Do the Union and the Confederacy have to been enemies (in aConfederate victory TL)

Suppose the Confederacy wins the ACW and becomes independent. Do the USA and CSA have to remain hostile towards each other or could they become friends again in enough time and what would precipitate such a thaw in their relations? They don't have to go TL-191 on each other I think. After all, the US and Great Britain became friends again although I admit that analogy is a bit flawed comparison.
 
Union likely remains largely hostile I think. Cold being the word.

You will have Nationalists elected in the north who want to re absorb the south. So the likely hood of a second war is rather high too.
 
It makes good stories if they remain hostile, but historically speaking its highly unlikely. The US has patched up its differences between Canada, Britain, Germany, Japan, Mexico, etc. over time. The CS would have a lot of cultural similarities with the US as well. More importantly would be the families that were intially divided by the ACW and would most likely seek to reestablish ties later.
 
Depending on how it ends I'd say it's likely. I mean, they would be one of the few states in the world that continues to practice slavery on that scale and combined with the continuing rise of abolitionists it would present a growing pressure to censure them for it.
 
Well, slavery is likely to be abolished at some point before 1890. They have to if they don't want to become a pariah state even if the slave holders are gonna put up a fight and go out kicking and screaming. If they don't abolish slavery they'll lose any support from Britain or France, the powers that mattered at the time.
 
Depending on how it ends I'd say it's likely. I mean, they would be one of the few states in the world that continues to practice slavery on that scale and combined with the continuing rise of abolitionists it would present a growing pressure to censure them for it.

But would Abolitionism as a political force continue in the US after an unsuccessful CW? They were not extremely popular in the North before the OTL war and if the public perception became that their agitation had destroyed the Union, they might be marginalized as dangerous radicals, particularly if they tried conducting John Brown-type actions after the war. I would think for example that President Lincoln would be wildly unpopular in a US that lost the south.
 
But would Abolitionism as a political force continue in the US after an unsuccessful CW? They were not extremely popular in the North before the OTL war and if the public perception became that their agitation had destroyed the Union, they might be marginalized as dangerous radicals, particularly if they tried conducting John Brown-type actions after the war. I would think for example that President Lincoln would be wildly unpopular in a US that lost the south.
That is why I said it depends. If it happens early on like in T-191 for instance, and there is no Proclamation the war never becomes about slavery. It was only as it went on that it changed more to that purpose in the minds of the north. I'd say in 1862 or even early '63 immediately after the EP it would not have been about slavery. And even so, once you go abolitionist it's difficult to go back and if the peculiar institution would have continued stories would still have come out detailing the worst practices.

I suppose if they started raiding there would be a backlash but I think they could successfully agitate for a somewhat unfriendly stance towards them, especaily as the years went by.
 
That is why I said it depends. If it happens early on like in T-191 for instance, and there is no Proclamation the war never becomes about slavery. It was only as it went on that it changed more to that purpose in the minds of the north. I'd say in 1862 or even early '63 immediately after the EP it would not have been about slavery. .

That's very true. By the way, I tend to agree that slavery would have withered away state by state and would have been gone by 1890-1900. for both political and economic reasons. Free white labor in the south was very aware even in the 1850's of the effects of slave-holding on their wages. Put together with international disapproval, its unlikely that the slavocracy could have maintained control past 1900.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
It makes good stories if they remain hostile, but historically speaking its highly unlikely. The US has patched up its differences between Canada, Britain, Germany, Japan, Mexico, etc. over time. The CS would have a lot of cultural similarities with the US as well. More importantly would be the families that were intially divided by the ACW and would most likely seek to reestablish ties later.

I somewhat agree, but we should look at these historical examples in context. I mean, yes we patched things up, but then again we never really lost anything to these countries. I mean, that's a bit shattering to national pride, having about 1/3 of your country kicking your fanny in a war and walking away from you (that would most likely leave a rather nasty scar.)

I mean, look at Russia; they're still stung by the loss of many of the SSRs, which they believe are theirs. And the European powers probably wouldn't be too thrilled about a Yankee-Reb detente; they wanted a divided North America because two countries working against one another (or at least frosty) would be easier to deal with. Of course, that's not to say the Europeans would have such a powerful say in the foreign policy of either American republic.
 
Probably for the rest of the 19th century, yeah. The Confederacy is going to lay claim to areas the US can and does hold, and they're going to do ugly things to both their pro-Union white and black populations which will not be widely supported in the USA.

Later the Confederacy will do something stupid and start a war, get the living (and some of the dead) shit beaten out of them, and less the chunks the USA really wants, will be thoroughly Finlandized. By 1975 or so relations could be fairly friendly, like the modern US relationship to Mexico - they're no threat to us, so we can afford to be nice to them. By 2009 I could see some kind of mutual treaty
linking the two closely, with the CSA as junior brother.
 
Technically speaking, no. They do not have to be enemies.

That said, it's unlikely that they'll be good friends either. Both sides will have irridentist claims on the other, the issue of slavery (though that might not be an issue, depending), and just general hostility after such a costly war. However, with the right conditions they can ignore those and settle into at least a business relationship.

It's just unlikely.
 
It's unlikely that there will be warm relations between the two, but economic realities will mean that there will be a lot of trade between them; like Canada, it's right next door, and it has a long open border. A lot of this depends on just how the south achieved it's independence. If it was because of British/French intervention, then the Union just might get it's revenge when/if those two are distracted by WW1.... or it might just sit on the sidelines and threaten the CSA into doing the same. If the south did it totally on their own, then the USA will either:

take a good look at their army and at those of Europe, make a lot of upgrades, and go back into the south for revenge, or
let them go, and in time, accept that the south is independent.
It's hard to say just which they would do; smart money would bet on the latter, since war weariness would be dragging down the north...
 
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