Blacks in post-slavery CSA.

Slavery was eventually going to end regardless of the CSA's existence, that much is clear. I believe that would sometime in the early 20th Century, when the CSA begins to industrialize, but what would happen after that?

IOTL, segregation was still a thing until 1960s in the USA, which makes me doubt the CSA would tolerate blacks at all. Especially as a potentially subversive element. I don't think they'd go as far as genocide (plus that'd give the USA the perfect excuse to invade), but perhaps shipping them all to Africa?
 
Slavery was eventually going to end regardless of the CSA's existence, that much is clear. I believe that would sometime in the early 20th Century, when the CSA begins to industrialize, but what would happen after that?

IOTL, segregation was still a thing until 1960s in the USA, which makes me doubt the CSA would tolerate blacks at all. Especially as a potentially subversive element. I don't think they'd go as far as genocide (plus that'd give the USA the perfect excuse to invade), but perhaps shipping them all to Africa?

I think it would be even worse than segregation, maybe even worse than Apartheid. I would expect the CSA to be highly segregated until an alt-civil rights movement emerges.
 
It depends on how slavery ends. There will never be nationwide emancipation, as that would be legally and politically impossible. That pretty much leaves cotton planters going out of business en masse for whatever reasons, which means their slaves would be freemen. Contrary to much common wisdom, slavery was compatible with industrialization. Free blacks will still be non-citizens, liable to be arrested and pressed back into slavery on account of their race. The idea that the natural position of a black person is slavery would be firmly entrenched in southern society, and it would evolve to the point where all blacks would be de facto slaves, even without an owner. If the south successfully industrializes, which there are reasons to doubt it can, factory owners, rail companies, shipyards, etc. could still rent blacks from commercial slave owners at a greater profitability than paying the wages of white workers. This state of affairs could go on for a long time.

Much more likely, slavery would end early in the 20th century with the social collapse of the south or at any time after secession with reconquest by the United States. Blacks would then have the opportunity to assert their rights.
 
Slavery was eventually going to end regardless of the CSA's existence, that much is clear.
That point is actually very much debated. But even if it did end, there are plenty of possibilities for a transition to a system of exploitation that's only markably better, like peonage.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
They'd just call it "labor camps" for vagrants...

Slavery was eventually going to end regardless of the CSA's existence, that much is clear. I believe that would sometime in the early 20th Century, when the CSA begins to industrialize, but what would happen after that?

IOTL, segregation was still a thing until 1960s in the USA, which makes me doubt the CSA would tolerate blacks at all. Especially as a potentially subversive element. I don't think they'd go as far as genocide (plus that'd give the USA the perfect excuse to invade), but perhaps shipping them all to Africa?

They'd just call it "labor camps" for vagrants... slavery would never end.

Read Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon; Pulitzer winner in 2008.

PBS did a documentary by the same name.

Sharecropping and debt peonage weren't much better.

The Civil War ended chattel slavery; that was worth every drop of blood spilled, but it didn't end corruption in the legal system...

Best,
 
For many African Americans OTL, the solution to Jim Crow was move north. While prejudice and racism existed, it was less dangerous than the Deep South

My guess is that in this scenario, while a separate United States wouldn't have Jim Crow, I doubt they would be very welcoming of African Americans, since there was plenty of racism in the Midwest. I guess African Americans would probably attempt to escape, their status being worse than undocumented Mexican immigrants OTL.

Since a Great Migration is not an option, an anti-Jim Crow insurgency would eventually emerge, the latest being sometime in the 1920s. Remember that in the 1920s, there was already a black nationalist movement, the most famous figure being Marcus Garvey.
 
Chattel slavery would probably end eventually, but that doesn't mean practical slavery would end. If official "emancipation" happened, I would expect the state of civil rights to still be far worse then after the Civil War OTL. Things like the Black Codes would be legally entrenched. Blacks wouldn't be citizens, they'd be banned from voting, owning property, owning a business, receiving a state-funded education (maybe a ban from any education at all), restricted to living in certain localities, restrictions on crossing state lines without government permission, anti-miscegenation laws in full force, unable to seek protection from the legal system (if the CSA ever had their own version of the Bill of Rights, none of those protections would apply to them), perhaps limitations on the amount of children allowed, in order to keep the population ratio favorable to whites; and the economic system would be rigged to keep blacks from ever rising out of poverty. So not too far off from OTL, but far more legally entrenched, with plenty of additional restrictions.


If the south successfully industrializes, which there are reasons to doubt it can, factory owners, rail companies, shipyards, etc. could still rent blacks from commercial slave owners at a greater profitability than paying the wages of white workers. This state of affairs could go on for a long time.

And if slavery still remains legal, this is the most likely outcome. While plantations will still exist, in all likelihood Blacks would belong to people or businesses that function as slave brokers, renting out slaves to industrialists for cheap prices.
 
Why do people always go about with this attitude that in a victorious CSA slavery would end on its own in a few decades?

Wasn't slavery heavily ingrained in the constitution? Even with industrialization I can't see them going "ok, we're now all done with slavery you're all free". I honestly believe it'd have continued in some for or other well into the 20th century at least the mid-point.
 
If slavery eventually did end in an independent Confederacy, it's likely that it would merely be replaced with a system comparable to or worse then apartheid, slavery in all but name.
 
If slavery eventually did end in an independent Confederacy, it's likely that it would merely be replaced with a system comparable to or worse then apartheid, slavery in all but name.

I do wonder, though, if the South would ever attempt to start creating bantustans, or if the cheap labor would be too important to them.

I suspect that in the Appalachians - and I guess anywhere that large-scale agriculture or industry wasn't viable - you'd see the establishment of "black-free" zones, while the productive heartlands would keep slaves-in-all-but-name

Not so ninja edit
Why do people always go about with this attitude that in a victorious CSA slavery would end on its own in a few decades?

Wasn't slavery heavily ingrained in the constitution? Even with industrialization I can't see them going "ok, we're now all done with slavery you're all free". I honestly believe it'd have continued in some for or other well into the 20th century at least the mid-point.

I think the feeling is that decreasing economic viability as industrialization occurs (typically this is predicated on the assumption that factory work requires more skill than farm work, which I'm very much not certain is true), combined with foreign pressure would force emancipation eventually.

People tend to look to Brazil, which ended slavery in 1888 after decades of decline. People tend to forget, though, that a lot of this decline happened because of a large drought in the late 1870s that basically destroyed a lot of Brazil's cotton production. Brazil also had emancipationists in the South (both on general principles and due to fear of competition for jobs), which the North did in the US historically, and which the CSA will probably mostly lack. Brazil also always had a much higher population of free blacks, and a smoother climb up for them socially (not smooth by any means, but the racial continuum in Brazil as opposed to the binary definition of race in the US meant that families could claw themselves into whiteness and prosperity over generations.

Still, though, I can imagine France and Great Britain leading the rest of the "civilized world" in threatening embargo on the South unless they get rid of slavery eventually - honestly, probably sooner rather than later. By the mid-19th century, most European bourgeoises and nobles considered slavery to be terribly gauche. Some led loud campaigns against global slavery (leading, among other things, the British declaration that they would no longer tolerate slave trade on the High Seas - which in many ways is only one step removed from outlawing slavery globally, in idea if not in practice). Considering that the CSA's economy is much smaller than the US's, and also is much more dependent on international trade, they'd fold pretty quickly in the face of any real economic pressure...or they'd collapse into poverty. Worst case scenario involves the US being supported by France and the UK at the turn of the century to destroy the peculiar institution once and for all.
 
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Why do people always go about with this attitude that in a victorious CSA slavery would end on its own in a few decades?

Wasn't slavery heavily ingrained in the constitution? Even with industrialization I can't see them going "ok, we're now all done with slavery you're all free". I honestly believe it'd have continued in some for or other well into the 20th century at least the mid-point.

Because it's a trope in almost all published alternate history about the subject.
 
I'll give my sincere opinion...

Slavery is very likely NOT to end in an independent CSA. If it does "end", it will only be to mutate into something else, but still be de-facto slavery in the form of peonage, sharecropping, penal labor, etc...

But I thought of a more disturbing scenario... Wold the whites ever think of a... "Final Solution to the Negro Question"?
 
Because it's a trope in almost all published alternate history about the subject.

Sorry it's a AH trope that slavery will end in a few decades or that it will last much longer?

All I know is it is popular CSA revisionist talk that slavery would have "eventually ended" on its own in the CSA and that a bloody war to end it wasn't necessary because it was already on its way out. Despite it being fully enshrined in its constitution and the planter class not looking to give it up any time soon.
 
Sorry it's a AH trope that slavery will end in a few decades or that it will last much longer?

All I know is it is popular CSA revisionist talk that slavery would have "eventually ended" on its own in the CSA and that a bloody war to end it wasn't necessary because it was already on its way out. Despite it being fully enshrined in its constitution and the planter class not looking to give it up any time soon.

That the South abolishes slavery under president Lee and proceeds to pull a Japan ten times over and outclass the north in industry and technology.

The AH trope is probably related to Lost Causeism. It's been around a long time.
 
I'll give my sincere opinion...

Slavery is very likely NOT to end in an independent CSA. If it does "end", it will only be to mutate into something else, but still be de-facto slavery in the form of peonage, sharecropping, penal labor, etc...

But I thought of a more disturbing scenario... Wold the whites ever think of a... "Final Solution to the Negro Question"?

Slavery will probably end in upheaval, like I mentioned. If the south does commit genocide against blacks, it'll probably be more like the Armenian genocide than the holocaust.
 
Why do people always go about with this attitude that in a victorious CSA slavery would end on its own in a few decades?

Wasn't slavery heavily ingrained in the constitution? Even with industrialization I can't see them going "ok, we're now all done with slavery you're all free". I honestly believe it'd have continued in some for or other well into the 20th century at least the mid-point.

Because the CSA would then become a pariah state as no other "modern" country would openly conduct equal diplomatic relations with it, and that usually won't fit into their stories.
 
That pretty much leaves cotton planters going out of business en masse for whatever reasons, which means their slaves would be freemen.

Cotton planters going out of business en masse means their slaves are valuable assets which will be sold to pay their creditors. The only slaves freed by this would be those too old, ill, or injured to work; who would be free to starve.
 
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