How long could slavery last in the CSA?

How long could slavery last?

  • No later than 1875

    Votes: 10 4.8%
  • 1875-1900

    Votes: 89 42.4%
  • Into 20th Century, but not beyond

    Votes: 59 28.1%
  • Inevitable, but not sure when

    Votes: 15 7.1%
  • Could survive into present day

    Votes: 37 17.6%

  • Total voters
    210
It's not just the unprofitability of slave labour, it's its unprofitability in a country that is a politically unstable powder keg with a complete economic dependency on cash crops, an increasingly large subjugated population and a dominant economic class dependent on slave labor with a revanchist neighbour and a government who has stated expansionnist aims: european tariffs alone could bring the CSA to its knees without fighting a single war.

Large-scale industrial slavery is also politically untenable. One has to be aware that the south also contains a large white underclass, which is in direct competition with slaves for work. While plantation labor is not desirable (or profitable from a workers standpoint) industrial and proto-industrial labor is. Industrial Slavery would be viewed as taking bread from their mouths, and bitterly bitterly opposed, especially given that racism and racial superiority is a necessary component to the CSA's national ideal,
 
Well no, of course not. But we do tend to identify Jews as victims of the holocaust the most.

And my reference was not to the Arbeitslager but to the Todt Organization by comparison to the Soviet reconstruction of their industrial capacity by the time of the Battle of Moscow.
 
I'm going to do a response to Snake once I have a proper computer; meantime...

King Gorilla said:
One has to be aware that the south also contains a large white underclass, which is in direct competition with slaves for work. While plantation labor is not desirable (or profitable from a workers standpoint) industrial and proto-industrial labor is. Industrial Slavery would be viewed as taking bread from their mouths, and bitterly bitterly opposed, especially given that racism and racial superiority is a necessary component to the CSA's national ideal,

It depends on how the slaves are utlized and how white workers come to see factory work -- as well as how the fruits of slave labor are distributed. Think of how the south used convicts during the Depression, only much larger scale.
 
It depends on how the slaves are utlized and how white workers come to see factory work -- as well as how the fruits of slave labor are distributed. Think of how the south used convicts during the Depression, only much larger scale.


The problem with this is that cotton prices will inevitably collapse. When this occurs the plantation economic model will be broken, resulting in the fire sale of surplus slaves and it will impoverish thousands of rural small holding, and subsistence farming whites. Even traditionally undesirable work starts to look appealing when one is thrust into real poverty. Unlike slaves, whites no matter how poor, have a political voice.
 
I have a previous post dealing with this very issue -- short version, a CSA government could very plausibly deal with a collapse in slave prices by purchasing excess slaves and putting them to "public use".
 

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I have a previous post dealing with this very issue -- short version, a CSA government could very plausibly deal with a collapse in slave prices by purchasing excess slaves and putting them to "public use".

With what money? If the economy is imploding, the government's chests are too. Besides there would be pretty much no type of public works apart from roads and rails that wouldn't be competing with the white working class. You'd end up with a situation like Mexico after independence with its spiralling debt.
 
There is also the issue that the Confederate government was constitutionally prohibited from funding internal improvements, which puts a bit of a kibosh on any slave-driven enterprise they might wish to engage in anyway.

It seems to me that the main reason slavery wouldn't work in an industrial economy is it requires free labor for several reasons:
a.) Slave labor isn't as mobile as free labor. Free workers can pick up and move when a firm goes bankrupt. Slaves not so much. In other words, wages send market signals as to where work is needed.
b.) Large numbers of slaves in urban areas dramatically improves the slaves' ability to organize, which would naturally spell the end of the system.
c.) Industrial work is more productive and requires a higher skill level than agricultural work. For wage workers, their wages will naturally increase as their productivity and skill specialization increases, but this presumably wouldn't happen for slaves. This significantly depresses the wages free non-slaveholders can earn, as well as creating a class of underemployed highly skilled chattel slaves. These are undesirable things for a society that doesn't want a revolution.
 
With what money? If the economy is imploding, the government's chests are too... You'd end up with a situation like Mexico after independence with its spiralling debt.

That doesn't necessarily mean the CSA or slavery will collapse.

Besides there would be pretty much no type of public works apart from roads and rails that wouldn't be competing with the white working class.

Now it circles back to the post I made 3.5 ago...

There is also the issue that the Confederate government was constitutionally prohibited from funding internal improvements, which puts a bit of a kibosh on any slave-driven enterprise they might wish to engage in anyway.

As I mentioned earlier, I believe if faced with a choice between honoring that provision and preserving slavery, the CSA would opt for the latter.

It seems to me that the main reason slavery wouldn't work in an industrial economy is it requires free labor for several reasons...

I'll get back to you on those...
 
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That doesn't necessarily mean the CSA or slavery will collapse; taking your example, Mexico didn't...

Well Mexico didn't dissolve, but it very much was left as a crippled state post independence. The war was extremely costly in terms of life, to say the least about debt, a sizable percentage of its professional class left, the war destroyed the infrastructure of its principle income earner, finally its central government was so weak that it needed(was frequently) to be co-opted by Caudillos in order to get anything done ie avoid collapsing into waring statelets.

Even still, Mexico was too broke to enact needed reforms and still found itself as easy prey towards american expansionism. The only reason why Santa Ana stayed in power so long was that he diplomatically, he was the only caudillo capable of having his authority recognized by the majority of the country.
 
Well Mexico didn't dissolve, but it very much was left as a crippled state post independence. The war was extremely costly in terms of life, to say the least about debt, a sizable percentage of its professional class left, the war destroyed the infrastructure of its principle income earner, finally its central government was so weak that it needed(was frequently) to be co-opted by Caudillos in order to get anything done ie avoid collapsing into waring statelets.

But the question here isn't can the CSA constitution endure, it's can slavery endure. If the latter can be achieved after the CSA falls into a dictatorship, the OP is still satisfied...

Even still, Mexico... still found itself as easy prey towards american expansionism.

I think I can see part of your point here -- can we assume the US is in no position to seek a revanchist enterprise after the war? (I know that itself is a contestable point, I just don't want this thread to turn into a broken US thread...)
 
Don't forget that soil depletion due to cotton monoculture hits in OTL Reconstruction, and the boll weevil comes in around the early 20th century, basically destroying the foundation of the Southern economy. In this timeline there is no Tuskegee and no George Washington Carver to advocate for soybeans or peanuts, and artificial fertilizers and the Haber process are still a ways off.

Fire Eater Edmund Ruffin was discussing the problem of soil exhaustion in 1821 and suggesting remedies. The South would have been much better off if they listened to his agricultural instead of his political views.

The boll weevil forced crop diversification in the south. It did not force anyone to treat black people better.

Plantation slavery dies one way or another, but I do not know whether the CSA has the political will to transition slavery into an industrial form...

Cotton was not the only labor-intensive crop grown in the South. If the cotton plantations go belly up, the owners will sell their slaves to the people growing tobacco, indigo, and rice.
 
Well, I'm pretty sure all involved knows the scenario whose plausibility they're debating is dystopic -- I know I give myself chills when I think of the ays the CSA might have kept the institution around...
 
As long as they can keep the slave population captive; you're going to have a situation where demographics will favour the slaves within a generation (in 1860, there are 39% slaves in the CSA, only 1,5% free blacks). 60% of the population holding 40% of the population captive will very quickly, horribly degenerate. If you thought sharecropping and Jim Crow were bad, things are going to suck, even harder.

Two of the states are majority slaves (South Carolina, Mississippi), Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Georgia are almost so; of those four, Louisiana is also majority black. Besides Louisiana, the only majorly industrialized states, North Carolina and Virginia, are the only ones with a significant free black population. A generation later, the four other southern states might be majority black, and you end up with a demographic balance where the West and North of the CSA is still majority white, and wealthier, while the southeastern states are basically in a constant state of internal civil war if they don't give up the peculiar institution fast, and they just fought for the damn thing, and the CSA constitution guarantees the right to own slaves, even if said state decides to go abolitionist.

And ATL where Cuba and the Dominican republic somehow become CSA states just make the situation even worse, now the white plantocracy is absolutely, completely screwed in the mid to long term.

Oh and to make things bleaker; industrial slavery will probably make things worse as the white working class will potentially lack the means to form a significant middle class, there might be one but more on the scale of the latin american republics at the time, at best, with only 6% of the population owning slaves. You'll probably have to have a hefty dosage of racial propaganda to maintain the order and even then the more educated parts of the white lower classes will probably learn of, and in part turn to, fascism or communism by the 20th century. And of course dependency on cash crops with only limited industry will have to be turned around with an ever stagnating economy and an aristocratic mindset in the upper class going against it. Slavery can last, but will the CSA?

Edit: I still say into the 20th century, assuming they don't get foreign pressure. At least it will last longer than Brazil.

And for slave traders bringing new African Slave in, Once Africa becomes European, slaves will be harder to obtain from Africa.

Being a subtropical area, human disease and small animals will be a determining factor.
 
They did, the slave populations were not only self-sustaining but growing; even if more kids die, they still had more kids on average than free families.

I am well aware that the slave population was self-sustaining. My point was it was not growing significantly faster than the free population. Looking at US Census data for 1850 and 1860, we see that the free population of the states that formed the CSA grew 25.0% while the slave population grew 25.3%. In 1860, slaves were just under 39% of the total population of the states that formed the CSA.

That difference is not going to be made up in a couple generations.
 
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