AHC: US-Confederate Wall

Given the timespan in which the civil war occurs I'm not sure why this would be possible or necessary. But still a wall and fortifications from Richmond to the Ohio River would be an interesting story.
 
"Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other *nor build an impassable wall between them*..." [emphasis added] https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/secession.htm

AHC: The US does build such a wall. Extra points if it makes the Confederates pay for it...

What if the CSA builds the wall instead? The CSA needs to prevent slaves escaping, and probably fears anti-slavery guerrilla infiltration.

In which case the CSA would pay for it.

(The length of the wall... The longest "wall" that I can think of would be the East/West German border, plus the borders of Czechoslovakia and Hungary with non-Communist countries. I don't believe Yugoslavia had a wall with Austria, Italy, or Greece; in fact I don't recall Yugoslavia particularly restricting emigration. I'm not at all sure about the borders between Yugoslavia and the Eastern Bloc.

A US/CSA Wall would be far longer. And would it include the Texas/New Mexico border??
 
What if the CSA builds the wall instead? The CSA needs to prevent slaves escaping, and probably fears anti-slavery guerrilla infiltration.

In which case the CSA would pay for it.

(The length of the wall... The longest "wall" that I can think of would be the East/West German border, plus the borders of Czechoslovakia and Hungary with non-Communist countries. I don't believe Yugoslavia had a wall with Austria, Italy, or Greece; in fact I don't recall Yugoslavia particularly restricting emigration. I'm not at all sure about the borders between Yugoslavia and the Eastern Bloc.

A US/CSA Wall would be far longer. And would it include the Texas/New Mexico border??

Too expensive. The Confederacy could barely supply shoes at a certain point. It was an agrarian society with a severely limited population. In addition, the states of the South were not unified and were bad at collaborating, and opposed Federal activity as a mantra. In addition, the South is underdeveloped, and already has nature as a barrier. A wall represents Federal infrastructure and activity far beyond what is even normally consider for a nation with a centralized government, let alone for the Confederacy. It runs in total opposition to the entire belief system of the CSA. Bear in mind as well that a wall would run a wide stretch of territory that would include rivers, forests, hills and mountains.
 
Too expensive. The Confederacy could barely supply shoes at a certain point. It was an agrarian society with a severely limited population. In addition, the states of the South were not unified and were bad at collaborating, and opposed Federal activity as a mantra. In addition, the South is underdeveloped, and already has nature as a barrier. A wall represents Federal infrastructure and activity far beyond what is even normally consider for a nation with a centralized government, let alone for the Confederacy. It runs in total opposition to the entire belief system of the CSA. Bear in mind as well that a wall would run a wide stretch of territory that would include rivers, forests, hills and mountains.

The entire belief system of the CSA is "Slavery is good and must be maintained at all costs, or the blacks will kill us all." While the doctrine of "states rights" had some theoretical support in the South, it had developed there only because the South feared Federal power might weaken slavery. During the ACW, the CSA government accreted powers far exceeding any peacetime US government, and even exceeding the USA during the ACW - all justified by the necessity of winning the war and surviving as a slave society. A postwar CSA would have many of the same concerns.
 
Well the CSA already has a border around the vast majority of it in the form of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Given that, they would only need... around 450 miles of wall, in Virginia. So maybe it could have been put forward as a plan, by the Virginia State Government, and copaid for by the Feds, but that's still alot of wall for what others pointed out is an agrarian society.
 
Border fortifications, barbed wire fencing in many areas, yes. A "wall" no. Too much territory, many places doable with modern technology but not 19th century technology. Furthermore the reality is that with the USA and CSA different nations, border guard patrols on the border would stop most escape attempts. Also, the upper south was reducing the slave population before the ACW for economic reasons. Any slave not residing within a few days of the border will find it almost impossible to escape. With an independent CSA there is no restraint on the punishment that could be meted out to abolition sympathizers on the underground RR in the CSA. The death penalty for aiding slave escapes, similar to punishment for aiding/encouraging a servile revolt, would rather rapidly eliminate almost all white aid for escaping slaves. It is not unreasonable that the USA might become quite unwelcoming to escaping slaves, blaming blacks for the disunion.

In any case assume a 30 foot wall is built from the Atlantic all the way to the Texas/NM border. In remote areas slaves who make it to the wall simply use 32 foot ladder to climb over the wall. In the 19th century no land mines, no electronic monitoring etc.
 
The Union could build a wall of armed fences like Trump's proposition to stop slave escapees from entering the Union illegally. Basically OTL's scenario except with African Americans rather than the current debate.

"We'll build a wall. We'll build a wall, and the Dixies'll pay for it!"
 
The entire belief system of the CSA is "Slavery is good and must be maintained at all costs, or the blacks will kill us all." While the doctrine of "states rights" had some theoretical support in the South, it had developed there only because the South feared Federal power might weaken slavery. During the ACW, the CSA government accreted powers far exceeding any peacetime US government, and even exceeding the USA during the ACW - all justified by the necessity of winning the war and surviving as a slave society. A postwar CSA would have many of the same concerns.

The central Confederate government did, hypocritically, become overbearing as the war progressed. But the underlying culture of the South, while legitimately focused on a slaveotocracy, was also a nation which treated Federalism, in terms of citizen opinion of it, with a regard straight out of the Articles of Confederation. Nullification was a Southern legal view in complete opposition to Constitution law, but widely popular. And the fact is, it is expensive beyond belief, it requires infrastructural planning beyond belief from a would be nation that barely had the ability to industrialize and was rural, underdeveloped and underpopulated, and construction would need to traverse the width of the Confederacy from the Mississippi eastward, through untamed woodlands, and into the Appalachian mountains. All this at a time when just to travel that breadth of territory took people long enough that someone would write folk songs about the people who died along the way. The South could not even get a comprehensive railroad system in place. It is like a farm community in Kansas building a Space Shuttle.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Both sides would fortify key defensive positions along their respective borders. The Potomac River is an obvious natural barrier between the two and we could expect the easiest fords to be fortified on both sides. If the CS Victory scenario somehow involves the South ended up in position of Kentucky, the Ohio River would be the frontier and we could expect the same thing. However, in the much more likely event that Kentucky remains Union territory, we would see more fortifications like Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, though hopefully better positioned.

How things would be in the Ozarks, to say nothing of farther west, would be very interesting.

In Blessed are the Peacemakers, I suggested that the northern counties of Virginia would be ceded by the Confederacy to the Union in their peace treaty, because otherwise Washington City would be much more difficult to defend. Brief mentions are made in House of the Proud of an enormous Union fortified base in Centerville.
 
Nullification was a Southern legal view in complete opposition to Constitution law, but widely popular.
The Nullification doctrine arose as a way to ensure Federal law would never interfere with Southern state enforcement of slavery. After the exposure of Denmark Vesey's plot in the 1820s, South Carolina adopted many measures to prevent any recurrence of the threat. Among these was the Negro Seamen Act, which required that free colored crewmen of any visiting ship had to be kept in prison till the ship departed. (Otherwise, they might sneak around organizing an insurrection.) Some of the visiting ships were British, and under a treaty, their crews (including any blacks) had the right to be treated as American seamen were in British ports. So a Federal judge ruled that the Act was void. South Carolina simply ignored his ruling, and soon afterwards began to assert the "states rights" doctrine.

However much Southern apologists want to believe otherwise, there is no evidence that "Southern" political principles differed from those of other areas except as driven by slavery.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
The Nullification doctrine arose as a way to ensure Federal law would never interfere with Southern state enforcement of slavery. After the exposure of Denmark Vesey's plot in the 1820s, South Carolina adopted many measures to prevent any recurrence of the threat. Among these was the Negro Seamen Act, which required that free colored crewmen of any visiting ship had to be kept in prison till the ship departed. (Otherwise, they might sneak around organizing an insurrection.) Some of the visiting ships were British, and under a treaty, their crews (including any blacks) had the right to be treated as American seamen were in British ports. So a Federal judge ruled that the Act was void. South Carolina simply ignored his ruling, and soon afterwards began to assert the "states rights" doctrine.

However much Southern apologists want to believe otherwise, there is no evidence that "Southern" political principles differed from those of other areas except as driven by slavery.

Your analysis is 99% correct, but strictly speaking the first discussions of nullification as a constitutional doctrine were expressed in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions in the 1790s and were a response to the Alien and Sedition Acts. Slavery really didn't factor into those events in any direct way.
 
There has been some discussion of the "states rights" issue on another board used by historians (full disclosure in my retirement I am getting PhD in military history at a real university). The consensus has been that the southern states mostly (though not 100%) used states rights to bolster slavery. A very simplistic summation is that a slave states had the right to slavery, and also various laws to prevent dissemination of abolitionist literature, etc. however when it came to laws restricting slavery ("liberty" laws) and aiding escaping slaves or resisting slave catchers, then (all of a sudden) federal law (such as the fugitive slave rulings) became supreme and overrode the "rights" of northern states. In essence twisting the argument to use whatever worked to keep slavery going, and attempt to expand it.
 
The Union could build a wall of armed fences like Trump's proposition to stop slave escapees from entering the Union illegally. Basically OTL's scenario except with African Americans rather than the current debate.

"We'll build a wall. We'll build a wall, and the Dixies'll pay for it!"


Why bother?

Per Dred Scott, Negroes (even free ones) were not citizens, so had no rights except what the States chose to give them. If northern states were unenthusiastic about having a lot of Blacks (and escapees weren't that numerous) they could easily enact "Black Codes" to keep them in their place, or encourage them to move on to Canada.

Also, if the Confederacy becomes the economic basket case which many on this forum assume, there'll be far more white Southerners emigrating than escaped slaves. Presumably the Union won't want to prevent that.
 
Why bother?

Per Dred Scott, Negroes (even free ones) were not citizens, so had no rights except what the States chose to give them. If northern states were unenthusiastic about having a lot of Blacks (and escapees weren't that numerous) they could easily enact "Black Codes" to keep them in their place, or encourage them to move on to Canada.

Also, if the Confederacy becomes the economic basket case which many on this forum assume, there'll be far more white Southerners emigrating than escaped slaves. Presumably the Union won't want to prevent that.
The Union could have a peaceful relationship with a smalltime banana-republic version of the Confederacy, because of British backing of the Confederacy leading eventually to amiable enough economic ties. If slaves start escaping in large numbers, the Confederacy could demand some sort of border agreement, and a nativist Union could agree on terms of keeping the "job-stealers" in line. And, in this case, the Confederates would most likely pay for most of it, though the Union actually would help and would garrison some border guards.
 
There has been some discussion of the "states rights" issue on another board used by historians (full disclosure in my retirement I am getting PhD in military history at a real university). The consensus has been that the southern states mostly (though not 100%) used states rights to bolster slavery. A very simplistic summation is that a slave states had the right to slavery, and also various laws to prevent dissemination of abolitionist literature, etc. however when it came to laws restricting slavery ("liberty" laws) and aiding escaping slaves or resisting slave catchers, then (all of a sudden) federal law (such as the fugitive slave rulings) became supreme and overrode the "rights" of northern states. In essence twisting the argument to use whatever worked to keep slavery going, and attempt to expand it.

It wasn't really "all of a sudden", though. Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that "[n]o Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due." And the Supremacy Clause is what it is. Most personal liberty laws probably were unconstitutional, and Pennsylvania v. Prigg was one of the mile-markers on the path to SCOTUS's recognition of such. While I'm not disagreeing at all that a good chunk of slavery jurisprudence bears the distinct aroma of outcome-based decision-making, I think it's a bridge too far to say that Slave Power was concerned only preserving and enhancing itself, unmoored from any guiding principle beyond the same.
 
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