Iirc, Missouri was the only slave state with much in the way of an antislavery movement, so I'd bet on it to be first. But there could be a long wait until the second.
A pre-civil war PoD, obviously.
1. Delaware
2. Maryland
3. Virginia
4. Kentucky
5. Tennessee
6. Missouri
8. Texas
9. North Carolina
10. Florida
The others are rather unlikely.
This is hardly 100% accurate. Some states are tied. What do y'all think?
Delaware to my mind throws a good deal of doubt on the notion that economic forces would have eliminated slavery. By 1860 slavery had long since been economically insignificant in the state. Over 90 percent of the African Americans living in the state were free. (In 1860, according to the census, there were exactly four slaves in the city of Wilmington!) Yet southern Delaware stubbornly resisted emancipation, and had just enough power to block it in the state as a whole. Politics, not economics, was decisive--Delaware Democrats feared that emancipation would lead to black voting, which would deliver the state to the Republicans. Hence Delaware rejected compensated emancipation, despite its financial advantages for the state; hence it refused to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment until...1901! (And even then it only did so because the Republicans had taken control of the state.) There is a good discussion of this in Patience Essah, *A House Divided: Slavery and Emancipation in Delaware, 1638-1865* (University Press of Virginia 1996). http://books.google.com/books?id=n3ZLDt5yes8C&pg=PA3
If it was that difficult to abolish slavery in Delaware, it is really hard to see states further south doing it voluntarily for a long time to come.
Delaware to my mind throws a good deal of doubt on the notion that economic forces would have eliminated slavery. By 1860 slavery had long since been economically insignificant in the state. Over 90 percent of the African Americans living in the state were free. (In 1860, according to the census, there were exactly four slaves in the city of Wilmington!) Yet southern Delaware stubbornly resisted emancipation, and had just enough power to block it in the state as a whole. Politics, not economics, was decisive--Delaware Democrats feared that emancipation would lead to black voting, which would deliver the state to the Republicans. Hence Delaware rejected compensated emancipation, despite its financial advantages for the state; hence it refused to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment until...1901! (And even then it only did so because the Republicans had taken control of the state.) There is a good discussion of this in Patience Essah, *A House Divided: Slavery and Emancipation in Delaware, 1638-1865* (University Press of Virginia 1996). http://books.google.com/books?id=n3ZLDt5yes8C&pg=PA3
If it was that difficult to abolish slavery in Delaware, it is really hard to see states further south doing it voluntarily for a long time to come.
I think it's best to understand that economic forces are one of several forces that play into the mix. I understand the number of free blacks on Delaware caused a lot of racial antipathy among the white population.
I think Virginia was most likely to end it (IIRC, they voted on gradual manumission in the 1830s, and it was pretty close). However, that doesn't mean the slaves would be free. They would probably just get sold to the Deep South, since I can't imagine Virginia slaveowners letting all that money get up, walk out the door, and start voting Republican.
1861 wasn't 1831, the South became worse on the issue, in particular Virginia. If it were that close to emancipation it would have been the 5th Union Slave State.
Right, but if Virginia had enacted gradual manumission in 1831, the political situation in 1861 would be radically different.
True enough, if that happened the CSA wouldn't have lasted long.
Also, IIRC Arkansas wasn't exactly a do-or-die state about its survival (they also didn't join the CSA until post-Ft. Sumter just like TN or VA). I'd say they'd abolish it before Florida would, or at least roughly as likely to at worst.
Kentucky had an abolitionist movement, remember Cassius Marcellus Clay? No, not the boxer, the abolitionist he was named after.
Muhammad Ali was named after an abolitionist? That makes his rejection of his "slave name" kind of ironic.