WI: The Illinois Slave Constitution of 1824

In 1824 slavery was still referred to as "a necessary evil." It would not be until after the Nat Turner Rebellion and the rise of Calhoun (i.e. post Jefferson and Jackson) that slavery was to be called "a positive good." Why does this matter? Because by introducing slavery while many saw it as a soon to end institution brought into the state just to kick-start immigration and the economy there is less opposition from proponents of free soil settlement.

Once Jefferson and Jackson are out of power the whole dynamic changes. The Old Northwest begins to look towards the immigrant filled Northeast for political support. The old slave south turned away from supporting small farmers and refused to support the various Homestead Acts. Even with IL as a slave state this won't change. The cost of slaves is just too much for poor immigrant farmers to afford. Pretty soon these non-slave farmers will vastly outnumber the slave holders in IL and beyond. IL will go back to being a free state.

The problem is that once the slave trade ends, with more territory open to slavery means more demand for slaves and higher prices for slaves. This has the knock on affect of making it harder for the smaller farms and small businesses to buy slaves. It is more likely that like MD and VA, IL will become a breeding ground for slaves to sell south. After a decade or two of this the slave population will drop and emancipation will be possible. If this occurs in an orderly fashion than it is likely DE, which was already on the borderline, will follow suite.

So what will the south do in the early 1850s when two or three border states (depending on the status of IA and KS) begin gradual emancipation? If the northern states got scared when IL went slave imagine the reaction 30 years later when IL, DE, IA and KS (possibly MO as well) vote to become free states.

Remember also that in 1824 Jefferson was still alive and he was very supportive of the idea of the yeoman farmer working small plots of land. If IL went slave, despite being a slave owner himself, he would not be too happy.

@Benkarnell - IL could and did elect very pro-slavery Governors because they could do so without fear of it being an issue. IL was a free state and by 1830 that wasn't going to change. Being a free soil/no slavery in the territories farmer more often than not went hand in hand with being racist and against allowing free blacks to live in your state or have any rights. If those governors had actually run on a platform of opening IL and the territories to slavery they would have lost. John Reynolds for instance came from PA and was a big supporter of Railways and canals. He even went to Philadelphia (not Savannah or Charleston) to raise funds for the canals.

Benjamin
 
Being a free soil/no slavery in the territories farmer more often than not went hand in hand with being racist and against allowing free blacks to live in your state or have any rights.


That is an extremely important point and one that is usually overlooked in threads of this type.

The majority of opponents to slavery arrived at that position via fears of labor competition from slaves and not via issues of morality. They thus were virulently racist and virulently opposed to slavery at the same time.
 
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It doesn't matter what your excuse is or was before or after the fact. You very much incorrectly portrayed an actual historical figure more people knew about than you had believed would know about and got called on it. Seriously, anyone who has researched or studied the emancipation movement in the US knows about Coles if only from his well intentioned support of the "colonization" movement which resulted in Liberia being founded.



All the more reason not to fuck with his reputation, wouldn't you think?

Good lord. Please get over yourself. If you think you've exposed my hidden pro-enslavement agenda... well done to you, I suppose.

So anyway:

It's pretty obvious the north-south conflict is going to come to a head at this far earlier date. But what form would such a conflict take in the mid-1820s? This is still a decade before Texas would have happened, so if it does happen in a similar fashion, the national context would have been changed quite a bit due to the crisis. So I think it's best to look at immediate effects first and work from there.

I completely agree with some of the statements here, that with or without the Missouri Compromise, a new constitution would confirm popular sovreignty as the de facto law of the land for all new states. Even if slavery were illegal in, say, the future Iowa Territory, upon statehood the citizens could institute slavery anyway. Are pro- and anti-slavery advocates fired up enough in the 1820s to resort to force of arms? Something tells me no. The 1820s are not the 1850s.

My guess is the fight moves first to Congress and the state legislatures. Even if Indiana (and Ohio) do not become slave states, movements will certainly arise in both states pushing to make them so. And by contrast, citizens of the Michigan Territory will probably push for fast-tracked statehood to counteract those movements, encouraged by the Adams-Clay Whigs.

My guess is that the Presidential election of 1824 is not effected, since it will take some time for Illinois to actually write and promulgate a new constitution, by which time Adams is probably already elected. But Cook's vote for him in the House of Representatives will probably be regarded as heroic by anti-slavery people throughout the US. When Andrew Jackson forms his political party, whether called the Democrats or something else, it will likely be even more overtly pro-slave than in OTL at this time. Slavery will be one of the burning national issues earlier than it was in real life.

@benjamin - That's an interesting scenario. I agree that immigration to northern Illinois will swing its outlook in a northerly direction by the 1850s, as it did in OTL. I want to hash out what happens in the meantime.
 
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This is an interesting topic. Living in Southern Illinois I've had the chance to see some of the Southern influence and everything. It annoys me when people see the state as homogenious. I also must say, I'd never heard of Coles, despite being able to thrown a rock into Coles county from where I'm sitting now.

Anywho, just one small thought to add. What are the prospects of the state splitting once the North gets going? Sure, nothing of the sort happened OTL, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen here. Perhaps if not before the Civil War (not even going to get into the butterflies with that, for the purpose of these statements assume one does happen sometime, and that's it), during, like West Virginia did? Or maybe even if the state government swings back to anti-slavery, the Southern part trying to break away.

I know overall, we should probably think about before the/a Civil War, as we are doing already, but this is just what hit me first :\

@Benjamin: In OTL Cairo had a slave breeding house already. Lends support to this scenario.
 
Good lord. Please get over yourself.


I simply pointed out your own lack of knowledge about your own POD. I also wrote at length about the immediate, short, and long term effects of that POD. I'd prefer to talk about the latter now.

If you think you've exposed my hidden pro-enslavement agenda... well done to you, I suppose.

I thought nothing of the sort. I do know you didn't know enough about your proposed POD, but that's been corrected so your extremely fascinating idea can be examined.

As for sectarian violence, I believe we'll see a rapid increase ITTL. Benjamin and I pointed out that the anti-slavery beliefs of most had an economic basis and not a moral one. We were already seeing anti-immigrant violence in this period and violence directed towards restrictive voting qualifications such as the agitation that would lead to the Dorr War about a decade later.

The expansion of slavery through the ballot is going to spark much more of the violence which is either already occurring or is set to occur along economic and class lines. A more radicalized US could be the result.

Answering one poster's question, states are not going to be split over this issue. The Constitution prevents Congress from splitting an existing state without that state's consent and gaining a state's consent is going to be nearly impossible. For example, if a pro-slavery faction wins the internal political battle within a state that means the pro-slavery faction is in the majority. If the anti-slavery faction then attempts to split off, the pro-slavery faction which controls the state will not accede to Congress taking that action. In rare cases, the winning faction might want to be shed of the other, but balkanizing a state might drop the pieces which result below the population level required for statehood.
 
In 1824 slavery was still referred to as "a necessary evil." It would not be until after the Nat Turner Rebellion and the rise of Calhoun (i.e. post Jefferson and Jackson) that slavery was to be called "a positive good." Why does this matter? Because by introducing slavery while many saw it as a soon to end institution brought into the state just to kick-start immigration and the economy there is less opposition from proponents of free soil settlement.

Once Jefferson and Jackson are out of power the whole dynamic changes. The Old Northwest begins to look towards the immigrant filled Northeast for political support. The old slave south turned away from supporting small farmers and refused to support the various Homestead Acts. Even with IL as a slave state this won't change. The cost of slaves is just too much for poor immigrant farmers to afford. Pretty soon these non-slave farmers will vastly outnumber the slave holders in IL and beyond. IL will go back to being a free state.

The problem is that once the slave trade ends, with more territory open to slavery means more demand for slaves and higher prices for slaves. This has the knock on affect of making it harder for the smaller farms and small businesses to buy slaves. It is more likely that like MD and VA, IL will become a breeding ground for slaves to sell south. After a decade or two of this the slave population will drop and emancipation will be possible. If this occurs in an orderly fashion than it is likely DE, which was already on the borderline, will follow suite.

So what will the south do in the early 1850s when two or three border states (depending on the status of IA and KS) begin gradual emancipation? If the northern states got scared when IL went slave imagine the reaction 30 years later when IL, DE, IA and KS (possibly MO as well) vote to become free states.

Remember also that in 1824 Jefferson was still alive and he was very supportive of the idea of the yeoman farmer working small plots of land. If IL went slave, despite being a slave owner himself, he would not be too happy.

@Benkarnell - IL could and did elect very pro-slavery Governors because they could do so without fear of it being an issue. IL was a free state and by 1830 that wasn't going to change. Being a free soil/no slavery in the territories farmer more often than not went hand in hand with being racist and against allowing free blacks to live in your state or have any rights. If those governors had actually run on a platform of opening IL and the territories to slavery they would have lost. John Reynolds for instance came from PA and was a big supporter of Railways and canals. He even went to Philadelphia (not Savannah or Charleston) to raise funds for the canals.

Benjamin


I'm skeptical of the idea that 'if we diffuse slavery enough it will disappear slowly'. The slaveholders could easily respond by breeding slaves more, couldn't they? We may see the establishment of 'slave breeding grounds' or some other type deal.
 
I simply pointed out your own lack of knowledge about your own POD. I thought nothing of the sort. I do know you didn't know enough about your proposed POD, but that's been corrected so your extremely fascinating idea can be examined.

All right, then, based on a single word you deduced everything that I ever knew. And heaped on the sarcasm to boot. Would that we all were possessed of such powers.

Thank you for your real input. I hadn't heard of the Dorr War. Very interesting. I think that some violent labor unrest is likely, then. But still no Bleeding Kansas analogue, at least not right away. That came after a long period with an increasingly poisonous political climate. This just doesn't.

Even in Illinois, I think the abundance of free land can absorb a lot of the angry white labor for a while. At this point, there's not yet a whole lot for slaves to work on in Illinois. Farms, some mining. But farmers upset with having to compete with unpaid enslaved labor would, I think, move before rising up. Every single one of them would have just recently moved from parts east, anyway. May as well move again. So there will be population pressure on the Native Americans of northern Illinois and, more so, Wisconsin, a little faster and sooner than in OTL. An earlier Black Hawk War.

As for federal politics: If we take the PoD to be that Coles for whatever reason fails to campaign effectively to stop the referendum, then it passes on August 2, 1824. That autumn was the inconclusive election for the next President of the US. Would a constitutional crisis in Illinois have affected the results? I'd tend to think no, since voting was almost entirely based on the region of the country each candidate came from. At most, I'd think that the election would have shifted slightly but resulted in no majority, sending it to Congress the following February.

And that's where we would see the first real political fallout. I would think that the Representatives would vote much more strongly along sectional lines. Illinois' one vote would still go to JQ Adams - Congressman Cook already knew he was violating the wishes of his constituents even in OTL - but I can see, say, some southern Congressmen supporting Andrew Jackson owing to a heightened sense of sectional solidarity following months of debate over the crisis in Illinois. Adams won Missouri and Louisiana's delegations by one vote, and Maryland's by only two. Those northern states whose support Jackson won (namely Indiana, Pennsylvania, and NJ), he won by higher margins. If Jackson could sway just 4 key Congressmen, he would tie Adams. In subsequent ballots, both Jackson and Adams would go for the up-for-grabs states that had voted for William Crawford... all of which were Southern.

So it may be that the first real consequence of this referendum would be a President Jackson in 1825... likely before Illinois' new state constitution could even be written.

but balkanizing a state might drop the pieces which result below the population level required for statehood.
Minor point in response: This threshhold could easily be ignored, especially in the rapidly-growing frontier states. Illinois itself was admitted before it had enough people to qualify, partly because it was growing so fast that it was not seen as an important issue, and partly because Illinoisans saw the political embroglio on the horizon that would come with Missouri's application for statehood, and so wanted to get in before that unfolded. I still don't think splitting is a likely outcome, mind.
 
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All right, then, based on a single word you deduced everything that I ever knew.


No, based on your word choices I realized you knew next to nothing about the man at the center of your POD. While you most definitely mischaracterized him, I'll state for at least the third time now that it doesn't effect this time line.

Just this week in a thread about the Incas retaking Cuzco, I mistakenly wrote that the Navajo and Hopi had rebelled against Spain in the late 1600s and the Pueblo. Another poster kindly corrected me and the thread moved on. Let's move on here too.

Thank you for your real input.

You're welcome.

Minor point in response: This threshhold could easily be ignored, especially in the rapidly-growing frontier states. Illinois itself was admitted before it had enough people to qualify, partly because it was growing so fast that it was not seen as an important issue, and partly because Illinoisans saw the political embroglio on the horizon that would come with Missouri's application for statehood, and so wanted to get in before that unfolded. I still don't think splitting is a likely outcome, mind.

I don't think splitting is a likely outcome either.

I also think the population threshold, which was routinely ignored during this period for reasons you mentioned, will be vigorously enforced by both sides in order to prevent any chance of splitting adding to the number of states in their enemy's camp. Putting it another way, people of this period in the OTL turned a blind eye to the threshold requirements for political purposes and people of this period in your ATL will rigorously enforce the threshold requirements for political purposes.
 
Wow, even when you're smoothing things over you can't help but be arrogant and insulting. You have no idea what you're talking about.

I'll be starting a TL thread for this. Please behave after the move.
 
Gentlemen, Gentlemen...rest your sphincters.

Now as for the timeline. Sounds like a good idea.

@Leistungsfähiger Amerikan: It's not just the diffusion of slaves but also the influx of non-slave holding immigrants. Sure IL can be used as a slave breeding ground like VA and MD had become, but slavery remained in these two states because industrialization remained low and there were few immigrants there looking to settle and start free-soil farms. IL will be completely different demograhically.

In general I still think slavery in IL will only last a generation (~20-30 years). The real question is what is to become of IA, KS and other near by states. Pro-slavery people in Missouri pushed slavery into KS not so much because they felt KS would make a great slave state, but because they feared having a free state next door would entice hundreds of slaves to run away. The same would be true in IL regarding IA. So most likely this TL will see a "Bleeding Iowa" some time in the 1840s. This will arouse anti-slave sentiment even further and lead to a rather nasty affair.

Another problem is the whole Texas-Mexico question. I sincerely doubt that Texan independence can be butterflied away though it can perhaps be delayed. Once this occurs war between the US and Mexico over the status of Texas and California is almost a given. The North in this scenario will be even less supportive of the war effort as the stab in the back repudiation of the Missouri Compromise will leave those northern very bitter. Most likely the current president will try to counter this northern anger by pressing for a better outcome in the Oregon Territory dispute. (This could also be tied into the Webster-Ashburton negotiations if things come to head at a slightly earlier date. One may even hypothesis a true war over the Aroostook Territory as a way to gain free states to counter balance IL and IA going slave.) It should go without saying that a war against both Mexico and Britain at this juncture would be a disaster for the United States.

Furthermore it very possible that as a way to limit immigrant influence in IL there will be a strong Know-Nothing Party that passes laws to disenfranchise immigrants. Perhaps extending the length of time to become a naturalized citizen to something absurd like 20 years. This could limit immigration but not by much since Chicago will be a very important center of commerce by dint of its very location, but it could lead to some nasty riots and an odd alliance between abolitionists (who very often supported immigrant rights in OTL) and immigrants (who very often hated the idea of giving blacks the right to vote) pressing for reform. It is very possible that IL will end up with something similar to the Rhode Island Dorrite Revolt of 1842.

Just some ideas
Benjamin
 
Sphincter rested. :eek::rolleyes::)

I really like pretty much all of what you've said. The Missouri Compromise technically isn't undone - Iowa (whatever it ends up being called) would still legally have to be created as a free state - but in effect the possibility of Iowa "going Illinois" would render the compromise meaningless.

I hadn't thought to look outside the borders at the effects on Texas and Oregon. I agree that some kind of push by Anglo-American Texans to join the US is going to happen regardless. But this will occur in a completely different context. Assuming a revolution some time in the 1830s, it will come after about a decade's worth of worsening relations between north and south. The South might be emboldened to pursue Texas more quickly.

I don't see war happening in the 1830s; the North still dominated Congress because of its higher population, and without the chance of going after Oregon at the same time I don't think they could be persuaded to make a move Texas as well. In the 1830s the US presence in Oregon was still quite small. The idea of going after Aroostook is fascinating, but I don't think a stretch of inhospitable forests would be seen as a fair balance to all of freaking Texas.
 
um...could we see a split between Northern and Southern Illinois, something similar to Virginia and West Virginia only earlier? Without Coles it might be hard to get the northern part of the state to get hot and bothered enough to break off, but once you get closer to the Civil War time period when it really becomes a sticking point, the Chicago area could easily be very anti-slavery and try and break off taking area north of what is now US 72 with it.
 
um...could we see a split between Northern and Southern Illinois, something similar to Virginia and West Virginia only earlier?


No. Splitting states is out of the question for reasons which have already been explained.

Getting back to this excellent idea, I believe we've all overlooked one very important factor while examining what could happen after the proposed Illinois constitutional convention: Andrew Jackson.

Jackson is "due" to become President in 1828 and I don't think what occurs in Illinois in 1824 is going to appreciably change things enough to prevent that. We're taking about the 1820s here, there is no telegraph yet let alone the 24-hour news cycle, internet, and other widespread instantaneous communications we all too frequently assume are present. The results of Illinois slave constitution is going to spark comments and reactions, but they will propagate very slowly (from our perspective) across the US. The repercussions will need time to develop so I think Jackson's presidency will still occur.

By way of example, the South Carolina nullification crisis took over two years to play out thanks in large part to the speed of communication available.

As many have pointed out, Illinois making popular sovereignty the de facto and, perhaps, de jure method for dealing with the slavery issue rather compromise at the Congressional/Federal level is going to place stresses on the US' political systems and national cohesion.

However, just as those stresses begin to appear, we're going to have one of the most headstrong man ever to occupy the office as President. Jackson's extreme patriotism for the US often led him to breaking the laws and ignoring the Constitution of the US. Putting it another way, Jackson loved the US and not a certain "version" of the US. In Jackson we might see a POTUS enforcing national unity via a variety of near-legal and extralegal means in response to the centripetal forces sparked by the slavery issue.

I'd also like to point out that one way to divert attention from pressing domestic issues is to manufacture more pressing foreign problems. Look at Jackson's OTL actions in Florida and keep that in mind.
 
More than that - as I explain earlier, Jackson could become President in 1824 if as few as four Southern Congressmen switch to his side. The House vote would be 6 months after the referendum - plenty of time for the news to break, though the new constitution would probably not be written. If those four could be persuaded that Jackson represents their interests better than Adams (or Clay), Jackson could be elected "four years early."
 
I really like pretty much all of what you've said. The Missouri Compromise technically isn't undone - Iowa (whatever it ends up being called) would still legally have to be created as a free state - but in effect the possibility of Iowa "going Illinois" would render the compromise meaningless.

Speculation:

Someone above mentioned the possibility of legal slaves being used in the mines in Galena. If so, this practice would probably spread into the rest of the Lead region north and west. (Mineral Point/Platteville/Dubuque). This area was the major center of population for the early Wisconsin Territory, which included Iowa (and much more) at the time.

Assuming Wisconsin Territory develops as OTL, then depending on how much of a majority the mining companies who want to use slave labor are, you could have a significant call for a pro-slavery constitution whenever Wisconsin becomes a state.

It's possible, even, that these factions could do some gerrymandering during their constitutional convention, to create a slave state out of OTL SW Wisconsin and Eastern Iowa, where they might have a chance of being a majority. There are problems with this scenario, however, and congress could reject their admission on several grounds.
 
In Wisconsin, I see that as being a local problem, but not something that would pull the state into the slave slot. Most Wisconsin settlers were not from slave states and would have objected to the practice for economic ("We should have those jobs") and racist reasons ("Keep Them out of here"). The mine's bosses would still try to bring in slaves from Illinois, but I think they'd face heavy opposition. Escpecially when you consider that the mines wouldn't be developed for several years after 1824, and by then we're assuming that there's more north-south tension, and presumably more antislavery feeling in states like Wisconsin.

I've been reading more in-depth into the House of Reps' vote for POTUS in 1825. Among other things, Kentucky's delegation had been "instructed" by its legislature to vote for Jackson, and the delegations who voted for Crawford knew he wouldn't win, but expected the voting to take several ballots and were either holding out for concessions or hoping Crawford could emerge as a compromise candidate.

Once I get this going as a TL, I think I'll have a tie vote or no majority in the House election. And then... well, I had first thought that Jackson would naturally emerge as the one to gain the Crawford supporters, but there were plenty in the Congressional establishment who hated him. It might be interesting for Crawford to actually end up being the compromise candidate after all. Jackson's still coming in 1828, I'm sure... but maybe we could see how President Crawford handles four years of growing sectionalism.
 
Jackson's still coming in 1828, I'm sure...


So am I.

Just as in the OTL, if the election goes to the House and a compromise candidate is the result, Jackson and his supporters are going to scream about a stolen election and begin the ground work for a truly national presidential campaign and the beginning of the Second Party System, just as happened in the OTL.

No Jackson in 1824 means Jackson in 1828, unless he dies or something.
 
In Wisconsin, I see that as being a local problem, but not something that would pull the state into the slave slot. Most Wisconsin settlers were not from slave states and would have objected to the practice for economic ("We should have those jobs") and racist reasons ("Keep Them out of here"). The mine's bosses would still try to bring in slaves from Illinois, but I think they'd face heavy opposition. Escpecially when you consider that the mines wouldn't be developed for several years after 1824, and by then we're assuming that there's more north-south tension, and presumably more antislavery feeling in states like Wisconsin.

Good points. There's also the problem that Wisconsin doesn't become a state until about 20 years after POD (probably even in TTL), and under the territorial laws, slavery isn't going to be legal.
 
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