PC/AHC: Race war in the Confederacy?

Assuming a genocide against African Americans, it would not be pragmatic at all to launch a genocide against them considering they form an extremely large proportion of the South's population.

Race war? Maybe. Genocide? No.
 
Sure, eventually. Blacks made up a majority in several Confederate states, and you can only keep people oppressed for so long...
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Yes, most definitely... in fact, it is damn near a given

Is it possible, after a hypothetical Confederate victory, for the CSA to decend into a race war/genocide?

Yes, most definitely... in fact, it is damn near a given, considering there are 180,000 USCTs with weapons in their hands and plenty of combat experience by 1865... which if the POD is the common "McClellan wins in November, 1864, is sworn into office in March, 1865 (all of a month before Appomattox) and proceeds to surrender everything the US has won since April, 1861" trope is the one in question.:rolleyes:

And even if your point of departure is (somehow) before the 1864 election, it ignores the the possibility of anti-slavery filibustering, which places the entire issue of the rebellion winning - on the battlefield or through some completely a-historical "war weariness" - into perspective.

The population of the rebel states was (roughly) 33 percent enslaved in 1860; to the great good sense of that segment of the southern population, although individuals quite courageously "liberated themselves" whenever circumstances allowed (akin to Robert Smalls and the other roughly half-million escapees/"contrabands", whose self-liberation is routinely ignored or belittled by neo-confederate apologists) this - generally - did not take place with excessive bloodshed against the white southern population (despite decades of scores to be settled).

And the Lincoln Administration, to its great good credit, treated emancipation, even as a war measure, as something to be accomplished in a regulated and largely "legalistic" manner, in fact essentially begging the enslaved NOT to take matters into their own hands.

And the US could take that approach because, as in Shelby Foote's memorable phrase, the U.S. really did "fight the war with one hand behind its back" and in more than one way - along with conscription, the U.S. did not recruit men of African ancestry until 1863, and not in large numbers into the USCTs until 1864-65 (at which point some 200,000 were in service, in the Army and Navy.)

Now, posit a world where - for some reason - the war is not going as well for the US in 1861-62 as it did historically. One would expect that what Frederick Douglass quite accurately referred to as "the strong black hand" of the Union war economy would come out...as it was, historically, half of the men who enlisted in the USCTs did so in northern or border states that, historically, were under US control in 1862.

So, along with (roughly) some 100,000 men of African ancestry who can be mobilized in loyal territory essentially by order of the president at any time in 1862, there are 100,000 more in rebel territory who, historically, chose to enlist when given the opportunity to do so by the presence of the US Army.

So, if even one in ten of those "southern 100,000" are willing to fight in insurrection with whatever comes to hand, that means there are 10,000 Denmark Veseys or Nat Turners ready to fight and die, and, presumably, the length and breadth of rebeldom...

Again, this is the sort of thing the moonlight and magnolia crowd NEVER take into consideration, largely because the myths they cling to so tightly must deny the enslaved any agency, to the point today the "happy slave" myth has metastisized into the "black confederate soldier" myth.

And does anyone really think that men as sharp, capable, and ruthless as Lincoln, Douglass, et al would not have played ALL of the cards in their hand, if necessary?

Best,
 
Speaking of the "moonlight & magnolias" crowd, before the ACW there was a considerable literature (medical) primarily from the south about medical/physiological/psychological differences between whites and blacks. One of the "afflictions" blacks "had" was "drapetomania" or a desire to run away {from their masters}. Just saying...
 
Is it possible, after a hypothetical Confederate victory, for the CSA to decend into a race war/genocide?

Dunno about a full-blown genocide(even if mainly because the slaves were still needed), although a race war might not be at all impossible, because.....

Sure, eventually. Blacks made up a majority in several Confederate states, and you can only keep people oppressed for so long...

This. Despite what one might hear from the "Moonlight and Magnolias" crowd, the large majority of slaves weren't *just* discontented(virtually all were discontented, at least), but also desperate to try to cope with their situation any way they could, including running away and even outright revolting. Truthfully, it was really only a matter of time before a major revolt, or series of revolts, would occur that could cripple entire sections of the region for several weeks, or even a few months at a time.....it's also almost unbelievable that there weren't *more* Nat Turners and Denmark Veseys.
 
This. Despite what one might hear from the "Moonlight and Magnolias" crowd, the large majority of slaves weren't *just* discontented(virtually all were discontented, at least), but also desperate to try to cope with their situation any way they could, including running away and even outright revolting. Truthfully, it was really only a matter of time before a major revolt, or series of revolts, would occur that could cripple entire sections of the region for several weeks, or even a few months at a time.....it's also almost unbelievable that there weren't *more* Nat Turners and Denmark Veseys.

Especially if the United States is funnelling arms and training then returning black guerrilla leaders. When the war takes off, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia are going to explode. The non-cotton producing Upper South, with its much smaller population of slaves, won't want to pour thousands of their young men into the meatgrinder to save King Cotton, and might instead attempt to secede or force the government to make peace. Meanwhile, depending on when this is and how much industrialization has happened, there could be a small Communist movement that could bring some white radicals onto the slaves' side. It could be a revolution.
 

Germaniac

Donor
If the confederacy wins, which is in my humble opinion as ASB as sealion, they will no longer prevent the importation of slaves. While many in the government will be opposed, as this will drop the worth of each slave, the confederate government will not be able to stop this as they do not have to proper authority to do so... this will lead to several problems...

1) As the price of slaves drops, the proliferation of slaves will increase. This will allow the yeoman farmer, who apparently fought for the right to decide his own fate, to buy his own slaves.

2) The proliferation will lead to the slave owning aristocracy wanting to restrict ownership of slaves
They will see that as more begin to buy foreign slaves the price of their own slaves will plummit. They dont want to see that after all this is a business.​

3) The backlash will lead to even more issues between the confederate states. As states where the aristocracy has more control will fight against the western states where the common man has more control.

4) as the southern states begin to break up the population has already skewed towards such a high percentage of slaves. once the states break up into several competing nations

5) The moment is ripe for absolute terror...
 
If the confederacy wins, which is in my humble opinion as ASB as sealion, they will no longer prevent the importation of slaves. While many in the government will be opposed, as this will drop the worth of each slave, the confederate government will not be able to stop this as they do not have to proper authority to do so... this will lead to several problems...

1) As the price of slaves drops, the proliferation of slaves will increase. This will allow the yeoman farmer, who apparently fought for the right to decide his own fate, to buy his own slaves.

2) The proliferation will lead to the slave owning aristocracy wanting to restrict ownership of slaves
They will see that as more begin to buy foreign slaves the price of their own slaves will plummit. They dont want to see that after all this is a business.​

3) The backlash will lead to even more issues between the confederate states. As states where the aristocracy has more control will fight against the western states where the common man has more control.

4) as the southern states begin to break up the population has already skewed towards such a high percentage of slaves. once the states break up into several competing nations

And the RN immediately institutes a blockade of the new CSA.

Nope. No way, no how.

Transatlantic trade in slaves was dead at this point, and anyone who tried restarting it would have to face the might of the RN, with contingents from other nations.

Might the slaveocrats be stupid enough to try passing such a law? Maybe. Would it succeed? Only in getting the UK and France as allies of the Union in 'Civil War 2.0'
 
You might see some slave trade between the CSA/Cuba/Brasil but importation of slaves from Africa in any significant numbers, just not happening. The RN won't allow it, and you'd probably see the USN and the RN cooperating here - before the ACW you had USN vessels working with anti-slave patrols along the African coast.

Eventually the CSA will have to confront the problem of developing at least some industry, and the dependence on "king cotton" and other plantation crops declining. Now you have a situation where you either have to make slaves suitable for industrial work, which causes all sorts of issues, or what?
When the upper south economy was shifting away from slave based crops etc, they sold their "excess" to the deep south. However when that excess is all over the CSA what do they do? Even before slavery outlawed in Cuba & Brasil you can only export so many slaves, and manumission is not an option, even under severe Jim Crow.

One possible "solution" is sterilization of enough males to prevent over-breeding (and in the late 19th century your only option is castration - hysterectomies of females will have too high a wastage rate & vasectomies/tubal ligations not there yet), which could be combined with euthanasia of old/crippled slaves and even selective infanticide. I can imagine that if a program like this were put in to effect, things would explode internally.
 
Race war yes, genocide no. A race war of sorts is practically guaranteed at some point in the CSA's history has a large scale uprising of the black population from de-facto slavery (or official slavery if pre-1900) which leads to terrible violence and set destruction.

A genocide would be spectacularly difficult to pull off at any time pre-1950 for the South considering its distinct lack of industrial base. That and the black population would outnumber there would be killers by a substantial number in some places.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
If the confederacy wins, which is in my humble opinion as ASB as sealion, they will no longer prevent the importation of slaves. While many in the government will be opposed, as this will drop the worth of each slave, the confederate government will not be able to stop this as they do not have to proper authority to do so...

They do have the proper authority, as specified in the Confederate Constitution.
 
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