Yet Another CSA, 1863-1905

NapoleonXIV

Banned
In 1863, 4 months after victory at Gettysburg, the CSA becomes an Independent nation in a negotiated peace largely brokered by the British Crown. A linchpin of the peace is the promise of the CSA to end slavery immediately and integrate all its former members into the population on an equal basis by 1890. (In return, the CSA will get substantial financial aid from both the US and Britain) A large part of this, written into the treaty by Frederick Douglass is the founding of a large University "for the edification of the black race so as to aid their entrance into world civilization". This University is also, however, to be a partially a model for the integration of society the treaty calls for, with admissions and hiring policies that aim at an 80/20 black-white ratio in both instructors and students. This University is to be endowed from several sources. The main one is the proceeds from the sale of all farms over 3000 acres, which have been confiscated by the terms of the treaty. Another is a small tax on the banking industry in the Confederacy. The University’s charter is also written so those individual scientists who invent new things can profit with them along with the University as a backer.

Robert E Lee and Frederick Douglass are made the heads of this institution, the Lee-Douglass University in Lexington, VA Lee, for his part, works tirelessly and well until his death in 1870. He leaves a legacy of the encouragement of the sciences and the first business courses in the US.

In 1872 the college hires a young black engineering instructor who had fled Kentucky before the war and been educated in Scotland. Elijah McCoy, already holding the first of several patents on RR devices he will hold comes to VA. Once here, his contact with the business faculty, apprises him of the problem all bankers of that time have with calculation and how its automation with ‘something like this new typewriter’ would be a godsend. Reading of the work of Charles Babbage and how it eventually proved too challenging for the technology of the 1840’s McCoy wonders if technology has improved enough in 40 years. In 1875 he builds the first practical and working model and soon thereafter founds a factory for their manufacture. Banks clamor for the new "computer"

The combination of even less Federal regulation than the still very lax and open North, a pool of business trained people available few other places and the closeness of the factory making its new calculators begins to attract banks to VA. Soon the Old Dominion has headquarters for most of the Banks which do their main business in the US and many of the European interests have large branches here as well. By 1890 the CSA is a world-banking powerhouse, well on its way to emulating Switzerland or the Caymans in this Century.

Many corporate giants in the US and Europe are also beginning to feel the hot breath of government on their necks. The CSA’s loose and lax federal govt. seems made to order for them. By the middle 1880s the CSA has a very large part of the world’s corporate HQ’s. A lot of this is like the modern Liberian fleet or the corporate population of Delaware in OTL but a good deal of the business has really accrued to the South. One consequence is that the international corporate giants can layoff debt to tide over lean years so that the CSA is spared most of the Panics plaguing the US in the 1890s’

The Lee-Douglass University, endowed with a tax on banking, is a main beneficiary here, in addition to its land grant status and its unique profit allowed charter and is now among the largest and wealthiest Universities in the world. High salaries, the latest facilities and low workloads are used to attract the best scientists the world over.

In 1893, however, a dispute with Cuba flares into a short and sharp war with Spain. Florida is invaded, with many citizens killed and widespread rapine and plunder in the new resort areas. The US and Britain broker an end quickly but the CSA is humiliated before the eyes of the world. Soon, new legislation from the CSA Congress authorize a military budget almost ten times as large as any that had gone before In addition, a very high percentage of the military budget is to be devoted to R&D. The main beneficiary again, will be Lee University. which by 1900 is a world phenomena. One of the richest world institutions of any kind, let alone Universities, and a world center of research in industry and the hard sciences backing military progress. The influence of “Lexington” on the CSA policies of any kind is incalculable. Henri Bequerel and Ernst Roentgen, Nikola Tesla and others, all teach at Lee-Douglass University.

And in 1900 they are joined by George Washington Carver a young musician who wants to combine the recent recording inventions of Thomas Edison with Tesla’s radio. Trained in botany and chemistry as well as music the young polymath takes quickly to early electronics as well.

He realizes, along with many others that the major next step in radio is the amplification of the radio signal, so that it can power Edison’s phonograph sound reproduction devices. He begins reading the works of Ferdinand Braun, the inventor of the Galena crystal diode but instead of using them as the basis for other devices he sees a way to modify the invention itself. Within 6 mos. he has invented the first transistor.

Elijah McCoy and his staff, who have by now developed the mechanical difference engine to a masterpiece of mechanical miniaturization rightly see this new device as the possible answer to their search for a completely new and different method of running computers. Within another year, the Integrated Circuit is the latest invention of the McCoy Institute of the Lee-Douglas University and the electronic computer is revolutionizing all forms of business in the world by 1905.

Is this plausible at all or just bloody silly?
 
Last edited:
Well, its interesting and original. The slavery issue is settled in what appears to be a fairly realistic approach. Lee-Douglass University is a good idea, but a little to implausible with the Difference Engine, radio and Tesla teaching. What would sound more likely would be it being an agriculture university that is replicated in other states, some be industrial, but that it be integrated also. However, really thinking about, exactly how many recently freed slaves will be ready for any sort of higher education by 1870? The ground work for even primary and secondary schooling has to be laid first - and that would be for white and black.
 
Not Buying It

IMHO the best the British Empire could get out of a Confederacy which was victorious at Gettysburg is a vague commitment to phase out slavery over a 10 year period. The plantations would not be sold off--instead the owners would recieve compensation for their slaves. There is a distinct possibility that some Deep South slaves would secede from the CSA itself and try to go it alone as indedepndent nations with slavery intact. There is my long held belief that to speak of the CSA as anything but a weak nexus of states is incorrect.

Likewise creation of integrationist university is likely to be extremely low on the CSA's priorities list.
 
Main problem: The slaves in the CSA were more worth than everything else. They were literally worth more than the ENTIRE Confederacy's real estate, and several times more than there even was currency in circulation. Compensating the slave owners would have been so extremely expensive that the mere idea would have caused the whole south to rise up in arms. If a third of all people in your country is property, that is one hell of a lot of capital. For the government to compensate the owners on anything near the market price of the slaves would have meant that immense taxes would have to be levied - in a time when the vast majority of a government's income was through tariffs.

An example:

State of Georgia, 1857

Slave Population 426,566
Free Negro Population 1,074

Value:
Slaves $223,939,723
Land $136,681,959
Money and Solvent Notes $83,895,461
City and Town Property $30,037,061
Manufactures $5,750,001
Bank Capital $856,510

For the entire Confederacy, as estimated in 1861:

Value of all land, including towns: $1,758,238,060
Value of all slaves: $2,142,634,200
Value of everything (land, slaves, railroads, bank capital etc): 4,632,160,501

share of slave value of gross national wealth: 46%

source: http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/property/property.html
 
Last edited:
True, it would be pretty expensive to free slaves at market value. However, thats what you wouldn't do, at least in one option. First, not all slaves will be worth market value, some will be less and some will be more. An "Emancipation Value" would be set by the Government, probably lower than market price. However, the incentive would be for the owners to sell off their slaves while they can get some compensation for them before the Government sets a Total Emancipation date.

The owners could be compensated in cash, but probably more likely a combination of cash and tax breaks/credits. These tax credits could probably be given several years to run before lapsing. One would hope that a return to business as usual, along with increased European investment (think about the investing that went into Latin America at the same time) that gradual emancipation and compensation will work.
 
Top