AHC: Worst possible outcome for the CSA

  • Thread starter Deleted member 67076
  • Start date
Don't blue ball us like that, post em.

In very brief form -

* the CSA wins independence by an incredible fluke of luck. Which is the only way it could win.

* Flush with ill deserved victory, the Confederacy launches an invasion of Cuba as its next target for expansion, which fails spectacularly as the Spanish kick its ass. Spain was still a modern naval power in the 1870's and the Confederacy was definitely not. A Confederate Army which manages to make a landing on Cuba finds it self surrounded by hostile Cubans who discover a new Spanish loyalism, after making enemies of the population, the Confederate army is horrifically but slowly obliterated. The Spanish navy bombards the Confederate coasts, including New Orleans, with impunity. A Spanish occupation of South Florida follows. The Confederacy sues for peace, North Florida leaves the Confederacy and enters into a loose affiliation with England.

* Meanwhile, the Confederacy turns west, seeking to expand by occupying Northern Mexico with the aid of local allies, to the extreme displeasure of the United States, France and Mexico itself. The Confederate military governance, with inadequate logistical support from home, supports itself with brutal forced labour and confiscations from the local population, earning undying enmity and further blackening the reputation of the Confederacy worldwide. This results in an increasingly ferocious guerilla campaign and eventually an outright war with Mexico. Defeated the Confederacy is forced to withdraw and even cede pieces of Texas.

* The Texans, feeling that they were made to bear the brunt of the costs and manpower levies of the war with Mexico, and forced to assume the territorial losses, and blaming the rest of the Confederacy and its lack of support (the old 'stabbed in the back' myth), decides to leave the Confederacy... Which results in the Texas Confederacy war, and the second devastation of New Orleans. The Confederacy loses, of course.

* Reunification negotiations with the Union fall apart, leaving Northern Texas seceding a la West Virginia and going off with America. The end result is a Free Texas with both its south and north chewed away, diminished, wartorn, bankrupt and without the support and trade of the rest of the United States, it more or less fades from history as a shabby little backwater, passionately loathed by both the Mexicans and Louisianans, and forgotten and ignored by everyone else.

* The Confederacy, in financial ruins from losing three consecutive wars, retreats into a state of denial, as the landed gentry continue to consolidate wealth and power. The war costs are repeatedly addressed by printing more currency, leading to bouts of hyperinflation and currency crashes. Hence, most of the Confederate well to do prefer to put their wealth into land and slaves, principally nonfungible commodities. The Confederacy fails to develop anything resembling a financial infrastructure. This is compounded by dissension and distrust among the states.

* Nevertheless, the Confederacy, or fire breathing elements therein, continue to embroil it in messy foreign adventures or filibusters. There's a disastrous intervention in the Yucatan, Filibusters attempts in Haiti, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, unpleasant and humiliating confrontations with the British, French and even the Dutch navy.

* With a massive shortage of liquid internal capital, a decided lack of foreign investment, a largely bankrupt and incompetent Confederate government, quarreling states and a constitutional prohibition against infrastructure projects - the Confederacy fails to build, or even maintain its infrastructure. Confederate internal transportation is a rickety and unreliable patchwork of failing rails, bad roads, navigable stretches of river, and avaricious local barons and bandits The Confederate economy is rife with systemic inefficiencies that it fails to address and worsen steadily. The standard of living declines steadily in most of the states. The rich hedge their bets by keeping their money in slaves.

* The Confederacy steadily degenerates into essentially a single cash crop neocolonial economy. Those who control or are involved in the cotton trade prosper. Everyone else, fails to do so. Unable to build or maintain infrastructure, foreign nations, chiefly the United States and Britain, but also France, Germany, Holland and even Belgium obtain local concessions, maintain, own and operate facilities. The Confederate ruling classes spends its moneys on imported luxuries rather than indigenous development.

* Despite all that, a small middle class develops in several coastal cities, and Birmingham emerges for a time as an Industrial center, based principally on access to coal and iron ore, and taking advantage of new developments in Iron and steel production which leave it temporarily ahead of its American and British rivals and their older industrial plant. However, lack of economies of scale, a small internal market, fierce external competition, eventually chokes off the Confederate steel industry and it too fades away.

* The only bright spot is Louisiana and New Orleans - prosperous as a trading nexus, sophisticated, urbane, multi-cultural and multi-racial, New Orleans tariffs are a critical pillar of the Confederate finances.... In return for which, Louisiana gets nothing whatsoever.

* Louisiana decides to withdraw from the Confederacy, triggering a Confederate invasion and occupation. However the French, Americans, British and even the Texans intervene decisively against the Confederacy, triggering yet another military disaster. Kansas is lost to the United States, and humiliating terms and penalties are imposed.

* Meanwhile, the wealthy, continuing to consolidate their investments in slaves, with no one to sell their slaves to except each other, have been slowly mounting a 'slave bubble' in which the paper value of slaves is dozens of orders of magnitude in excess of productivity. The Louisiana defeat triggers another familiar bout of hyperinflation, which drives up the value of slaves as a 'refuge for wealth', which then triggers the bust of the slave bubble.

* Overnight, fortunes everywhere are obliterated, followed by the collapse of a landholder based economy. The dependent middle class is devastated, schools and public institutions are closed or abandoned. Destitute planters simply abandon their slaves or drive them out into the world. This leads to runaway social crises, including local uprisings, genocides, atrocities of every sort, starvation, mass movements of population.

* In an effort to stabilize the situation, the Confederate and State Governments assume ownership of all abandoned slaves. Many are euthanized. Many are worked to death in forced labour. Most are rented back to their former owners under horrific conditions.

* In an effort to maintain economic function, the Confederacy becomes a command economy. However, cash strapped, its power devolves to local states, municipalities and particularly strongmen. The Confederacy degenerates into a morass combining the worst aspects of feudalism and communism. Standards of living continue to decline, local starvation is common, local epidemics are untreated, literacy rates among whites are around 5%. Surviving confederate elites operate through a combination of theft and brutality.

* Obviously, the hellholishness is not universal. Some areas and states, particularly coastal ones, maintain order and civilization. Some states, particularly 'Less Virginia' have had enough, and petition to rejoin the United States. America is less than welcoming however, the negotiations founder on the issue of slavery. Later, the United States refuses to consider any further overtures to rejoin.

* With nowhere to go, with critical sources of revenue lost, the Confederacy is poorly prepared for the boll weevil. Again, there is massive state confiscation of abandoned slaves, euthanasia, slave rebellions and race riots. With the final progressive collapse of the cotton trade, the Confederacy continues to degenerate - conflicts between different states result in the Confederacy being sundered into two or three warring successor states. Power devolves to counties, with powerful counties ruling their states. Conflicts between powerful counties result in territory being fought back and forth, groups of small counties being consolidated into new puppet states. The remaining seven states of the original Confederacy being divided into a motley assembly of some thirty warring and competing petty microstates, fiefdoms and badlands. A region of incredible grinding policy, ruled by savage tyrannical elites who maintain their position through pseudolegal theft and relentless brutality, with a standard of living an average Haitian or a poorer African would consider degenerate.

That's basically what I have in mind. Except, you know, I plan to make it ugly.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
And the difference between this and reality is...

In very brief form - A region of incredible grinding policy, ruled by savage tyrannical elites who maintain their position through pseudolegal theft and relentless brutality, with a standard of living an average Haitian or a poorer African would consider degenerate.

That's basically what I have in mind. Except, you know, I plan to make it ugly.

Mine goes like this:

In July, 1861, a landing party from the rebel raider Sumter "occupies" the guano island of Navassa; word of this feat slowly percolates back to the rebel government. The same month, however, the rebel forces are broken at Bull Run, in northern Virginia, when a well-regarded brigade commander, Thomas S. Jackson, dies when he attempts to jump a small wall on horseback to help rally his troops. McDowell's US Army of Northeastern Virginia movies - slowly - to the south, reinforced with Patterson's corps from the Valley.

By December, the US forces are besieging Richmond, and the rebel government flees to North Carolina, and then to Georgia. The war thrashes to its conclusion over the next two years. Lincoln orchestrates the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 as a war measure against the Deep South, and the 13th-15th amendments follow. Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest flee to Navassa with a Miss O'Hara and a Miss Wilkes aboard a small sailboat, vowing never to surrender; their boat sinks just offshore. The "last of the rebels" make it ashore, to subsist on reptiles and feral dogs, cats, pigs, and the local vegetation.

US history continues, more or less as in reality, except no one ever bothers to return to Navassa.

A century and half later, the heavily inbred, toothless, and generally unpleasant descendents of the Sumter's raiding party, Davis, Forrest, and the two southern belles, including the delusional "Prezdent" Jef Daviz da Fifteenth, are re-discovered by the crew of a passing Haitian garbage barge.

The Haitians, upon figuring out who these people are, leave them to their miserable existence. Cruise ships make a point of passing the island in the daylight so passengers can point and laugh.

Best,
 
Mine goes like this:

In July, 1861, a landing party from the rebel raider Sumter "occupies" the guano island of Navassa; word of this feat slowly percolates back to the rebel government. The same month, however, the rebel forces are broken at Bull Run, in northern Virginia, when a well-regarded brigade commander, Thomas S. Jackson, dies when he attempts to jump a small wall on horseback to help rally his troops. McDowell's US Army of Northeastern Virginia movies - slowly - to the south, reinforced with Patterson's corps from the Valley.

By December, the US forces are besieging Richmond, and the rebel government flees to North Carolina, and then to Georgia. The war thrashes to its conclusion over the next two years. Lincoln orchestrates the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 as a war measure against the Deep South, and the 13th-15th amendments follow. Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest flee to Navassa with a Miss O'Hara and a Miss Wilkes aboard a small sailboat, vowing never to surrender; their boat sinks just offshore. The "last of the rebels" make it ashore, to subsist on reptiles and feral dogs, cats, pigs, and the local vegetation.

US history continues, more or less as in reality, except no one ever bothers to return to Navassa.

A century and half later, the heavily inbred, toothless, and generally unpleasant descendents of the Sumter's raiding party, Davis, Forrest, and the two southern belles, including the delusional "Prezdent" Jef Daviz da Fifteenth, are re-discovered by the crew of a passing Haitian garbage barge.

The Haitians, upon figuring out who these people are, leave them to their miserable existence. Cruise ships make a point of passing the island in the daylight so passengers can point and laugh.

Best,

Love it. But it needs to be bigger.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Well, there's always the "South Carolina" option:

Well, there's always the "South Carolina" option:

Too small for a republic, too large for an insane asylum.

It could be a rebelvation.

Best,
 
Mine goes like this:

In July, 1861, a landing party from the rebel raider Sumter "occupies" the guano island of Navassa; word of this feat slowly percolates back to the rebel government. The same month, however, the rebel forces are broken at Bull Run, in northern Virginia, when a well-regarded brigade commander, Thomas S. Jackson, dies when he attempts to jump a small wall on horseback to help rally his troops. McDowell's US Army of Northeastern Virginia movies - slowly - to the south, reinforced with Patterson's corps from the Valley.

By December, the US forces are besieging Richmond, and the rebel government flees to North Carolina, and then to Georgia. The war thrashes to its conclusion over the next two years. Lincoln orchestrates the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 as a war measure against the Deep South, and the 13th-15th amendments follow. Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest flee to Navassa with a Miss O'Hara and a Miss Wilkes aboard a small sailboat, vowing never to surrender; their boat sinks just offshore. The "last of the rebels" make it ashore, to subsist on reptiles and feral dogs, cats, pigs, and the local vegetation.

US history continues, more or less as in reality, except no one ever bothers to return to Navassa.

A century and half later, the heavily inbred, toothless, and generally unpleasant descendents of the Sumter's raiding party, Davis, Forrest, and the two southern belles, including the delusional "Prezdent" Jef Daviz da Fifteenth, are re-discovered by the crew of a passing Haitian garbage barge.

The Haitians, upon figuring out who these people are, leave them to their miserable existence. Cruise ships make a point of passing the island in the daylight so passengers can point and laugh.

Best,

I cant top this, Im trying to but I cant.

I bow before your superior skill.
 
Fifty years down the line of being oppressed by the bourgeoisie landed elite will make the proletariat think otherwise:D.

The USA (all corners) lack the working class radicalism of the Europeans. Their's the result of a thousand years of crushed peasant revolts and the failed revolutions of 1848. The workers of Europe would NEVER trust the moneyed classes the way America's do to this day. Otherwise, there would BE no Republican Party.

In very brief form -
<snip> The remaining seven states of the original Confederacy being divided into a motley assembly of some thirty warring and competing petty micro-states, fiefdoms and badlands. A region of incredible grinding policy, ruled by savage tyrannical elites who maintain their position through pseudo-legal theft and relentless brutality, with a standard of living an average Haitian or a poorer African would consider degenerate.

That's basically what I have in mind. Except, you know, I plan to make it ugly.

Mother-*uck:eek:

I know that the OP says "Keep the CSA independent". But rationally the USA can't survive with the Mother of All Haiti(s) plus a huge chunk of Nazi Germany plus Imperial AND Soviet Russia on their border. Don't forget that ITTL the Mississippi will be totally cut off to normal civilian traffic. Now what did Sherman say about that?

Not to mention that the CSA going full on Vlad Tepes will mean so many refugees pouring north (the topography doesn't really allow for a southern drift) that is going to change the racial makeup of the USA drastically. And its not like ITTL that the CSA will have the organizational and physical resources to pull off a Nazi Holocaust. This isn't the united fascist Jake Featherstone Confederacy, with an intact government and secret police.

Jesus. Let us know when you start that badboy

:eek: Yeah, PM me in fact.:)
 
The USA (all corners) lack the working class radicalism of the Europeans. Their's the result of a thousand years of crushed peasant revolts and the failed revolutions of 1848. The workers of Europe would NEVER trust the moneyed classes the way America's do to this day. Otherwise, there would BE no Republican Party.



Mother-*uck:eek:

I know that the OP says "Keep the CSA independent". But rationally the USA can't survive with the Mother of All Haiti(s) plus a huge chunk of Nazi Germany plus Imperial AND Soviet Russia on their border. Don't forget that ITTL the Mississippi will be totally cut off to normal civilian traffic. Now what did Sherman say about that?

Not to mention that the CSA going full on Vlad Tepes will mean so many refugees pouring north (the topography doesn't really allow for a southern drift) that is going to change the racial makeup of the USA drastically. And its not like ITTL that the CSA will have the organizational and physical resources to pull off a Nazi Holocaust. This isn't the united fascist Jake Featherstone Confederacy, with an intact government and secret police.



:eek: Yeah, PM me in fact.:)
Continued slavery might mean otherwise.Continued slavery might mean social conditions that favors communism for both the slaves and the poor whites.
 
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Hmm let's see.

One of the Confederate gambles succeed (somehow) and a reasonably large C.S.A becomes independent. Presidents Davis, Breckinridge, and (S.D.) Lee are all surprisingly competent, and the south gets a real navy (bringing the slave trade back), colonies and industrial base (mainly from further centralization but) . Sometime in the late 1890s, once the value of slaves is plummeting, desperate Confederates consider the idea of compensated emancipation. Of course, poor whites despise the idea of a large black underclass. The issue seems stuck at an impasse, but then a low level bureaucrat gets a bright idea - how about the slave owners have compensated "population reduction" instead? Let the invisible hand solve the problem.

And once slaves become worth more dead than alive, planters prove to be, shall we say, surprisingly inventive for a rural society. In addition to starving slaves and working them to death, some get the bright idea of bringing some slaves in from abroad on the cheap. The Confederate government, which has a surprisingly large amount of corrupt smugglers in it, is perfectly happy to start killing Africans brought in from abroad (Soylent Black? maybe). This would not be so much of an issue except that one legacy of the early competent Confederate presidents(and navy) is Confederate Haiti, and Confederate Congo.

Does 1/3 Featherston, 1/3 King Leopold, and 1/3 the Invisible Hand work?
 
Mother-*uck:eek:

I know that the OP says "Keep the CSA independent". But rationally the USA can't survive with the Mother of All Haiti(s) plus a huge chunk of Nazi Germany plus Imperial AND Soviet Russia on their border.

Oh it's not all that bad for the USA. Freed from the need to subsidize the Confederacy, with expansive territories to fill and runaway industrialization, and the lack of the political drag and corruption of the former southern states, the USA actually does better. I haven't decided how closely the rest of the world will hew to OTL.

I'm not really thinking 'Mother of all Haiti(s)' - more along the lines of North Korea, but without the sense of fun, joi de vivre, the standard of living, wealth or the level headedness that the NK enjoy OTL.


Don't forget that ITTL the Mississippi will be totally cut off to normal civilian traffic. Now what did Sherman say about that?

The CSA actually earns a large part of its federal revenues from taxes and tariffs on the American use of the Mississippi, so while the government is even halfway sane, it has no intention of killing that golden goose. Of course, as the CSA gets progressively crazier and more bankrupt, the taxes and tariffs rise, CSA policies become more arbitrary and punitive, and to use the words of Ramsay Bolton 'the CSA gets its favourite toy taken away from it, and cries.'


Not to mention that the CSA going full on Vlad Tepes

I wouldn't say Vlad Tepes per se. And it's not going to happen all at once. I'm going to take my time driving old Dixie down.


will mean so many refugees pouring north (the topography doesn't really allow for a southern drift) that is going to change the racial makeup of the USA drastically.

There'll certainly be refugees and the equivalent of the 'Great Migration' for both whites and blacks from time to time, despite the presence of walls and guards on both sides of the Border.


And its not like ITTL that the CSA will have the organizational and physical resources to pull off a Nazi Holocaust. This isn't the united fascist Jake Featherstone Confederacy, with an intact government and secret police.

Oh certainly not. We're not talking genocide. We're talking occasional periods of widespread Euthenasia as a cost saving measure by destitute state governments, and occasional stock termination by bankrupt slave owners.

It's not going to be the United Fascist Confederacy. That would be their ideal. But they'll fall short, and they'll keep on free falling. :D
 
The USA (all corners) lack the working class radicalism of the Europeans. Their's the result of a thousand years of crushed peasant revolts and the failed revolutions of 1848. The workers of Europe would NEVER trust the moneyed classes the way America's do to this day. Otherwise, there would BE no Republican Party.



Mother-*uck:eek:

I know that the OP says "Keep the CSA independent". But rationally the USA can't survive with the Mother of All Haiti(s) plus a huge chunk of Nazi Germany plus Imperial AND Soviet Russia on their border. Don't forget that ITTL the Mississippi will be totally cut off to normal civilian traffic. Now what did Sherman say about that?

Not to mention that the CSA going full on Vlad Tepes will mean so many refugees pouring north (the topography doesn't really allow for a southern drift) that is going to change the racial makeup of the USA drastically. And its not like ITTL that the CSA will have the organizational and physical resources to pull off a Nazi Holocaust. This isn't the united fascist Jake Featherstone Confederacy, with an intact government and secret police.



:eek: Yeah, PM me in fact.:)
Maybe the USA also collapsed?
 
Mine goes like this:

In July, 1861, a landing party from the rebel raider Sumter "occupies" the guano island of Navassa; word of this feat slowly percolates back to the rebel government. The same month, however, the rebel forces are broken at Bull Run, in northern Virginia, when a well-regarded brigade commander, Thomas S. Jackson, dies when he attempts to jump a small wall on horseback to help rally his troops. McDowell's US Army of Northeastern Virginia movies - slowly - to the south, reinforced with Patterson's corps from the Valley.

By December, the US forces are besieging Richmond, and the rebel government flees to North Carolina, and then to Georgia. The war thrashes to its conclusion over the next two years. Lincoln orchestrates the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 as a war measure against the Deep South, and the 13th-15th amendments follow. Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest flee to Navassa with a Miss O'Hara and a Miss Wilkes aboard a small sailboat, vowing never to surrender; their boat sinks just offshore. The "last of the rebels" make it ashore, to subsist on reptiles and feral dogs, cats, pigs, and the local vegetation.

US history continues, more or less as in reality, except no one ever bothers to return to Navassa.

A century and half later, the heavily inbred, toothless, and generally unpleasant descendents of the Sumter's raiding party, Davis, Forrest, and the two southern belles, including the delusional "Prezdent" Jef Daviz da Fifteenth, are re-discovered by the crew of a passing Haitian garbage barge.

The Haitians, upon figuring out who these people are, leave them to their miserable existence. Cruise ships make a point of passing the island in the daylight so passengers can point and laugh.

Best,

Ten dollars says that Lost-causers flock to the island to join their idols' descendents.:D
 

Saphroneth

Banned
The USA (all corners) lack the working class radicalism of the Europeans. Their's the result of a thousand years of crushed peasant revolts and the failed revolutions of 1848. The workers of Europe would NEVER trust the moneyed classes the way America's do to this day. Otherwise, there would BE no Republican Party.
...wait, pardon?

Didn't the Americans mostly come from that very same Europe? (Over two thirds of the way through that thousand years of crushed peasant revolts.)

I've also heard of this thing called the Gilded Age. It was, as I understand it, somewhat unpleasant.
 
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