapons. This is widely considered by many to be the start of the French Revolution. Soon, this wave of revolutionary fervor spread quickly into the countryside as peasants looted and burned the homes of tax collectors and landlords in response to years of exploitation. This agrarian resurrection expedited the growing exodus of nobles from France and inspired the National Assembly to abolish feudalism on August 4, 1789 after centuries.
The Assembly soon adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, upholding its commitment to creating a system based on democratic principles. It had previously spent several months pondering about France’s political future, such as who would elect delegates and whether the clergy would owe allegiance to the Catholic Church or the French government. Most important, in the aftermath of the king attempting to flee France in June 1791, how much power could he retain? Finally adopted on September 3, 1791, France’s first written constitution firmly established a constitutional monarchy. This did not satiate radicals like Maximillien de Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins and Georges Danton, who more strongly supported a republican government and demanded a trial for King Louis XVI. Internationally, this produced a variety of reactions almost no one could ignore.

 

[52cardsshortofadeck]

I could see some SAC jingoism over Florida later on. Especially if the border dispute goes SOUTH. ( puns are fantastic)

If the SAC did try to acquire Florida, would the US try to acquire it instead (unlikely given the most direct route is through the SAC), or would they try to support resistance (US-backed *Seminole wars, perhaps)?

 

[PGSBHurricane]

If the SAC did try to acquire Florida, would the US try to acquire it instead (unlikely given the most direct route is through the SAC), or would they try to support resistance (US-backed *Seminole wars, perhaps)?

It's going to be difficult for the USA to acquire Florida as the SoCon is right there so maybe supporting a resistance towards the SoCon is more likely. But it's going to be more difficult with time because

Spoiler

at least one state will eventually secede from the USA and make it harder for it to access Florida.

 

[Constantine Paleologos]

Virginia?