How long could the American Civil War go on, and what would be the repercussions and results for America, its politics, reunification, race relations, etc of a longer Civil War?
I'd suggested a
12 year scenario here.
I disagree with a lot of the Dixie Fans here; the South is either going to get a Carthaginian Peace Deal or its going to get a revanchist North.
The South can hold out until 1864. But if it does, why would the Union give back to it all sorts of things it's taken? Why return the Mississippi River to being an international waterway? Why return New Orleans, or make any concessions at all?
And if the Union doesn't give those back, how exactly is the Confederacy going to keep going? Every last scenario I've seen is a Rainbow Village outcome where magic Southerners are able to not only win the Civil War, they get all the stuff the Union took from them AND often things like Kentucky. It's like we deleted the actual war, imagined Washington DC and Baltimore Falling, and putting Philadelphia under siege.
And then the Confederacy will have incredible turmoil inside its own borders. They are committed to at best re-enslaving thousands of liberated slaves; they might very well try to kill them. And it's not like the Northern Abolitionists that are satisfied that the problem has been Gerrymandered out of the Union. The Civil War will rage on because Slavery = A positive good = We can't get rid of it was superglued into the Confederate Constitution.
I think the Civil War will last until the Confederates are crushed on the battlefield, crushed by their hopeless economic situation, or quite possibly crushed by a neverending war that the Unionists and Abolitionists will quite enthusiastically fan.
One of the Professors of my College, Roger Ransom, wrote
This work, which is one of my first great reads of Alternative History. His scenario proposes a 50 year timeframe in which the Confederates are beaten and reannexed in WWI. Optimistic and relying a bit too much on replay bias, it's still not outright ASB.
Anyhow, the Civil War can definitely run hot and cold for longer than just being a hot war.