Abolishing slavery in a victorious Confederacy: not so easy

I'd doubt there would be much use for slaves as field hands as mechanization and industrialization made such work much more efficient and cheap with tractors and other machines, and it isn't likely the entire black population of the CSA would all become servants around the house- especially since not everybody could afford one.

Slaves were already being used in industry before the ACW. Mechanization would mean less slaves are needed for farming, but the factories would want them.

Another problem is the boll weevil infestation, which spread across the south from 1892 to about 1925. With a forced change to other, less labor-intensive, crops and relatively few Confederate factories there would be a large surplus of slaves. Slave prices will plummet and slave owners will be faced with the choice of paying to feed, clothe, and house slaves they cannot afford or freeing them.

Factory owners will probably snap up the best slaves at bargain prices. Poor whites, faced with failing farms, few jobs in the factories, and heavy competition with free blacks for many othe jobs will be in difficult position. There may very well be massacres of free blacks. There will also probably be heavy emmigration of poor whites (and to a lesser extent poor blacks) to other countries.

Since the more pro-immigrant USA already has plenty of workers for its fields, mines, and factories, they probably don't want immigrants from the CSA. The USA may face a problem with illegal immigrants from the CSA starting in the late 1920's, with CSA cottonbacks fairly easy to detect based on their accents.
 

Kaptin Kurk

Banned
On thing about these slavery arguments:

One assumes that slavery has to look like it did in Mississippi in 1830s, or it's not slavery. Sharecropping was good enough for the land owners up until the 1930s, and I don't think that type of arangement couldn't be altered financially and socially to the point that Sharecropper couldn't = slave.

(No one says that a slave owner has to provide food or clothing to his slaves, instead of giving the slave a stippend to provide his own. Hell, often the masters didn't provide food, clothing, ect to slaves. Just gave them some time off to provide their own, and a little piece of land on which to grow their own food. The MS 1830s view of slavery really colors and warps the preception of what slavery necessarily has to mean)

Not to mention the possibility of industrial slaves. Sending a certain number of slaves to work in an steel factory, coal mine, anything thats labor intensive while not being particularly intellectually intensive is quite possible. (West Virginia supposedly had a number blacks in it back in the boombing days of coal mining)

Paying these slaves isn't out of the question either, especially if they have to spend their money at the owner's store. You just have the benefit of them never being able to legally strike or switch jobs for a better deal.

I could see slavery lasting well into the 20th century in the C.S.A. No, not in the since of a bunch of black people picking cotton in the fields, being whipped on their backs by a driver. But hell, a slave could work at McDonalds as well as a high-school kid or new immigrant. And when there's no longer a need for him, or you're downsizing, there's no reason he couldn't be put on a national slave stock market with other slaves, and bought by an expanding pizza-hut at bargin prices

One of the real limits of slavery is that it's not as easy to hire / fire slaves as it is free labor. But that's not a restriction smart men couldn't over come. Hell, people came up with the Credit Union to get around the exploitations of Banks. A Slave Holder's Union, or communally owned slaves, could get around the...I need 100 slaves in may, but only 40 in September....problem. Someone needs 100 September, 40 in may. And if they're within 100 miles of you...

Slavery could survive much longer if:

1) Slaves would probably be allowed to own property. Doesn't mean their property rights couldn't be abriged or ignored, but there would probably be some provision for it.

2) Slaves Codes would probably develop, allowing slaves some minimal amounts of rights.

3) Divide and conquer was implemented efficiently, creating a class of 'super slaves or free blacks' with great incentive to keep the lower slaves or regular slaves in check. Mullato families would be perfect for this position. If the Lousiana ethic could be exported to other Anglo-States.

Anyways: There's no reason to believe that the Southernor's first response to the declining profitability and acceptability of 1830s Mississippi Delta style slavery would be "Just chuck the whole thing" rather than, "Alright, how can we make this work?" Sure, slavery would become more complex. But then again, who'd believe the modern U.S. tax Code? The Modern C.S.A. 'Slave Code' might be just and ponderous, and full of loopholes, but just as real.
 
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You are committing the fallacy of assuming that conditions within an independent Confederacy would be the same as they were in the antebellum South, without considering why those conditions existed in the antebellum South and whether those same conditions would exist in the postwar Confederacy.

The reason why debate on the slavery issue within the South was being stifled in the antebellum period can directly be linked to the fact that the South was still in a union with the North. It became a sectional issue, and the South got into a siege mentality, "circled the wagons," so to speak, and closed down internal debate because it was considered necessary to present a united front to the North. If the South is in a separate country from the North, and thus doesn't have to pay attention to Northern anti-slavery agitation (which, itself, will probably pretty much dry up following a successful Southern secession) anymore, then it can "uncircle the wagons" and allow debate to happen again.

PLEASE! The various Confederate states were run by slaveowners PRIOR to the Civil War. Why woulds slave owners suddenly allow debate about slavery to occur among the plebes? They stifled the arguement because they thought they MIGHT lose and even a chance of losing that arguement was not permitted.
 
PLEASE! The various Confederate states were run by slaveowners PRIOR to the Civil War. Why woulds slave owners suddenly allow debate about slavery to occur among the plebes? They stifled the arguement because they thought they MIGHT lose and even a chance of losing that arguement was not permitted.

This argument has been dead for seven months.
 
Which matters why? This is a recent arguement about it. Seven months or seven years doesn't change the arguement.

The other side has moved on with their life by now. Perhaps you should do the same. Go outside, smell the flowers, rejoice in the world that we live in and all its beauty.

Or, y'know, stick with what is apparently a winning formula in your book and obsess over Confederate politics. Whatever seems best.
 
The other side has moved on with their life by now. Perhaps you should do the same. Go outside, smell the flowers, rejoice in the world that we live in and all its beauty.

Or, y'know, stick with what is apparently a winning formula in your book and obsess over Confederate politics. Whatever seems best.

LOL!!!:D Don't you know that Yankees need to periodically thump their chests and crow about how superior the North is to the South in order to feel whole and healthy? Standing on their soap boxes and ranting about how evil the South was and is just makes them feel good. Would you deny them that pleasure? You heartless cad! ;)
 
Just to clarify the issues. The North did indeed commit some act that could be called war crimes. There was a lot of racism in the North. The motives involved in those prosecuting the war were at best mixed.

However the leadership of the South made war on the United States (treason by the deliberately narrow definition on the US Constitution), adopted the more extreme form of racism and fought a war for the purpose of contintuing to benefit from force labour and property in human beings.

The North might not have been as good as some as its less informed defenders in our times might feel but the South was just as bad as its general reputation.
 
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