<Big Sigh>
BlueMax, the reason I replied to you and took you to task was not to ignite an off-topic debate. The point of a DBWI is that you take whatever POD the OP has laid out, and then run with it. There is way too much tendency on this board for some members to slice noobs into quivering shreds and drive them off the board for no particular reason than to make themselves feel superior.
As for the relative merits of the Confederacy, I normally don't get into these debates anymore, because it really serves no purpose. Neither of us is going to change our opinions. The difference between us is that I recognize that my opinions are just that, whereas you seem to think yours are holy writ.

That is a common failing of Yankees and those who think like them, and it precludes any sort of meaningful debate with such people.
However, I will respond, briefly, to the points you have made here. Enjoy it while you can. It is unlikely you will see anything of the like ever again.
My opinion and nothing more, eh?:
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_Constitution
"Explicit support of Slavery"
Actually, all the Confederate Constitution does with slavery is to remove the issue from the realm of national politics and put it in the hands of the States. It does not make slavery perpetual, or place any impediments to it's abolition, except to provide that this cannot be done by the national government. It has to be done by State action. This is hardly "explicit support of slavery."
http://www.csawardept.com/documents/secession/AL/
"Alabama's secession declaration, which secedes because it is "avowedly hostile to domestic institutions" and "it is the desire of the desire and purpose of the people of the State of Alabama to meet the slaveholding states of the South"
http://www.lsjunction.com/docs/secesson.htm
"
The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretenses and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slave-holding States."
I don't recall anyone disputing that the secession of some of the Southern States was largely the result of a desire to protect slavery...or more properly, to protect their right to deal with slavery in a manner and at a time of their own choosing, without interference by outsiders. To that extent, yes, the Southern States left over slavery.
However, even that can, at best, be said to be true of the original seven seceded States only. It most definitely was not true of all the seceded States...the four (or six, depending on whether you consider the secessions of Missouri and Kentucky valid) which seceded after Fort Sumter left because the Lincoln Administration demanded they turn over their State militias to be used in an invasion of the seceded States.
So, not only does the Confederate Constitution enshrine the right to own slaves, the individual states themselves secede for that very reason? And then they flip it around and get rid of it? As they conveniently DID NOT DO OTL? That sounds like YOUR opinion and nothing more.
In point of fact, the Confederacy did evolve toward the decision to abolish slavery as the war went on. By the end of the war they had passed a black recruitment law which most historians, including people like James McPherson (in BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM) admit would have inevitably lead to the abandonment of slavery in the South within a short time after the war, no matter who won the war. Furthermore, at the same time, the Confederate government was explicitly offering emancipation of the slaves to the governments of Britain and France in exchange for recognition.
Break out the sources, Robert. I'd love to see how you can explain how the CSA would be as well off today alone as it would be as part of the United States. Because, frankly, Harry Turtledove is not what I'd consider a good source on this topic.
Look, he's a new guy. Fair enough. He needs to understand that the CSA is VERY LIKELY to suck up much worse than the south did OTL. Perhaps its an issue of pride from your PoV, but someone needs to explain the "butterfly effect" to him--that actions taken in the past change the course of events.
I'm sure that you like your confederate states timeline. But a real Confederate States are going to get sucker punched by the falling price of cotton (which they rely on as their main export), they will be forced to spend much of their economy to match the armed forces of their more powerful northern neighbor, which can pay less in proportion, they will miss out on the Industrial Revolution, because the planeter elites aren't going to like it. And they've locked themselves into a slavery system, which they aren't going to magically get themselves out of.
Even with WW2's investment in the Sun Belt, the South is still poorer than the Union.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_states_by_GDP_per_capita_(nominal).PNG
With a seperate currency, no Industrialization for at least 50 years, and a weak infrastructure, might be on par with Mexico today.
Well, first. the antebellum South was already industrializing. Was it doing so as fast as the North? No. But the fact is that the antebellum South in 1860, taken in isolation, was already the fourth most industrialized country in the world (after Britain, the North, and France), with, IIRC, the third largest mileage of railroads in the world at that time (after the U.S. and Britain). Yes, by comparison with the North, it looks small. But it was not at all insigificant.
Second, industrialization in the South was ramped up significantly by the war itself. As you yourself mention, they would have needed to maintain a significant military after the war. This need would have lead to all sorts of industries being established and maintained which would have not only met military needs, but also provided products for export.
Lastly, a good part of the reason why the South has been so far behind the rest of the nation economically can be traced to the fact that it lost the war. The Southern economy was destroyed by the war. Most of the industrialization that had occurred in the South before the war was destroyed by invading Union armies during the war. After the war, discriminatory railroad rates and federal taxes also retarded Southern industrialization. Some or all of these things won't have occurred in a TL where the South won the war.
Finally, these pictures happened OTL, with even a basic US attempt to curb racism through reconstruction. Just imagine that this crap is still happening today--and its not only accepted, its kind of a spectacle.
http://www.honorbrashear.com/images/duluth-lynching.jpg
http://www.apspuhuru.org/tribunal/lynching.jpg
CSA victorious would mean these kinds of abuses would never end.
Funny you should mention the
Duluth Lynchings. You were aware, weren't you, that these occurred in DULUTH, MINNESOTA? Last time I checked, Minnesota wasn't part of the South.
I do not deny that lynching and other horrible things happened in the South in the years after the Civil War. However, I would argue that most of those things can be directly traced to the fact that the South lost the war. The war and the Reconstruction that followed left a legacy of hatred which would not exist in an independent Confederacy. Lynching was very rare in the antebellum South. Free blacks lived free of segregation and other "Jim Crow" type laws in the antebellum South (not true of blacks in the antebellum North, by the way). Read Alexis de Tocqueville, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA. That all changed after the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the link between those things is too obvious to ignore.
I make no claim as to racism or a desire for ethnic cleansing on your part, Robert, but the real Confederate States is not going to be nearly as utopian as you claim.
I don't think I've ever claimed it would be a utopia. In some ways it would be better than OTL, in other ways worse. The difference between you and I is that I don't think it would be a complete DYSTOPIA.
Indeed, that's part of the reason why I feel like I HAVE to argue with CSA wankers is because the CSA stood for slavery to the point of enshrining it in the foundation of their country. I'm sure that you just want to have a CSA you can be proud of, but I think that would be nearly ASB. And if nothing else, it would mean pogroms against Africans to this day.
The operative part of this is "I
think that would be nearly ASB." It's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. But you don't need to try to force everyone else to hold the same opinions you do.
In the United States, we tend to drum up the virtues of the Confederate States because its feel-good stuff for people who want to remember the heroism and dedication of Lee and Jackson. Of course, Lee and Jackson weren't agitators--they reluctantly supported their states after they left; they certainly didn't push them to leave. Therefore, much of the glory falls onto the shoulders of men who wouldn't even want there to be a CSA in the first place.
In short, the happy feel good CSA is a either an ASB dream or its a result of decades of deception to hide what really happened. The OP can mute me, can PM me to knock it off. That's all fine. But I'm tired of people so badly butchering history.
This is AH.com. We are in the business of butchering history. Nay, not just butchering it...we mangle it...sodomize it...do unspeakably depraved things to it...and then play in the warm blood afterward. All in the name of fun.
The problem with you is that you take yourself and your beliefs WAY too seriously. Lighten up, and play nice.
