Historical What If: Confederate States

[Kontiki]

Alright, let's say when the South wanted to secede, the North just said "ok, enjoy your independent crappiness ". How do things play out? Do they eventually rejoin the North, either peacefully or through invasion? How does the westward expansion happen (or does it)? What are the global implications?

Discuss.

[LordShiva]

Teh US would complain about illegal immigrants from teh backward CS rather than Mexico.

[Patroklos]

The CSA conquers the North in 30 years.

[lord of the mark]

1. If the US is going to let them go, I presume that means the south will get no territories beyond texas. Maybe the North will let Oklahoma go (since the dominant tribes there want to go) but no new Mexico or Arizona. The west will be settled by free white pioneers, for the most part. Also, the north will insist on the right of free navigation on the Mississippi.

2. Some fire eaters will want to reopen the slave trade. Given the desire of existing slaveowners to maintain the value of their slaves, and the need to remain friends with Great Britain, this will not happen. Some folks in the CSA will want to filibuster in the Carib and central america. Again, UK will make sure the CSA govt will not allow this.

3. If this happens peacefully, we wont have seen the big growth in the CSA central govt that happened during the war. States rights may be more real than in a CSA wins at Gettysburg scenario.

4. With the north gone, there will be class conflict between poor white southerners, esp mountaineers, and planters. The north may try to exploit this, but that might backfire. Or maybe not, as in this scen theres been no war.

5. The North will go looking for long term alliances, as in Turtledove.

6. There will be large numbers of blacks fleeing north, where there is no longer a fugitive slave act. This could lead to more authoritarian measures in the South.

7. The Empire of Mexico will survive, at least for a while.

8. The Second Reform act in the UK may be impacted.

9. The CSA will maintain free trade, and will NOT industrialize. Or maybe not.

10. CSA politics will be dominated by the issues of free trade, mountaineer vs planter class conflict, as well as by slavery and relations with the US and UK.

11. There will be a couple of million more people around north and south. Wages in general will be lower, and as a result immigration from Europe to the US will be lower. The US working class will be both more poorly paid, and more native born than in OTL, which may exacerbate class conflict in the north, though with less influence of "foreign ideologies".

There will be larger European migration elsewhere, such as South America and Australia.

[Patroklos]

The CSA will maintain free trade, and will NOT industrialize. Or maybe not.

There will be no differnece in this regard that there was in reality. Once free from running water industry will move South. Especially since there will be a requirement to produce things independant of the North.

[Lancer]

WWI is won by the Germans in europe and the USA in America.

The German's allies, the Confederate States can't take the US but do distract the US from the war in europe enough that we can't help much in keeping the sea lanes open or resupplying the allies there. France falls in 1918, the Brits are starved into a seperate peace. German control/alliances stretch across europe and to the Persian Gulf, but they are exausted rulers of a ravaged landscape. The US conquers the south and brings it back into the union but after 40+ years of independance it will be restive for decades which forces the US to be much more imperialistic.

WWII looks like a land and also great naval war. The US/Brits/Russians vs the Germans/Austro Hungarians/Turks and Japanese. The Italians would be neutral because their place would be taken by their competitors, the AHians.

The war would be brutal on the surface of the oceans with niether side ready to grant the other supremacy of the seas. If the allies lose the oceans then the Brits will duck out again, and the Russian will be isolated, the war lost and the Germans would be the great super power of europe for the forseeable future. More likely the Germans lose the oceans they will revert to sub warfare, but will be able to supply their empire by rail from the vast areas conquered in WWI. Their allies the Japanese will be conquered and the Japanese islands made part of the imperialist US.

China will emerge as the third force in the coming decades with both sides wooing them.

Eventually someone comes up with nukes and all bets are off.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Patroklos


There will be no differnece in this regard that there was in reality. Once free from running water industry will move South. Especially since there will be a requirement to produce things independant of the North.

why, when manufactured goods from England are so cheap? Cheaper than Northern goods, which required a tariff wall to compete. You are aware that that was one of the main arguments for intervention in UK during the OTL war? And that, slavery aside, the threat of tariffs on southern terms of trade was the souths main substantive grievance with the north prewar?

Nah, selling cotton and importing manufactures is too lucrative. OTOH industrializing will have lots of appeal to hungry moutaineer types, more of whom are alive in this scenario. So Im thinking a free trade party, led by large planters, and a southern industry party, led by mountain types. When the planters attack the mountaineers for being not confederate enough, or not racially conscious enough, the mountaineers will tout the industrial program on national security grounds. The planters party will be friendlier toward the UK than the mountaineers, though the latter wont be pro-USA.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Lancer
WWI is won by the Germans in europe and the USA in America.

Youre jumping too far. I dont know we get a recognizable WW1. If Maximillian survives in Mexico, does that effect Nappys willingness to stand up to Bismarck in Europe? How does a UK that no longer faces the balancing effect of a strong US impact the euro power balance from 1861 to 1873?

How does a larger, poorer euro population impact society? Does the crash of '73 happen earlier? Worse?

Heck, we've overlooked the events in europe 1861-1865. In particular no cotton famine of 1861. How does this effect UK working class politics?


If you MUST assume WW1 on time in 1914, why would Germany and the CSA be allies? I think Turtledove got that one right, UK and CSA are natural allies, and USA is more likely to be pro-German.

[lord of the mark]

oh and on southern industrialization

dont forget that to some extent OTL southern industrialization had its roots in the example set by CSA wartime, blockade driven, mobilization. Showed what the South COULD do. In this scen that hasnt happened. No one is even sure a blockade COULD be effective, if a war DID break out. Given that, its going to be hard to motivate the planters to do anything to encourage industrialization, esp as that means competition for labor. And I dont know that the free market will induce the industrialization with cheap UK goods flooding in. Maybe in some industries, but not most, I think.

[Kontiki]

No one envisions a later re-merger between the CSA and USA? I don't know enough US history to know if there was sufficient common cause to lead to this somewhere down the road, ignoring any outside reason to do so. I suppose, though, that if the USA and CSA followed different paths of development, merger under agreeable terms would become progressively more difficult.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Kontiki
No one envisions a later re-merger between the CSA and USA? I don't know enough US history to know if there was sufficient common cause to lead to this somewhere down the road, ignoring any outside reason to do so. I suppose, though, that if the USA and CSA followed different paths of development, merger under agreeable terms would become progressively more difficult.

people tend to get attached to their nation states. Esp the kinds of people who tend to shape opinion. It took two horrible world wars to get the Euros thinking merger. The two germanies and two koreas were imposed by outsiders. The South will be little more enthusiastic for merger with the USA, than, say, Canada has been.

Something likes a revolution within the CSA could lead to this, but I havent seen the TL lead to that yet.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
If you MUST assume WW1 on time in 1914, why would Germany and the CSA be allies? I think Turtledove got that one right, UK and CSA are natural allies, and USA is more likely to be pro-German.

You beat me to it. I agree with both you and Turtledove.



The northern states were heavily settled by Germans, with a thick belt of German settlement stretching from Maryland through Wisconsin and Minnesota. There was stong German ethnic solidarity (and in some sense almost a parallel German society) up until the First World War, when a viciously anti-German sentiment was stirred up by the war (with the help of anti-German propaganda from the U.S. Government). The effects of WW1, compounded by WW2, led German Americans to largely abandon their previous ethnic solidarity and basically assimilate into WASP culture.

There was some German settlement in the South, but not as much as in the North.

If we envision a situation in which there is both an independent Confederacy hostile to the U.S.A. and a unified German state, I would say that the U.S.A. would be the natural German ally, not the C.S.A.

[Patroklos]

why, when manufactured goods from England are so cheap? Cheaper than Northern goods, which required a tariff wall to compete.

Manufactured goods were cheap in the real world too, and it didn't keep the South from industrializing. All being independant would do would be to restrict the even cheaper goods from the North from flooding the market.

And remember, with the South not being razed to the ground by the war, the economic outlook for the second half of the 19th century would be much brighter.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Patroklos


Manufactured goods were cheap in the real world too, and it didn't keep the South from industrializing. All being independant would do would be to restrict the even cheaper goods from the North from flooding the market.

Let me clarify. The price of British manufactures, delivered to this side of the atlantic, from 1865 till at least the late 1890s, was LOWER than the price of US manufactured goods (most of which were produced in the north) Thats why northern manufacturers supported tariffs, and why southerners,both before and after the war, opposed them. Because a tariff wall, by keeping out British goods, and making the South captive to Northern manufactures, increased the price the south paid for everything it bought. Especially AFTER the civil war, when northern control of Congress and the White House was more complete.

In an independent CSA scenario, IF the South chooses free trade, manufactured goods will be significantly cheaper than in OTL. Simply because there is no longer a tariff wall keeping out cheaper British manufactures. Yes there will be fewer northern goods flowing south, not because of independence per se (unless the South adopts protective tariffs, why would independence stop the flow of goods?) but because the absence of the tariff wall will make it harder for northern industry to compete with Britain.

Now are there still reasons in this scenario for the south to industrialize - yes. 1. to deal with social issues of surplus labor, especially among poor whites 2. For reasons of "national security" 3. Here and there for purely economic reasons.

But lets not forget - in OTL the purely economic reasons didnt lead to THAT much industrialization in the south, prior to the 1920s. And the New South movement was bitterly opposed in the late 19th century, by planters who feared competition for their labor force, and the social disruption of urbanization. Those who did support it were largely motivated by the need to maintain white social solidarity.

This charecterization of OTL is based largely on my memory of "The New South Creed" which i read some decades ago.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Patroklos

And remember, with the South not being razed to the ground by the war, the economic outlook for the second half of the 19th century would be much brighter.

Yeah, there will be more industrial assets in Richmond, Atlanta, and a few other places. But mainly there will be less destruction to agricultural buildings and equipment, to cotton warehouses, etc. A richer south in general may be a better market for industrial goods, but its also going to be a South where cash crop agriculture for export looks better to.

Oh, and with no war, the Europeans wont have turned as hard to Egyptian cotton, and the market for raw cotton may be stronger.

The South in this scenario will certainly be better off. The question is whether it will bet on industry or on king cotton (for export in its raw form). While theres reason to think industry will be attractive, including the OTL New South movement, and the triumph of southern industry from 1920 to the present, there is also, I think very good reason to expect resistance, looking both at attitudes in the ante bellum south, and at the resistance to the New South movement.

I think it safe to say this argument will dominate southern politics in this TL.