Bookmark1995
Banned
Wow! The Confederacy pulled itself out of the fires of hell, but it seems like they are headed into another frying pan.
I mean, considering it wasn’t military defeat but a lack of will to continue the war that allowed Confederate independence to become realised. It makes sense relations improve somewhat. If it was military defeat then just look at OTL antebellum France after the Franco-Prussian War to see how the Union would be.Well shit, that was unexpected and awesome. I'm glad you didn't follow the "US is revanchist until the end of either time or the CSA" approach that's popular in discussions
- Upon the end of hostilities, Confederate forces would leave Cuba with the condition that the leaders of revolutionary Cuba, such as Gomez and Marti, promised to hold a referendum on joining the USA, joining the CSA, or becoming an independent "Confederacy."
- The Confederate share of the American debt, as taken on by the Confederacy in 1867, was still unpaid. Such debt would be entirely refinanced by US bankers, such as those in Wall Street, at favorable interest rates (better than what bankers in London or anywhere else were offering) due to the United States government declaring itself secondarily liable for such debts. Grant and Mahone actually both sought that - making the US government secondarily liable meant that the two countries would have to work together even if relations later soured.
- President Mahone was to draft an "emergency wartime" executive order creating a Freedom of Womb law throughout the entire nation, effective for all children of slaves born on or after February 8th, 1886 in order to "celebrate" the 25th anniversary of Confederate independence and "unite the nation for war", closely based on the Brazilian Law of Free Birth.
- The Confederate government would be allowed to compensate all slaveholders for emancipated children born free. Mahone saw this as necessary to prevent a massive revolt of planters. In order to pay them, the Confederate government would borrow such money from US banks, similar to its refinanced national debt. The Confederacy would also recognize Stonewall's emancipation of slaves in North Carolina and be allowed to compensate the former slave holders through the same financial mechanisms
Aaand there goes Confederate sovereignty (good riddance). This is going to get really interesting in the following century....However, the Supreme Court ruled that the Treaty Power allowed the government to enforce "treaties" with provisions that required powers the Confederate government normally did not have under the Constitution. The Bayonet Congress obviously ratified the treaty with the United States that established the Law of Free Birth, which instituted its provisions even if the Confederate government did not have those enumerated powers.
Wow. Confederate States of America, a wholey owned subsidiary of USA Government Inc.
The question there is whether those Oil exploration companies will be owned by people in Dallas or in New York.
This timeline has an impressive ability to really mess around with things completely until they're even more of a cluster than OTL. I can't imagine how Leopold's going to try and get his revenge, but I look forward to seeing his attempts.
This is the most flat out hilarious timeline on the board (spit take Joubert hahaha). It’s also pretty darn great, and utterly plausible. Thanks!
Economics was not the only reason most white southerners supported slavery. Most white people in the South firmly believed that abolition would result in mass murder of white males and mass rape of white females. Slaves were 45% of the population in Alabama, 44% in Florida & Georgia, 47% in Louisiana, 55% in Mississippi, 57% in South Carolina. I would expect the poor whites in those states, who gain nothing from compensated emancipation to rise up against the Confederate government and/or flee en masse to places where there were a lot less black people. The current enslaved population also gains nothing by this treaty, so I'd expect attempted mass exodus by many of them as well.
The free womb law doesn't strictly harm the bottom line of any of the plantation owners, even if it ideologically dooms slavery in the long-term.
None of my points had anything to do with how the slaveholders would respond. There's a lot more to the Confederacy than just the slaveholders. Roughly 1/3 of Confederate families owned slaves. Rough 1/3 of the Confederate population were slaves.
That leaves about 1/3 of the Confederate population - white people who own no slaves. They gain nothing form this law and it offers them a world they have been indoctrinated to believe will result is mass horrors against the white population. Even southern whites who didn't fear mass slaughter were appalled by the idea of future emancipation.