RAR/ Alt-Hist: Preventing the U.S. Civil War

[Elheru Aran]

Rouge 9's thread in Testing brought to mind a Facebook post I saw the other day to which someone commented that James Buchanan was responsible for not preventing the Civil War, and that made for some interesting thinking.

Now that we're past that highly scholarly preamble...

The American Civil War, 1860-65. We can stipulate that the ultimate causes were a.) the legality of slavery in the United States, b.) states' rights in relation thereof, c.) economic issues in relation thereof contextualized with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the increasing primacy of the Northern states versus the agriculturally based economy of the South.

With that in mind, how could the Civil War have been prevented? Was it James Buchanan's fault for being an epically shitty President? Was it the Southern states' fault for trying to jack the government over the past fifty years to support their broken system? Was conflict inevitable, or could it have been prevented?

If you like, imagine this as one of Zor's RARs. You're in charge of a Foundation type think-tank. You are going to be sent back in time to a year of your choosing, the only stipulation is that it has to be before South Carolina fires on Fort Sumter and the states secede. You have the ear of various politicians throughout this time, and they will take your advice seriously with minimal questions about who you actually are. Being in multiple places at the same time may be difficult, so you may have a number of agents that will follow your orders in helping you manipulate society and government in order to prevent outright war from happening. Skirmishes are permissible, but loss of life is undesirable in general (and along these lines, no assassinating people like John Calhoun).

Emancipating the slaves is a secondary goal; if you can prevent the war from happening and emancipate the slaves at the same time, great. If you do not emancipate the slaves before 1859, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry and various other atrocities such as Bloody Kansas will still happen. This will not help the situation. If you cannot emancipate them without the war happening, you lose.

[Crazedwraith]

Is preventing the war but not freeing the slaves a win or lose? You say it's a secondary goal. Which to me means not achieving it is still a success just not a complete one. Whereas the last sentence suggests not emancipating them is fail state.

[Tribble]

Couple of questions:

How far back in time can you go? Could you go all the way back to the creation of the U.S. Constitution/Articles of Confederation?

Does the entire Union have to be preserved at all costs? Is it a condition that the States have to join at their historical times, and that they must not be allowed to leave?

[Elheru Aran]

Is preventing the war but not freeing the slaves a win or lose? You say it's a secondary goal. Which to me means not achieving it is still a success just not a complete one. Whereas the last sentence suggests not emancipating them is fail state.

The only real fail is having the war happen. Emancipating the slaves, for moral reasons, would preferably happen sooner rather than later. If the slaves cannot be emancipated by, say, 1900, then that's also a fail (though obviously if the war didn't happen everything after that point is straight-up counterfactual hypothesizing).

Couple of questions:

How far back in time can you go? Could you go all the way back to the creation of the U.S. Constitution?

Does the entire Union have to be preserved at all costs? Is it a condition that the States have to join at their historical times, and that they must not be allowed to leave?

You can go back to approximately ~1800. (EDIT: If you see no way to prevent the CW without going further back, please share)

The War of 1812 will still happen due to external influences (British resentment against the former colonies, economic pressures, the Napoleonic wars, etc). The Mexican War is up in the air; if you think it will happen anyway, that's fine. If you see some way to prevent it from happening, that is also fine, but explain.

It is *strongly* preferable that the Union be preserved. If you see no way to avoid having some states leave, explain what happens. Territories joining the US may happen whenever, depending on how you explain the development of your alt-hist.

Essentially I am looking for something along the lines of "if x, y, and z had/had not happened, the Civil War would have been prevented". I suspect dealing with the slavery question would also be strongly involved in preventing the war as well.

[Purple]

Pass a constitutional amendment that makes sure slavery can't be abolished on a federal level. That should pacify the south indefinitely and still allow the individual states to abolish it at their own pace. That's my understanding at least.

[Elheru Aran]

Pass a constitutional amendment that makes sure slavery can't be abolished on a federal level. That should pacify the south indefinitely and still allow the individual states to abolish it at their own pace. That's my understanding at least.

Why this specific solution? When? And how? You can't just say "Pass an amendment". That's fine, but show your work.

[Tribble]

As I am not a historian and not that familiar with US history, my answer may be full of crap. But I'll take a crack at it anyways

I would prefer to try and nip it in the bud, so to speak.

IIRC, while the Articles of Confederation provided for a "perpetual union" this was not mentioned in the Constitution, nor was there any mechanism for the States withdrawing. Also, IIRC it wasn't entirely clear at the time whether the U.S. Constitution completely replaced the Articles of Confederation, or whether the Articles of Confederation still applied where the Constitution was silent. IMO this oversight would inevitably lead to a constitutional crisis on some issue, though not necessarily lead to war. I would make it very clear in the Constitution that the Union was perpetual and that once a state joined, there was no legal right for it to secede. That would have take a lot of the wind out of the secessionists' sails.

I would also include a phase-out of slavery in the Constitution, so that by year X every state in the Union must be slave-free. IMO this needs to be included since slavery was the primary cause for the Civil War and as long as you had free-states and slave states in one Union there was bound to be massive tension between the two. While I would morally prefer it if slavery were banned right from the start, I don't think that is realistic. However, I do think that the States might be influenced enough to adopt a gradual phase-out, especially since the Southern economy was nowhere near as dependant on slavery in 1789 as it was by the time of the Civil War. The Cotton industry had yet to really take off after all, since the Cotton gin hadn't been invented yet. While they may grumble a lot, I imagine that a persuasive enough person could convince them that it's in the best interests of the Union in the long-run, and that it wouldn't have an immediate impact on them financially.

[Gandalf]

Can I go back and try to get the American/British leaders to better negotiate terms, thus preventing the the British Empire from losing the colonies in the first place? This was slavery presumably ends when it does in the rest of the Empire. If the slave states still insist on seceding, they would then find themselves with far greater enemies arrayed against them, possibly increasing the possibility of seeking rapprochement.

If I'm not allowed to do that, then get northern politicians to funnel resources into the south in the hope of starting a slave insurgency as early as possible.

[Elheru Aran]

Charming, but no. The US needs to be a thing. If we went far enough back we could prevent the colonization of the Americas but I'm drawing the line at the Constitution's ratification.

How are you going to account for the usual Southern response of crushing force against slave revolts? We are looking for relatively peaceful solutions here by preference; do you not think such is possible?

[Tribble]

How are you going to account for the usual Southern response of crushing force against slave revolts? We are looking for relatively peaceful solutions here by preference; do you not think such is possible?

Well, yes, I think the modifications to the Constitution I suggested would be enough to prevent or at least moderate such things, though it obviously wouldn't eliminate racism on its own. Still, by 1860 at least a few decades would have gone by where the USA was slave-free, and I'd imagine that minorities would be much better off than they were historically. And without having all that bloodshed in the process.

[Purple]

Pass a constitutional amendment that makes sure slavery can't be abolished on a federal level. That should pacify the south indefinitely and still allow the individual states to abolish it at their own pace. That's my understanding at least.

Why this specific solution? When? And how? You can't just say "Pass an amendment". That's fine, but show your work.

Why? Because it pacifies the south permanently by making it abundantly clear that at no point in time will the union ever attempt to take their slaves away. It's as much a gesture as it is a practical deed.

When? As early as is possible in accordance to your rules. So like I'd go back as far as I can and start pushing for it to happen as early as it can. When it happens I do not know, but I'd try and get it on day 2 if I could.

How? You said we have the ear of the politicians at the time. I figured I could just get the various senators to vote for it.

[Raw Shark]

I go back as far as possible, and influence "Little Jimmy" Buchanan, who was 9 in 1800, to think that listening to your own fucking general when he tells you to reinforce every federal installation in the South as a priority is a good thing, tell everybody else I can influence to chill the fuck out, and the rest will probably sort itself.

[Eternal_Freedom]

If I really do have the ear of politicians, then I'd go back to 1800 and persuade as many Southern politicians as possible that slavery will, in only a few decades, be economically non-viable and will leave the South trailing the North in prosperity for another hundred years. Work on them to gently phase out slavery as industrialisation begins, for instance starting with "no new slaves" and then "salves can't do more than xyz hours" and "slaves cannot be punished in xyz manner."

Keep it going long enough and you have slavery abolished in all but name (and probably completely), a South that is no longer solely agriculture-based but has industry like the North does and best of all, no massive wedge issue to force a civil war, and no follow-on utter failure at Reconstruction.

The only problem then is to decide which President to use on the penny and ($50?) bill.

[Lord Revan]

I think the Civil War was unavoidble by 1800 the Southern elite had too much invested in slave based cotton farming that they could or at least would be willing to industrialize in any reasonble timeframe meaning that sooner or later the Civil War is gonna erupt simply as I cannot imagine Northern states being all that willing to exclusively run the failing southern economy at a net loss to themselves for all that long.

maybe if you were to somehow able to prevent Britain and rest of European powers from getting cheap sources of cotton in Asia you could prevent the US civil war but only by maintaining the Status Que

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Pass a constitutional amendment that makes sure slavery can't be abolished on a federal level. That should pacify the south indefinitely and still allow the individual states to abolish it at their own pace. That's my understanding at least.

Why this specific solution? When? And how? You can't just say "Pass an amendment". That's fine, but show your work. :P

Why? Because it pacifies the south permanently by making it abundantly clear that at no point in time will the union ever attempt to take their slaves away. It's as much a gesture as it is a practical deed.

When? As early as is possible in accordance to your rules. So like I'd go back as far as I can and start pushing for it to happen as early as it can. When it happens I do not know, but I'd try and get it on day 2 if I could.

How? You said we have the ear of the politicians at the time. I figured I could just get the various senators to vote for it.

Amendments have to be ratified by 3/4ths of the states. In the first couple of decades after the Revolutionary War, many northern states abolished the practice, and it is exceptionally difficult to see them going along with an amendment to protect it for all perpetuity ... especially since their motivation for abolishing slavery was deeply emotional in nature.

~~~

A possible way to prevent the American Civil War might start with shooting Eli Whitney and anyone else related to the invention of the cotton gin in the US. Do anything you can to delay its introduction into the United States by, say, three decades (and make sure it turns up somewhere else first ... say it becomes used first to process Indian cotton ... then you talk British politicians into imposing steep tariffs on American cotton, since now they've got their own sources, and slavery was already very much passé in Europe by this time.) That way, the British turn to India and Egypt for their cotton sooner, and southern slaveholders don't get a chance to make nearly as much on cotton.

Of course, this retards economic development of the United States, since sizable fractions of the northern economy depended on exporting cotton from the south onto the international market. The southern planters continue to expand west, and bicker of slave vs. free territorires ... the cotton market is simply too lucrative for them not to, even at the modest rates of production from hand-processing and reduced demand due to European tariffs. However, Southerners chafing at Yankee abolition won't have the notion of "cotton diplomacy" (the thought that England and France would back secession to keep the cotton flowing,) to support them.

The North, without the flow of cotton that it experienced in the OTL, diversifies (and industrializes) its economies sooner. When the gold and minerals start to be discovered in the West in the 1840s and 1850s, the industrial inequality between North and South will only escalate ... especially with international moves against slavery and things produced with slave labor. Economic forces draw more poor whites to the North, while penning up blacks in slave plantations makes less and less economic sense (since black labor would need to be used to backfill work that used to be done by poor whites. This will have the effect of encouraging abolitionism through race riots, as blacks come to realize that they ought to be paid for doing white man's work; and the Northern labor movement, which will turn up much earlier in this scenario, presumably agitates for their cause.)

A potential end result is that the United States finally gets around to abolishing slavery by the 1870s or 1880s, as the institution succumbs to economic, political, and diplomatic pressures. Of course, this non Civil War US will probably suck even worse for blacks than the OTL, since institutional racism will have had longer to become more deeply ingrained in the non-black population (who will likely see the Southern blacks as unskilled laborers and sharecroppers whose existence caused the South to become the economic cesspit that it would likely be in this scenario.)

[Eternal_Freedom]

Why this specific solution? When? And how? You can't just say "Pass an amendment". That's fine, but show your work.

Why? Because it pacifies the south permanently by making it abundantly clear that at no point in time will the union ever attempt to take their slaves away. It's as much a gesture as it is a practical deed.

When? As early as is possible in accordance to your rules. So like I'd go back as far as I can and start pushing for it to happen as early as it can. When it happens I do not know, but I'd try and get it on day 2 if I could.

How? You said we have the ear of the politicians at the time. I figured I could just get the various senators to vote for it.

Amendments have to be ratified by 3/4ths of the states. In the first couple of decades after the Revolutionary War, many northern states abolished the practice, and it is exceptionally difficult to see them going along with an amendment to protect it for all perpetuity ... especially since their motivation for abolishing slavery was deeply emotional in nature.

In Purple's defence (and I never thought I'd write that) his proposed amendment isn't "protecting slavery for all perpetuity" but simply saying the Federal government can't abolish it, leaving it to the individual states to decide. And if we go with the "we have the ears of politicians" scenario, telling Northern states that taking this route will avoid a bloody civil war may be enough to swing it.

If you then combine that with your other suggestions of reducing the South's "King Cotton" mentality, you can avoid the civil war and more gradually phase out slavery.

EDIT: now if you want a really alt-hist version of how to avoid the war and abolish slavery, don't do anything with the US at all. Start around 1840 or so once slavery is being eliminated in Europe and the British Empire. Persuade the European Powers that slavery is a horrible thing and that the US, especially the Southern states, are monster for holding on to such a barbaric institution. Forge a coalition and present an ultimatum to the US, you have one year to abolish slavery or we will declare war to liberate the slaves once and for all. If they capitulate, brilliant, if not, Britain and France can dedicate their militaries towards the war without fear of other European powers from taking advantage.

Hell, you could even use that as a springboard for forming the UN a hundred years early.

[SCRawl]

Couldn't we just introduce sufficiently advanced technology in, say, 1000 CE, which would (in the fullness of time) obviate the need for slavery by the 1860s? Or would that create too much risk that the US would never even exist in such a divergent timeline?

[Borgholio]

I would have to second EA's suggestion about making it economically non-viable to have slaves. If the south switched from labor-intensive cotton to different crops, or began industrializing earlier, then slaves would be less valuable and gradually they may only be seen as a "prestige" thing to have a couple slaves. Whole plantations of hundreds of slaves would be a thing of the past.

[Guardsman Bass]

Put me in the group that thinks you'd have to go beyond simply abolishing the international slave trade in the Constitution to including a phase-out of slavery itself in it. It's not particularly realistic, but you can try.

I'm actually not convinced that we'd abolish slavery if the US was still part of the British Empire in the 19th century. There would have been a vocal cotton plantation elite in colonial America that would have stood as a resistant force to the British push to outlaw slavery in the Empire.

[Borgholio]

I'm actually not convinced that we'd abolish slavery if the US was still part of the British Empire in the 19th century. There would have been a vocal cotton plantation elite in colonial America that would have stood as a resistant force to the British push to outlaw slavery in the Empire.

Could be that the war for independence started over slavery instead of taxation.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'm actually not convinced that we'd abolish slavery if the US was still part of the British Empire in the 19th century. There would have been a vocal cotton plantation elite in colonial America that would have stood as a resistant force to the British push to outlaw slavery in the Empire.

Could be that the war for independence started over slavery instead of taxation.

Which would give us the historical hilarity of the traditionally-oppressive British Empire having the moral high ground in a war with "the land of the Free..."

[Elheru Aran]

So there seems to be a general consensus that you have to start early. That's interesting.

You all are aware that one of the major reasons that the Constitution included the Three-Fifths Compromise was the political strength of the Southern states' delegates, right? They even got the Convention to agree that Congress couldn't ban the slave trade until 1808, and put a fugitive slave clause into the legislation. Otherwise the Constitution wouldn't have been ratified by all the states, Georgia and South Carolina in particular. Their 'peculiar institution' was such a sacred cow that they could not stand the very notion of not enshrining it within their new national law.

How are you going to deal with that particular issue? Bear in mind that it's not only political, it's also strongly social and cultural.

[Gandalf]

Charming, but no. The US needs to be a thing. If we went far enough back we could prevent the colonization of the Americas but I'm drawing the line at the Constitution's ratification.

How are you going to account for the usual Southern response of crushing force against slave revolts? We are looking for relatively peaceful solutions here by preference; do you not think such is possible?

I had the idea that a slave insurgency with external (northern abolitionist) assistance would essentially function as a terror campaign against the slave economy. It makes slave ownership riskier for both life and capital, and may very well avert all out war. Largely nonsensical, but it seemed the easiest way.

[Borgholio]

I would think that a slave insurgency funded by the North could (justifiably this time) be considered Northern Aggression and be used as an excuse for war.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

So there seems to be a general consensus that you have to start early. That's interesting.

You all are aware that one of the major reasons that the Constitution included the Three-Fifths Compromise was the political strength of the Southern states' delegates, right? They even got the Convention to agree that Congress couldn't ban the slave trade until 1808, and put a fugitive slave clause into the legislation. Otherwise the Constitution wouldn't have been ratified by all the states, Georgia and South Carolina in particular. Their 'peculiar institution' was such a sacred cow that they could not stand the very notion of not enshrining it within their new national law.

How are you going to deal with that particular issue? Bear in mind that it's not only political, it's also strongly social and cultural.

Indeed. Which is why I suggested that starting early to kill the profitability of slavery from the outside is the only option that could work. It's too well-entrenched in the South, so the only way to snuff it out is to keep Southern slaveholders from getting too rich and influential until the Northern drive to industrialization (and their ability to exploit the mineral wealth of the West) essentially starves them out.

I had the idea that a slave insurgency with external (northern abolitionist) assistance would essentially function as a terror campaign against the slave economy. It makes slave ownership riskier for both life and capital, and may very well avert all out war. Largely nonsensical, but it seemed the easiest way.

People like John Brown and Nat Turner had the exact same idea in the OTL. Needless to say, efforts to start a slave insurgency were largely stillborn, precisely because the notion of a slave uprising was so terrifying that white society came down like the proverbial ton of bricks on anyone who tried.