The Confederate government sent a peace delegation to Washington before the firing on Fort Sumter but Lincoln refused to meet them. Seward did meet with the peace commissioners, and Lincoln himself did negotiate with Confederate officials in 1865.
I think either Lincoln changing his mind and negotiating with the Confederacy in 1861 or Seward being President and negotiating as President instead of Secretary of State are reasonably plausible PODs that don't require changing lots of other things. Its also important to realize that only seven states had seceded at that point and actually no other state was inclined to secede. A POD could be a clearer communication by Virginia that they would go if the federal government used force to suppress secession (regardless of who fired the first thought), or several border states making a joint declaration, better yet if this includes Kentucky.
Also emancipation was a wartime measure and support within the federal government for outright abolition was pretty much zero. An amendment guaranteeing the existence of slavery was passed by Congress and sent to the states about this time. And actually most northerners, including abolitionists, except apparently Lincoln, thought that if a state seceded there wasn't anything constitutionally a state could do about it.
The issues to be negotiated were the Confederacy's share of the national debt, tariffs (a lot of tariff revenue for the federal government was collected in southern ports), navigation rights on the Mississippi, and federal property within the seceding states. Maybe the federal government could threaten to stop enforcing the fugitive slave law as a negotiating tactic (it was enforced after 1861 IOTL), but that is the only way I can see slavery entering into the discussion.
So what would have been the consequence of a negotiation? Could either side have negotiated in good faith? Would the fire-eaters in the South have engineered a war anyway?
I think either Lincoln changing his mind and negotiating with the Confederacy in 1861 or Seward being President and negotiating as President instead of Secretary of State are reasonably plausible PODs that don't require changing lots of other things. Its also important to realize that only seven states had seceded at that point and actually no other state was inclined to secede. A POD could be a clearer communication by Virginia that they would go if the federal government used force to suppress secession (regardless of who fired the first thought), or several border states making a joint declaration, better yet if this includes Kentucky.
Also emancipation was a wartime measure and support within the federal government for outright abolition was pretty much zero. An amendment guaranteeing the existence of slavery was passed by Congress and sent to the states about this time. And actually most northerners, including abolitionists, except apparently Lincoln, thought that if a state seceded there wasn't anything constitutionally a state could do about it.
The issues to be negotiated were the Confederacy's share of the national debt, tariffs (a lot of tariff revenue for the federal government was collected in southern ports), navigation rights on the Mississippi, and federal property within the seceding states. Maybe the federal government could threaten to stop enforcing the fugitive slave law as a negotiating tactic (it was enforced after 1861 IOTL), but that is the only way I can see slavery entering into the discussion.
So what would have been the consequence of a negotiation? Could either side have negotiated in good faith? Would the fire-eaters in the South have engineered a war anyway?