Could there be peace between USA and CSA?

[Vabasion]

Obviously confederacy is doomed. Even if it does win there are wars around the corner that it may almost certainly not be able to win. From every standpoint, economic, political and logical US would want to retake the lands.

But would it? Presidents change every few years, cultural change between 1865 and 1895 is massive, the bleeding of the war, especially in southern victory would be massive and I honestly don’t know if US population would be willing to bleed once or twice more over it. And slavery is simply unsustainable and unprofitable, with population growth that followed and desire for work slavery is almost certain to be pushed out.

Can there be some resignation over desire for said territory, or reconciliation? Or is confederacy doomed to be swallowed up unless it finds a powerful foreign patron. And if it does find a patron who is likely to be one? Britain?

 

[Jasen777]

It's possible, but not the most likely IMO.

 

[BELFAST]

For there to be peace between the USA and CSA, it would take a very different attitude for the USA.
An independent CSA leaves the possibility of other states wanting to secede.
A CSA with powerful overseas protector would be seen as a threat by the Union.
With the loss of land, people, revenue and markets in the CSA and the rising power of European empires the union might have doubts of its own long term survival.
I cannot see the USA allowing an independent country the size of the CSA on its borders.

I am not sure what wars around the corner you are talking about for the CSA. I think the CSA would avoid wars as it would be too busy controlling its slave population and repairing the damage to the economy post-independence.

 

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

The most likely POD for a CSA that survives more than five years would be that secession happens, but not the firing on Fort Sumter. After a crisis, the USA federal government accepts secession of the six states, maybe someone other than Lincoln is president. The Confederate government goes out of its way to avoid provocation or trying to get the other slave states to secede.

This is a velvet divorce scenario, like that of Slovakia from Czechoslovakia, and there are other precedents. I don't see why the CSA doesn't continue as a weird, embarrassing country that grew out of the USA, and relations between the two are probably fine.

Once the war starts, you really need effective foreign intervention, or something ASB like a complete northern states screw or Confederate wonder weapons. This would be a very different world.

 

[Belisarius II]

It's just highly unlikely. The Union felt deeply offended, and threatened. It wasn't an age of squishiness over casualties. Yes both sides were appalled at the losses, but the attitude was in for a penny, in for a pound. These dead did not die in vain. 40% of Union troops were foreign born, and 10% were Black, so the Union was never going to run out of men. The South fought till half the young men were dead, or disabled. The ACW was a ruthless fight to the finish, only a massive foreign intervention could save the CSA, and even that wouldn't be easy, or sure. Would the UK fight an all out bitter war, with massive casualties, and cost, to uphold slavery, to avenge the stopping of the Trent?

 

[BELFAST]

Would the UK fight an all out bitter war, with massive casualties, and cost, to uphold slavery, to avenge the stopping of the Trent?

Indeed.
The UK and France would need a better reason to help the CSA than the Trent.
Maybe a boycott on Union export of wheat to UK and France when both are short of food until they stop trading with the CSA. That would need ASB level of insanity on the part of the Union.
or
France and the UK start to see the rising power of the USA as a threat to their empires long term.

 

[marktaha]

Read Turtledove's series starting with How Few Remain?

 

[Alstein]

Indeed.
The UK and France would need a better reason to help the CSA than the Trent.
Maybe a boycott on Union export of wheat to UK and France when both are short of food until they stop trading with the CSA. That would need ASB level of insanity on the part of the Union.
or
France and the UK start to see the rising power of the USA as a threat to their empires long term.

Maybe if the US merchants boycott on their own perhaps, due to some provocation by the UK? Just refuse to sell to the UK, but will sell to others?

 

[vizzer]

Maybe if the US merchants boycott on their own perhaps, due to some provocation by the UK? Just refuse to sell to the UK, but will sell to others?

Then the British buy from those others with a mark-up.

 

[tallthinkev]

Then the British buy from those others with a mark-up.

Not even that really, just another British merchant based in country X. Or non British in Britain?

 

[EnglishCanuck]

I mean, if we go by either an early or late win scenario, it's probably one where there has been sufficient political/military damage inflicted that the Union chose to cry uncle. Let's not mince words, there's no scenario possible where the CSA is able to militarily overcome the power of the North and impose its political will on their former countrymen. In every conceivable scenario it's one where the Union has probably chosen to throw in the towel.

Let's just go with a "late peace" scenario and say that the Union sues for peace after Lincoln loses the 1864 election and the Peace Plank wins out for the Democrats. Ostensibly the US will have just voted in a power which declared peace as a priority. After a few brutal years of war, hundreds of thousands dead and maimed, the people of the US have decided enough is enough. In ten years will they want round two? Why?

The CSA on its own is only a source of embarrassment and potential - but perhaps not actual - threat. It would really depend on the actions of the government in Richmond post 1865 that would frame relations. There's lots of economic reasons for them to get along, the cotton trade is lucrative and necessary for the textile mills of New England to function, the north-south trade on the natural highway of the Mississippi is almost essential, and there's money in tobacco and Texas cattle farming. On the flip side the North now has reason to want to be competitive in industry lest the South decide they want to import European manufactured goods over Northern made ones.

Richmond has expansionistic goals, the slavocracy coveted Cuba, and many more wanted to try their hand in Latin America again. It's possible they seek common cause with a power like France or Spain and that kind of long term alliance gets them thinking that the South is a threat. But absent some kind of foreign power ally seeking, the Confederacy is just a bad neighbor who you tolerate.