For some reason, lets say the south abolishes slavery in like 1840 or around that time, does this have any profound effects on American history?
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There would be about a million more able bodied Americans in 1870 for faster settlement of the west and a more aggressive American participation in the Imperial age. I suspect an earlier Spanish War, a second Mexican War and aggressive American territorial gains in the Pacific.
1840 is before the Mexican-American War. This time Polk's wet dream comes true.
Polks wet dream?
Everything North of Veracruz! Or at least much of Northern OTL Modern Mexico.
So essentially an American Empire. Would there be an American Civil War?
There would be about a million more able bodied Americans in 1870 for faster settlement of the west and a more aggressive American participation in the Imperial age. I suspect an earlier Spanish War, a second Mexican War and aggressive American territorial gains in the Pacific.
1840 is much too late for peaceful voluntary emancipation. 1830 is about the last plausible date, and even that probably only happens in the Upper South - South Carolina and the cotton belt aren't going to be getting rid of it of their own volition.
Did everyone just wake up one day and go, "you know for some reason all of a sudden I don't think slavery is right"?
If I recall correctly (which I admit maybe wrong because I'm talking about cultural force here), but as the first of the 19th century went on Slavery went from being seen as "necessary evil" by the slave owners as something "positive good" by them as opposition toward rised in order to further justify the insanity
You're correct. Many of the quotes about the evils of slavery the Lost Causers here offer to show how Southerners really didn't like come from the founding generation or the turn of the century; by 1860 it was viewed as a positive good across a wide range of issues, and Southern elites were actively looking for ways to diversify its economic potential. It was enough into the fabric of Southern life that its very hard to wrap it up quickly and neatly; with a few exceptions, a lot of posters here ignore the highly hierarchical nature of antebellum South.
However, if we can postulate some events that would get the non-planter whites in the South angry enough at the planters to get rid of slavery, and give them a big enough economic stake, and a ~1840 PoD, I think you have a lightening fast settlement of the West. If you're a black sharecropper, you have very little reason to stay in the South, and if your leaving in 1840 and 1880, theres a lot of great land a heck of a lot closer then there is OTL. Add to that the fact that there would be many more whites from both section able to settle the west, and things snowball fast.
So you reach an 1880 with a more settled West. It's likely a more diverse West, as blacks leaving the South can go early, set up, and have a numerical strength in some areas such that they don't need to put with as much crap as OTL. It's also a much more federal America, as you haven't had the centralizing effects of the Civil War. You don't have a 14th and 15th Amendment. The state's have much more leeway in how they run their affairs, and how they pick people to send to DC. You could end up with states out west a bit unusual to our eyes.
If the South "frees" the slaves voluntarily, you're not going to get freedom and citizenship and the ability of the freedmen to move wherever they want and start their own homesteads. It's going to be an apprenticeship type situation, like in the West Indies, and there's going to be major efforts at sending as many as possible to Liberia. In OTL, even despite a massive defeat in the Civil War, and the Reconstruction Amendments, the white South is able to reimpose de facto economic and political control over its Black population, and the exodus to the north doesn't happen for 60 years after independence. An abolition of slavery that is done even more on the slaveowners' terms is hardly likely to result in a situation that allows massive movement of African Americans into the Louisiana Purchase lands and the ATL Mexican Cession.
Or an apprenticeship situation like Colonial America. One of the reasons why slavery made economic sense in the South was that you could prevent people from fleeing west into smallpox-cleared land in a way you couldn't with indentured servants. In OTL, there's a lot less land by the time African Americans can leave. If we assume that a 1840 emancipation would still be a brutally racist craphole, a lot of people will want to get out if possible. The OTL western settlement was a lot browner than Hollywood usually portrays anyway; I think an early emancipation would only increase this.
1840 is before the Mexican-American War. This time Polk's wet dream comes true.
If the South "frees" the slaves voluntarily, you're not going to get freedom and citizenship and the ability of the freedmen to move wherever they want and start their own homesteads. It's going to be an apprenticeship type situation, like in the West Indies, and there's going to be major efforts at sending as many as possible to Liberia. In OTL, even despite a massive defeat in the Civil War, and the Reconstruction Amendments, the white South is able to reimpose de facto economic and political control over its Black population, and the exodus to the north doesn't happen for 60 years after independence. An abolition of slavery that is done even more on the slaveowners' terms is hardly likely to result in a situation that allows massive movement of African Americans into the Louisiana Purchase lands and the ATL Mexican Cession.
You have a good possibility the slaves could be sent back to Africa.