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What-if the Constitutional Convention had not written slavery in?
Posit:
1. The Continental Army offers freedom to slaves who fight in the RevolutionaryWar. There's at least one magnificent battle in which freedmen take great casualties and rout the Redcoats, perhaps defending a beloved city. Maybe another dramatic story involving mothers and babies or grandmothers.
2. After the war there is therefore strong sentiment for keeping the promise. In this timeline, the Articles of Confederation largely fall apart over this issue, as you can't have "full faith and credit" with the states having such a deep disagreement about this.
3. I picture someone talking to Washington -- "I know you're going to free them in your will anyway, why wait? They'll still be profitable to you as tenants." And Jefferson -- "You've said that living in proximity to slaves degrades a man's morality -- so eliminate the problem." Possibly, the first time he hears it, Jefferson thinks that the speaker is proposing to liquidate the slaves instead of freeing them, and his horror at the imagined suggestion helps him come to terms with the slaves' humanity -- which was a cognitive problem for Jefferson, from what I know of him.
I guess I have to read good modern biographies of these guys and more of their writing.
The key to Franklin's influence during the Constitutional Convention, David K points out, is him not being estranged from his son -- that's a whole thing I know nothing about. The son was apparently a Tory. I need to read about this and find out why he was a Tory -- there were lots of reasons, some of them excellent. I bet there's something in there that will give me what I need. Anyway, with his son on his side, Franklin's age and frailty would be less of a barrier, as he would have someone with his name to echo him and bolster him.
What I see happening -- I mean what I want to build a case for the dramatic correctness of in this story -- is an immediate ban on blackbirding, with a staged and stepped end to slavery by the end of the century. Then what I have to decide on is what happens after the Convention. Here are some possibilities:
1. The Convention dissolves, and so does the nation. There's a new convention resulting in "These United States" including most of the Northern states and a couple of Southern states. The other states either become Balkanized, or they form a looser confederacy. War ensues, piecemeal, medium low-level. The shore-to-shore US doesn't happen, or happens much later on very different terms.
2. The Convention finishes with an anti-slavery compromise like I described above. War ensues, much more piecemeal, and:
2a. the slaves states secede as in the real timeline but earlier and with an altered shape, etc.
2b. pro-slavery rebellions are put down.
2c. pro-slavery forces are moderately successful, but don't secede, and
2c' pull off a coup, possibly monarchist, and reinstate legal slavery
2c'' negotiate a truce involving promises to a longer schedule of ending slavery, which they either keep to or don't
3. The Convention concludes and the slave states officially accept the end of slavery, and rebellion is small, localized, and variously ignored (so that people remain in bondage in some places) or put down.
In any case, without the rush on the part of slavehnolders to increase their influence in the government by gaining more slave states, a significant amount of the pressure to expand is lifted, which gains Native American nations time to absorb technology, fight their own wars of expansion, make alliances, and set up rival modern states. Mustn't forget that Eastern, Southeastern, and Southwestern "tribes" were actually fully developed nations with all the social institutions and history and sophistication that implies. Well, so were some of the Plains and Northwestern peoples. Actually, I think the only Native Americans living in what we usually imagine as "tribal" states were some guys in California, the Sonora Desert, and some of the Arctic folks. Which doesn't make them not nations, especially if the continent is allowed the breathing space to go through the nation-building process Europe was going through.
I think it may be a very long time, in this timeline, before you get a united continent, and then it's not three large nations but more of a European Community model.
Obviously I need to read a whole lot more history before I write this.
Posit:
1. The Continental Army offers freedom to slaves who fight in the RevolutionaryWar. There's at least one magnificent battle in which freedmen take great casualties and rout the Redcoats, perhaps defending a beloved city. Maybe another dramatic story involving mothers and babies or grandmothers.
2. After the war there is therefore strong sentiment for keeping the promise. In this timeline, the Articles of Confederation largely fall apart over this issue, as you can't have "full faith and credit" with the states having such a deep disagreement about this.
3. I picture someone talking to Washington -- "I know you're going to free them in your will anyway, why wait? They'll still be profitable to you as tenants." And Jefferson -- "You've said that living in proximity to slaves degrades a man's morality -- so eliminate the problem." Possibly, the first time he hears it, Jefferson thinks that the speaker is proposing to liquidate the slaves instead of freeing them, and his horror at the imagined suggestion helps him come to terms with the slaves' humanity -- which was a cognitive problem for Jefferson, from what I know of him.
I guess I have to read good modern biographies of these guys and more of their writing.
The key to Franklin's influence during the Constitutional Convention, David K points out, is him not being estranged from his son -- that's a whole thing I know nothing about. The son was apparently a Tory. I need to read about this and find out why he was a Tory -- there were lots of reasons, some of them excellent. I bet there's something in there that will give me what I need. Anyway, with his son on his side, Franklin's age and frailty would be less of a barrier, as he would have someone with his name to echo him and bolster him.
What I see happening -- I mean what I want to build a case for the dramatic correctness of in this story -- is an immediate ban on blackbirding, with a staged and stepped end to slavery by the end of the century. Then what I have to decide on is what happens after the Convention. Here are some possibilities:
1. The Convention dissolves, and so does the nation. There's a new convention resulting in "These United States" including most of the Northern states and a couple of Southern states. The other states either become Balkanized, or they form a looser confederacy. War ensues, piecemeal, medium low-level. The shore-to-shore US doesn't happen, or happens much later on very different terms.
2. The Convention finishes with an anti-slavery compromise like I described above. War ensues, much more piecemeal, and:
2a. the slaves states secede as in the real timeline but earlier and with an altered shape, etc.
2b. pro-slavery rebellions are put down.
2c. pro-slavery forces are moderately successful, but don't secede, and
2c' pull off a coup, possibly monarchist, and reinstate legal slavery
2c'' negotiate a truce involving promises to a longer schedule of ending slavery, which they either keep to or don't
3. The Convention concludes and the slave states officially accept the end of slavery, and rebellion is small, localized, and variously ignored (so that people remain in bondage in some places) or put down.
In any case, without the rush on the part of slavehnolders to increase their influence in the government by gaining more slave states, a significant amount of the pressure to expand is lifted, which gains Native American nations time to absorb technology, fight their own wars of expansion, make alliances, and set up rival modern states. Mustn't forget that Eastern, Southeastern, and Southwestern "tribes" were actually fully developed nations with all the social institutions and history and sophistication that implies. Well, so were some of the Plains and Northwestern peoples. Actually, I think the only Native Americans living in what we usually imagine as "tribal" states were some guys in California, the Sonora Desert, and some of the Arctic folks. Which doesn't make them not nations, especially if the continent is allowed the breathing space to go through the nation-building process Europe was going through.
I think it may be a very long time, in this timeline, before you get a united continent, and then it's not three large nations but more of a European Community model.
Obviously I need to read a whole lot more history before I write this.
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