DBWI: No President Nathen Bedford Forrest

It has been argued on this website that if the ACW had ended differently the USA would have surpassed the European nations sometime around 1900. As it stands the area of the former CSA took decades to recover, some would suggest that parts of it never have. Is there any merit to those arguments?
 
In all possibility, yes, since remember that those in the South went through the "Dying Years", and had to contend with the numerous Black Belt "republics". We would, as a region, probably be better off if we can skip that and the stagnation of the last decade of the CSA. Thus the country on a whole would be better, and we could skip the constaint drain of occupation to combate the DWA attacks[1].


[1]. (OOC: Dixie Whiteman's Army: Think lovechild of the tamil tigers, IRA and KKK)
 
It has been argued on this website that if the ACW had ended differently the USA would have surpassed the European nations sometime around 1900. As it stands the area of the former CSA took decades to recover, some would suggest that parts of it never have. Is there any merit to those arguments?
I've never heard that one and would like to know myself. I've mainly read that both nations would be generally weaker.
 
My take on it is that Forrest makes a useful scapegoat for a despicable institution doomed to failure. If an Ironman didn't take control of the Confederacy and amend its constitution to strengthen its executive, how would the rest of the state hope to remain intact?


Yes, the CSA was near bankrupt for most of its existence, oppressed its slaves and lower class whites to favor its planter elite, and had an inflation rate of 400% a year, but it probably either that or simply collapse.


The sordid events of the 1890s are the price a nation pays for abusing 80~90% of its people; if anything the Union should have tried to intervene earlier--but if those events of the 1890s hadn't occured, we'd probably have an intergenerational problem of Southrons constantly seceding over every stupid thing they didn't like. A dystopian outcome where 1/3rd of the population died of starvation, reprisials for slavery, or diseases caused from broken agriculture killed the idea of an independent south DEAD.


The CSA was the worst thing the South ever did. Before 1860, the South could rightly claim to have been a major influence on the United States as a whole. By the time the former CSA was readmitted as three states to the USA, they'd moved to dead last in wealth, influence and culture. How much of that was due to things like putting New Orleans to the torch and how much was due to decades of oppressive rule is hard to determine, but either way, the South held and holds today remarkably little power.


What if, instead of there being 3 Southern states (plus Tennessee and *Virginia*) there were 11 in congress? With free blacks added into the mix, the former CSA would have had a larger representation in the House than it did pre-secession as well. If the CSA had been quickly defeated, they'd still have at least some power nationally again. As things stand now, they're still an underdeveloped backwater known for electing Black Socialists as governors.


At least guys like Martin L. King and John Lewis have done great good for their people, but they've had a long road to run.
 
My take on it is that Forrest makes a useful scapegoat for a despicable institution doomed to failure. If an Ironman didn't take control of the Confederacy and amend its constitution to strengthen its executive, how would the rest of the state hope to remain intact?


Yes, the CSA was near bankrupt for most of its existence, oppressed its slaves and lower class whites to favor its planter elite, and had an inflation rate of 400% a year, but it probably either that or simply collapse.


The sordid events of the 1890s are the price a nation pays for abusing 80~90% of its people; if anything the Union should have tried to intervene earlier--but if those events of the 1890s hadn't occured, we'd probably have an intergenerational problem of Southrons constantly seceding over every stupid thing they didn't like. A dystopian outcome where 1/3rd of the population died of starvation, reprisials for slavery, or diseases caused from broken agriculture killed the idea of an independent south DEAD.


The CSA was the worst thing the South ever did. Before 1860, the South could rightly claim to have been a major influence on the United States as a whole. By the time the former CSA was readmitted as three states to the USA, they'd moved to dead last in wealth, influence and culture. How much of that was due to things like putting New Orleans to the torch and how much was due to decades of oppressive rule is hard to determine, but either way, the South held and holds today remarkably little power.


What if, instead of there being 3 Southern states (plus Tennessee and *Virginia*) there were 11 in congress? With free blacks added into the mix, the former CSA would have had a larger representation in the House than it did pre-secession as well. If the CSA had been quickly defeated, they'd still have at least some power nationally again. As things stand now, they're still an underdeveloped backwater known for electing Black Socialists as governors.


At least guys like Martin L. King and John Lewis have done great good for their people, but they've had a long road to run.

Yeah, and they are still dead last except for Texas. Texas got lucky with all that oil otherwise they would be dead last too. Odds are without a Yankee soldier from Pennsylvania getting the idea that the conditions were right for oil it wouldn't have been found in 1915. Even Texas is only in the top half with wealth, it has little cultural influence and it has surprisingly little political influence for its size.
 
So, let's consider what happens if Bedford Forrest dies before 1866:

Forrest managed to mix populism as a war hero with a tacit approval of planter elites to win a term in office and a mandate for constitutional change--in short, he won because he was able to be all things to all people.

The situation in 1866 was, of course, highly confused. The name often floated around--John C. Breckinridge--was a man without a state in the Confederacy and had no chance of gaining the Presidency.

Three interesting figures emerged opposite Forrest in 1866: Governor Joe Brown of Georgia, General James Longstreet and General Braxton Bragg. With Longstreet's views on Slavery clearly unacceptable, the choice is pretty much either the CSA breaking down under Joe Brown or Bragg trying to do as Forrest except without a second term or greater executive power.

A Joe Brown Confederacy probably dissolves as the states fail to work together, ending the CSA awkwardly but early.

A Bragg Confederacy probably doesn't receive the early buy in from poor whites that Forrest used in his transformation of the Confederate State, which probably leads to a clumsier attempt to impose minority order without the orthodoxy established by Forrest's stronger executive office.

I'm not seeing how the CSA fails to fall apart without Forrest. Anyone that fails to satisfy the Planter Elite won't win office in 1866. Anyone that fails the support of poor whites is going to be left in a tiny minority government. He's the sort of character that can bend both together and still have a state afterward.

By 1878, Forrest was able to leave office with a "New Normalcy" that would outlive him. The year he handpicked Jeb Stuart to replace him, the ATL Confederacies would probably have already partially collapsed and/or be facing annexation by a Union sensing weakness.

I guess I'm left with a simplier question: why not just have the Union fully avoid the "Dixie Suicide" decades by military victory in a second Lincoln term? Perhaps the former Confederacy would have avoided the absolute worse implications of the 1890s with an earlier collapse, but this is just a partial solution. What if we made the South actually able to claim an ounce of pride for the CSA instead of the most politically left portion of the country?
 
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