The Anti-Slavery War of 1834 - An Alternate History Thought Experiment

 

The interactions this summer of the political scene and the pandemic presented the 4^th of July to me differently this year.  I found it difficult to carry on with my annual watching of the film musical “1776” knowing that it would meaning watching the Southern colonies hold American Independence hostage to their ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery.  Which sent my mind to work on a thought problem exercise of “What if the Continental Congress failed to agree upon the Declaration of Independence?” 

Historian Niall Ferguson wrote in “Virtual History” that in doing alternate history, it is important to make the smallest possible alteration that will lead to the greatest changes.  Guided by that thought, the simplest possible change from which to launch this thought experiment is -   

·         The Continental Congress rejects the proposed Declaration of Independence over the issue of slavery in early July, 1776.  The Southern delegates begin withdrawing from the collapsing Congress and returning home beginning with the two Carolinas.  Georgian, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware reluctantly complete this withdrawal during August as the British Army drives Washington out of New York.

Washington’s attempted Christmas attack at Trenton is a dismal failure.  The General is killed trying to rally his rear guard covering the shattered army’s attempted retreat to its boats.  General Henry Knox drowns attempting to get the American artillery back across the river under fire.  After action criticism focused upon too complicated a battle plan and reliance upon militia against professionals with both Hessian and British reinforcements.

In January, a Commission is mandated by the Crown to offer the American rebels pardons (with some exceptions including John Adams), to allow judges to serve on condition of good behavior, and to promise to discuss colonial grievances (except the Quebec Act) in exchange for a cease-fire, the final official dissolution of the Continental Congress, the re-establishment of the pre-war (traditional) colonial assemblies, the acceptance of Lord North's Conciliatory Proposal and compensation for the Loyalists adversely affected by the war. 

Patrick Henry – exiled (friends in Virginia, which stays loyal, intercede)

Samuel Adams – arrested and brought to London for trial and execution (hanged, drawn, and quartered)

John Adams – arrested and brought to London for trial (hanged, drawn and quartered – after his brother Samuel)

Thomas Jefferson – arrested and brought to London for trial and execution (hanged, drawn, and quartered, the last of all)

Benjamin Franklin – eludes capture (rumored to have been engineered by friends in Britain) and lives out his days in Paris

Thomas Paine – eludes arrest in the American colonies, reaches Europe and by staying on the move, eludes arrest until 1789 when he is arrested in France and imprisoned.

This leaves the 13 American colonies under British rule.  Crown policy limits them to the area between the Atlantic and the main crest of the Appalachian Mountains.  The territories beyond the mountains are reserved for the various Native American tribes.  The colonies continue to see immigration though less than in our timeline because there is less available ‘free’ land.

Without the debt burden incurred in supporting the American struggle for independence and without the example of that successful revolution, France does not face the pressures leading to revolution in 1789 – buying it some time.

Now we begin to run into what I call ‘the multiple body problem’ – the farther removed we are from our point of alteration in history, the more unknowns accumulate. 

Unanswered Questions:

·         Without a French Revolution and the following wars between France the rest of Europe, what conflicts may have occurred in Europe and on what scale?

·         What further reforms might France’s Royalist Army introduce (not to mention the French Navy)?

·         The Holy Roman Empire survives and it and Russia are both eyeing the weakening Ottoman Empire’s holdings around the Black Sea and in the Balkans. 

·         What revolutionary movements might emerge where in Europe and with what degree of success?

However, we can anchor our alternative timeline on two other points from our history:

1 May 1807 – The Slave Trade Act 1807, officially An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire. Although it did not abolish the practice of slavery, it did encourage British action to press other nation states to abolish their own slave trades and it would require an end to the trade between Britain’ slaveholding colonies in North America and the Caribbean and their African sources.

The invention of the Cotton Gin in 1794 by the Colonial American inventor Eli Whitney supported the expanded cultivation of cotton in the southern colonies, sustained by the supply of labor in the form of enslaved Africans brought to the colonies and sold to the growing number of planters.  The trade is in part financed by investors and speculators throughout the colonies (concentrated in New York and Boston) who have few other outlets of investment in the colonies.  Financial investment activity in the American colonies tended to follow patterns established in London but focused almost entirely on the colonies including some investment in the trade with the African coast until 1807. 

With Spain still holding Florida and the Gulf Coast to Louisiana as well as all lands west of the Mississippi River, Spain and Portugal became unofficial beneficiaries of the ongoing slave trade, needing the profits to support their respective wars as they attempted to hold on to their colonial empires in the Americas.  Slaves from Africa are shipped through Florida and the Gulf Coast up to and around New Orleans and then sold to planters inland.  Cherokee efforts to adopt “civilized” ways meant that they too are adopting plantation agriculture using enslaved Africans for manpower.

From 1776 then through 1807, we come to 1833:

The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73) abolished slavery in parts of the British Empire, effective 1834 – one year after passage. This Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom expanded the jurisdiction of the Slave Trade Act 1807 and made the purchase or ownership of slaves illegal within the British Empire, with the exception of "the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company" including Saint Helena.

The Act provided for payments to slave-owners. Historically, the amount of money to be spent on the payments was set at "the Sum of Twenty Million Pounds Sterling” to pay out for the loss of the slaves as business assets to the registered owners of the freed slaves. In 1833, £20 million amounted to 40% of the Treasury's annual income or approximately 5% of British GDP at the time. To finance the payments, the British government took on a £15 million loan, finalized on 3 August 1835, with banker Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore; £5 million was paid out directly in government stock, worth £1.5 billion in present day. The money was not paid back by the British taxpayers until 2015, when the British Government decided to modernize the gilt portfolio by redeeming all remaining undated gilts. The long gap between this money being borrowed and its repayment was due to the type of financial instrument that was used, rather than the amount of money borrowed.

Historically, half of the money went to slave-owning families in the Caribbean and Africa, while the other half went to absentee owners living in Britain. The names listed in the returns for slave owner payments show that ownership was spread over many hundreds of British families,[28] many of them (though not all) of high social standing. For example, Henry Phillpotts (then the Bishop of Exeter), with three others (as trustees and executors of the will of John Ward, 1st Earl of Dudley), was paid £12,700 for 665 slaves in the West Indies, whilst Henry Lascelles, 2nd Earl of Harewood received £26,309 for 2,554 slaves on 6 plantations. The majority of men and women who were paid under the 1833 Abolition Act are listed in a Parliamentary Return, entitled Slavery Abolition Act, which is an account of all moneys awarded by the Commissioners of Slave Compensation in the Parliamentary Papers 1837–8 (215) vol. 48.

Here is another point at which our history and this alternate history collide.  In our history, there were over 2 million slaves in 1830.  At rates approximately the same as noted above – this could cost the British Crown thirty million pounds.  Such an expense might

1) stop the abolition movement in its tracks;

2) result in less generous payments to the owners of slaves, possibly bankrupting some owners; or,

3) a determined Government in London could seek another process for abolition of slavery.

But even with the fullest historical rate of compensation, the planters in the southern American colonies might consider resisting the Crown.  After all, they seceded in 1861 with even less a definitive threat of abolition.

In this timeline they are not facing the might of the British Empire that defeated Napoleon, but a military power relatively little changed from that which defeated the attempted American rebellion just over 50 years earlier – with some technological improvements.  I see this as a conflict much on the scale of our timeline’s War of 1812 with armies made up of brigades.  Native American allies for both sides would number perhaps a 1,000 total, parceled out in 2-300 hundred per “field army” and used as scouts and screens against the other side’s scouts.

It would not be unreasonable to suppose that a coalition might emerge between genuine abolitionists in the other colonies and those individuals in the ‘northern’ colonies who still hold grudges against the southern colonies for sabotaging independence in 1776.  Such a coalition might offer strong support to the Crown in a conflict aimed at eliminating slavery in North America. 

My personal casting of the Major Characters for this drama follows:

Commander in Chief, British Forces – (London) – General Rowland Hill, 1st Viscount Hill

Colonial Secretary (London) – Sir George Murray (1772-1846)

Governor-General of British North America and Lieutenant Governor of Lower Canada – General the Right Honorable The Lord Aylmer (1775-1850)

Commander, Royal Naval force for the North American Expedition (sailing from Cork) – Admiral Thomas Cochrane

Commander, British Expedition to North America – General Sir Charles James Napier (1782-1853)

Commander of American Colonial forces - General Winfield Scott (June 13, 1786 – May 29, 1866) senior American militia commander, he served as a general in the United States Army from 1814 to 1861, most experienced member of British forces of American birth (Virginia).

John Quincy Adams (July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as Royal Governor of Massachusetts from 1825 to 1835.   He was the eldest son of John Adams (executed after the failure of the American Revolution in 1777).  His widowed mother, Abigal Adams, was determined to see that John Quincy’s prospects would not be tarnished by his father’s fate and lobbied diligently on his behalf until her death in 1818.  His career was further facilitated by evolving British attitudes towards both the failed revolution and by the economic growth of the colonies.  This changing attitude reflected in part the influence of the romanticized version presented in the novels of James Fennimore Cooper, often called “the American Sir Walter Scott”.  Adams was a key figure in supporting the abolition of slavery after the 1833 act, rumored to be in part driven by a desire to punish the Southern slave states for their ‘betrayal’ of his father in the Continental Congress.

Candidate for command of the Southern rebels:  Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American soldier and statesman born in the colonial Carolinas.  Here I am considering geography and an altered life experience in this alternate timeline as leaving Jackson more amenable to being a defender of slavery even if this Jackson chooses to consider the struggle to be one against the overreaching parliament across the Atlantic versus the ‘yeoman farmers’ of the Americas.

 

 

"Hurrying Heinz" Guderian Talked Tanks in 1937

In 1931, Lieutenant-Colonel Heinz Guderian was named chief of staff to the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops, the center of Germany's work on mobile warfare and armored forces.  Guderian was the public advocate while his new boss General major Lutz worked behind the scenes.  Guderian reached out to leaders of the Nazi regime to promote the panzer force concept, attract support, and secure resources, including a demonstration for Hitler himself.  Lutz persuaded, cajoled, and compensated for Guderian's often arrogant and argumentative behavior.  In autumn 1936, Lutz asked Guderian to write a book that promoted the Mobile Troops Command and strategic mechanized warfare. The resulting work was “Achtung! Panzer!”.  First published in German in 1937, Guderian’s best-selling book remained in print for much of the war but was only translated into English in 1992 by historian Christopher Duffy.   (His memoirs, “Panzer Leader”, appeared in English in 1952).  The book opens with a preface from General der Panzertruppen Lutz.

With 10 chapters, each with two to five subheadings, the first 133 pages recount the history of armored warfare from the World War I British and French introduction of tanks, and eventually Germany’s limited adoption of them.  Drawing on the information available to him in 1937, Guderian provides a professional military assessment of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of their use during the Great War.  He includes 14 maps to illustrate the various battles.  In the following sections of the book, he surveys post-Great War developments regarding tanks and tank warfare, technically, tactically, and organizationally.  This segment also lays out Guderian’s distillation of Germany’s (and his own) thinking on tank warfare. 

Guderian’s analysis of the Great War battles reflects his own thoughts on tactics and especially tactics for mechanized warfare.  The evolution of the tank to mounting a single main cannon in a turret capable of 360 movement sets the standard for tank armament – supported by multiple machine guns.  He dismisses the Spanish Civil War as fielding too few tanks on any battlefield to offer any serious insights.  His most interesting revelation is that the German mechanized force, rather than start with a blank page, adapted the British Army’s 1927 Provisional Instructions on Tank and Armoured Car Training, Part II as its first manual, subsequently modified to reflect Germany’s own lessons, experiences, and thoughts.  Guderian freely admitted that the British and French had led the way in armor and tactics at the end of the Great War while Germany neglected to develop either

Each chapter includes endnotes provided by the translator and there is a one page bibliography of works cited by Guderian.  This edition includes 40 black and white photographs of tanks of day (1916 to 1937) as well as the classic profile photo of Guderian himself.   Unfortunately, the photos and captions are not tied to related points in the text.  The imagery and Guderian’s original text clearly rely upon the classic reference work of the day, Taschenbuch der Tanks, by Heigl.

With an admittedly limited focus and only a short vision into the future (because of technology limitations), the book addressed two important questions which would require answering if an army was to be mechanized.

How will the army be supplied with fuel, spares and replacement vehicles?

And how to move large mechanized forces, especially those that are road-bound?

Guderian answered these questions in discussions of three broad areas: refueling; spares parts; and access to roads.  He also called for radio receivers in all tanks as well as transmitters in command vehicles (in these pre-transceiver days).   One additional point, reflecting both his historical analysis and in his prescripts for the future use of tanks, is the emphasis upon mass – concentrating armor into a major element in either attack or defense (usually by counterattack) rather than scattering and dissipating the power of armor by distributing it amongst and tying it to the infantry. 

From our modern perspective, the ideas Guderian presented on how armored units should be organized and how they should fight are not surprising.  And even in period, the ideas were all out there but no one had brought so many of them together and helped implement them as early and completely.  The lessons of actual combat would offer further developments and tweaks but it’s all pretty much here.

•             “we have no desire to impose a rigid tactical framework”

•             “most important mission is not infantry support, but to destroy the enemy anti-tank defenses and suppress or blind the enemy artillery” first

•             “The tanks will go ahead of the infantry when an extensive tract of open ground has to be traversed before the break-in.  When the two sides are in close contact and the terrain favors the attack, the tanks will attack simultaneously with the infantry; the infantry will have to attack under artillery cover ahead of the tanks when we need to overcome initial obstacles – a stretch of river, for example, or barriers or minefields – before the tanks can intervene” 

•             What was needed was a “modern and fast moving force of infantry possessing strong fire power, and specially equipped, organized and trained in permanent co-operation with tanks”

•             “if… rifle units were united permanently with tanks in a single formation, it would form a comradeship of army in time of peace – a comradeship that would prove its worth”

•             “Airpower’s role is to “bring the entire depth of the enemy defense under simultaneous attack” and to ‘delay intervention of enemy reserves” road and rail traffic, command centers and the whole communications system…troop accommodations… - paratroops and air-landing forces”

Guderian offers a number of positive references to Hitler and his importance to the panzers, including Hitler’s words about motorization and mechanization at the 1937 Automobile Exhibition.  Guderian would later say “The Fuhrer is a man of vision….[who] recognized the enormous significance …of road construction which is massive in scale and carried through on consistent principles….7,000 kilometers of autobahn.”  Two and a half pages are dedicated to the “The Versailles Diktat” and how the Germans looked for loopholes.  It is also generally known that Guderian was one of the very few generals to repeatedly challenge Hitler’s views and decisions and survive, although it cost him field commands on more than one occasion.

Guderian and his staff surrendered to U.S. forces on 10 May 1945.  He answered Allied questions and denied being an ardent supporter of Nazism.  He avoided conviction at the Nuremberg Trials because there was no substantial documentary evidence against him at that time, though having joined the U.S. Army Historical Division in 1945, the U.S. refused requests from the Soviet Union to have him extradited.

While interned by the Americans, his conversations were secretly taped. In one such recording, in conversation with Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb and General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, Guderian said, "The fundamental principles [of Nazism] were fine".  Guderian was released from captivity without trial in 1948.  He retired to Schwangau near Füssen in Southern Bavaria and began writing. He remained an ardent German nationalist for the rest of his life.  He died on May 14, 1954 at the age of 65.

“Achtung! Panzer!” remains an important milestone in the history of the development of armor and mechanized warfare, collecting and presenting principles for their use that still apply today.  It is also an important historical work for understanding the thinking and operational art of the German army during the Second World War.