Realistically, how long could slavery have lasted had the south won the civil war?

[mrmitchell]

Thanks Gepap.

Sharecropping continued to deteriorate life in the South long after the Civil War was over. At least in Arkansas, by 1930, the only real effect of abolition was the elimination of the rich plantation owner class. 40% of farms were mortgaged and high taxes ruined many landowners (the ones that were supposed to be well off!) Many farms ended up being owned by absentee landlords or insurance companies. Since sharecropping wasn't just a job but a way of life, many landlords never moved on but instead became tenant farmers themselves.

The result was that by the 1930s, 60% of the entire state's farmers were tenant farmers (sharecroppers), over 90% in counties in the Mississippi Delta. Tenants on average had an income of $284, including the value of their home gardens, in 1934, with a high birth rate, sunup to sundown workdays, and abuse of the tenant by many landlords. It was illegal for a sharecropper to move away, except once crops had been harvested, and "at least one planter kept barbed wire stockades and used force to keep tenants." (All this information comes from "Arkansas Odyssey," an excellent AR history textbook.)

So how does this relate to the original post? Slavery set the South up for this. No middle class developed at any point before the dream of agricultural life was defeated. No matter how long slavery could have hypothetically lasted, the end result would always be the same.

[Odin]

Originally posted by mrmitchell
It was illegal for a sharecropper to move away, except once crops had been harvested, and "at least one planter kept barbed wire stockades and used force to keep tenants."

My God, this sounds like serfdom.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by mrmitchell
It was illegal for a sharecropper to move away, except once crops had been harvested, and "at least one planter kept barbed wire stockades and used force to keep tenants." (All this information comes from "Arkansas Odyssey," an excellent AR history textbook.)

So how does this relate to the original post? Slavery set the South up for this. No middle class developed at any point before the dream of agricultural life was defeated. No matter how long slavery could have hypothetically lasted, the end result would always be the same.

Actually more than just one planter used force to keep his black tenants on their farms. One of the original purposes of the KKK was to keep blacks in their place, i.e., prevent them from leaving the plantations. Even after the KKK was officially suppressed popular action, i.e., lynching, kept blacks where the white farmers wanted them. There are many tales of labor recruiters coming down to the South to bring blacks to Northern factories being beaten or murdered.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Odin


My God, this sounds like serfdom.

It was serfdom, and that gets to the real question: not how long slavery would have lasted, but at what point blacks would have been given, in fact as well as theory, the same rights as whites, and how that would have happened.

The scenario is actually rather interesting. I would imagine that slavery would have ended fairly quickly in the CSA, because the CSA's major trade partner would have been the anti-slavery UK. What would have taken its place would have been a kind of feudal Apartheid.

So far, of course, that's no different from what actually did happen.

But now comes the really interesting question: what if there had been no Great Migration? That is, what if, as the Union industrialized, CSA blacks had not had the freedom to move to Northern cities? Now you've got a very different South -- one that might well be majority-black. You also have a South that suffers even more mightily during the Great Depression, since a greater percentage of its GNP woudl be agricultural.

So the final question is: would the CSA finally end in race-based revolution, a la South Africa, or struggle along as a multi-racial third world country, a la Brazil? Those seem to me the only likely outcomes.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by alva
There's a connection between the war and slavery?

Yes, because the rapidly developing industries in the North were in desperate need of labor.

As a result, even if the South had won, slaves would still flee in mass to the North. And a second war would have been won by the North.

[Nickiow]

Re: Realistically, how long could slavery have lasted had the south won the civil war?

Originally posted by Dis
Or the north chose not to fight it?

I know you guys hate what if threads. But this is a social question. How much longer could the civilized (I use that term loosely) world accepted the institution of slavery?

Slavery is a form of economic behavoir, if there was no WBTS there is no economic grounds to argue that slavery would ever end, a slave can operate simple machinary, cheaper than a free man its really that simple.

When the North took a stand on the non extension of slavery its the economic issue thats most important, free whites cannot compete economicly with labour costs that undercut them a slave wrking in any industry will therfore be the most economic means of labour and slavery will not on economic grounds ever end, the degree of slavery may change, ie reward punishment etc.

[Theben]

It certainly wouldn't have lasted past MrFun's biting critiques.

[Bill3000]

Slavery is not that viable when the North already has Emancipation, making the cities of the South to have more unhappy citizens. As well, population rushing can be quite inefficient and is not much of a benefit by itself- Serfdom is much better.

[snoopy369]

/me directs OPer to the following:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345406141/qid=1131985455/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-0386991-1444715?v=glance&s=books

Turtledove's series starts with the assumption that the South wins, and goes from there He's a Ph. D. in history, and an amazing writer. Also not a slouch when it comes to hitting the issues ...

The series is still going, unfortunately ... I only say unfortunately because I can't really read a series of >10 books, I get bored with it regardless of its awesomeness - it's just too much repetition. But, How Few Remain is a single stand-alone book, and after HFR he writes in trilogies, the first two come to a pretty solid ending...

[Lawrence of Arabia]

how long would the south have had slavery? i'd say it would still be continuing today. with all the crackpots and white trash down there, theres no way that reason and enlightenment would ever have reached them in sufficient numbers to change public opinion.

[Stefu]

The scenario is actually rather interesting. I would imagine that slavery would have ended fairly quickly in the CSA, because the CSA's major trade partner would have been the anti-slavery UK. What would have taken its place would have been a kind of feudal Apartheid.

Of course, that's presuming that the Southern elites would rather choose abolition than being an international pariah - not at all a foregone conclusion. I'd imagine that after Confederacy had won the war for independence, against insurmountable odds, it would validate slavery would be validated as much as to become holy writ in the minds of the plantation class (and a fair number of other whites as well.)

[lord of the mark]

cmon, as everyone knows, slavery would have been abolished around 1880 by the President Longstreet, in return for british support in the second war between the states. But a rigid system of pass laws would have been instituted instead. The North would not have attracted many runaways, due to the intense racism associated with the blame placed on blacks for the bloody, losing first war.


dayum, i just realized snoopy has already posted a link to Turteldove

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
There was a good document on the matter... (Or so I'm told, have not been able to, hum, acquire it from anywhere...)

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389828/

I wonder how they went with it?

Trailer: http://a.videodetective.com/?PublishedID=203237

[MrFun]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
It's estimated that slavery would have gone away within 5 years. The South sededed because they didn't like the North sticking their big honkers into their business.
No, I don't have a source to quote. Believe it or not, it makes no difference to me. It's a dead issue.

And this nonsense comes from the same person who once said that the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction era was necessary in order to maintain order.

[Vesayen]

Mechanized farming would not end slavery, but it would change the scale, and the jobs slaves would do.

Even our society has worthless jobs no one wants to do-they'd do those instead.