What would cause Virginia to want to leave the Union before 1805?

With a POD of late-1781 on, what would it take for Virginia to give up on the idea of the Union?

Would it be one single large issue like land cessions or slavery? Is there a line in the sand for any of the states in the 1780s and 1790s. Would an explicit ban on slavery in all federal territories or even a timeline for manumission (however unlikely that is) be enough?

Or would it have to be a series of knocks (the death of Washington or Madison, land cessions, slavery, debt, a less successful Constitutional Convention, the location of the federal district, a war with Britain in the 1790s, the election of 1800, etc.) where Virginia comes out on the ‘losing’ side often enough that the state doesn’t see the point in staying in the Union?

Thanks you in advance for your thoughts.
 
A PoD that has Virginia leave the Union on a permanent basis before 1805 is probably harder to do than having a Union that falls apart. Slavery as a sectional issue doesn't creep in until significantly later on and Virginia has a giant population when compared to other states just going off the 1790 census. It's not quite as extreme as England leaving the United Kingdom shortly after the Acts of Union are signed, but it would make you question what the Union even was that early on.
 
A PoD that has Virginia leave the Union on a permanent basis before 1805 is probably harder to do than having a Union that falls apart. Slavery as a sectional issue doesn't creep in until significantly later on and Virginia has a giant population when compared to other states just going off the 1790 census. It's not quite as extreme as England leaving the United Kingdom shortly after the Acts of Union are signed, but it would make you question what the Union even was that early on.

Okay...I can see that. I think more than England in the UK, the situation is more similar to Ontario in Canada...A large, populous, wealthy, centrally located entity in a federal union to a number of other entities of various sizes.

It's Virginia's very size that made me ask the question. There's a trope of the failed Union but how do you really get there early in the process. There were a lot of issues but there was also a lot of good will as well.

Perhaps the question could be rephrased to "What could cause Virginia to stop wanting to compromise with the other states and start throwing it's weight around to the point that the other states stop wanting to compromise with Virginia? Or vice versa?"

The initial action could be quite small but it would start a downward spiral. Would a refusal to give up control of Kentucky be enough?
 

Marc

Donor
A PoD that has Virginia leave the Union on a permanent basis before 1805 is probably harder to do than having a Union that falls apart. Slavery as a sectional issue doesn't creep in until significantly later on and Virginia has a giant population when compared to other states just going off the 1790 census. It's not quite as extreme as England leaving the United Kingdom shortly after the Acts of Union are signed, but it would make you question what the Union even was that early on.

Not really, if you exclude slaves, which was how people largely did, rightly so, given that those slaves were largely seen and treated as only economic tools, not really people. As someone once acerbically commented back then, that if you count slaves, then you might as well count mules...
A further backup to the historical reality is the infamous 3/5's compromise to buttress up Southern representation in Congress.

Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania were close in comparative population to Virginia, and more so in wealth. Yes, the latter was a powerhouse, but hardly the only one in the early republic.

Finally, the ruling elite of Virginia was largely invested in maintaining these United States - they saw it as a vital asset
 
Maybe...obviously unlikely but adams could have been drawn into war with france and really pushed alien and sedition acts much too far under the auspices of war emergency. Washington died in 1799 and without him as a moral compass for the republic. Adams is reelected and the federalists go even further and generally become the monarch virginia always thought he was.

But you have to have a pretty dim view of adams for that to happen
 
Not with George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson at the helm.

So is the 'removal' of these three enough? It would require a series of PODs but would it be enough?

Or is it really a case that the political elites in Virginia and the other major states wanted the Union so much that it didn't really matter who was in charge? That doesn't seem right somehow. It makes the United States too inevitable.
 
Not really, if you exclude slaves, which was how people largely did, rightly so, given that those slaves were largely seen and treated as only economic tools, not really people. As someone once acerbically commented back then, that if you count slaves, then you might as well count mules...
A further backup to the historical reality is the infamous 3/5's compromise to buttress up Southern representation in Congress.

Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania were close in comparative population to Virginia, and more so in wealth. Yes, the latter was a powerhouse, but hardly the only one in the early republic.

Finally, the ruling elite of Virginia was largely invested in maintaining these United States - they saw it as a vital asset
Virginia is still a huge part of the economy here, and with the potential for vast westward expansion it has resources that will throw the balance of power with the other colonies off. And this is before industrialization really gets rolling. George Washington wasn't a random choice to head the continental army, it was(in part) a move to ensure that Virginia was truly invested in it.


Some kind of union is most likely in Virginia's best interest during this time period. Especially one that gives that union the power to break down tariffs between interstate borders.
 
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