Good point. In addition, I would say that classist structures in the Confederacy would just further intensify over time, and the situation of poor whites would have a hard time trying to improve.
Could/would the USA survive long-term after a CSA victory?
- Thread starter OldScifi
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Considering the extreme difficulties that leftism had in taking off in OTL South even in the Gilded Age, I find it doubtful that in a much poorer and more isolated State, which has more in common with the feudal era than with the 20th century, somehow the theory of the labor movement spreads and becomes popular. Especially when it will be a workerism that ignores the fact that the most oppressed class is not poor whites but slaves. It seems more like a kind of wish-fulfillment "we just have to wait for the leftist revolution to break out and destroy the CSA for us because economics."
Yemen was a conquered region, far different from any 1860 US states. Even then, it took the Italo-Turkish War and then the World War I for Yemen to gain independence.
First, tariffs alone are not going to cause secession, because there are other policies that would benefit these states such as internal improvements and railroad expansions, and industrialization would bring in new supporters. As for how to stop the secessionists, the Army could cooperate with local unionists to neutralize them.
Because the South was extremely anti-labor union and resistant to leftist ideas IOTL, and the emigration of Unionists and poor whites would only make leftism less likely to enter the political discourse.
Then again, poor whites existed in the American South mainly because the slave owners took more and more land.
And the historical reaction to that was either to redouble the oppression of blacks or to move west. Only the second is now more difficult because the West is another country, so they either resign themselves to being non-citizen immigrants or continue to keep their boots on black collars.
And in any case it is much more likely that any form of "laborism" that emerged in CSA had a strong racist component. (I remember that I proposed that it would be based on the dialectical conflict between "progressive races vs reactionary races", both concepts aligning very closely with local racial divisions)...
Good point. However, since much of the poor whites were located in Appalachia, which is where large amounts of coal are located, it could be possible for the Confederacy to get interested in these mineral resources and decide that pushing the poor whites out of Appalachia is the best course of action.
That’s sort of the route I was thinking of if such a movement existed. Again, this does depends a lot on CSA domestic policy and the economy of the nation. If it’s functioning decently, then it probably struggle similarly to how it did in Chile (basically being crushed repeatedly)
Why expel them? Someone has to work those mines, as well as supervise the blacks who do the hardest work. It's more likely that they'll decide to keep the whites for that, especially if by then Confederate leaders are starting to get restless that more and more whites are heading west...
Good point. However, it is likely that the Confederacy will remain brutally focused on maintaining a plantation economy, the same economy that created poor whites.
I expect the union to survive but with the federal government weaker, needing to grant increased autonomy (rights) to the states to weaken calls for state/regional separatism that would be louder in this timeline. Despite a weaker federal government I fully expect the union to be stronger then the confederacy regardless. A independent south would eventually get rid of slavery in the coming decades, most likely before 1900 but without otl pressure from the north for desegregation (they litteraly had to send in the military to enforce desegregation early on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine ) I expect race relations to maintain at either otl south african apartide levels or otl Jim Crow levels. Haveing a dissatisfied and oppressed majority population kept down by a minority white population would make for a larger handicap then any regionalism the north might experience and could potentially serve to make them a pariah state if we look further down the time line like otl south africa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine ) I expect race relations to maintain at either otl south african apartide levels or otl Jim Crow levels. Haveing a dissatisfied and oppressed majority population kept down by a minority white population would make for a larger handicap then any regionalism the north might experience and could potentially serve to make them a pariah state if we look further down the time line like otl south africa.