WI: America Loves Slavery

Suppose that all 13 of the founding colonies loved slavery. Sure, the South had farms (I learned last week some wheat farmers had slaves profitably) and later they would get cotton. But many there are many other uses for slaves, such as household servants. The North might not use them as much as the South, but they will have them. Might need a POD as early as 1760s to get this change in public opinion, but let's just say whatever the POD is, slavery is viewed favorable on ideological reasons. Let's just suppose that at least until 1860s, at least 75% of the voting population in every single state views slavery as something good for society, possibly longer if no forces shift public opinion. Not a bad thing, not an obsolete institution, not a necessary evil, but good. Any free black who is talented or gifted is viewed as an exception, just as a tall female doesn't indicate the tallness of them in general.

And any non-white can become a slave if they are born while their parents are defaulting on debt (I think other civilizations had a combination of debt and chattel bondage?)

So... what happens? I mean, obviously some outside force is going to shift public opinion away from slavery. No one in the modern world openly accepts chattel bondage (not to say the modern world completely eliminated it, but no one openly has slaves and supports slavery). Would it be the Quakers? Some of them go to America and give them an Enlightenment? Maybe having to resort to conscription in WW2 will end slavery (unless you can tell me this somehow butterflies Pearl Harbor)? Or will it be put off until the 1950s (communism will probably seem much more appealing than being a slave and to avoid a slave revolt the American capitalists must show blacks there is a route to a comfortable life besides revolt) I'm pretty sure it's silly to say that if slavery is viewed favorable by all states in 1860s it will continue to today.

Or something silly like the British blockading America to end slavery (let's see... weakly defended Canada vs an America that can deploy 5 million troops, maybe 1/8 of which needs to remain behind to suppress a revolt, I'm sure that will end up making America kneel to British power)?
 
Why would an outside force shift public opinion away from slavery? Slavery is a very good bargain for the slaveholder and slavery could continue until the free population became so large that slaves were viewed as economic competition As long as slaves could be imported, captured pr breed, then there could be a nice free to slave ratio allowing the free population to live high on the hog.

Consider, if you are free and make minimum wage, your not very well off. If you owned five slaves, however, you'd be high on the hog. You don't even need to own the slavess directly. Suppose instead that the state owned slaves and did away with your taxes?

One of the prime reasons the Southern rebellion failed is that many Southerners had little stake in the system.

In America, Jim Crow is abolished by judicial fiat. It never would have been repealed by the legislatures


And who would force the change? America isn't South Africa but a great power who achieved hegemony in the Western Hemisphere no later than 1865. No one is blockading her, no one is invading to end slavery. America would be left as a quaint strange society- the way many view Saudi Arabia or North Korea
 

Deleted member 97083

In my observations, states tend to resolve their internal contradictions with their own ideology over time, or they go through a great crisis. If this crisis does not resolve the contradiction, the country collapses.

For example, the United Kingdom, which, as it became more and more of a liberal democracy focused on promoting liberal values like the rights of man, could not longer justify the British Empire, and began decolonization.

Or the USSR, which was founded on Marxist values but strayed farther and farther from them, until the Soviet Union was so much of a facade that both the elites and the people allowed it to collapse.

Because the United States was founded on liberalism and Enlightenment values, de jure slavery had to end at some point as it resolved its internal contradictions. Otherwise, a great crisis (like a civil war splitting the country in half for 4 years and being the bloodiest war fought on American soil) would happen to force the end of slavery.
 
And I meant slavery as individuals, not your example.

Nothing would break the system down- slavery endured in societies for thousands of years. Its only in modern times that the institution was abolished. Who is going to blocakde America? Who is going to force this change and why? Nobody

America would be viewed as a strange exotic land like people view Saudi Arabia and North Korea As long as the political class derives enough benefits from it, the institution will survive

The South lost because it was in a country that was mostly free and the ratio of slaves to free was too low even in the South. Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina all refused to join the rebellion because there were almost no slaves there. Change the ratio and they would have fought for it as well


Here, your having the whole country operate on a slave basis It can last forever really
 
Nothing would break the system down- slavery endured in societies for thousands of years. Its only in modern times that the institution was abolished. Who is going to blocakde America? Who is going to force this change and why? Nobody

America would be viewed as a strange exotic land like people view Saudi Arabia and North Korea As long as the political class derives enough benefits from it, the institution will survive

The South lost because it was in a country that was mostly free and the ratio of slaves to free was too low even in the South. Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina all refused to join the rebellion because there were almost no slaves there. Change the ratio and they would have fought for it as well


Here, your having the whole country operate on a slave basis It can last forever really

Sounds plausible. OK.
 

Deleted member 97083

Nothing would break the system down- slavery endured in societies for thousands of years. Its only in modern times that the institution was abolished. Who is going to blocakde America? Who is going to force this change and why? Nobody

America would be viewed as a strange exotic land like people view Saudi Arabia and North Korea As long as the political class derives enough benefits from it, the institution will survive

The South lost because it was in a country that was mostly free and the ratio of slaves to free was too low even in the South. Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina all refused to join the rebellion because there were almost no slaves there. Change the ratio and they would have fought for it as well

Here, your having the whole country operate on a slave basis It can last forever really

With the Bill of Rights existing though, and literacy being common leading to the spread of information, and the economics of industrialization, it's very hard for slavery to survive permanently. It would require subsidization or enforcement by the ruling class beyond a certain point.

Also, Saudi Arabia or North Korea may be antiquated, but they both have not strayed from their founding ideas.

The US was founded on liberal values, and developed based on those ideals.
 
With the Bill of Rights existing though, and literacy being common leading to the spread of information, and the economics of industrialization, it's very hard for slavery to survive permanently. It would require subsidization or enforcement by the ruling class beyond a certain point.

Also, Saudi Arabia or North Korea may be antiquated, but they both have not strayed from their founding ideas.

The US was founded on liberal values, and developed based on those ideals.

Does the original bill of rights accept all "races" as equals?
 

Deleted member 97083

Does the original bill of rights accept all "races" as equals?
Not explicitly, but the zeitgeist of Enlightenment values in the early United States meant that the US would continue moving (if slowly) towards the liberal idea that all men are inherently equal, as that was the purpose of the United States existing.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Maintaining eugenics as a force might help with America reversing civil rights of minorities, as it did IOTL, and even begin a new slavery. :p
 
......... The South lost because it was in a country that was mostly free and the ratio of slaves to free was too low even in the South. Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina all refused to join the rebellion because there were almost no slaves there. Change the ratio and they would have fought for it as well
---------------------------------------------

OTL If you look at wikipedia's entries about Eli Whitney and his patents on cotton gins .... you will see that the numbers of (black African) slaves increased almost five-fold between 1790 (date of invention) and 1860. This was because cotton gins made cotton production profitable, so profitable that Americans continued to import slaves and enslaved all children born to slaves.
"King Cotton" also made cotton-growing state's economic powerhouses who could dictate prices to British weaving mills. Since Brits disliked taking orders from any one, they outlawed transportation of slaves across the Atlantic Ocean.
By 1860, Southern American states were roughly 1/3 slaves. Southern White populations were divided between "white trash", white tradesmen and a tiny plantation-owning elite. It was that tiny elite that convinced entire states to rebel against the USA.
Meanwhile, slavery had never been profitable in Northern states and with industrialization, they needed more and more literate factory-workers. Since illiterate slaves were unprofitable in Northern states, those states outlawed the practice.

WI more states grew labour-intensive crops, and demand for cheap labour remained high?

Big picture: the antebellum American states were not the only slave-owning states in the Americas. Back before whites arrived, labour-intensive farming methods required thousands of slaves to support the Mayan, Incan, Aztec, Salish, Haida, Iroquois, etc. tribes/empires.
 
OTL If you look at wikipedia's entries about Eli Whitney and his patents on cotton gins .... you will see that the numbers of (black African) slaves increased almost five-fold between 1790 (date of invention) and 1860. This was because cotton gins made cotton production profitable, so profitable that Americans continued to import slaves and enslaved all children born to slaves.
"King Cotton" also made cotton-growing state's economic powerhouses who could dictate prices to British weaving mills. Since Brits disliked taking orders from any one, they outlawed transportation of slaves across the Atlantic Ocean.
By 1860, Southern American states were roughly 1/3 slaves. Southern White populations were divided between "white trash", white tradesmen and a tiny plantation-owning elite. It was that tiny elite that convinced entire states to rebel against the USA.
Meanwhile, slavery had never been profitable in Northern states and with industrialization, they needed more and more literate factory-workers. Since illiterate slaves were unprofitable in Northern states, those states outlawed the practice.

WI more states grew labour-intensive crops, and demand for cheap labour remained high?

Big picture: the antebellum American states were not the only slave-owning states in the Americas. Back before whites arrived, labour-intensive farming methods required thousands of slaves to support the Mayan, Incan, Aztec, Salish, Haida, Iroquois, etc. tribes/empires.

Yeah yeah yeah...

So what if all the states liked slavery? South for economic reasons and the North for ideological reasons. Someone pointed out wheat farming with slavery was still marginally profitable and there could be slaves as houseworkers. Just because slaves aren't used in water mills/ texiles making doesn't mean the North had to give them up entirely.
 
Or the USSR, which was founded on Marxist values but strayed farther and farther from them, until the Soviet Union was so much of a facade that both the elites and the people allowed it to collapse.

Largely off-topic, but the Soviet Union went off course and wedged itself in an ideological cul-de-sac pretty much from the start: most pre-1917 Marxists [1] weren't thinking of the Socialist State in terms of a one-man totalitarian regime industrializing through forced labor and carrying out genocidal purges of any possible opposition. (And attempts to bend ideology to make it match "really existing Socialism" only helped insure Marxism, even the brands strongly anti-USSR, would largely go down with the USSR as a legitimate intellectual position).

[1] Well, except for that creepy guy in back. Yes, Chadowski, I am talking about you, you jerk.
 
@B_Munro

Well, what do you think a USA that liked slavery from the get-go and will be ideologically tied to it for at least to the 1860s? Will they shake it off, or not? What do you think it will take fror them to get rid of it?
 
Does the original bill of rights accept all "races" as equals?
Not at all, and it wouldn't really matter if it did. As seen in OTL's Dredd Scott, an excuse can always be produced by the judiciary to maintain the power structure. I mean, the 15th Amendment says "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," but that didn't really work out on the ground at all for the next 100 years or so.
 

SsgtC

Banned
Honestly, by the 1860s, the North would have done away with slavery anyway. Economic reality would have ensured that. Keeping slaves to serve as maids, butlers, houseservents, etc is hugely expensive and massively inefficient. Slaves were used for that purpose in the South because plantation owners had so many slaves and as they got older or were too young or not physically fit enough to work in the fields, they were put in the house so the owner could get some value out of them. And if they didn't need anymore in the house, they would rent the slave out to their neighbors.

In other words, without large scale slavery, small scale slavery doesn't work.
 
Top