CSA Wins, How Long Does Slavery Stay: An Analysis

Define "family"

Are we talking about family as in households or are we talking about family as in extended family?


Household would probably do.

If males over 21 are about a fourth of the population (does anyone have accurate stats?) but maybe 90% of the slavelholders, that makes slaveholders a very high percentage of the adult male population - and if you throw in nephews and first cousins of slaveholders, and younger men who probably hope to become slaveholders as they rise in the world, the proportion is even higher. That's a massive interest group, even without allowing for them being at the richer (hence more influential) end of the social spectrum.
 
Take for example Brazil. Its lucrative coffee and sugar industry manufactured by cheap and inexhaustible labor from Africa is overwhelming the expensive British sugar from India. So what Britain did is to pressure Brazil to end its cheap, mass labor and destroy the potential obstacle to British exports from India.
If this were the case, the easier way to make Brazilian sugar more expensive would have been to put a tariff on it, just like the North put a tariff on British manufactured goods to protect their domestic industry. Such a tariff would achieve the same aim of protecting British sugar, but wouldn't rely for its success on the Brazilian government taking action. Yet Britain grants Brazilian slave sugar without a differential duty:

The hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Hope) wants us to revert to a differential duty between slave-grown and free-grown sugar. The question has been frequently discussed, and Parliament has made up its mind that such a plan is not desirable, as evasion would be easy, and, if applied to sugar, the principle must be extended to slave-grown cotton, tobacco, and other articles. (Lord Palmerston, HC Deb 26 July 1861 vol 164 cc1658-9)

Funny, that. It's almost as if they didn't care about whether Brazilian sugar was undercutting Indian (by which I assume you mean West Indian), but they did care about the condition of the slave.

Cool! Is the whole thing worth reading? I've got a dangerously large free time surplus at the moment, I have to get rid of it.
If you're interested in slavery in East Africa, definitely. It's a bit more thoughtful than most Royal Navy memoirs, which have a tendency to be collections of anecdotes.
 
If this were the case, the easier way to make Brazilian sugar more expensive would have been to put a tariff on it, just like the North put a tariff on British manufactured goods to protect their domestic industry. Such a tariff would achieve the same aim of protecting British sugar, but wouldn't rely for its success on the Brazilian government taking action. Yet Britain grants Brazilian slave sugar without a differential duty:

The hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Hope) wants us to revert to a differential duty between slave-grown and free-grown sugar. The question has been frequently discussed, and Parliament has made up its mind that such a plan is not desirable, as evasion would be easy, and, if applied to sugar, the principle must be extended to slave-grown cotton, tobacco, and other articles. (Lord Palmerston, HC Deb 26 July 1861 vol 164 cc1658-9)

Funny, that. It's almost as if they didn't care about whether Brazilian sugar was undercutting Indian (by which I assume you mean West Indian), but they did care about the condition of the slave.

Producing in its own territory doesn't necessarily means more profitability. Britain needed to sell all its industrial production everywhere around the world, for that, they should consider diplomacy. In the 19th century, they only turned to their own territory for raw materials when there were "problems" with the traditional areas of production of these materials. i.e. Wheat production in Canada was only launched massivily with the cut of the Russian production by the Crimean War; the same is true for the Indian Cotton and the ACW; etc.

Higher tariffs on the Brazilian would lead to a retaliation over British industrial products by the Brazilian governement and a eventual industrial boom that would menace British sphere of influence over Latin America. As a matter of fact, this almost happened in OTL.
 
When the CSA is brought up on this forum, one thing most people agree on is that slavery would be abolished sooner or later due to one or more factors. I am going to list each factor I am aware of and see if it points to a quick {quick for the CSA} abolition. In this analysis, I'm assuming a limited conflict takes place between the Union and Confederacy which results in a quick victory for the CSA and independence. So, without further ado:

THE CSA WOULD HAVE ABOLISHED SLAVERY BECAUSE:



  • Slavery Doesn't Mesh With An Industrialized Economy
WRONG again! The United States was industrializing nicely before the Civil War. But I suppose, an independent CSA is another matter.

The South had several things going against it as it industrialized. Most of the regions wealth was in slaves, not capital, so obtaining money to build a factory or railroad was difficult. Most of its white population was rural and practiced subsistence farming, so they weren't doing much for the economy. The lack of a consumer base for the reasons above meant that there wasn't much desire or reason to build any manufacturing plants in the region, since not many people could buy the finished products.

Throughout its pre-Civil War history, the South was industrializing, but very very slowly, and only in urban areas like Atlanta. So yes, I would agree that slavery does not really work in an industrialized country. But I would counter with one question: so what? Just because slaves and industry don't mix doesn't mean the CSA would choose industry. They could, and probably would, keep their slaves and just export raw material.

Such an arrangement works for everyone. The South keeps its slaves, the North and Europe get cheap raw material, everyone wins. Except the slaves and poor whites, but who cares about them. The Northern business sector was massively anti-war; there's a reason why New York City threatened to cede during the war. Sure, they kept their mouths shut once those government contracts started flowing, but really the status quo would have made them happier.

Now I can hear some of you screaming at your screens. "But the South has to industrialize with an angry Union at their border!!!!" Do they really? If the Union government, after a limited {or no} conflict, agrees to let the South go, would they really want to take them back? Every year the CSA remains independent is a year for it to establish its own culture, for the business sector to adapt to the status quo, for the world to just move on. Eventually, the Union is going to look across the border and think "eh, it's not worth it."

Of course, for the first decade or so tensions may run high. But will the CSA industrialize to counter a Union threat? Unlikely. More likely is they'll import more weapons from Europe instead.


  • Mechanization of Agriculture Would End Slavery -OR- Synthetic Materials Would Overshadow Cotton
The best argument, I think. Fails on the simple fact that not all slaves were used in agriculture; many worked in mines, catering, shopkeeping, shipbuilding, and other sectors of the economy. Now of course agriculture and particularly cotton was the major sector, so I'm not saying this argument is wrong. But consider this; the first practical, commercially viable cotton picker was invented in 1943. That's quite a wait.

For synthetics, they hit the scene in the late 30's and 40's, spurred by World War II. Without World War II... who knows?

So, in conclusion. My argument is that the CSA would have abolished slavery once mechanization fully took root. So... the 50's or 60's. If the CSA simply shuffles the slaves into other areas like mining, might take even longer. They might not even call it slavery anymore, maybe something nicer like "free labor programs" or "we swear these aren't slaves". The CSA would live happily as a third-world nation with high amounts of foreign capital and a poor population, dependent on cash crops. And of course, I'm assuming the Confederacy doesn't collapse into communist revolution, which is not all that unlikely.

I invite counter-arguments. :)

*Time on a Cross is demonized in academic circles for good reason. However, many of its statistics are sound. This is one of them

I think robcraufurd has adequately argued against the idea that Britain would not care about ending slavery or try to bring about it's end (and that if Britain did so it that it was purely out of economic interest).

But I think the idea that slavery doesn't really work in an industrialized country is also a shaky assumption. For those interested, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon is a very revealing read about the conditions of convict-leasing and peonage in the South after the Civil War. For instance it notes that by the end of the 1880s at least 10,000 black men were working as forced labour in forced labour mines, fields and workcamps across the former Confederate States. It also reveals that prior to the Civil War some slave owners would lease their slaves to industrial interests (and that some slaves who reported to their masters that the managers of the ironworks (to which they were leased) had abused them often were not made available for leasing again the next year; also as an incentive to work hard and follow the rules slaves were permitted to earn small amounts of cash - typically less than $5 a month - by agreeing to perform extra tasks such as tending the furnances at night, cutting extra wood or digging additional ore). In 1861 railroads owned an estimated 20,000 slaves (and would lease more). In the final years of the Civil War slaves were used for "churning out iron, cannons, gun metal, rifled artillery, battle ships, and munitions at Selma, Shelby Iron Works, and the Brierfield foundry". Slaves would be leased by the railroads for about $20 a month in the 1850s and leased slaves typically cost $120 at the beginning of the war, but that cost doubled by 1864/1865. Particularly skilled slaves (those with carpentry or ironmaking skills) would be leased for as much as $500 or more per year.

After the war places like the Pratt Mines and companies such as Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad would use leased convict labour that was apparently brutal and little removed from slavery in essence.


The boll weevil will certainly harm the cotton industry, but it will not end slavery. Slaves are valuable assets. Bankrupt cotton planters will not be allowed to emancipate their slaves, instead the slaves will be sold to pay off the planters' debts. Slave prices will drop, and since owning slaves was a status symbol, the number of slaveholders should increase. That's not going to increase chances of emancipation in the Confederacy.

The boll weevil, if alongside mechinization in the CSA, is certainly going to injure classic plantation slavery in a whole new way. And it's going to drive some of the CSA's richest states straight into the dirt economically because that which made their economies so profitable is gone. Add to it by the early-1900s it wouldn't be impossible to believe that states like Virginia, Kentucky or Tennessee are going to be floating the idea of emmancipation.

In OTL, cotton had hit it's zenith in some parts of the South in the 1890s. Imagine that in a world where the CSA never fell and the old system was in place and never destroyed, that system essentially implodes on itself once that nasty little beetle crosses the Rio Grande, a pretty big "Cotton Bust".

I agree that the boll weevil wouldn't bring about an end to universal slavery in the South. It would devastate the cotton industry but slaves have been used in other spheres of economic activity that would be unaffected by the boll weevil such as sugar, tobacco and industry.

What the boll weevil might do in effective collaboration with British anti-slavery efforts and possibly Union anti-slavery efforts is to bring about what in essence would be a economic crash in the slave market. Prior to the civil war, slaves would be leased for between $10-20 a month (though highly skilled slaves would fetch $40 a month or more) and could cost $3,000 at an auction for example.

In the convict-lease system, African Americans as peons or convicts would typically have their labour contracts sold (these contracts could be sold for between $4 to $20 a month or even $20-40 in total).

In OTL some (but not most) farmers simply abandoned their cotton plantations when the boll weevil decimated the crop. In a TL where the British might carry out action at a Confederate port over an incident and where a few farmers might abandon their plantations you could have a situation where a few slaves are actually abandoned coupled with slave prices plummeting as a result of the boll weevil.

Might it not then be possible that the price of a slave would be worth less than the cost to keep a slave at some point? If so what happens then? And what happens in the case of slaves who earned (and maybe saved) a bit of cash from the extra work they volunteered to do in industrial settings? Might they not be able to buy their own freedom (at least a few of them? Or perhaps some of them may pool to buy the freedom of one). And what about anti-slavery societies and individuals in the North and Britain? Might they not be able to carry out drives (not necessarily concerted drives) to purchase the freedom of slaves now that slave prices have plummeted? I could see the American Colonization Society (perhaps renaming itself the American Emancipation and Colonization Society) attempting to raise money to purchase the freedom of at least (now cheap) slaves and send them to Haiti and or Liberia. Similar societies might even spring up in the CSA itself (no doubt supported by working class whites) calling for the sending of the excess slaves "back to Africa", specifically Liberia and/or perhaps to Haiti.

Public disapproval of the conditions to which cheap slaves would be subjected to might even spur a change in the system. I speculate that this might occur because in 1908-1909 such a thing occurred in Georgia with regard to the convict leasing system after a legislative inquiry reported on the appalling conditions (and corruption) in the convict leasing system. Churches passed resolutions calling for an end to the practice, some businesses began advertising "non convict bricks" and the Atlanta city council voted to bar the purchase of any goods made by convicts. In October 1908 Georgia's electorate (nearly all white) voted to end the system as of March 1909 and the previously profitable Chattahoochee Brick company saw its business collapse.

Some people compared the probable situation of a slave-less CSA to the apartheid's South Africa. Not necessarily the best parallel I'd said. The CSA would hardly have something like a Bantustan, that is in a simplist definition an American Indian Reserve. African-americans lived mostly by the most important economic areas of the country, the cotton fields. If we don't have an African Trail of Tears, I just can't see a Bantustan in the CSA.

What the Southerns could probably do is to invent a new "sui generis" form of serfdom to replace straightfoward slavery just to please European powers. In addition, I don't see the CSA getting that much immigration either. Local politicians will probably feel compelled to follow a more isolacionistic point of view towards them to keep theirselves in power, as the immigrants would probably relate more to US' ideology creating a situation similar that of the Uitlanders in the South African Republics in OTL.

Exactly, but try and get half of the AH.Com populace to even consider what is fundamentally different from sharecropping (for men) or living in as a maid (for women) in a town / state where you have no rights, or can randomly be arrested and assigned to a chain-gang for the highest bidder and slavery, and it's like a brick wall. Granted, not being stripped naked on an auction is nice, but that's far from the most objectionable thing about slavery.

Anyway, right or wrong not withstanding, if you think the South was weaker, less inventive, or less committed to its way of life than the Boers, than I think you are being "obtuse". Whatever the Afrikaners accomplished in SA, expect the Southerners to achieve 5x as much at least.

I've thought that in the wake of a Cotton Collapse (which may be accompanied by some slaves being abandoned, purchasing their own freedom, being shipped to Haiti and/or Liberia and/or rebelling) that if the slaves ended up being freed they would of course not be considered as "citizens" but probably given the status of "denizens" (something like this but without far more restricted rights and limited freedom of movement)


The Confederacy has virtually no chance of gaining any of the northern Mexican states. The people of those states did not want to join the Confederacy; the Mexican government was violently oppsed to selling those states; and the Confederacy had not hard currency to make the purchase with. The Confederacy's track record on diplomacy was one of dismal failure. The Confederacy's ability to take and hold territory was even worse.

Depending on butterflies, if this is an 1862 victory or otherwise, who says the CSA won't try to aquire Northern Mexico in the 1870s-1890s? Also, who is in charge of TTL's Mexico? Is it the pro-US Juarez? Who by 1863 or so was on the run out of Mexico towards Union held El Paso. Or is it the French/pro-CS Maxamillian, who is one character who IMO would greatly benefit from an 1862 Confederate victory and all Juarez would have in that scenario is the French-friendly CSA waiting for him.

Sonora, Chihuahua and Nuevo Leon were also isolated from Mexico's federal government during the American Civil War/French Intervention, they were also among Mexico's biggest cotton states, the governor of Nuevo Leon had offered to join the CSA, Davis rejected it, but sent agents there for future reference.

I believe it could go either way.

But the Union would disapprove of it as would Britain. If the French decided to make a deal with the CSA to support their puppet Empire of Mexico then perhaps it could lead to a rupture in Anglo-French relations.
 
Whilst it would be lovely to think of poor whites and black slaves uniting under the gospels of Marx, Engels and Lincoln to throw off their mutual enemy, I'd say it's rather unlikely. Skin colour, as an easy recognisable difference, has been used as a means to divide the proletariat and in a surviving slave state this would likely go up to eleven. Slaves themselves would be demonised as savages, and those who tried to build united fronts compared to John Brown and others. Slavery is also detrimental to the interests of labour, and whilst it would be absurd to blame the slaves for this, a certain unspoken grudge may form. Like in South Africa, even the Marxists are more to talk of 'Socialism for White Folks'

The Slaves on the other hand, have little or no political organisation and even poorer literacy rates than the white working class, if you're going to create a power vacuum caused by a revolution, their own rebellion is likely to be based on years and generations of pent up rage rather than political doctrine or even a clear agenda. Whites are likely to be attacked indiscriminately putting in place the conditions for a devastating race war.

In Slavery By Another Name it is documented that a summer 1908 strike by the United Mine Workers against US Steel (now owners of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company) and other mine owners (such as Sloss-Sheffield and Pratt Consolidated Coal) resulted in 500 free black miners (brought in as strikebreakers initially and never welcomed by the union) joining the 7,000 other free (mostly white) miners. This prospect was terrifying to the coal companies and to the elite across the south and the mine owners responded with a campaign to divide the union along racial lines and started using more convict labour (pushed to their very limits) to keep operating (the black convicts and farmhands brought in to work on the mines were subject to hoots and threats from the strikers). A combination of this use of convict labour, the threat of the Alabama militia being dispatched to break up the camps of the strikers and the strikers themselves running out of money caused the strike to collapse by September 1908.

I could well imagine that in a TL where the CSA and slavery survived that working class whites might end up drifting to and/or establishing a party that campaigned for sending the slaves "back to Africa" so they wouldn't have to compete with slave labour in the mines and factories (such competition of course resulting in depressed wages for themselves). If such a party were to come into power for a state government then it could be possible that the state itself would abolish slavery and ban the permanent residency of any slave or free black on it's territory (note the CS Constitution protected the right of sojourn for a slave owner with his slaves so as long as slaves were being transported across this state which had banned the settlement of slaves and free blacks then no legal issues would arise.)
 
The Confederacy has virtually no chance of gaining any of the northern Mexican states. The people of those states did not want to join the Confederacy; the Mexican government was violently oppsed to selling those states; and the Confederacy had not hard currency to make the purchase with. The Confederacy's track record on diplomacy was one of dismal failure. The Confederacy's ability to take and hold territory was even worse.

The boll weevil will certainly harm the cotton industry, but it will not end slavery. Slaves are valuable assets. Bankrupt cotton planters will not be allowed to emancipate their slaves, instead the slaves will be sold to pay off the planters' debts. Slave prices will drop, and since owning slaves was a status symbol, the number of slaveholders should increase. That's not going to increase chances of emancipation in the Confederacy.

Bingo! People in debt don't get rid of their property but sell it. The planter who is deep in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy because of the boll weevil won't free his slaves but sell them. In fact they couldn't do so legally any more than you can give away your car that you owe money on during a bankruptcy. It is an asset that the bank will want to seize and has every right of doing so. If the owner won't sell the slaves the bank WILL during the bankruptcy procedure.
 
In Slavery By Another Name it is documented that a summer 1908 strike by the United Mine Workers against US Steel (now owners of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company) and other mine owners (such as Sloss-Sheffield and Pratt Consolidated Coal) resulted in 500 free black miners (brought in as strikebreakers initially and never welcomed by the union) joining the 7,000 other free (mostly white) miners. This prospect was terrifying to the coal companies and to the elite across the south and the mine owners responded with a campaign to divide the union along racial lines and started using more convict labour (pushed to their very limits) to keep operating (the black convicts and farmhands brought in to work on the mines were subject to hoots and threats from the strikers). A combination of this use of convict labour, the threat of the Alabama militia being dispatched to break up the camps of the strikers and the strikers themselves running out of money caused the strike to collapse by September 1908.

I could well imagine that in a TL where the CSA and slavery survived that working class whites might end up drifting to and/or establishing a party that campaigned for sending the slaves "back to Africa" so they wouldn't have to compete with slave labour in the mines and factories (such competition of course resulting in depressed wages for themselves). If such a party were to come into power for a state government then it could be possible that the state itself would abolish slavery and ban the permanent residency of any slave or free black on it's territory (note the CS Constitution protected the right of sojourn for a slave owner with his slaves so as long as slaves were being transported across this state which had banned the settlement of slaves and free blacks then no legal issues would arise.)

Yeah, I can see this too.

I never even considered the convict labor aspect (but then again, it happened in OTL as well), that is a good assessment.
 
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