Could/Should the CSA have Industrialized (Given an ACW victory)?

[Scherzo]

This popped into my mind the other day as I read over some TL-191 thread. Reminded me of how Longstreet, in the novels, began the progressive emancipation of slaves in the 1880s as a means to prepare the CSA for industrialization, and indeed by WWI/WWII the Confederacy seemed to have a decent indsutrial output, though not to the scale of the North.

How likely is that though? Did the CSA have enough resources to pull out of the ground to make it worth their while to build up their own industry? And furthermore would they even want to do that? Besides maintaining slavery, one of the main reasons for secession was to maintain their agrarian lifestyle in the face of growing northern mercantile centralization. Why would they voluntarily bring that upon themselves?

 

[TFSmith121]

This gets discussed on a regular basis; there's a

This has been discussed on a regular basis; there's a long thread or two already.

Problems:

1) CSA was defeated in 1865;
2) CSA was a failed state by (essentially) 1864;
3) CSA was a loose confederacy with no central government;
4) CSA constitution, along with prohibiting emancipation, also prohibits state investment in infrastructure.
5) Did I mention the CSA was defeated?

There is a quote worth mentioning; it was written by William Preston Johnston, Colonel, C.S.A., the son of Albert Sidney Johnston, for his article on Shiloh in Battles and Leaders, and it sums up the Confederacy, even better than the "arrogance" quote from Gone with the Wind...

….on the 10th of September, 1861, General Johnston was entrusted with the defense of that part of the Confederate States which lay west of the Mountains, except the Gulf Coast (Bragg having control of West Florida and Alabama, and Mansfield Lovell of the coast of Mississippi and Alabama). His command was imperial in extent, and his powers and discretion as large as the theory of the Confederate Government permitted: he lacked nothing except men, munitions, and the means of obtaining them, while he had the right to ask for anything, and the State Executives had the power to withhold everything.

Think about that for a while...

Best,

 

[Scherzo]

I'm not getting into "Could an Industrialized Confederacy Won The War". We're putting aside the fact that they won the war as a given because that's not what I'm interested in talking about. I want to know if a peacetime CSA could or would even want to industrialize.

 

[Sirius]

I'm not getting into "Could an Industrialized Confederacy Won The War". We're putting aside the fact that they won the war as a given because that's not what I'm interested in talking about. I want to know if a peacetime CSA could or would even want to industrialize.

Smith does bring up the extreme decentralization of the CSA, which is relevant. The North industrialized with state support. The infrastructure improvements and tariffs characteristic of Federalist and then Whig programs allowed that region to develop its industry. In the CSA there will be political will for neither. I can only imagine industrialization happening very slowly, limited to certain locations. The failed state prediction for the CSA is very likely. The Boll Weevil isn't butterflied away, and cotton farming as an industry was in a permanent decline by this time anyway. By 1900, I envision the CSA as a completely backwards confederation of states, largely unindustrialized and plagued by a constant insurgency of blacks, carpetbaggers, and southern socialists (with a proto-Maoist ideology).

 

[Scherzo]

Yeah that's sort of what I was thinking. The CSA didn't care about being economically powerful, it was way more concerned about preserving the agrarian social order, progress be damned. I was just wondering if people thought that might change or not. I remember at the time I was reading How Few Remain I found Longstreet's rationalization for slave emancipation to be in character for Confederacy, but now I realize the CSA wasn't really trying to be a functioning nation-state; it was trying to more or less be a cabal of Plantation owning aristocrats.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

I could imagine the CSA as an equivalent to OTL South Korea before Park Chung Hee, but without the genius of a Park-like figure. You could get light industry started with the small scale production of consumer goods in the CSA, but you won't get a massive industrialization scenario like OTL USA.

 

[TFSmith121]

Without industry, they can't win ANY war...

I'm not getting into "Could an Industrialized Confederacy Won The War". We're putting aside the fact that they won the war as a given because that's not what I'm interested in talking about. I want to know if a peacetime CSA could or would even want to industrialize.

Without industry, they can't win ANY war...which means a "CSA" can't exist...

As was pretty much demonstrated by the events of 1861-65.

Unless the CSA is planning to defend itself with cotton balls, tobacco, bourbon, and peaches, it needs to industrialize...

Pretty hard to resist the US Army and Navy otherwise.

Best,

 

[Scherzo]

Might point is I want to completely avoid a "Could have won the Civil War" debate. I don't care about that. I'm interested in how a peacetime CSA would have hypothetically developed.

 

[Sirius]

Without industry, they can't win ANY war...which means a "CSA" can't exist...

As was pretty much demonstrated by the events of 1861-65.

Unless the CSA is planning to defend itself with cotton balls, tobacco, bourbon, and peaches, it needs to industrialize...

Pretty hard to resist the US Army and Navy otherwise.

Best,

We get the point. Please stop.

I could imagine the CSA as an equivalent to OTL South Korea before Park Chung Hee, but without the genius of a Park-like figure. You could get light industry started with the small scale production of consumer goods in the CSA, but you won't get a massive industrialization scenario like OTL USA.

The South Korean miracle needed a strong state and an excess of foreign capital. The CSA would have neither. Unless of course the trend was broken in some way. A successful socialist revolution supported by some USSR analog could perhaps pull this off (thought not without a whole lot of bloodshed, I think).

Yeah that's sort of what I was thinking. The CSA didn't care about being economically powerful, it was way more concerned about preserving the agrarian social order, progress be damned. I was just wondering if people thought that might change or not. I remember at the time I was reading How Few Remain I found Longstreet's rationalization for slave emancipation to be in character for Confederacy, but now I realize the CSA wasn't really trying to be a functioning nation-state; it was trying to more or less be a cabal of Plantation owning aristocrats.

What could change this dour prediction would be a change in the class of people who dominate southern society. The most obvious trajectory to me is an alliance of farmers and urban laborers (whites) agitating for a participatory democracy, winning, and charting a course towards light industry. The other option is a more radical revolution led by blacks and socialists, which could be taken in a number of directions. The tensions are there for either scenario to be plausible. Really, how long could the slavocrats hold onto power after cotton farming stops being profitable and holding slaves a liability?

 

[Elcheapodeca]

Smith does bring up the extreme decentralization of the CSA, which is relevant. The North industrialized with state support. The infrastructure improvements and tariffs characteristic of Federalist and then Whig programs allowed that region to develop its industry. In the CSA there will be political will for neither. I can only imagine industrialization happening very slowly, limited to certain locations. The failed state prediction for the CSA is very likely. The Boll Weevil isn't butterflied away, and cotton farming as an industry was in a permanent decline by this time anyway. By 1900, I envision the CSA as a completely backwards confederation of states, largely unindustrialized and plagued by a constant insurgency of blacks, carpetbaggers, and southern socialists (with a proto-Maoist ideology).

I doubt the CSA could win at all. IRRC roughly 1/4+ or 1/3+ of the army had to be kept inside the CSA to stop slave revolts and unionist revolts. There were also many areas of the country that had more unionists then secessionists and some of the independence referendums would probably have been defeated if put to a vote.

IMO the only reason it lasted for as long as it did was the string of failed Union commanders on the eastern front. Had the union been led by someone willing to use their army competently the war could have been ended years earlier. Even then the CSA was forced to sacrifice the western part of the country in order to hold off the Union in the east.

The CSA's only hope is to by some sort of diplomatic miracle employ Britain in the war. However, this would be a double edged sword as Britain entering would firmly inflame U.S public opinion against both Britain and the CSA resulting in less war weariness and more recruits. Britain also wouldn't be able to do a 1812 repeat as the U.S is much more militarized at this point and could quite possibly destroy any British landing attempt. It is debatable if the U.S could defeat the RN but I doubt Britain would commit the entire RN to the U.S in order to help a backwards slave state.

An early drive on D.C will quite probably end the war sooner for the Union. The D.C fortifications were too strong for the CSA to seize. In an attempt to capture D.C it is highly possible that the CSA military is encircled and destroyed ending the war.

TLDR: It is nearly impossible for the CSA to win the war for various reasons.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

I doubt the CSA could win at all. IRRC roughly 1/4+ or 1/3+ of the army had to be kept inside the CSA to stop slave revolts and unionist revolts. There were also many areas of the country that had more unionists then secessionists and some of the independence referendums would probably have been defeated if put to a vote.

IMO the only reason it lasted for as long as it did was the string of failed Union commanders on the eastern front. Had the union been led by someone willing to use their army competently the war could have been ended years earlier. Even then the CSA was forced to sacrifice the western part of the country in order to hold off the Union in the east.

The CSA's only hope is to by some sort of diplomatic miracle employ Britain in the war. However, this would be a double edged sword as Britain entering would firmly inflame U.S public opinion against both Britain and the CSA resulting in less war weariness and more recruits. Britain also wouldn't be able to do a 1812 repeat as the U.S is much more militarized at this point and could quite possibly destroy any British landing attempt. It is debatable if the U.S could defeat the RN but I doubt Britain would commit the entire RN to the U.S in order to help a backwards slave state.

An early drive on D.C will quite probably end the war sooner for the Union. The D.C fortifications were too strong for the CSA to seize. In an attempt to capture D.C it is highly possible that the CSA military is encircled and destroyed ending the war.

TLDR: It is nearly impossible for the CSA to win the war for various reasons.

If the CSA's military leadership was a bit smarter and combined that with the early demise of prominent Union generals like Grant and Thomas, then we could have a totally different scenario that leads to an unusual CS victory.

 

[judaspaladin]

The thing with these scenarios is there are so many variables and possibilities. Some Confederates might recognize the need to industrialize if they want to survive as a nation. How much luck they'd have is of course very debatable.

In the long run though industrialization would only put off the inevitable: the CSA would either self destruct and/or be reconquered by the North.

 

[Elcheapodeca]

If the CSA's military leadership was a bit smarter and combined that with the early demise of prominent Union generals like Grant and Thomas, then we could have a totally different scenario that leads to an unusual CS victory.

I'm not sure that even this would work. The CSA basically has to win really early (Which is very unlikely) or go home. Over time the Union's superiority in men, equipment, and industry will result in a Union victory. The Union also had a fairly deep bench when it comes to top level commanders. The CSA really only had Lee, Longstreet, and Jackson and perhaps a few others I'm forgetting to equal the Union's best.

 

[Scherzo]

Again, do not debate whether the South could've won the war. That's not what this thread is about. See the Given an ACW Victory in the title. If you need an excuse, just fanwank some Reverse-Antietam like Turtledove does in 191. I have no idea if that could've realistically had happened, but again, not the focus of the thread.

 

[Sirius]

I'm not sure that even this would work. The CSA basically has to win really early (Which is very unlikely) or go home. Over time the Union's superiority in men, equipment, and industry will result in a Union victory. The Union also had a fairly deep bench when it comes to top level commanders. The CSA really only had Lee, Longstreet, and Jackson and perhaps a few others I'm forgetting to equal the Union's best.

This is tangential to the OP. Please take it to a different thread.

 

[Elcheapodeca]

This is tangential to the OP. Please take it to a different thread.

Ok sorry.

 

[bguy]

Smith does bring up the extreme decentralization of the CSA, which is relevant.

Was the CSA really that decentralized though? The CSA government imposed conscription, impressment of property (including slaves), and the suspension of habeas corpus during the war. That suggests that under the right circumstances they were willing to tolerate a fairly aggressive central government.

The North industrialized with state support. The infrastructure improvements and tariffs characteristic of Federalist and then Whig programs allowed that region to develop its industry.

Out of curiosity how much of the infrastructure improvements were actually funded by the federal government? I was under the impression the Whigs were largely frustrated in their attempts to do so at the national level and did more of their infrastructure programs at the state level.

In the CSA there will be political will for neither.

Well in the 1840s the Whig Party did very well in some Southern states (Tennessee, North Carolina) and was at least competitive in other states (Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi), so there must have been at least some potential support for a Whig economic program in the South. (Obviously adopting such a program at the national level would require amending the Confederate Constitution, but I'm not convinced that is an insurmountable obstacle as the Confederate Constitution is actually somewhat easier to amend then the US Constitution.)

 

[Scherzo]

My main question is how were agricultural exports looking for the CSA/South in that time period? I feel the upshot of being unindustiralized is that (during peacetime at least) you don't have to import much besides the luxury goods for the rich.

And I guess another question, if agriculture was mainly slave labor in the South, what exactly were poor white southerners 'doing' during that time period?

 

[DValdron]

There have been several threads on this topic, and a number of competing viewpoints articulated.

There are multiple obstacles to Confederate industrialization. To run through some of the chief ones:

1) Lack of any financial infrastructure, no real banking establishment, no organized system for credit and securities, tended to mean that capital was safest tied up in land or slaves, and therefore not available for investment;

2) Lack of coherent internal transportation infrastructure and networks - the South had no central railway trunk, instead there was a patchwork of inefficient short run rails with no standardization, canals, and poor quality roads, all oriented toward delivery to export, this meant significant internal transshipment costs, particularly compared to imports. Not fatal, but a serious cumulative handicap.

3) A constitutional prohibition against infrastructure projects.

4) A relatively small and extremely fragmented domestic market, particularly in comparison to adjacent rivals the US, Britain and France, which placed the domestic industries at a net disadvantage compared to manufactured imports.

5) Serious difficulties penetrating any foreign market, notably America, Europe or Latin America for a number of reasons, ranging from distance, lack of blue water shipping, prior secured market positions for the US and Britain, distaste for slavery, etc.

6) A fairly regressive 'renter/owner' plantation culture that places a premium on land and property ownership and is unlikely to support or embrace entrepreneurialism.

7) Low tariff policies that would have made it difficult for domestic industries to thrive against foreign imports.

8) Massive confederate war debts and deficit policy likely to produce hyperinflations, crashes and speculative bubbles.

9) Inability to access foreign investment capital based on the hostility to slaveocracy.

My best guess is that you would have seen some degree of Confederate industrialization between 1860 and 1890, driven by railroads, export service, and state subsidies. Mostly light industry. You'd have likely seen a briefly prosperous Confederate steel industry and secondary manufacturing. But most Confederate industry will tend to be local and small scale, it will have difficulty achieving economies of scale. In the long run, starved of capital, shut out of export markets, and competing against better capitalized foreign manufacturers with much greater economies of scale and easy market access, a lot of the Confederate industry will wither on the vine, be pushed out, or bought out. The steel industry would likely be the Confederate flagship, but it's likely to decline by 1890 at the latest and not likely to last much past 1910. After that, what you'll get is a scattering of light service industries, small scale and local.

Basically, you'll be looking at a broadly 'latin American third world' styled economy, with an early bloom of halfhearted industrialization followed by de-industrialization, and a neocolonial mercantile structure based on exports of a small basket of raw materials and commodities, and imports of a wide spectrum of goods.

But that's just my assessment.

 

[Scherzo]

So a related question, would some form of Industrialization been necessary for the Confederates to preserve their way of life? And as Sirius suggested, how much cultural change could come from poor, white agitation?