IF (an I don't think it would happen) the CSA decided to eliminate slavery, one slow method would be to declare that all children of slaves born after a given day are born free, or rather, indentured, and free after a certain age. The work from ,erhaps age 12 to age 20, is compensation for the cost of feeding them, etc.
How long would Slavery Last in a Victorious Confederacy?
- Thread starter aspie3000
- Start date
The earliest I could see the movement towards abolitionism in the CSA is around 1900. By that time even the newly enlisted are getting old . A 12 year old drummer boy in 1865 is now 47 and thus middle aged. Even in the CSA 12 year old boys being soldiers were very much the exception. A 16 year old is now 51 , a 22 year old 2nd Lt. is now 57 and those are the 1865 recruits. The middle and senior non-coms and officers are dying of old age and their influence is waning . The new generation might slowly start looking at things differently. However it would be at the start of the process not the end. For one thing it is certain a lot of the younger generation would approve of slavery in 1900 as they have been taught that by daddy all their life.
In 1860, the average price of a slave was roughly triple what it had been in 1845. I've seen estimates that as many as 500,o00 slaves escaped during the Civil. That's about 1 in 7 of the slave population of the Confederacy and probably a higher percent for able bodied adult males. I'd expect that shortage to drive slave prices up sharply after Confederate independence. It' would take a very long time for slavery to become unprofitable - commercially viable cotton picking machines weren't commonly available until the 1950s in OTL, and that wouldn't eliminate the social reasons for maintaining slavery.
Freeing your slaves to prevent assets from being seized was illegal. Period courts routinely overturned wills that freed slaves if the owner had unpaid debts. The slaves would be sold to pay those debts and if there were any left, the remaining slaves would be allowed to go free.
Nor were slaves used exclusively for picking cotton. If slaves are being replaced by mechanical cotton pickers the price of slaves goes down and they are used somewhere else. They aren't freed they are simply doing something else.
That would be a lot of investment. And given a book I read lately telling how in the Soviet Union they still had two thirds of the cotton on fields using tractors as it didn't get all the stuff... Yah, tractors work best in truly massive, flat areas. Though I suppose there where mechanical devices other than tractors around. I am just wondering who would produce them. Anyone know if Eli Whitney got much for making the cotton gin? Though he was a bit of a fraud, maybe the example of not getting cash for helping out slavers would prevent much more innovation in that area, especially as cotton may have drained the soil of too many nutrients by the time devices to lower the use of slave labor came around. Also, anyone know if the British started up so much cotton production in India and Egypt because of the Civil War, or did they independently just decide to make the Indians give them their cotton?
Nevermind that, looked it up and seems they were both producing loads of cotton already. I suppose the main issue was that the Southerners were willing to accept British goods, while the Indians had little desire for them.
dcharles
Banned
This is... Perd Hapley-esque.
But, moving on: Tractors and mechanical cotton harvesters aren't the same thing.
And as for tractors, they work best in flat areas in the same way everything with wheels works best in a flat area. Compared with a car, for example, a tractor performs quite well in rough terrain.
It will go away in stages, with the Industrial Revolution being the biggest threat to slavery as we know it. Simply paying a wage, albeit a shitty one, is usually more cost-effective than housing and feeding a slave, not to mention the increased security costs. This means a lot of out-of-work blacks in the CSA along with a bunch of slave owners who suddenly have worthless slaves. The question is, how do they keep from losing value on their slaves?
Picture plantations turning into "factory plantations" - lots more machinery and lots more accidents, but a similar amount of security. Slaves will still have reduced value, but "slave liquidators" help plantation owners recoup some costs while helping others staff these massive plantations. White workers get the Industrial jobs while black slaves and freed workers end up with what's left.
There's one thing that could work in a few different directions here - unions. In the USA, if workers are unionized, thanks to favorable labor laws, owners have no choice but to play ball. In the CSA, if workers unionize, they have to stay below the threshold of "it's just cheaper to buy slaves to do the work" and things can only get so good for them. That's assuming that demand for workers doesn't exceed the number of workers available, in which case, we'll see slaves cutting deals for freedom and slavery becoming rare, if not unheard of or flat-out illegal.
Picture plantations turning into "factory plantations" - lots more machinery and lots more accidents, but a similar amount of security. Slaves will still have reduced value, but "slave liquidators" help plantation owners recoup some costs while helping others staff these massive plantations. White workers get the Industrial jobs while black slaves and freed workers end up with what's left.
There's one thing that could work in a few different directions here - unions. In the USA, if workers are unionized, thanks to favorable labor laws, owners have no choice but to play ball. In the CSA, if workers unionize, they have to stay below the threshold of "it's just cheaper to buy slaves to do the work" and things can only get so good for them. That's assuming that demand for workers doesn't exceed the number of workers available, in which case, we'll see slaves cutting deals for freedom and slavery becoming rare, if not unheard of or flat-out illegal.
Southern industry was moving towards slave labor before the Civil War. In 1847, white workers at the Tredegar Iron Company went on strike. The strike failed and Tredegar replaced the strikers with slave workers, who could not go on strike. OTOH, an independent Confederacy would have a labor shortage. According to Lincoln's Loyalists, about 10% of draft age men from Confederate states served in the Union army, few of them would dare return after the war. An even higher percent of black men had joined the Union army or at least fled to Union territory.
Well, yes, slavery would eventually become inviable economically. But I agree that house slaves might be a thing for a while longer after that.
Pretty much all of this is fairly plausible with the exception of the bold, including that last bit, being questionable-some slaves would probably just be put to work elsewhere, and I can actually see the "slave liquidators" you mention making a shitload of money.....by just murdering slaves en masse.
(Also, let's not forget that, by 1860, free blacks were essentially becoming forbidden to live in certain Southern states at all.)The sugar plantations were remarkably brutal. Probably more so than *most* cotton or tobacco plantations in the South. If you are a slave on an island, surrounded by shark-infested waters running away is not an option as it was in the southern U.S.
Apparently, the rice plantations of Louisiana were awful on a Caribbean level. Bad enough that being "sold down the River" became a byword and fearsome threat to slaves further north.
Sounds like Rent-a-Slave would be big business for industry in the South, since slaves would be expendable and always needed. Keeping people from escaping would be a huge issue as well, since slaves would constantly flee north, so yes, a labor shortage would be inevitable. How it would play out is interesting, since the CSA could end up collapsing or be reformed based on the labor shortage.
Pretty much all of this is fairly plausible with the exception of the bold, including that last bit, being questionable-some slaves would probably just be put to work elsewhere, and I can actually see the "slave liquidators" you mention making a shitload of money.....by just murdering slaves en masse.
I'm not sure at what point Southern racism would meet extreme desperation and the slaves would be necessary. They would probably be owned by people who rent them to industrialists while plantations go away by and large. So for some time slavery exists, until it's no longer viable, and then yes, a lot of them probably get shot. And others don't, and they either go free, defect north, or try to make their way in the CSA, while defecting blacks are treated in the North the way Mexican border-crossers are treated OTL.
FillyofDelphi
Banned
... and how long can this be sustained before some politician gets the genius idea to make political hay out of the masses of poor, unemployed Whites with the ballot? Abandoning Democracy and ruling by bayonet isen't an option: not with Yankee armies breathing down your neck and when said bayonets are largely in the hands of poor Whites. Southern planters would soon run into the problem that the Barbados sugar planters did during the slavery boom: while you might not nessicerily need white workers, you need white militia... and the military class in any society usually gets what they want.
Even without sharks, it probably wasn't an option. According to Solomon Northup in 12 Years a Slave, at least in the area where he was held, slaves were not allowed to learn to swim.
It would require a Constitutional Amendment to end slavery in the Confederacy, While that is possible, if it showed any signs of passing, I'd expect the more reactionary states to leave the Confederacy if Emancipation shows any sign of becoming the law.
True, but it also shows that slavery was integral to the confederacy's being. Expressly writing it into the Confederate constitution rather than trying to dance around the issue as the Federal constitution did mean that to abolish it would be as likely as the presidency being abolished in the United States. Slavery likely ends in Dixie as a result of a second war with the United States that sees most/all of the Confederacy liberated.