WI: American Civil War Averted

Saphroneth

Banned
The male lead was against it, and the female lead, as a woman, had no voice in the matter, and saw her life ruined by the fire-eaters' folly. And postwar, all her secessionist menfolk (and womenfolk too) would probably have starved to death had she not done any number of unladylike things to save the lives of the idiots whose precious "honour" had killed her father and brought her whole world down in ruins. If that's Confederate propaganda, what would anti-Confederate propaganda look like..
I think perhaps the problem is that it's assumed to be propaganda, when it may actually just be a realistic portrayal as far as the author was concerned - those with close relationships to the slave owners considered them to be friends to some extent (because well-treated) and didn't have a good sense of what life would be like without them; those in the fields are vaguely assumed to think the same way but don't actually show up as such.
 
Is Lee being active in politics in this way OTL? [snip]

We are – precisely as the OP feared – straying from the topic, here. If ever I were to make a TL of this sort, then these things could be thrashed out.

I do wish (and hope the OP will indulge) to make a few minor corrections or amplifications, all the same, to point a moral I will conclude with.

RE Lee was, ITL, used regularly, when stationed in DC, as a Congressional liaison by the War Department: usually as a sort of lobbyist when the Corps of Engineers wanted a bigger budget. He did ITL have the respect of, inter alia, the Rangers when stationed in Texas (and in turn said that the Cortina Wars could be dealt with either by an entire US Army Corps or a company of Rangers), and there would be nothing odd or improper in his being, as an officer tasked with suppressing “hostiles” on the frontier, asked to dinner by the governor of said frontier state. Nor in giving an emollient answer if asked about Senator Davis over the coffee.

Jefferson Davis did, ITL, give two pro-Union speeches in the North in 1858: he was regarded, prior to Mississippi’s secession, as the sort of Southern Unionist who was of the subset thereof who wished Southern predominance within the Union.

That is why, ITL, it was Benjamin Butler – who had been appointed to the USMA Board of Visitors in 1857 by Secretary Davis, and described himself as “... always a friend of Southern rights but an enemy of Southern wrongs” – who did in fact put Davis’ name in nomination and voted (usually alone and through the 57th ballot) for his nomination in the Charleston DNC of 1860 (and he afterwards supported Breckinridge over Douglas in the election of 1860, ITL).

I was under the impression that these facts were generally known.

There is more to be said, point by point, but this is not the thread in which to do so. What is worth pointing out, by means of these examples, is this moral: that reliance merely upon hindsight – yours, mine, anyone’s – will get the relations, positions, and views of all sorts of people on the eve of the War very wrong indeed.
 
This is my first time jumping into this or any other thread so please be kind in your responses.

If slavery is the root of all causes that brings about the Civil War (or as we in the South call it - the War of Northern Aggression), then you have to go all the way back to the scientific community at the time that enabled it. With scientists saying that Africans were sub-human, then the early European slave trade can continue without moral objections. If however, Science decides Africans are the same as any other people, then you have a moral objection to their enslavement. Britain, Spain, and France have to look at a different way to staff the large agricultural plantations, possibly with indentured servants.

Indentured servants, as used in south Louisiana and around New Orleans, were considered 'people' and could buy their way out of servitude to freedom, something the African slaves could not do in the rest of the South. Could the agricultural South have found the labor with this type of pool is a topic of discussion. My question then becomes what happens to the Civil War if there are no slaves to emancipate? If a large enough pool of indentured servants (a nice way to say 'slaves') who have volunteered to enter this type of contract can be found to work the Southern fields, it would seem the issue of "States Rights" does not become the knife separating the Union.
 
1) "Beast Butler" not having any problems with working so closely with Deep South Democrats? Not being sarcastic at all, but did anything like this happened IRL?:confused:
Butler was pretty much of a Doughface. Butler voted 57 times for the nomination of Davis, and supported Breckinridge in the election. In early 1862, a Southern leader wrote that his presence in command (of the Army forces) meant the expedition against New Orleans was feigned - there was no way Republicans would ever give anyone like Butler such a chance at glory.

Stephen Douglas is dying, BTW...he didn't drop dead in mid-stride, he suffered a slow lingering death.

Douglas died of typhoid fever. He was perfectly healthy a month earlier.

"Back to Africa" movements were never more than a means to ship out Black Leaders out of the USA to Liberia.

So you're saying that Henry Clay, Supreme Court Justice Bushrod Washington, Daniel Webster, and James Monroe were all lying about their motives? The Colonization Society primarily concerned itself with free blacks, and there was a sense (expressed most frankly by John Randolph) that free blacks were trouble. But there were others who saw in colonization a long-term solution to slavery. Also, many of the leaders (Clay in particular) saw interracial prejudice as deeply ingrained, and instinctive, that blacks would never get a fair deal in the U.S.

Not for nothing did they oppose teaching Blacks their three R's. You have an education, and you have upward mobility, which Southern Whites would not tolerate.
Under the Jim Crow system, there were schools for black children. Poorly funded, grossly inferior to schools for white children, but still tax-supported schools for black children. In South Carolina in the 1890s, "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman presided over revisions to the state constitution which allowed the final suppression of black voting. But it was also under Tillman that South Carolina established its first teachers' college for blacks.

Problem: The Fire-Eaters are very much in charge in the South, and they represent 80% of Southern Whites... This is the first time I have ever heard the use of this word Cooperationists. I'm not saying it wasn't used, but it doesn't seem to have survived. These people really were powerless in their own states. They were outnumbered 4:1 by the Fire-Eaters.

This is a gross exaggeration, even in the Deep South. Recent research has shown that in voting for delegates to the Georgia secession convention, just over 50% of the actual votes went to (conditional) Unionist delegates. (The secessionist majority was achieved by gerrymandering districts and cooking the returns.) In the November election, of 393,000 votes in the Deep South, only 220,000 (56%) went to Breckinridge - the other 44% to Bell and Douglas, whom the Fire-Eaters rejected.

It was certainly not true in the Upper South, which strongly rejected the Fire-Eaters' program of immediate secession.

Tennessee voted against having a secession convention. Maryland's legislature voted 53-13 against a convention, after Fort Sumter and the Baltimore riots. Missouri's convention rejected secession. Kentucky had no convention, was famously declared neutral by its governor, and ended by going with the Union.

2/3 of the delegates to the Virginia convention were conditional or strict Unionists. Only 66 of 191 voted for secession on April 4. The final vote was 136 for secession, 52 against (after 12 nays changed to yeas once the resolution had carried).

The Fire-Eaters had the whip hand, and stampeded the Deep South into secession, but their control was not so firm as claimed. One reason they pushed for immediate secession is because they expected their influence to ebb once Lincoln took office and there were no slave insurrections or abolitionist agents appointed U.S. Marshal.
 
One good possibility to avoid THE Civil War and Secession would be for the Nullification Crisis to go hot. If SC tries seceding by itself. Andrew Jackson would use Federal troops, and the precedent that secession was illegal would be set.

There would likely be a Supreme Court ruling codifying it as being unconstitutional.

If it's just one State trying to secede, it might not be counted as a Civil War. And it would certainly be nothing like OTL's.
 
You can have no secession and no Confederacy, but its wildly unlikely you'd have no conflict. If the conflict is resolved without a war, there are several changes. Slavery's end is put off for at least a generation. Admission of western free states, selection of a route for the transcontinental railroad, and solving the national debt crisis will be significantly delayed due to the obstruction of southern politicians.

The Morrill tariff was a response to the financial crisis of 1857 and federal the revenue shortfalls that resulted. The choices were an increased tariff or massive deficit spending. The Buchanan administration had already passed 6 different emergency financial measures, significantly increasing federal debt. By 1860, even Buchanan supported the tariff, but southern leaders still opposed it

Most people claiming the Morrill Tariff was highly protective are not looking at the actual rates, but the much higher rates passed four months later to pay for the expenses of the Civil War.
 
Get Thomas McGhee's troubles in 1858 to erupt from a large riot into a full-blown pish against the British "occupiers" in Quebec and Ireland. Have this get out of control and allow the development of the Fenian brotherhood a few years early and cause the British to threaten retaliation. British naval squadrons loom over not only Northern ports but also Southern cities, most specifically New Orleans and Charleston. Because of a miscommunication and worsening tensions a British squadron shells Fort Sumter and kick-starts a war that doesn't resolve all of the American divisions but does cause the war to be delayed by about a decade. By this time the overwhelming industrial capacity of the northern US and generation of veterans on both sides who 'did not risk their lives to defeat the British only to have them win years later at the diplomatic table' means the rebellion is put down much more quickly and never spreads beyond four or five states. Slavery is ended with gradual manumission through 1890 or 1900 and it takes another 50 to 100 years for full legal equality to emerge as more than theoretical.
 
You can have no secession and no Confederacy, but its wildly unlikely you'd have no conflict. If the conflict is resolved without a war, there are several changes. Slavery's end is put off for at least a generation. Admission of western free states, selection of a route for the transcontinental railroad, and solving the national debt crisis will be significantly delayed due to the obstruction of southern politicians.

Actually, as far a new states were concerned there might be little change from OTL

As David T pointed out in a recent thread, in early 1861 the votes to admit Kansas were probably there even had the Lower South not seceded. After that, neither WV nor NV is likely to be admitted w/o the ACW. Apart from those, only two new states, NB and CO, were admitted prior to 1889 - almost thirty years later. How much slower can you get?
 
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One more possible change - in 1859 the California state legislature approved the Pico Act to divide California into two free states. It also needed approval by the federal government, which was too busy with the Civil War to take the matter up. Without a Civil War, it might be approved, though the slaveholding states might want to split Texas into multiple slave states as a response.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
One more possible change - in 1859 the California state legislature approved the Pico Act to divide California into two free states. It also needed approval by the federal government, which was too busy with the Civil War to take the matter up. Without a Civil War, it might be approved, though the slaveholding states might want to split Texas into multiple slave states as a response.
California's odd because it entered as a sort of "half and half" (Fremont and Gwin being the first two Senators). I could see the slaveowner faction pretty much assuming that SoCal (as "Colorado") would be a slave state and then being very upset when everyone else disagrees, though it would likely not actually start the ACW off.
 
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