AHC: Survival & Collapse of the CSA

Vexacus

Banned
The alternate history challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have the CSA survive to the 80s then fall apart like the USSR did. Bonus points will be awarded if some of the Comfederate States go independent like the old Soviet Bloc nations
 
A peaceful collapse of the CSA is possible, but I imagine it would occur much sooner than the 80s. I would actually think of a race war as the end scenario for the Confederacy.
 
A peaceful collapse of the CSA is possible, but I imagine it would occur much sooner than the 80s. I would actually think of a race war as the end scenario for the Confederacy.

You could have a South Africa like scenario.

Long resistance to change, followed by a slow realization that the ruling Party/Ethnic Group really isn't prepared to go to the extremes needed to maintain power.

Especially if you have significant white movement to the USA.


Once the writing in on the wall about black majority/plurality rule, then states that want to delay/avoid that, especially if they are still white majority break away.

It is NOT to be assumed that the US will want to try to absorb any of this mess to deal with.
 

DTanza

Banned
Honestly I think the CSA would probably collapse from internal strife after twenty or thirty years at most.

An authoritarian government held together by nothing except desperation to maintain slavery and visceral hatred of anyone that would deprive them of their slaves isn't going to last long.
 
The alternate history challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have the CSA survive to the 80s then fall apart like the USSR did. Bonus points will be awarded if some of the Comfederate States go independent like the old Soviet Bloc nations

I was actually working on a TL idea with just that premise some months ago, believe it or not. However, getting the C.S.A. to survive that long, or at least one that keeps slavery until the end, is going to be really tough, and may perhaps require a bit of handwaving, if you want it to survive to the Eighties. It is theoretically possible, however: perhaps the C.S.A. may industrialize to some extent, and may allow foreign imports, and significant amounts of foreign trade, etc.....although all of these could very well require a rather different C.S., and the government would, at some point, have to intervene to keep the inevitable financial bubble from popping. Which means bailouts, and probably starting no later than the late 1940s early 1950s at the latest, and probably earlier than that, if not everything goes right for them.

I do agree with Corbell Mark IV, though: a South Africa type social situation very well develop, especially if a C.S. President or two gets capped, or if a majorly damaging slave revolt takes out half of Mississippi's cotton country, or something. If all the chips fall in a certain direction, that'd probably go a good way towards your goal, IMO.
 
The problem with a "South Africa" solution to the CSA, is that while South Africa was majority black, the CSA will be majority white.
 
The problem with a "South Africa" solution to the CSA, is that while South Africa was majority black, the CSA will be majority white.

True, although I was intending to refer more to this:
Long resistance to change, followed by a slow realization that the ruling Party/Ethnic Group really isn't prepared to go to the extremes needed to maintain power.

Which strikes me as pretty plausible, TBH.
 
One difference between the CSA & South Africa is that, while there was a large black population in the CSA it was still very much a minority overall. IMHO the most likely "collapse" scenario for the CSA comes from its deep commitment to states rights. It is almost inevitable that there will be deep divisions among the states as time goes on, and one or more seceding from the CSA (Texas for example) is not unlikely. Severe racial problems are definitely a :winkytongue:ossibility, but the white/black ratio is such that you won't get a South Africa.
 
The alternate history challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have the CSA survive to the 80s then fall apart like the USSR did. Bonus points will be awarded if some of the Comfederate States go independent like the old Soviet Bloc nations

Weakened rump CSA wins independence after McClellan wins narrow electoral victory, followed by unexpected death and Pendleton negotiating a peace deal. Unlikely, yes, but the premise requires an independent CSA.


The CSA then limps on for another two decades until the structural issues (i.e the fact that a majority of the population is solidly against the CSA's existence) comes to the fore. Attempts by the aristocracy to maintain supremacy and restrict the franchise with e.g. poll taxes/etc. result only in a polarized angry population, until at the last, in the 1880s the workers rise in Dixieland, with a loose 'coalition' of poor whites, Unionists, and slaves defeating Confederate forces in their core territories, only to quickly/roughly break apart into infighting. The end result involves a collection of quasi-socialist black republics across the Black Belt, Unionist territory in e.g. Nickajack and the Appalachian west of North Carolina joining the U.S. as the state of "Nickajack", Texan independence (though the north/west of the state including the Hill Country is lost to Unionists), Floridian independence, and a radical revanchist fire-eater rump Confederacy under Pitchfork Ben Tillman based in the Carolinas. Union forces meanwhile took the opportunity to occupy the Gulf Coast and most of Virginia. The U.S.A. finds it useful to refrain from immediately invading the Carolinas to properly distract the dangerous socialist Black Belt republics with their threat.




....What? You never specified which '80s.
 
The alternate history challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have the CSA survive to the 80s then fall apart like the USSR did. Bonus points will be awarded if some of the Comfederate States go independent like the old Soviet Bloc nations

If you mean the 1880s, that's fairly easy to do. The Confederacy was deeply divided on most issues except slavery and clearly felt losing an election was grounds for secession. South Carolina, dominated by radical pro-slavery apologists, or the TransMississippi my break off as early as the 1867 elections and complete fragmentation could easily occur by the 1880s.

If you want the Confederacy to last to the 1980s, that's going to require the first generation of Confederate politicians to out-do the Meiji restoration, which is unlikely. Even then, they're unlikely to make it to past the 1930s as a single state.
 
That's easy. The Confederacy is ecstatic at its victory, then reality sets in. By the 1870s, the Confederate economy has collapsed, slave revolts are an everyday occurrence, and revolution seems imminent. Texas is the first state to secede, followed by all the others. The various states rejoin America after the collapse of the CSA in the 1880s.


...Oh. You meant the 1980s. :eek:

Yeah, that's pretty hard to do.
 
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