How long would Slavery Last in a Victorious Confederacy?

[EnglishCanuck]

Really depends on economic conditions. Slavery was only defendable insofar as it made the planter class wealthy. Once the price of slaves declines to a critical degree (eg slaves are no longer useful as collateral) then the practice of chattel slavery at least will be dead. Cheap slaves will likely be sold/freed leading to something of a crisis for Confederate authority and racial theory.

At that point de-facto slavery will end, and something will replace it. I envision it as something akin to Apartheid/Russian serfdom/Nazi ghettos in practice.

 

[Md139115]

I really think there should be a poll added to this.

Aside from that, I really do wonder what the Northern states would look like. Would they be stronger or weaker? Also, would the South be able to capitalize on the oil in Texas and Oklahoma? If they could it might bring the levels of antagonism between the sides to new levels.

I second the poll

 

[Kalan]

Haha. I feel like I'm having dejavu. See this thread: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...acy-pulls-a-meiji.422274/page-8#post-15367205

But long story short, the South was industrializing, just not to anywhere near the extent of the North. IOTL, the postwar South became very industrialized in comparison to the rest of the world. In an ATL, the South emerges from the war richer and healthier, with many more factories than when the war started. The most likely outcome of this change in circumstance is that the postwar CS would be economicallly healthier and more manufacturing oriented than the OTL postwar South.

And you don't think that the loss of slavery had anything to do with the faster industrialisation after the war? IOTL there had to be new sources of wealth and income as the most valuable property of the South - it's slaves - had just become worthless. If the CSA is successful its plantages will continue to thrive, and there would be much less need to develop industries. Furthermore the South would also be cut off from its major source of investment (the north) which would also hinder any development.

 

[AnonymousSauce]

Until today unless the CSA stopped existing, had a Constitutional Convention or a coup/revolution. Note that ATL 2017 slavery might not be very widespread but it would still exist de jure.

You really think that the full weight of the world's moral opprobrium, which in OTL was able to crack the apartheid nut as soon as the Cold War ended, would not be sufficient to bring about an end to slavery in the South any time before present?

 

[missouribob]

You really think that the full weight of the world's moral opprobrium, which in OTL was able to crack the apartheid nut as soon as the Cold War ended, would not be sufficient to bring about an end to slavery in the South any time before present?

Note the three conditions I noted where it wouldn't be. Also this ATL would be butterflied so post 1865 meaning by ATL 2017 slavery might not be as taboo.

 

[Falecius]

You really think that the full weight of the world's moral opprobrium, which in OTL was able to crack the apartheid nut as soon as the Cold War ended, would not be sufficient to bring about an end to slavery in the South any time before present?

Countries like Saudi Arabia, Israel, or Myanmar (and many others) have been pursuing policies that most of the world sees very unfavorably for decades. This generally does not appear to have impacted their willingness to pursue them (OK, they usually can afford that partly because of very powerful protectors, like the US in Saudi and Israel's cases, and to a lesser extent China for Myanmar - or Sudan - but there also examples where nasty policies by an isolated country raised widespread global condemnation without much effect - think Iran or North Korea).
The world's moral opprobium alone is rarely sufficient if its full weight is not backed by more concrete forms of pressure. Which were very much in place with South Africa, for instance. (Also, South Africa has been lucky).

 

[Moosemac]

I mean, with no Nazis guaranteed in this timeline that sort of "moral opprobrium" might not develop to the same extend as OTL

Of course the confederacy could certainly cause massive amounts of infamy locally in the Americas depending how they are playing their PR cards.

 

[Johnrankins]

To be fair, Tunisia abolished slavery of her own accord (though Europeans encouraged the move), several years before the US Emancipation Proclamation. The whole point of there being a Confederacy was their refusal to even consider the prospect of having to do the same sometime in the future. Also, slavery in Islamic contexts is legally different from antebellum south chattel slavery (although in practice it varied a lot and sometimes resembled that). In Islamic law, slaves are considered full human beings who just happen to be in a diminished, dependent condition. They can be sold or bought (but not separated from family members in the process) but cannot be really treated as property. Also, Islamic law encouraged freeing slaves - in the Confederacy, some states had laws against it.
This is however somewhat theoretical - slaves were often treated much worse than law consented, and even if in principle they had legal recourse (slaves could sue masters for mistreatment under shari'a laws, I don't think that would have ever been possible in Antebellum South Carolina) it was rarely possible for them to actually obtain it.

Islamic slavery was far better in theory than in practice. Crossing the Sahara was even deadlier than the Atlantic Passage from what I have read and turning someone into a eunuch was not only painful but had around a 90% fatality rate IIRC.

 

[Johnrankins]

Perhaps we should read what they actually wrote to justify secession.

"For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery." - Georgia Declaration of Causes for Secession

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization." - Mississippi Declaration of Causes for Secession

"We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection." - South Carolina Declaration of Causes for Secession

"Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time." - Texas Declaration of Causes for Secession

"In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States." - Texas Declaration of Causes for Secession

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." - Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy

"We but imitate the policy of our fathers in dissolving a union with non-slaveholding confederates, and seeking a confederation with slave-holding States." - South Carolina's Address to the Slaveholding States

"Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. - Address of the Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention

"Louisiana supplies to Texas a market for her surplus wheat, grain and stock; both States have large areas of fertile, uncultivated lands, peculiarly adapted to slave labor; and they are both so deeply interested in African slavery that it may be said to be absolutely necessary to their existence, and is the keystone to the arch of their prosperity." - Address of the Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention

"The people of the slaveholding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery. " - Address of the Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention

"To evade the issue thus forced upon us at this time, without the fullest security for our rights, is, in my opinion, fatal to the institution of slavery forever. The time has arrived when the people of the South must prepare either to abandon or to fortify and maintain it. Abandon it, we cannot, interwoven as it is with our wealth, prosperity, and domestic happiness." - Message of the Governor to the Tennessee Assembly

"The Black Republican party has for years continued to make aggressions upon the slaveholding States, under the forms of law, and in every manner that fanaticism could devise. and have now gained strength and position, which threaten, not only the destruction of the institution of slavery, but must degrade and ruin the slaveholding States, if not resisted. - Message of the Governor to the Alabama Legislature

"The Federal Government has failed to protect the rights and property of the citizens of the South, and is about to pass into the hands of a party pledged for the destruction, not only of their rights and property, but the equality of the States ordained by the Constitution, and the heaven-ordained superiority of the white over the black race. -Letter of the Commissioner from Alabama to the Governor of Kentucky

"What Southern man, be he slave-holder or non-slave-holder, can without indignation and horror contemplate the triumph of negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters, in the not distant future, associating with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality, and the white man stripped, by the Heaven-daring hand of fanaticism of that title to superiority over the black race which God himself has bestowed? -Letter of the Commissioner from Alabama to the Governor of Kentucky

"Will the South give up the institution of slavery, and consent that her citizens be stripped of their property, her civilization destroyed, the whole land laid waste by fire and sword? It is impossible; she can not, she will not." -Letter of the Commissioner from Alabama to the Governor of Kentucky

"Wealth is timid, and wealthy men may cry for peace, and submit to wrong for fear they may lose their money: but the poor, honest laborers of Georgia, can never consent to see slavery abolished, and submit to all the taxation, vassalage, low wages and downright degradation, which must follow. " Open Letter from the Governor of Georgia

Like I said the one thing you can't say about them is that they were hypocritical on the issue. They were loud and proud of it!

 

[Greenville]

Slavery ends by 1890 like most other nations in the Americas at the time simply because industrialization catches up at the time and morality starts to change even in the South.

 

[Falecius]

Islamic slavery was far better in theory than in practice.

Completely true.
Not sure about the fatality rate of castration for eunuchs, but it was certainly high.

 

[dcharles]

And you don't think that the loss of slavery had anything to do with the faster industrialisation after the war? IOTL there had to be new sources of wealth and income as the most valuable property of the South - it's slaves - had just become worthless. If the CSA is successful its plantages will continue to thrive, and there would be much less need to develop industries. Furthermore the South would also be cut off from its major source of investment (the north) which would also hinder any development.

Well, no. Losing all of your money doesn't make you rich. Southern manufacturing grew a lot during the 1850s. After the war, not so much. The 1880s is when that growth really started to increase.

I pointed out in another post that the prewar prices for cotton were more or less an all-time high. They deteriorated steadily for the remainder of the century. So growing cotton will become a progressively less attractive as time goes on. Also, as cotton becomes cheaper, its easier for the mill-owners to buy and turn into finished cloth. So at the very moment in time that cotton becomes less profitable, manufacturing becomes more profitable. But this time, the Southern ruling class hasn't lost all of its money because of emancipation and the total loss from investment in government bonds and conversion to CS currency. There's more money to invest and not less.

As a side point, its important to keep in mind that industries were already developed in the South. It can't be stressed enough that the antebellum South was an industrialized region--what it wasn't was a country that was industrialized anywhere near the extent of the Northern states, the UK, or France. Relative to other nations at the time, the antebellum Southern states are probably at about the level of Austria-Hungary. During the war, they began a crash industrialization program that expanded total capacity by a staggering amount. In a world with a victorious CS, they've probably pulled well ahead of Austria_Hungary. They haven't reached the levels of the first tier nations like the US, UK, France, or Germany, but they're most likely at the forefront of the second tier nations.

 

[dcharles]

Industrializing to what degree? Having some industry in a plantation dominated economy is not the same as being an industrialized slave holding economy. And it still doesn't mean slavery wasn't holding industrialization back.

Check out some of the thread that I linked to, there are some numbers there.

 

[DG Valdron]

Well, no. Losing all of your money doesn't make you rich. Southern manufacturing grew a lot during the 1850s. After the war, not so much. The 1880s is when that growth really started to increase.

I pointed out in another post that the prewar prices for cotton were more or less an all-time high. They deteriorated steadily for the remainder of the century. So growing cotton will become a progressively less attractive as time goes on. Also, as cotton becomes cheaper, its easier for the mill-owners to buy and turn into finished cloth. So at the very moment in time that cotton becomes less profitable, manufacturing becomes more profitable. But this time, the Southern ruling class hasn't lost all of its money because of emancipation and the total loss from investment in government bonds and conversion to CS currency. There's more money to invest and not less.

As a side point, its important to keep in mind that industries were already developed in the South. It can't be stressed enough that the antebellum South was an industrialized region--what it wasn't was a country that was industrialized anywhere near the extent of the Northern states, the UK, or France. Relative to other nations at the time, the antebellum Southern states are probably at about the level of Austria-Hungary. During the war, they began a crash industrialization program that expanded total capacity by a staggering amount. In a world with a victorious CS, they've probably pulled well ahead of Austria_Hungary. They haven't reached the levels of the first tier nations like the US, UK, France, or Germany, but they're most likely at the forefront of the second tier nations.

There is some kind of case for industrialisation, but there are a number of key drawbacks.

First - infrastructure. The South had serious infrastructure issues that would hinder the hypothetical Confederacy's emergence and industrialisation. Essentially, it was disconnected and colonial. There was, apart from the Mississippi, no central or interconnected pathway for transport and trading. Now, while the Mississippi is significant, it leaves out key regions of the Confederacy - the Atlantic Coast and most of the Gulf Coast states. These were often relatively rugged terrain, with disconnected rivers draining separately to the sea. They were connected by poor quality roads, and short stretches of railway with varying gages and often poor quality. The mis-matched transportion network of roads, rails and waterways meant that goods moving within the Confederacy would have to be transshipped at increasing costs. The Confederate cities and population centers did not connect to each other, they connected to the markets. This mean that it was comparatively more expensive to ship goods within the confederacy than it was to import and export goods. This would, in the absence of heavy tariffs, tend to discourage domestic industry. At the very least, it would tend to give importers and exporters a competitive advantage over homegrown. Heavy tariffs are extremely unlikely for a Confederate economy built on cotton exports, and massive investment in infrastructure, canals, a coherent rail system, is essentially prohibited by the Confederate constitution.

Second - Finance. There was no financial structure worthy of the name. There were no substantial banks or lending institutions. There were no internal mechanisms for finance or to move and invest capital. Typically, as a result, Confederate investment tended to be in consolidating tangible assets, land and slaves. While the frequent response is 'well, they'll get foreign investment' there's actually a lot of competition for foreign investment from the United States, Canada, the British and French Colonies, Europe, Russia, etc. I don't see any reason why the Confederacy would be extraordinarily competitive. Most likely, foreign investment would be limited and deployed to service a neocolonial economic model, rather than industrialisation.

Third - Markets. The Confederacy doesn't have any. European states, even the ones that lagged in industrialisation, typically had fairly large dense populations in comparison to America, and they were also proximate to other European states. So there were potential markets all over the place, and rich potential markets in proximity. Several European countries, particularly Britain, but also France, the Netherlands, Denmark maintained and had substantial merchant marines, their ships and seagoing traditions extended all over the world. The Confederacy in contrast, has a relatively small white population - a limited domestic market handicapped by transshipment, infrastructure and financing setbacks. There was little or no real opportunity for the Confederacy to access international markets. Certainly it wasn't going to be selling manufactured goods to the United States or Britain. More, it would be competing with the United States, Britain, and eventually France, Germany and Russia. I don't see it making waves successfully in Latin America or Asia. So there isn't much more than a problematic domestic market, highly vulnerable to competition from imports.

This doesn't mean that the Confederacy can't industrialize. But I think it would require a degree of state intervention and planning comparable to the Asian economies or Scandinavia in the latter half of the 20th century. This in itself seems unlikely for this era, and particularly for the culture and political set up of the Confederacy.

Absent such intervention, and assuming basically a laissez fair model of economic drift, my assumption is that the Confederacy would at best experience a partial industrialisation blooming briefly for a time, but fading away as a result of limited production runs, lack of capital investment, difficulties getting to market, lack of reinvestment and updating. It would probably peak out about 1880, be well into decline by 1890, and pretty much be dead by 1910. The most likely, though imperfect model is the commodity driven agrarian economies of Latin America.

Still, anything's possible, and while the Latin America is, barring quasi-socialist intervention by far the likeliest outcome... Well, it all depends.

 

[Johnrankins]

Well, no. Losing all of your money doesn't make you rich. Southern manufacturing grew a lot during the 1850s. After the war, not so much. The 1880s is when that growth really started to increase.

I pointed out in another post that the prewar prices for cotton were more or less an all-time high. They deteriorated steadily for the remainder of the century. So growing cotton will become a progressively less attractive as time goes on. Also, as cotton becomes cheaper, its easier for the mill-owners to buy and turn into finished cloth. So at the very moment in time that cotton becomes less profitable, manufacturing becomes more profitable. But this time, the Southern ruling class hasn't lost all of its money because of emancipation and the total loss from investment in government bonds and conversion to CS currency. There's more money to invest and not less.

As a side point, its important to keep in mind that industries were already developed in the South. It can't be stressed enough that the antebellum South was an industrialized region--what it wasn't was a country that was industrialized anywhere near the extent of the Northern states, the UK, or France. Relative to other nations at the time, the antebellum Southern states are probably at about the level of Austria-Hungary. During the war, they began a crash industrialization program that expanded total capacity by a staggering amount. In a world with a victorious CS, they've probably pulled well ahead of Austria_Hungary. They haven't reached the levels of the first tier nations like the US, UK, France, or Germany, but they're most likely at the forefront of the second tier nations.

On the other hand state and national debt hasn't been wiped out by federal fiat, you still have your nearly worthless currency and the federal government is not pouring money in to rebuild. The CSA government is in debt to the eyebrows , the CSA state governments are the same, planters owe vast fortunes to Northern factors and the Northern Railroad companies aren't rebuilding your rails. You now have to pay for your own army and navy, you are diplomatically isolated and you live in fear that one day an army will come down from the north. There are runaway slaves roaming the countryside some armed and you are facing guerilla resistance in the mountains. You are by no means in great shape to do anything. This is true as early as 1862 and it continues spiraling down.

 

[Nurhaci]

1880s,After the Brazil.

 

[Fiver]

CSA wouldn't be a great power. And if you mean Britain after OTL civil war the British bought their cotton in... Egypt.

While Egyptian cotton production increased significantly during the Civil War, Britain mainly imported its cotton from India. After the Civil War, imports of Indian cotton started dropping and by 1870, the US was the main source of imported cotton for Britain again.

The chart is from an article in The Journal of Economic History.

 

[Alex Zetsu]

Ok, looks like I didn't remember correctly there.

 

[Guardian54]

A surviving CSA is the Draka, complete with bullshittium-tier ASB interference.

I do not think I can adequately convey my opinion of the Draka without a) risking a ban or b) deciding that Stirling wrote it specifically as a Troll Fic to make Americans buttmad while laughing at how the Americans don't realize the Draka is more like them than they want to admit.

 

[Fiver]

Who? Who would support the Confederacy? Canada? Britain? Europe? China? The freed former colonies of Africa and Asia? Latin America with their considerable minority populations? Come on. The best analogue for the Confederacy is South Africa, but more isolated.

The question is not who would support the Confederacy -period alliances tended to be the the duration of a war. It's not till around 1890 you started to see long-term alliances and even then, the Confederacy would not have been important enough for a major power to ally with. The important question is who would care enough about slavery to try to embargo the Confederacy? Maybe Britain, but even that is unlikely.

At independence, the Confederacy would not be the only slaveholding country. The Netherlands had only just ended slavery in heir colonies in 1863. Portugal ended slavery in 1869, Puerto Rico in 1873, the Ottomans in 1882, Cambodia on 1884, Cuba in 1886, Brazil in 1888, Korea in 1894. Egypt on 1895, Madagascar in 1896, Zanzibar in 1897, China in 1906, Siam in 1912, Morocco in 1922, Afghanistan in 1923, Iran in 1928, etc.