damein fisher
Banned
What throughout the 19th century, the US is able to keep the number of Slave and free equal? Would we see no civil war at the costs of heightened tension? Or would it just delay the civil war?
What throughout the 19th century, the US is able to keep the number of Slave and free equal? Would we see no civil war at the costs of heightened tension? Or would it just delay the civil war?
The slave/free state even split was pushed beyond its logical limit. It seems difficult to imagine that it would have worked out for any longer than it did, and very possible it would have worked out less.
Oh I agree, eventually something needed to break, I'm just asking what the effects of a more equal balance would be. As in, an equal number of slave states versus free states
Indiana and Illinois if Harrison had his way with legalising slavery in the Indiana Territory.What possible additional slave states would there be?
What possible additional slave states would there be?
What possible additional slave states would there be?
Actually the timeline I was imagining would have less free states; War of 11812 loses Michigan, Wisconsin are Canadian while Minnesota never forms.
You're basically describing the Decades of Darkness USA, then. If the country's center of gravity is further south, whether by more southern conquests or territorial losses to the north, slavery might last longer. The writing is still on the wall from 1808 on, though. Brazil only held out until 1888, and they didn't have a huge industrial free soil area agitating for abolition.
What possible additional slave states would there be?
You're basically describing the Decades of Darkness USA, then. If the country's center of gravity is further south, whether by more southern conquests or territorial losses to the north, slavery might last longer. The writing is still on the wall from 1808 on, though. Brazil only held out until 1888, and they didn't have a huge industrial free soil area agitating for abolition.
What exactly gives you this impression?
I'm not saying it was 100% inevitable, but the price of slaves was causing strain on the social system by the 1850's. Not that super-expensive slaves are bad for slaveowners, but a lot of things like ditch-digging were having to be done by free white man, often Irish immigrants. The immigrants tended to mix fairly freely with blacks, which greatly upset Southern whites, and if a free white man's labor is valued much less than that of a slave, there's going to be a certain amount of class resentment. That and the issue of being an international pariah state.
I think you're conflating views and treatment of Irish, who weren't even universally viewed as White at the time, with that of Native Southerners. GDP per capita wasn't that different from Northerners and inequality was about the same, while the need to retain of the Free Whites led the Slave holding class to forge a symbiotic relationship with them; for one example, service in slave patrols in exchange for getting to use machinery owned by the Planters.