Post by eurofed on Dec 6, 2017 11:59:26 GMT
This scenario’s main theme is a greater success of liberalism in the early-mid 19th century across the Western world, especially as it concerns the 1848 revolutions. It is combined with my signature AH theme of greater success of big states. The PoD is at the end of the ARW as it concerns the Western Hemisphere, although its effects for Europe do not get noticeable until the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
ITTL the Patriots reaped a little more military and diplomatic success during the last phase of the ARW so in addition to its OTL gains the USA also got Upper Canada at the peace table. The area joined the Union as two free states during the early 19th century. American Loyalists mostly went to Quebec, the Maritimes, and Newfoundland. The USA approved the Land Ordinance of 1784 that regulated the status of US territories with the antislavery provision proposed by Jefferson that forbid slavery in the territories. This created a precedent that caused Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Arkansas to join the Union as free states. However, the Southern states successfully lobbied the Congress for the admission of Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana as slave states. The example of its western neighbors eventually persuaded Virginia to implement gradual emancipation of slaves. This in turn created a political domino that led Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina to adopt the same policy. When the Upper South states embraced gradual abolition, they mostly dealt with their Blacks by selling slaves into the remaining slave slaves. This caused the vast majority of the Black population in the United States to get concentrated in the Deep South, Caribbean, and Gulf Coast states.
US control of the Great Lakes and British inability to meddle with Native tribes in the region defused Anglo-American tensions during the Napoleonic Wars enough to avert the War of 1812. A couple decades later, however, rising tensions in Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia against reactionary British colonial rule and local oligarchic elites caused a republican and democratic uprising backed by American sympathizers. Greater development because of the influx of Loyalist settlers and repressive Tory policies drove the Maritime colonies to follow the pattern of OTL Upper Canada. Widespread resentment among liberal English-speaking and Franco-Canadian settlers against reactionary British policies, US support, and parallel revolutionary turmoil in Britain gave momentum to the uprising. Border incidents during the conflict gave the USA a pretext to intervene, sealing the success of the rebellion. Because of recent revolutionary upheaval at home, Britain was unwilling to engage in another long and costly conflict with the Americans on their turf to keep a few rebellious colonies under its thumb, and recognized the independence of Lower Canada and the Maritime colonies.
The Canadian revolutionaries negotiated a few safeguards and guarantees for the language and legal system of the Franco-Canadians with the US government. Lower Canada (renamed Quebec), New Brunswick (renamed Acadia), and Nova Scotia joined the USA as free states. American control of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence waterway gave the USA an overwhelming advantage over Britain about settler colonization, economic development, and military force projection in Western Canada, which became more and more evident with westward expansion of the Frontier. This and the loss of Quebec and Acadia persuaded the British to cede Rupert’s Land and the Pacific Northwest to the USA. British colonies in North America got limited to Newfoundland, Vancouver Island, and the British West Indies.
Inclusion of the Canadian and Upper South states in the free section gradually gave it a decisive advantage in the federal government. All efforts to ensure retention of a political balance between the free and slave sections proved wholly unfeasible even with the help of the three-fifths rule as the slaveholding area gradually got limited to the Deep South, Caribbean, and Gulf Coast states. Frantic efforts by the slaveholders to compensate by territorial expansion drove the USA into victorious wars with Spain and Mexico. The pretexts for the conflicts arose from Spain’s refusal to discuss a peaceful purchase of its Caribbean colonies and the political status of the breakaway republics of Texas, Rio Grande, and California, which seceded from Mexico under the control of pro-US settlers.
Backwardness and chronic political instability of Spain and Mexico combined with the growing might of the USA gave the Americans an easy victory in both conflicts. The result was the US annexation of Cuba, East Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Texas, Rio Grande, California, the Southwest, and northern Mexico down to the Tropic of Cancer. Cuba, East Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico joined the Union as slave states. The slaveholders lobbied to divide Florida, Texas, Rio Grande, and California into several states (two for Florida, California, and Rio Grande, four for Texas) in the expectation that all of them but North California would support slavery.
The Congress approved the division plan, but reality frustrated the slavers’ expectations since a wave of free-soil settlers caused the northern Texan state and South California to vote against slavery in the end. Moreover, the precedent of state division and long-standing grievances between the Appalachian and lowland sections of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina inspired the counties of western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and northwestern North Carolina to secede from their respective states and form two new states. By the mid-19th century, purchase of Alaska from Russia and the North-Western Territory from Britain rounded up US rule of the North American continent from the Artic Polar Circle to the Tropic of Cancer.
By the half of the 19th century, perspectives increasingly turned bleak for slavery in the USA. The free section was getting overwhelmingly dominant in demographic, economic, and political terms, veto-proof supermajority in the federal government was within its grasp, ever less willing to cater or appease the interests of the slaveholding section, and increasingly prone to deem slavery immoral, outdated, and unsustainable, a burden and disgrace for the nation. This translated into increasingly severe legal limits to slavery in the Western territories and free-soil settlers steadily out-crowded slaveholding ones. The federal government increasingly adjusted the economic policies and infrastructure projects of the Union to favor Northern interests. The Congress and the free states repealed or nullified provisions for the return of fugitive slaves and gave them shelter. This led to the slaveholding states hemorrhaging increasing numbers of fugitive slaves to the free section. The courts gave the stamp of approval to federal and state antislavery policies. The North began to look with growing sympathy to proposals for a national compensated emancipation scheme and the moment seemed on the horizon when the free section would get the numbers to approve it.
Territorial expansion of slavery got its last hurrah when a group of Southern filibustering mercenaries took over Nicaragua, established a pro-slavery regime, and won the ensuing military conflict with the other Central American states. Filibuster Nicaragua conquered and annexed Costa Rica. It successfully withstood and repelled the invasion of the Central American alliance on the northern front, although it failed to conquer the rest of Central America. It then petitioned for admission to the USA as a slave state. Despite its misgivings, the free section supported the annexation because of Nicaragua’s considerable strategic value for the building of an inter-oceanic canal. Other filibuster attempts to conquer land in Mexico, Central America, or northern South America failed.
Out of growing desperation about the future of slavery in the Union, the slaveholding elites organized the secession of a Confederation of the Deep South, Caribbean, and Gulf Coast states. They did so despite the blatant demographic, economic, and military inferiority of their section, in the overconfident expectation that they would get foreign help and the martial prowess of their population would compensate for all their disadvantages. However, their expectations soon turned out massively exaggerated, since the other great powers turned out indifferent or hostile to the cause of the Confederation, and the superiority of the Union proved overwhelming. In less than a year, the secessionists were decisively defeated and forced to surrender. The political backlash of the rebellion drove the ratification of a few constitutional amendments that banned slavery and guaranteed civil and voting rights of the freedmen.
The Reconstruction amendments abolished slavery without compensation, extended citizenship to everyone born in the United States, and explicitly declared the Union indivisible and secession treason without consent of the Congress or the states. They also stripped the right to hold office from former Confederate government officials that had previously sworn loyalty to the US Constitution by holding federal or state offices, and most importantly created new federal civil rights that the courts could protect. The most far-ranging provision was the full extension of the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution to the states and the empowerment of Congress to legislate and protect those rights. The Reconstruction amendments also decreed that the United States or any state could not deny or limit the right to vote or hold office because of race, color, ethnicity, language, creed, or previous condition of servitude or because of the failure to pay poll taxes. The Congress also added prohibition of establishment of a national language and a guarantee that the states could keep a legal system that did not conflict with the US Constitution as a conciliatory measure for the Franco-Canadians and the Hispanics.
To lessen the social burden of integrating the freedmen in Southern society, the federal government implemented a mix of approaches, including socio-economic relief, expropriation of planter elites and land reform, immigration in the Western territories or various nations of Latin America, or resettlement in West Africa. A sizable portion of less fortunate US Blacks were sold to Brazil before the slavers’ uprising. As many stubborn slaveowners embraced the foolhardy scheme of secession, many other more foresighted ones instead realized the inevitable demise of slavery in the USA and smuggled their slaves as contraband to Brazil, often with the neglect or connivance of federal and state authorities. Many freedmen that continued to live in the USA remained part of the underclass and often faced widespread social discrimination and socio-economic hardship, especially if they remained in the Southern states. As a rule, however, the attempts of White racists to impose a regime of legal segregation and second-class citizenship on the freedmen failed and a sizable Black and ‘poor White’ minority arose in Southern society to counterbalance the power of the old elites.
Events in Latin America during and after independence wars took place more or less the same way as OTL, with a couple important exceptions. A combination of a few timely deaths, military victories, and sensible political compromises allowed Gran Colombia and the United Provinces of Rio de la Plata (alter renamed Argentina) to stabilize as federal unions that kept control of most lands in the former Viceroyalties of New Grenada and Rio de la Plata respectively. Argentina in particular grew into a fairly functional, stable, and liberal federal republic on the US model. Successful integration of Buenos Aries, Montevideo, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Caterina in Argentina consolidated its hegemony over the Platine region with considerable benefits in terms of political stability and economic development. It achieved this status first by defending its rule on Banda Oriental against the expansionist ambitions of the Brazilian Empire, then by supporting Republican rebels in Southern Brazil against the Imperial regime.
ITTL the Patriots reaped a little more military and diplomatic success during the last phase of the ARW so in addition to its OTL gains the USA also got Upper Canada at the peace table. The area joined the Union as two free states during the early 19th century. American Loyalists mostly went to Quebec, the Maritimes, and Newfoundland. The USA approved the Land Ordinance of 1784 that regulated the status of US territories with the antislavery provision proposed by Jefferson that forbid slavery in the territories. This created a precedent that caused Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Arkansas to join the Union as free states. However, the Southern states successfully lobbied the Congress for the admission of Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana as slave states. The example of its western neighbors eventually persuaded Virginia to implement gradual emancipation of slaves. This in turn created a political domino that led Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina to adopt the same policy. When the Upper South states embraced gradual abolition, they mostly dealt with their Blacks by selling slaves into the remaining slave slaves. This caused the vast majority of the Black population in the United States to get concentrated in the Deep South, Caribbean, and Gulf Coast states.
US control of the Great Lakes and British inability to meddle with Native tribes in the region defused Anglo-American tensions during the Napoleonic Wars enough to avert the War of 1812. A couple decades later, however, rising tensions in Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia against reactionary British colonial rule and local oligarchic elites caused a republican and democratic uprising backed by American sympathizers. Greater development because of the influx of Loyalist settlers and repressive Tory policies drove the Maritime colonies to follow the pattern of OTL Upper Canada. Widespread resentment among liberal English-speaking and Franco-Canadian settlers against reactionary British policies, US support, and parallel revolutionary turmoil in Britain gave momentum to the uprising. Border incidents during the conflict gave the USA a pretext to intervene, sealing the success of the rebellion. Because of recent revolutionary upheaval at home, Britain was unwilling to engage in another long and costly conflict with the Americans on their turf to keep a few rebellious colonies under its thumb, and recognized the independence of Lower Canada and the Maritime colonies.
The Canadian revolutionaries negotiated a few safeguards and guarantees for the language and legal system of the Franco-Canadians with the US government. Lower Canada (renamed Quebec), New Brunswick (renamed Acadia), and Nova Scotia joined the USA as free states. American control of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence waterway gave the USA an overwhelming advantage over Britain about settler colonization, economic development, and military force projection in Western Canada, which became more and more evident with westward expansion of the Frontier. This and the loss of Quebec and Acadia persuaded the British to cede Rupert’s Land and the Pacific Northwest to the USA. British colonies in North America got limited to Newfoundland, Vancouver Island, and the British West Indies.
Inclusion of the Canadian and Upper South states in the free section gradually gave it a decisive advantage in the federal government. All efforts to ensure retention of a political balance between the free and slave sections proved wholly unfeasible even with the help of the three-fifths rule as the slaveholding area gradually got limited to the Deep South, Caribbean, and Gulf Coast states. Frantic efforts by the slaveholders to compensate by territorial expansion drove the USA into victorious wars with Spain and Mexico. The pretexts for the conflicts arose from Spain’s refusal to discuss a peaceful purchase of its Caribbean colonies and the political status of the breakaway republics of Texas, Rio Grande, and California, which seceded from Mexico under the control of pro-US settlers.
Backwardness and chronic political instability of Spain and Mexico combined with the growing might of the USA gave the Americans an easy victory in both conflicts. The result was the US annexation of Cuba, East Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Texas, Rio Grande, California, the Southwest, and northern Mexico down to the Tropic of Cancer. Cuba, East Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico joined the Union as slave states. The slaveholders lobbied to divide Florida, Texas, Rio Grande, and California into several states (two for Florida, California, and Rio Grande, four for Texas) in the expectation that all of them but North California would support slavery.
The Congress approved the division plan, but reality frustrated the slavers’ expectations since a wave of free-soil settlers caused the northern Texan state and South California to vote against slavery in the end. Moreover, the precedent of state division and long-standing grievances between the Appalachian and lowland sections of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina inspired the counties of western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and northwestern North Carolina to secede from their respective states and form two new states. By the mid-19th century, purchase of Alaska from Russia and the North-Western Territory from Britain rounded up US rule of the North American continent from the Artic Polar Circle to the Tropic of Cancer.
By the half of the 19th century, perspectives increasingly turned bleak for slavery in the USA. The free section was getting overwhelmingly dominant in demographic, economic, and political terms, veto-proof supermajority in the federal government was within its grasp, ever less willing to cater or appease the interests of the slaveholding section, and increasingly prone to deem slavery immoral, outdated, and unsustainable, a burden and disgrace for the nation. This translated into increasingly severe legal limits to slavery in the Western territories and free-soil settlers steadily out-crowded slaveholding ones. The federal government increasingly adjusted the economic policies and infrastructure projects of the Union to favor Northern interests. The Congress and the free states repealed or nullified provisions for the return of fugitive slaves and gave them shelter. This led to the slaveholding states hemorrhaging increasing numbers of fugitive slaves to the free section. The courts gave the stamp of approval to federal and state antislavery policies. The North began to look with growing sympathy to proposals for a national compensated emancipation scheme and the moment seemed on the horizon when the free section would get the numbers to approve it.
Territorial expansion of slavery got its last hurrah when a group of Southern filibustering mercenaries took over Nicaragua, established a pro-slavery regime, and won the ensuing military conflict with the other Central American states. Filibuster Nicaragua conquered and annexed Costa Rica. It successfully withstood and repelled the invasion of the Central American alliance on the northern front, although it failed to conquer the rest of Central America. It then petitioned for admission to the USA as a slave state. Despite its misgivings, the free section supported the annexation because of Nicaragua’s considerable strategic value for the building of an inter-oceanic canal. Other filibuster attempts to conquer land in Mexico, Central America, or northern South America failed.
Out of growing desperation about the future of slavery in the Union, the slaveholding elites organized the secession of a Confederation of the Deep South, Caribbean, and Gulf Coast states. They did so despite the blatant demographic, economic, and military inferiority of their section, in the overconfident expectation that they would get foreign help and the martial prowess of their population would compensate for all their disadvantages. However, their expectations soon turned out massively exaggerated, since the other great powers turned out indifferent or hostile to the cause of the Confederation, and the superiority of the Union proved overwhelming. In less than a year, the secessionists were decisively defeated and forced to surrender. The political backlash of the rebellion drove the ratification of a few constitutional amendments that banned slavery and guaranteed civil and voting rights of the freedmen.
The Reconstruction amendments abolished slavery without compensation, extended citizenship to everyone born in the United States, and explicitly declared the Union indivisible and secession treason without consent of the Congress or the states. They also stripped the right to hold office from former Confederate government officials that had previously sworn loyalty to the US Constitution by holding federal or state offices, and most importantly created new federal civil rights that the courts could protect. The most far-ranging provision was the full extension of the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution to the states and the empowerment of Congress to legislate and protect those rights. The Reconstruction amendments also decreed that the United States or any state could not deny or limit the right to vote or hold office because of race, color, ethnicity, language, creed, or previous condition of servitude or because of the failure to pay poll taxes. The Congress also added prohibition of establishment of a national language and a guarantee that the states could keep a legal system that did not conflict with the US Constitution as a conciliatory measure for the Franco-Canadians and the Hispanics.
To lessen the social burden of integrating the freedmen in Southern society, the federal government implemented a mix of approaches, including socio-economic relief, expropriation of planter elites and land reform, immigration in the Western territories or various nations of Latin America, or resettlement in West Africa. A sizable portion of less fortunate US Blacks were sold to Brazil before the slavers’ uprising. As many stubborn slaveowners embraced the foolhardy scheme of secession, many other more foresighted ones instead realized the inevitable demise of slavery in the USA and smuggled their slaves as contraband to Brazil, often with the neglect or connivance of federal and state authorities. Many freedmen that continued to live in the USA remained part of the underclass and often faced widespread social discrimination and socio-economic hardship, especially if they remained in the Southern states. As a rule, however, the attempts of White racists to impose a regime of legal segregation and second-class citizenship on the freedmen failed and a sizable Black and ‘poor White’ minority arose in Southern society to counterbalance the power of the old elites.
Events in Latin America during and after independence wars took place more or less the same way as OTL, with a couple important exceptions. A combination of a few timely deaths, military victories, and sensible political compromises allowed Gran Colombia and the United Provinces of Rio de la Plata (alter renamed Argentina) to stabilize as federal unions that kept control of most lands in the former Viceroyalties of New Grenada and Rio de la Plata respectively. Argentina in particular grew into a fairly functional, stable, and liberal federal republic on the US model. Successful integration of Buenos Aries, Montevideo, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Caterina in Argentina consolidated its hegemony over the Platine region with considerable benefits in terms of political stability and economic development. It achieved this status first by defending its rule on Banda Oriental against the expansionist ambitions of the Brazilian Empire, then by supporting Republican rebels in Southern Brazil against the Imperial regime.