AHC: CSA-South Africa Analogy

In Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 series, he analogizes the CSA and Nazi Germany. In this AHC, I challenge you to make a CSA that resembles South Africa- a country with a well-constructed constitution but persistent and pervasive inequality- blacks are enfranchised, but most are extremely poor and live in slums or rural backwaters- disease is rampant and whites still hold a lot of de-facto power, though every president since black suffrage has been black, as they are the majority of the country's population by far. Bonus points for having it be a US ally both before and after black enfranchisement, and making it an important regional power.
 
This is probably more likely than TL-191. Somehow get the South to win the War, possibly with British help, so the Americans are afraid to fight them. By 1925, slavery is outlawed. A new system is put in place. Eventually most of Europe falls to Communism/Germany/Sweden. Britain remains a power, but is weakened. The south needs help, so the US comes in and props it up, making it a US ally. Not a nice scenario.
 
How would you replicate the relative levels of black and white population? A CSA with whites only being 10 or 20% of the population would have to have undergone a huge demographic upset.
 
How would you replicate the relative levels of black and white population? A CSA with whites only being 10 or 20% of the population would have to have undergone a huge demographic upset.
It doesn't have to be a perfect analogy- I'd say a black population of 60-70% would be high enough to consistently get black presidents elected, without being demographically impossible.
 
In Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 series, he analogizes the CSA and Nazi Germany. In this AHC, I challenge you to make a CSA that resembles South Africa- a country with a well-constructed constitution but persistent and pervasive inequality- blacks are enfranchised, but most are extremely poor and live in slums or rural backwaters- disease is rampant and whites still hold a lot of de-facto power, though every president since black suffrage has been black, as they are the majority of the country's population by far. Bonus points for having it be a US ally both before and after black enfranchisement, and making it an important regional power.

It would have to be majority black, and even the "Gulf Squadron" (the seven Deep South states that declared secession in December 1860 and January 1861) were not, collectively, majority black (52.7% white). If all the slaves and free colored in the Upper South, Border States, and North were moved to the CSA, it would be about 60% black.

Suppose the Deep South declared secession, and got away with it due to the connivance of President Lane. (Lane was Breckinridge's running mate, who would have been elected VP by the Senate if there was no Electoral College majority, and would have become President if the House failed to name a President. In fact, some Republicans in 1860 campaigned on the slogan "Lincoln or Lane", arguing that if Lincoln did not win outright, Lane would become President.)

Lane blocks all action to stop secession; then suddenly is removed from office in a quasi-Constitutional coup - with the Deep South missing, Republicans have a majority of delegations and elect Lincoln. The CSA has had several months to organize, all Federal forts and dockyards were handed over - it's too late to put down secession. But further secession can be blocked, and Congress enacts several strong anti-slavery laws, including a gradual emancipation amendment (all children born after 1 January 1865 are free).

Slaveholders in the Upper South and Border see the handwriting on the wall, and either sell their slaves south, or move south with them. The free blacks in the USA are subject to much discrimination and persecution. The CSA abolishes de jure slavery around 1885. After 1885, most USA blacks leave for the CSA.

From 1890-1930, a lot of poor whites moved out of the CSA to the USA, leaving a white minority almost exclusively composed of slaveholders and their households, and numbering only about 25% of the population, but having a monopoly of power. This system breaks down in the 1980s; the whites agree to a power-sharing system with the blacks. A few years later the whites are forced aside; but the new black rulers are thoroughly corrupt.

As to the CSA being a "regional power", it would be too large not to be - though greatly inferior to the USA.
 
@Rich Rostrom: I like the idea you have set up on the whole, but with one addendum; if Texas stays in, I doubt you could make the analogy work. Leaving aside the fact that African Americans have always been a minority there (not exceeding 31% immediately post-Civil War, and dropping consistently afterwards), you also have large Native American and Hispanic populations taking up the "minority" role under Anglo Whites for the vast bulk of their history, and that's not factoring in the ingress of Germans and other immigrant waves from Central Europe and/or the rest of the USA during said timeframe. Unless you wanna start committing widespread massacres, depopulations and range wars (if not an actual one down the road), I can't see TX falling under the same analogy as Louisiana or Florida. Furthermore, while Texas did throw their lot in with the CSA pre-Ft. Sumter in OTL, the state could also have gone their own way or even (if more remotely) stayed in the Union, I don't see them hanging for very long with the other "Gulf Squadron+GA/SC" states before striking out on their own, or rejoining the USA if they feel their interests aren't being served in Montgomery.
 
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I can't imagine why US blacks would go south.

Chances are, they wouldn't, not with a C.S.A. even halfway similar to our own. There would be some social problems up North, that I can't dispute much, but it's highly doubtful they'd be even nearly as bad off in the U.S.A., than in the Confederacy, even if they DID get rid of slavery.....
 
I can't imagine why US blacks would go south.

You wouldn't need them to; in 1860, the vast majority of Blacks (which made up about 15% of the total population at the time) lived in the slave holding states, and in OTL, over the following few decades, a couple of those states would become black majority (this peaking in 1880 when South Carolina became 60.7% African-American). If you could just maintain a high level of population growth in their numbers, as well as avoiding the flight of many blacks to the North, you could possibly get a South African-esque scenario that the OP describes.
 
I suppose a more likely scenario would be poor whites migrating north in search of better prospects in the United States, with blacks being unable to migrate either because they're enslaved or tied to the land by debt.

Also, I think much of the OTL migration to the South could be reduced if it wasn't an integrated part of the United States.
 
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