CHC: Slavery in the USA in a CSA TL:

For the purposes of the discussion the POD here is that Lee defeats McClellan in an open-field battle where McClellan actively tries to lead the Army of the Potomac, his inexperience leads him to make major mistakes, and Lee "wins" a gruesome bloodbath that only qualifies as a "victory" because McClellan winds up withdrawing to "shield Washington", though none of this is as clear overseas, while Bragg wins simultaneously a Super-Perryville. Iuka and Second Corinth are still victories for Grant and Rosecrans, but they obviously matter far less in this case.

Thus the UK and France decide that the CSA's able to win the war in its own right, recognize it, and dictate mediation (essentially a TL-191 style short war victory). As to the details of how this works, I invoke the MST3K Mantra's AH version: It's just a scenario, you really should relax. Don't ask how it happens, just go with the assumption that it does as it's incidental to the topic here.

Now, this is a cultural history challenge on a side of a Union defeat that's usually neglected: the Union will in almost all realistic scenarios retain Delaware, Maryland, and Missouri, and in most scenarios is more likely to keep, as opposed to lose, Kentucky. What happens to slavery in the post-War of Secession USA?

The Union slave states IOTL weren't exactly keen on altering the institution until later in the war when they changed in tune with the whole of the USA. But they're also not going to want to join the Confederacy even when it wins the war when they weren't interested in doing this in 1862-3 IOTL. The Union still, thus, will retain a significant and vital chunk of territory where slavery is a surviving institution in any scenario where there's now a CSA to the south.

What does the USA *do* with the slaves still on its territory? How would these people impact the development of race-relations in the ATL USA?
 
I imagine a lot of slave state members are very anxious about this. This is not the outcome anyone wants.

Can't see the 13th Amendment passing too easily, but then, how many voices will be really raised against it?
 
I think that the slaveowners will eventually be bought off. The FSL is dead which means slaves can free themselves by walking north. The slaveowners will lose more and more slaves to it and will eventually be willing to be bought off and it will cost less and less as slaves continue to walk off.
 
I imagine a lot of slave state members are very anxious about this. This is not the outcome anyone wants.

Can't see the 13th Amendment passing too easily, but then, how many voices will be really raised against it?

Well, I actually could see them backing a different version with gradual emancipation. One reason they might have for doing so with an independent CSA to the south would be the memories of the CS Army's invasions of Maryland and Kentucky (an 1862 scenario leaves out Sterling Price's invasion, an 1864 scenario would add Missouri to the list of slave US states invaded by CS troops) and wanting to remove any excuse on the part of the CSA to repeat those invasions. Which would be an ironic end to US slavery, but it would still qualify *as* an end. And would at least in theory attempt to provide a reason to forestall, not bring on, war with the Confederacy.
 
I think that the slaveowners will eventually be bought off. The FSL is dead which means slaves can free themselves by walking north. The slaveowners will lose more and more slaves to it and will eventually be willing to be bought off and it will cost less and less as slaves continue to walk off.

Not to mention that the slave states still in the USA would remember how the CSA acted with regard to slave states controlled by the Union in the war and would seek to avoid offering their mere existence as an excuse for an invasion.
 
Well, I actually could see them backing a different version with gradual emancipation. One reason they might have for doing so with an independent CSA to the south would be the memories of the CS Army's invasions of Maryland and Kentucky (an 1862 scenario leaves out Sterling Price's invasion, an 1864 scenario would add Missouri to the list of slave US states invaded by CS troops) and wanting to remove any excuse on the part of the CSA to repeat those invasions. Which would be an ironic end to US slavery, but it would still qualify *as* an end. And would at least in theory attempt to provide a reason to forestall, not bring on, war with the Confederacy.

Good point as CSA hypocrisy knew no bounds.
 
Good point as CSA hypocrisy knew no bounds.

And of course those states most aware of this in the USA would be US slave states. Though again I don't think it'd be as instantaneous as the OTL 13th Amendment was, though this still leaves a question as to what the USA does with its new masses of freedmen and how US black culture develops as opposed to CS black culture. I could see the two becoming very different.
 
This is a great question. On the one hand, I can see a radicalized North forcing it to death. On the other hand, I can see everyone being exquisitely careful not to push the slave states into Confederate sympathies. (Though this would probably evaporate over time, unless radical states-rights Democrats get into power.) On the gripping hand, I'm afraid that losing the Civil War, especially before the USCT come into prominence, would make the Northern population a lot less sympathetic to abolition than IOTL because they tie it to a bloody and futile war.
 
This is a great question. On the one hand, I can see a radicalized North forcing it to death. On the other hand, I can see everyone being exquisitely careful not to push the slave states into Confederate sympathies. (Though this would probably evaporate over time, unless radical states-rights Democrats get into power.) On the gripping hand, I'm afraid that losing the Civil War, especially before the USCT come into prominence, would make the Northern population a lot less sympathetic to abolition than IOTL because they tie it to a bloody and futile war.

I dunno. The Northern public in some ways as per the actual embrace of things like the Contraband Policy, Conscription Act, and the Sea Islands experiment was actually more radical than Lincoln, not less so, when it came to using slavery as a weapon of war (with all the caveats as far as actually measuring public opinion at the time). Too, the CSA made no bones about wanting *all* slave states in its territory, and if you're a slave state bordering it in terms of the US-CS border, what seems the easiest way to prevent the CSA wanting an invasion?
 
I dunno. The Northern public in some ways as per the actual embrace of things like the Contraband Policy, Conscription Act, and the Sea Islands experiment was actually more radical than Lincoln, not less so, when it came to using slavery as a weapon of war
But that was as a weapon of war against a declared enemy far away, not abolishing slavery against the wishes of friends nearby. Didn't Lincoln have to assure Illinois voters in the Lincoln-Douglas debates that he wouldn't oppose the Illinois law against free Blacks entering the state? Plus, I'm afraid attitudes would change for the worse after the war was clearly lost. I'd very much like it to be otherwise, but I'm afraid it wouldn't.

Of course, all this doesn't apply to the slave states abolishing slavery on their own. West Virginia enacted gradual abolition in spring-summer 1863 with a little Federal pressure, and the Missouri convention in summer 1863 wanted to do it but had trouble finding a way around the slavery protections in their state constitution. As you say, I don't think this would be retarded too much by a Confederate victory tying them even more to the free state economy... but Kentucky and Maryland might be a different story.
 
But that was as a weapon of war against a declared enemy far away, not abolishing slavery against the wishes of friends nearby. Didn't Lincoln have to assure Illinois voters in the Lincoln-Douglas debates that he wouldn't oppose the Illinois law against free Blacks entering the state? Plus, I'm afraid attitudes would change for the worse after the war was clearly lost. I'd very much like it to be otherwise, but I'm afraid it wouldn't.

Of course, all this doesn't apply to the slave states abolishing slavery on their own. West Virginia enacted gradual abolition in spring-summer 1863 with a little Federal pressure, and the Missouri convention in summer 1863 wanted to do it but had trouble finding a way around the slavery protections in their state constitution. As you say, I don't think this would be retarded too much by a Confederate victory tying them even more to the free state economy... but Kentucky and Maryland might be a different story.

Except that by the same token that it might worsen overall US attitudes to race and slavery, there's still going to be a hostile neighbor to the south that considers all US slave state territory its by right. Unless the slave states want another war with the CSA whenever the CSA gets it in its little egotistical head to commit suicide, then their concept will be gradual emancipation from the pragmatic POV of avoiding armies marching all over their territory shooting each other and that territory up.
 
Unless the slave states want another war with the CSA whenever the CSA gets it in its little egotistical head to commit suicide, then their concept will be gradual emancipation from the pragmatic POV of avoiding armies marching all over their territory shooting each other and that territory up.
Seems like that'd depend a lot on the precise circumstances surrounding the peace treaty and the trend shown in CSA politics. It could go that way, but I think it's less probable... though it becomes more likely the later the CSA victory is, because it gives the Davis dictatorship more time to centralize things.

Plus, I think slavery in at least Kentucky is too deeply rooted for that to tear it out in less than a couple decades, at least.
 
Did I open up a can o' worms with my thread earlier? :p

Nope, actually, this is a point that's needed discussion in its own right for a while. As it's one that gets vague reference, if any, in published ATLs and almost none in Civil War ATLs in this forum. I blame at least some of it on the Hollywood history version of the war that neglects that the actual Union included both slave and free states against a CSA that was all slave states, and that dramatically oversimplified the Union attitude to abolition and what abolition was the prelude for.
 
Seems like that'd depend a lot on the precise circumstances surrounding the peace treaty and the trend shown in CSA politics. It could go that way, but I think it's less probable... though it becomes more likely the later the CSA victory is, because it gives the Davis dictatorship more time to centralize things.

Plus, I think slavery in at least Kentucky is too deeply rooted for that to tear it out in less than a couple decades, at least.

Hence the "gradual emancipation" part. ;)
 
So much was riding on what Kentucky would do with itself. What was that bishop turned general that basically screwed up the whole thing with Kentucky by invading it? I can't remember his name.
 
So much was riding on what Kentucky would do with itself. What was that bishop turned general that basically screwed up the whole thing with Kentucky by invading it? I can't remember his name.

Leonidas Polk. And technically, strictly speaking, it was not merely invading Kentucky to seize Columbus where he screwed up, but it was both this and not bothering to seize Paducah as well. Someone who thought strategically would have realized this, but Polk never understood just why Ulysses S. Grant captured Paducah in the first place as he'd never. intended. to. seize. it. :rolleyes::eek::mad:

Yes, I really despise Leonidas Polk. I'd claim Bragg as a Louisiana general any day of the week and twice on Sunday over Polk. The only general, as opposed to cutthroat thug (i.e. Jennison and his goons or Quantrill and *his* goons) I despise worse is Jefferson Davis.
 
What're your thoughts on Beauregard?

(apart from his being laughably vain)

Good planner, terrible executioner, the man that bought the Confederacy living to 1865 at the expense of that one engineering officer who was probably Grant's worst single selection for a crucial combat position. Even Ben Butler leading his own army would have actually captured Petersburg then. :rolleyes:

Either way, when he absolutely had to Beauregard *did* save the CSA for far longer than would have otherwise been the case. It's the sole thing that redeems his career where he was blatantly fighting Jefferson Davis for most of the war, not the Union army. At least Joe Johnston was subtle about it during the war.
 
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