How long until slavery's natural death?

It's pretty well-known that slavery would have eventually just died out, even if the CSA won independence. But how long until this occurred and what would trigger it? Would it have to be the public opinion of it going hitting rock bottom until the government reluctantly outlawed it? It would be hard to see a majority of CSA legislators advocating g abolition otherwise.

Thank you for answering.

Edit: My apologies if I reopened a thoroughly discussed topic.
 
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Anaxagoras

Banned
We've gone over this several times, actually. The fact is that the Confederate Constitution made it almost impossible to abolish slavery, even if the majority of the Confederate people wanted to abolish it. So long as it was legal in a single state, it was effectively legal across the Confederacy.

Moreover, there was effectively no anti-slavery feeling in the South by 1860. There were some people who were ambivalent about slavery or quietly opposed to it, but if anyone stands up in the Confederate Congress or any state legislature and espouses abolitionist views, they're likely to be run out of town on a rail. In Jefferson's time, it had been common to view slavery as a problem that needed to be solved or, at best, a necessary evil. By the Civil War, though, that attitude had pretty much been replaced by the John Calhounesque feeling that slavery was a positive good.

Sadly, slavery is going to last a long time in the Confederacy.
 
I believe slavery could remain into existence for far longer than people are willing to admit. Even in an industialised society you can use slaves. Many industrial workers hardly need an education or you could use slaves as servants or sex workers or other low class work. Personaly I think it is more likely that slavery slowly fades out than it actualy getting banned in the CSA. Slavery was the main cause for the existence of the country, for cultural reasons alone banning it would be hard.
 
Most CSA Victory! timelines have a way to optimistic slavery end date.

So there's a problem people will run into with the "The Lost Cause Victorious!" timelines, and its that because most of us have at least some of the moral compass of 21st century individuals, the CSA has to show that yes, it was really about state's rights and not founding a society on the enslavement of other human beings. This even goes for "The Lost Cause Victorious II: Trent Affair Buggalloo" timelines, because the British Empire that lasts well into the 22nd Century can't have a Southern ally/client state that is fond of slavery.

The biggest handwave is the Bull Weevil. It makes cotton production less dominant, and thus the free market will take away slavery. This generation's Lost Cause tends to be very Ron Paul, Austrian economics inflected, so the Bull Weevil is quite popular right now. The problem this runs up against is... the free market. And here I'm talking the free market of Adam Smith and economists, not the free market that will solve many problems while requiring no money from you, or the free market that would inevitably turn you into John Galt if there were less regulations. It runs up against many cultural, political factors - but also the plain free market. We're talking about plan simple market forces here, and how they affect wages, and labor, and all sorts of things. Because, you see, it was about more than just cotton. The slaver aristocracy was diversifying - rice, indigo, and many other crops were grown with slave labor. In addition, by 1860, the aristocracy was diversifying into industrial concerns - brick making, iron working, etc.

But M. Stuart, you say, don't you know that unfree labor is less economically efficient than free labor! And yes, I do know this. In terms of large scale economic output, it is. But for your individual slave holding capitalist, it isn't. You have a labor force you get to give the ruthless bare minimum of clothing, food, and shelter too. Again, history back me up. Wages for whites outside of the slaver aristocracy were much lower in the South than the North - this is simple economics. You cannot negotiate for higher wages when the other person has the option to replace you with... someone who has to work for next to nothing. Probably affects the price you sell at too - as is the case today, people don't give a shit about how it was made if they can get it cheap. By 1860, the aristocracy is diversifying out of cotton, and while that would lead to an industrial South which would produce less overall than a free South, it will make the slave aristocracy fabulously wealthy - no cotton needed.

And lastly, for all of the sentimental, hazy filtered nostalgia of a rural society with manly, rural values resisting the encroachment of the grimy industrial North - this was a feudal society. Large landowners called the tune, and expected deference. Why do you think that Lee's soldier called "Marse Robert"? He was one of their beloved lordly class, and "Marse" is what you said - free or slave alike. The Southern slave holder as kind master over his flock is at the heart of the elite's conception of itself. As mentioned above, it is written into the Confederate Constitution. They viewed themselves as a feudal aristocracy, to the point where they even staged the occasional tournament in the 1850s (look it up). They are not going alienate the core of that feudal identity, especially as it kept them rich. And as the 19th rolls to a close, eugenics and Social Darwinism will only cement this conception, not challenge it.

The short version? Your 21st century values are what demands a victorious CSA get rid of slavery as fast as possible. Their 19th century values made no such demands on them. And an actual historical timeline most acknowledge that people in that time will make decisions as people in that time, not decisions to make you feel better.
 
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My guess:

Early/mid-20th century after a Communist revolution in which poor disenfranchised whites team up with slaves.

The 19th Confederacy is essentially a textbook case of a banana republic. Just look at Wikipedia's definition:

"Banana republic is a political science term for a politically unstable country whose economy is largely dependent on exporting a limited-resource product, e.g. bananas. It typically has stratified social classes, including a large, impoverished working class and a ruling plutocracy of business, political, and military elites; this politico-economic oligarchy controls the primary-sector productions to exploit the country's economy."

Politically unstable, check
Dependent economy on limited-resource product, check
Stratified social classes, check
Large and hyper-impoverished working class, check
Ruling plutocracy that controls the primary-sector productions, check


Banana republics, as we've seen over the past century, are not especially good at reforming and changing on their own. Eventually, something will give.
 
I don't see how it is "well-known" that slavery would die out eventually. I would actually argue that since in this timeline the Southern planters just fought and won a war for their right to own slaves they would be as hell-bent against attempts to abolish/restrict it from Richmond as they were from Washington. You would have to wait until the Southern generation who fought the political battles of the 1850s and won the Civil War to be either dead or dying (which means ending slavery will not even be acceptable to talk about until the early 20th century), and maybe for some reason the upcoming Southern leaders are less attached to it and even that is not a sure thing, the South has proved that the the succeeding generation is not always a step forward (just compare Thomas Jefferson and John C. Calhoun for example).
 
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It's pretty well-known that slavery would have eventually just died out, even if the CSA won independence. But how long until this occurred and what would trigger it? Would it have to be the public opinion of it going hitting rock bottom until the government reluctantly outlawed it? It would be hard to see a majority of CSA legislators advocating g abolition otherwise.

Thank you for answering.

Edit: My apologies if I reopened a thoroughly discussed topic.

It's alright, really. Discussion is what this site's all about. :cool:

In any case, slavery, at least as we know it, will HAVE to come to an end at some point before the year 2000.

Realistically speaking, it's going to depend mainly on two things: If the tide of public opinion turns against slavery, and when economic necessity demands that it be disposed of(or risk permanent stagnation or even total economic collapse, if the warnings are ignored).

I would estimate that in the case of the former, probably somewhere around 1905-10 or so, maybe sooner if necessity also demands it. But without it? We could potentially be talking somewhere to least the end of 1920s, maybe as late as the 1940s or even slightly beyond that. And then it's possible that they might just hang on to it until the very end, until either the economy implodes, or a dictatorship arises(think: Featherston from TL-191).....and perhaps the latter may occur in reaction to the former. :eek:

In short, let's be thankful that the Union won the war. Because if we hadn't, things could eventually have become quite screwed-up indeed.....:(
 
Actually, potential other answer:

It's extremely unlikely for the CSA to win independence. It's even more unlikely that they keep it for much longer, given the massive slave revolts and Unionist rebellion they'd be facing if they managed to win a peace.

So, slavery dies out within the decade after the CSA wins independence.... after the USA declares war upon the failed state and annexes it. From within, it'd take a revolution to end it - either a successful one, or the fear of one. Slaveholders aren't just going to give up their property for nothing.
 
Putting aside the Confederate constitutional issues - at least a generation, probably two. The best case scenario is a sea change in attitudes, Great Awakening style. Such things are possible - the positive good ideology didn't really take hold in the South until the early 19th century - but they're impossible to predict. And real life trends aren't encouraging: We didn't see such a movement until the Social Gospel arose in the 1890s, and even then it wasn't popular in the South.

Absent that, it really depends on how easy it is for non-slaveholding whites to emigrate to the US. If they can, then the North acts as an escape valve for social pressure and slavery persists into the 20th century. If they can't, then the white working/yeoman class will eventually decide that a racial caste system isn't worth socioeconomic domination by the planter elite. The options in that case are either an 1832 style compromise by the powers that be, or a revolution.

Market forces won't do it. While manufacturing is more vulnerable to slowdown and sabotage than agriculture, you can just look around the world today and see that slavery does just fine in industry. It's less efficient socially, but that doesn't matter to the individual actors who benefit from the system while the rest of their country stagnates.
 
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Cultural factors

Remember there's a key difference between the South in any ^CSA victory scenario and Russia. The South's has an escape valve in that its white yeomanry get to be "king for a day", as it were, whenever they encounter an African-American slave. The yeomanry can be bought into this system of racial supremacy because it does give their position more dignity than the equivalent person in Manchu China or Tsarist Russia (or even in a Northern mining town). That little shred of "but at least I'm not X" underpinned a very unequal and hierarchical system after the OTL Civil War, after all.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
We chewed this over at length a couple of months ago;

Do a search for "confederacy victorious" or something similar.

Setting moonlight and magnolias romanticsm aside, the slaveholding elite and the vast majority of southern whites loved slavery; it gave them wealth, political power, and the assurance that however much the rest of the Western world looked at them askance, there was always someone lesser they could "master"....

They loved it so much that by 1860, there were "white" elites arguing seriously that slavery should be extended across the color line.

Not that slavery was not perverse beyond the ken of almost anyone passing for a human being in its own right, but what was particularly perverse about so many of its advocates is they quite consciously were enslaving their own kith and kin - including their own children.

Not to bring in Godwin, but think of Nazis marching their kinder - not someone else's, which is sick enough, but their own children - into the gates of Auschwitz and you have a rough moral equivalent.

Which is part of why the repeated "how could the CSA have won" threads get old really fast; it does raise the question if the posters really understand what they are arguing in favor of...which if they do, makes it clear what they "really" are all about.

And if they don't, it makes their willful ignorance clear.

Best,
 
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Do a search for "confederacy victorious" or something similar.

Setting moonlight and magnolias romanticsm aside, the slaveholding elite and the vast majority of southern whites loved slavery; it gave them wealth, political power, and the assurance that however much the rest of the Western world looked at them askance, there was always someone lesser they could "master"....

They loved it so much that by 1860, there were "white" elites arguing seriously that slavery should be extended across the color line.

Best,


Which politicians/elites advocated "white slavery", by the way? I'm curious.

I remember doing "in-character" debates in college history classes concerning slavery, and none of the historical characters used seemed to advocate it in their respective documents. . .


(I also deal with enough antebellum genealogical information in my job that I have a bit of investment in studying the period. . .)
 

TFSmith121

Banned
George Fitzhugh is one of the best known;

George Fitzhugh is one of the best known; the one-drop rule was clear, and most of those advocating the "mudsill theory" weren't far away from Fitzhugh's position.

Best,
 
This question comes up again and again. And the replies are always similar. Including my own. So let me try one more time. Never mind if the CSA won, or what. So slavery continues beyond 1865.
Let's look at other New World countries, and when slavery ended there. [And let's also assume that this new CSA victorious OTL causes no butterflies re: slavery ending dates] OK; British Empire, 1834, French islands, 1848, various independent former Spanish colonies, 1850s; Spanish posessions [except Cuba. 1873] Cuba, 1886, Brazil, 1888.
So now, you have one stubborn holdout: the CSA. And every two-bit Wilberforce wannabe all over the Anglo-Saxon world is screaming at you to do the right thing. And maybe the civilized world starts listening to all this, and decides to apply some serious economic pressure. I really don't give a rat's ass what the CSA constitution says, you can easily come up with a plausible scenario where it gets banned by 1890, or '95 at the latest. None of this 1940s nonsense. I mean, didn't anyone here ever here of sharecropping? How easy it is to cheat the ex-slaves? Pay them a pittance, which hardly impacts your profits? The sugar planters on Jamaica found out that their world did not end on August 1, 1838. So, to sum up, why make yourself an international pariah, when, for just pennies on the dollar, you can make your pain go away with the stroke of a pen?
 
This question comes up again and again. And the replies are always similar. Including my own. So let me try one more time. Never mind if the CSA won, or what. So slavery continues beyond 1865.
Let's look at other New World countries, and when slavery ended there. [And let's also assume that this new CSA victorious OTL causes no butterflies re: slavery ending dates] OK; British Empire, 1834, French islands, 1848, various independent former Spanish colonies, 1850s; Spanish posessions [except Cuba. 1873] Cuba, 1886, Brazil, 1888.

The no butterflies rule would difficult to enforce because one reason for the end of Brazilian slavery was because of the ACW. Absent that, Brazilian slavery would probably have held on for longer. The institution was on the way out, for a variety of reasons, but it would have lasted several years longer without the ACW.

So now, you have one stubborn holdout: the CSA. And every two-bit Wilberforce wannabe all over the Anglo-Saxon world is screaming at you to do the right thing. And maybe the civilized world starts listening to all this, and decides to apply some serious economic pressure.

And the question comes down to what, exactly, is the civilized world doing in terms of economic pressure? The track record of successful boycotts or embargoes in this era is very, very limited. (There were some minor ones, but their success was not noteworthy.)

I really don't give a rat's ass what the CSA constitution says, you can easily come up with a plausible scenario where it gets banned by 1890, or '95 at the latest. None of this 1940s nonsense.

This is the same region which stubbornly held on to slavery until forced to give it up at the barrel of a gun, and which even then clung onto institutions abhorred by the world (Jim Crow) into the 1960s or thereabouts?

I mean, didn't anyone here ever here of sharecropping? How easy it is to cheat the ex-slaves? Pay them a pittance, which hardly impacts your profits? The sugar planters on Jamaica found out that their world did not end on August 1, 1838.

The sugar planters of Jamaica were ruined after abolition of slavery there. That was one reason (among several) that the South was so vehemently opposed even to compensated emancipation.

For sharecropping in general, that was both more expensive and less reliable for the planters (sharecroppers can move, after all). Not to mention the rabid fear in the South of what the slaves would do if they were freed.

So, to sum up, why make yourself an international pariah, when, for just pennies on the dollar, you can make your pain go away with the stroke of a pen?

Quite apart from anything else, the price tag alone on abolition is hardly pennies in the dollar. Try billions in 1860 dollars. Good luck getting anyone to pay for that.
 
What I am trying to suggest here is a scenario where the entire Anglo-Saxon world [And maybe other countries like France and Germany] decide that they need to make their errant cousins in the CSA see the light. I'm not sure that could realistically happen in the 1890s, but let's assume that they do. So that everyone who counts, from John O' Groats to Invercargill, NZ decides to make Johnny Reb cry uncle. So the RN and USN blockade the entire CSA coastline. Which means no blockade runners from Bermuda or the Bahamas. Of course, the South wants to resist to the bitter end, but for what purpose? Also, I wasn't going to suggest compensated emancipation here, just economic pressure so draconian that the South gets carried, kicking and screaming, into the 20th century. You could have worse Jim Crow than in OTL because of this; but I make the case that the rest of the world could make it happen, it they had the will. But I'm not sure they really would.
The no butterflies rule would difficult to enforce because one reason for the end of Brazilian slavery was because of the ACW. Absent that, Brazilian slavery would probably have held on for longer. The institution was on the way out, for a variety of reasons, but it would have lasted several years longer without the ACW.



And the question comes down to what, exactly, is the civilized world doing in terms of economic pressure? The track record of successful boycotts or embargoes in this era is very, very limited. (There were some minor ones, but their success was not noteworthy.)



This is the same region which stubbornly held on to slavery until forced to give it up at the barrel of a gun, and which even then clung onto institutions abhorred by the world (Jim Crow) into the 1960s or thereabouts?



The sugar planters of Jamaica were ruined after abolition of slavery there. That was one reason (among several) that the South was so vehemently opposed even to compensated emancipation.

For sharecropping in general, that was both more expensive and less reliable for the planters (sharecroppers can move, after all). Not to mention the rabid fear in the South of what the slaves would do if they were freed.



Quite apart from anything else, the price tag alone on abolition is hardly pennies in the dollar. Try billions in 1860 dollars. Good luck getting anyone to pay for that.
 
And the question comes down to what, exactly, is the civilized world doing in terms of economic pressure? The track record of successful boycotts or embargoes in this era is very, very limited. (There were some minor ones, but their success was not noteworthy.)

That may be true to a point, but do remember that the concept of "boycotting" had not yet become all that accepted just yet. This could easily change by 1890 or so, given the right PODs.

This is the same region which stubbornly held on to slavery until forced to give it up at the barrel of a gun, and which even then clung onto institutions abhorred by the world (Jim Crow) into the 1960s or thereabouts?

Some truth to this, though, to be honest, a large part of the reason why Jim Crow lasted until the 1960s was because of the bitterness over the Civil War.....and the lack of political will to address the problem in Washington. With the right PODs, it could have ended around 1955, maybe even 1950 or so, instead of around 1965 as it was in our world.

For sharecropping in general, that was both more expensive and less reliable for the planters (sharecroppers can move, after all).

Not quite in all cases. And in fact, for many sharecroppers, it was actually practically impossible to move even under some of the worst of conditions, due to financial constraints or certain other circumstances.
 
That may be true to a point, but do remember that the concept of "boycotting" had not yet become all that accepted just yet. This could easily change by 1890 or so, given the right PODs.

And the PoD for this is? It's all very well to wave hands and say "boycotts could become more successful", but the question is - why? This was an era where even Britain - the most vehemently antislavery of all European powers - also had very strong backing for free trade. What changes the underlying reasons for that?

None of this stops Britain applying other strong measures against continued slavery, but the question remains how effective they will be. And it's a given that if Britain ever gets involved in a war against the CSA - which is certainly possible - that they would take even more severe measures to end slavery.

But the "South abandons slavery on its own, because the rest of the world hates them" motif is overblown.

Some truth to this, though, to be honest, a large part of the reason why Jim Crow lasted until the 1960s was because of the bitterness over the Civil War.....and the lack of political will to address the problem in Washington. With the right PODs, it could have ended around 1955, maybe even 1950 or so, instead of around 1965 as it was in our world.

I'd argue with that being the underlying reason - rather, the entrenched racism which hadn't changed since before the ACW. Regardless, it's irrelevant in the context of whether the South would give up slavery on its own by 1900, let alone 1890.

Not quite in all cases. And in fact, for many sharecroppers, it was actually practically impossible to move even under some of the worst of conditions, due to financial constraints or certain other circumstances.

According to Gavin Wright in Old South, New South, sharecroppers "had ample opportunity to move from place to place between seasons". Even in 1910 (when the opportunities for movement were relatively lower), over half of the black share tenants had been on their current farm for less than two years. And barely 15% had been there for longer than 5 years.

Risking having 50+% of your workforce move in less than two years would, I think, lead planters to conclude that sharecropping would be less reliable than slavery.
 
You could have worse Jim Crow than in OTL because of this; but I make the case that the rest of the world could make it happen, it they had the will. But I'm not sure they really would.

It's the will (and the money) which is lacking, for my mind. And a blockade is an act of war. A blockade scenario would require that the rest of the world had started a war for the purpose of freeing the slaves. Disgust with the South would be high, of course - and growing ever higher each decade - but enough to expend direct blood and treasure to free them? I'm not convinced.

Naturally, if the CSA is foolish enough to end up in a war with Britain or the US of A, then this equation changes.
 
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