While reading Jonathan Israel's
Expanding Blaze I came across something interesting, well bunches of interesting things, but for this item I'm looking at
Thomas Paine's reaction to the
Louisiana Purchase.
Tom Paine thought of two things when the Louisiana Purchase was confirmed. A) Keep the local French Royalists and Oligarchs from taking it over, B) prevent the spread of Slavery. My alternate focuses on the second issue.
One of Paine's plans was to attract large amounts of Free African Americans to Louisiana by offering them to chance to buy land through labor. Basically if an African-American knew how to farm in the Louisiana climate, they could claim land and pay for it with produce. There are more details than that, but Paine's plans got shot down, all of them. Jefferson was as bitterly disappointed as Paine.
In this Q6 reality (
Tom Paine-7)Paine's allies made subtle appeals to planter prejudice, both against black folks and Catholics, and got some of the plan passed. It's now 1830, Andrew Jackson is President. Louisiana and Arkansas both have sent Black Senators and Congressmen to Washington. An alliance of working class Whites, with Blacks and Indians, basically runs Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. They are less than thrilled with Jackson, as they call themselves
Painites much as most American radicals did in the 1780's, John Quincy Adams disliked them too.
Basically a very different early America. The politics of the lower Mississippi is radically different, They are still expansionist. And the Slavery question is even more volatile in this American Southwest.
Andrew Jackson knows that the
Five Civilized Tribes have close allies here, and some Indians are in congress. This fight won't be pretty, or merely two sided.