Independent New York City after a Union loss in the ACW - effects?

Prompted by a comment that @David T made in another thread.

So, in early 1861, NYC Mayor Fernando Wood, a noted Copperhead, proposed that the city should secede from the United States and declare itself a free city in order to maintain trade relations with the Southern states. While IOTL this never went anywhere... what if Wood had been successful in convincing the city council to secede? Assume that, in other respects, this is a standard early CSA victory scenario (the South wins several important early battles, the British and French intervene to broker a peace, etc), because I can't imagine New York City maintaining independence otherwise.

Anyway, what would be the political, social, and economic ramifications of an independent New York City in the 1800s - not only for the city itself, although that would certainly be fascinating, but also for the United States, who would have just lost not only the Southern states, but the largest city in the country.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
New York City as a city-state could only have survived if it openly traded with everyone without restrictions. It would become sort of a 19th century version of Hong Kong, in other words.

It would have had to have some sort of security guarantee from the British to maintain its independence. Otherwise there would be nothing to keep the United States from marching back in anytime it wanted.

Along with the successful secession of the South, the departure of NYC would make secession acceptable, likely leading to independence movements in other parts of the country.
 
I agree with Anaxagoras, New York would need a security guarantee from Britain. Perhaps the negotiated peace could include something similar to the treaty of London's guarantees of Belgian independance, with a corrosponding requirement for New York to be neutral? If New England also seceeds, NY would feel more secure, otherwise it might well develop a siege mentality, especially if the remaining US is hostile. Either way, NY is likely to have warmer relations with London and Paris than with Washington for a very long time. Whitehall is likely to treat it as a protectorate, and make it very clear that New York's access to British markets is very much dependant on following their lead. Washington, I expect, would fixate on it, and do all in its power to try and 'convince' New York to come back. Propaganda, blackmail, espionage, so long as Britain continues to protect New York they'd stop short of outright war unless the British were preoccupied elsewhere, but otherwise think spies and suchlike. Actually, a spy novel set in that timeline might make for fascinating reading.
 
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Not so sure about the US marching in. Would that not depend on the trade tariff charged by NY? If it is lease expensive to trade through NY than their own markets it would not be wise to invade, it costs money to make war, for a start.
 
I imagine it would very much depend on whether or not US governments choose to use it as a propaganda tool, Alsace-Lorraine style, and if so, for how long.
 
Manhattan isn't strategically viable enough from land to be maintained as an independent state for long, unless you're turning it into a Luxembourg of the western hemisphere
 
New York State and the Feds ignore any guarantees, Britain protests--and does nothing as New York City is brought into the Union again and the ringleaders are imprisoned for life.
 
NYC was just Manhattan at this time and had about 800,000 residents.

I have a feeling there would be enough opposition to secession that it gets dragged back into the Union, even though the ramifications will be huge.

It’d harm the Civil War war effort, it would create a prescedent of secession outside of the South’s desire to maintain slavery, it could permanently embed a nationalist identity on NYC and surrounding areas (a lot of people who populate the NYC Metropolitan area, especially on Long Island and in Hudson Valley are either from the city or descended from people from there), and it would lead to a lot of instability in the trust of the US federal government’s ability to govern domestically and internationally.
 
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