Confederate and Union Economic/Industrial/Infastructural Development

That may be true, but said improvements cost enormous quantities of capital, in most cases well beyond the finances of both individual states and individuals.

Well, American railroads were privately owned...

Southern capital institutions were destroyed by the Civil War in OTL. This may change in an ATL.
 
I'm currently the very interesting, albeit a bit dry, A House Dividing: Economic Development In Pennsylvania and Virginia Before the Civil War by John Majewski. One of the more telling aspects of Southern attempts at both building internal transportation networks and creating industry is that while investors repeatedly bought in to such schemes, unlike like in the North, they almost never turned a profit. In some instances land value along a new rail line or canal increased enough to justify the cost but only for the people immediately along the new route. But usually the lack of large cities and high population densities meant there were few markets for these improvements to service and so they, along with attempts at industrialization flounderd.

Thus, funding for improvements became very localized and just enough to increase land values for the large planters (which allowed them to get more loans to put more acreage in a cash crop and buy more slaves). In the North many locals bought shares for canal and rail companies but the real money came from bankers in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston. In fact even the few Southern banks often were funded by Northern investors who held upward of 90% of their assets.

Another problem was that in the critical years from 1840 to 1860, 87.5% of all new immigrants arrived in and stayed in the free states. In fact the in flow of immigrants to the South was only marginally more than the rate of emigration that native Southerns had as many small farmers moved North to get better jobs. With slavery maintained there is absolutely no reason for this to change.

Also, I doubt there would be enough outside pressure to persuade the South to end slavery any time soon. It would take a major change of culture and ideology, something that didn't even occur in OTL after losing the Civil War, to make them end slavery (well they ended slavery OTL but their culture of institutionalized racism persisted for another 100 years). Besides political reality would be such that the pressure against the South would be relatively minor. Either France, to protect intrusions into Latin America, or Britain, to protect Canada, would back the CSA against the USA. In OTL the US backed some really nasty SOBs to win the Cold War, why would the politics of this reality be any different?

Benjamin
 
There are some things usually overlooked in this kind of POD, especially this late.

For one thing, even if East Tennessee remains Union territory that still leaves a number of Confederate whites who were engaging in pro-Union paramilitary activities throughout the Confederacy by this point. For the CSA to establish territorial control would mean some relatively lengthy suppression campaigns seeing CS Army regulars up against these paramilitaries.

A more difficult question is what happens to black Union soldiers recruited in 1863 and their families? I can't see the Confederacy being very willing to accept them as legitimate soldiers and I still less see them freeing their families to go North with them. I am also quite skeptical that the Union leadership would be very concerned about blacks, but now you've ex-slaves, some of whom have actual combat experience and a huge number of them with experience of military discipline. If these soldiers are subject to attempted re-enslavement by Confederate authorities the white paramilitaries would have black allies.

Another interesting question is that the CS government had already accumulated much greater power by this point than it was legally authorized to. With it being peacetime as well the CSA would establish a Supreme Court, and I can see in the light of the enhanced powers the CS central government assumed with large sections of the country having a few die-hards who don't accept the peace (pro-Union versions of Jesse James in the Ozarks and suchllike) and of course potential trouble from the black Union troops that such a CSA would be in for.....interesting times. A fight between the CS President and Congress over a Supreme Court in such a context would not perhaps unmoor the CSA entirely but it would be a crisis as grave as 1787 for the USA.
 
Okay the way I see it the Confederacy has a number of things working against it.

1) A fractured, poorly maintained and incredibly regionalized transportation network.
2) Most of the Confederacy is former Democrat territory and largely stood against internal government improvements. Though this was at least partially balanced by the needs of the war you will likely see this come out post war with virulent opposition to many projects the government might propose.
3) A fragmented and poorly designed financial structure which resulted in hyper inflation and the virtual breakdown of the southern economy. This will need to be replaced as well.
4) A populace which is in comparison to the North relatively uneducated and without the public schooling infrastructure of the north.
5) Before the war much of the actual trading abroad of Southern cotton was done via Yankee traders and Yankee ships.
6) A lack of immigration from Europe will likely hamper any real growth.
7) A Government nearly completely crippled from tremendous war debts and a "Currency" which is virtually non grata anywhere.
8) The Planter class has a absolutely tremendous amount of political power. They will almost undoubtedly stop any attempt to create a tariff on imported goods. Without a Tariff any attempt to create domestic manufacturing capabilities will likely be swamped by massive amounts of cheaper superior British and French goods.
9) Much of the industrial facilities created during the war were built in a hodge podge fashion and will likely post war have to be either completely replaced or abandoned.

Add to this whatever comes of the black Union troops recruited and trained at this time of the war, the pockets of Unionism left still in the CSA, as not everyone will stop fighting just because the shooting war's over (in fact allowing West Virginia and East Tennessee as Union states may even embolden the few other strongholds) and the political struggle that will be setting up a CS Supreme Court in the context of the other two.
 
Add to this whatever comes of the black Union troops recruited and trained at this time of the war, the pockets of Unionism left still in the CSA, as not everyone will stop fighting just because the shooting war's over (in fact allowing West Virginia and East Tennessee as Union states may even embolden the few other strongholds) and the political struggle that will be setting up a CS Supreme Court in the context of the other two.

I tend to think that a low scale bushwacking war would persist at the very least till the early 1900s.

The way I see it the Union may begin cleansing its border states (Mostly the former Confederate Ones) of pro confederates and expelling them into the confederacy. You can probably expect the south to do the opposite. You may see the North settling Contrabands in former pro confederate areas.

I think that the Confederacies pre war enthusiasm for Filibustering and Southern expansion may reemerge. I think the Confederacy may attempt to seize control of either portions of Mexico or more likely countries in the Caribbean and Central America.
 
I tend to think that a low scale bushwacking war would persist at the very least till the early 1900s.

The way I see it the Union may begin cleansing its border states (Mostly the former Confederate Ones) of pro confederates and expelling them into the confederacy. You can probably expect the south to do the opposite. You may see the North settling Contrabands in former pro confederate areas.

I think that the Confederacies pre war enthusiasm for Filibustering and Southern expansion may reemerge. I think the Confederacy may attempt to seize control of either portions of Mexico or more likely countries in the Caribbean and Central America.

And note as well that over time wars lead to centralization of feudal societies. That's the reason the Hundred Year's War was as crucial as it was to the formation of Absolutist France. Such a guerrilla conflict would continue to increase the power of Richmond, particularly the Confederate President, and also the influence of the CS military.

What that would mean for the 20th Century is interesting. And if the CSA were to make such attempts it could easily spark a second conflict between the two.

:eek: Oh. My. God. Timeline-191. :eek:
 

The Sandman

Banned
I'd say that the North probably keeps all of Tennessee. They hold all of it by mid-1863, and the South doesn't have the capacity to evict them; Southern victory in the east is already being traded for Northern evacuation of all of the bits of territory along the coast that the North held by that point and for a peace treaty; West Virginia and Tennessee can both be held by the Union without any additional effort.

And the South does not have a rosy economic future ahead of it, given that they've already sabotaged their cotton market and that they're running out of usable land for it anyway. They don't have anything else they can produce that will bring in enough capital to function, they can't get industrialization because slavery destroys the low-wage economy that would pull in immigrants while also absorbing available capital, they can't get internal improvements for the reasons already mentioned...

The only way the Confederacy can avoid becoming a banana republic is to free the slaves and have a functioning federal government, but do either of those things and they cease to be the Confederacy. So they're pretty much boned.
 
I'd say that the North probably keeps all of Tennessee. They hold all of it by mid-1863, and the South doesn't have the capacity to evict them; Southern victory in the east is already being traded for Northern evacuation of all of the bits of territory along the coast that the North held by that point and for a peace treaty; West Virginia and Tennessee can both be held by the Union without any additional effort.

And the South does not have a rosy economic future ahead of it, given that they've already sabotaged their cotton market and that they're running out of usable land for it anyway. They don't have anything else they can produce that will bring in enough capital to function, they can't get industrialization because slavery destroys the low-wage economy that would pull in immigrants while also absorbing available capital, they can't get internal improvements for the reasons already mentioned...

The only way the Confederacy can avoid becoming a banana republic is to free the slaves and have a functioning federal government, but do either of those things and they cease to be the Confederacy. So they're pretty much boned.


Good point about Tennessee.

Otherwise pretty much the conclusion I came to.
 
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