Poll: When Would the CSA Eliminate Slavery

By What Point Would The Confederacy Have Eradicated Slavery?


  • Total voters
    556
Status
Not open for further replies.
This is interesting but I'm not sure I understand it. Could you expand on this?

Sure. Specifically, in the cities I named, slaves were too expensive to do labor like ditch digging. That work was done by large groups of Irish immigrants, mostly single men. Southerners were really bothered by seeing white men doing heavy labor while black slaves in the cities, a lot of whom were skilled craftsman, were superficially higher on the social ladder. The habits of the Irish also bothered Southerners, who thought they were giving a bad impression of white people to the black population. They also had no compunctions about mixing with black people socially.
 
I would imagine decades down road the CSA could have enough raw resources to fund the industries that it finds vital which makes them able to at least wage war better. Businesses are given tax cuts and tools to build industry(if you give people with the skills and money the opportunity to have all their basic resources(raw resources) you can track investors and people. In the north you often have to pay more taxes, more legal work, and buy your own materials. In the south they are literally giving people all the stuff they need except physical money which investors cover.

The Confederate government would never give would-be industrialists "all the stuff they need except physical money". Import tariffs would be lower in the Confederacy, but the Confederacy ran up a much higher per capita war debt than the Union, so taxes would have to be higher.
 
There are people with the money and skills who would jump at that and careless about morals) with CSA could still get a lot of immigrants from people denied access to US. US did have limits and restrictions even at height of immigration into US. Europe got plenty of desperate people.

Any immigrants denied access to the US would be more likely to go to Canada than to the Confederacy. Before 1882, nobody was denied immigration to the US. Between 1882 and 1903 no Europeans were denied immigration to the US, only Chinese, who I doubt the Confederacy would welcome. Starting in 1903 anarchists, epileptics, beggars, and pimps were not allowed into the US; hardly a good basis for a thriving Confederate industrial sector. In 1907, the mentally handicapped, the insane, known criminals, and anyone suffering from "a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease". I doubt the Confederacy would welcome any of these people with open arms and even more doubtful they would kickstart Confederate industry. Not until 1921 did the US start having quotas on immigrants.

Industrialization can happen at very rapid speeds closer you get to modern day and more you interact regularly with industrial nations. Some random Yankee with some money to spare will look at the south and think “I could make some money down there if I did this”. He can go down south much more easily then somewhere like Mexico and Japan and already speaks the same language(helps trade) and are use to working with each other(people like knowing what their getting in the deal.

Or that same Yankee investor could stay home or go to Canada where there are lower trade barriers, better infrastructure, a more stable currency, lower taxes, and no slavery.
 
Last edited:
Western United States might get flooded with massive immigration from south(some southerners but more so Europeans using CSA to get into the US). This could help the north or destabilize it depending how it is handled(if they head west in large numbers they could be first people to settle many areas which creates unassimilated ethnic enclaves throughout the west. Assimilation is big part of US).

The first years after the Civil War would probably see a large number of Confederate Unionists move to the USA, but they would not be ethnically "Confederate", and would not form ethnic enclaves. They would see themselves as US citizens betrayed by their state governments. This will not destabilize the US, most of these immigrants would probably be even more anti-Confederacy than the average citizen of the US. Later Confederate immigrants to the Union are about as likely as Canadians to form ethnic enclaves.
 
Wouldn’t the Germans who still largely retain their culture at time make US more Germanic in character due to many in the Midwest, PA, and Northern Plains?).

Many of those Germans did retain their culture in OTL. Most of those ethnic enclaves disappeared around the Great War, though the Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonites still speak German. OTL's German-Americans did make the US more Germanic in character. Many Germans came the US to escape the militarism and oligarchism of their native lands in favor of living in a democratic republic. Quintessential American foods like hotdogs and hamburgers are German in origin, as is the Christmas tree. A lot of Germans came to the US for religious freedom, reinforcing an already existing American belief. German immigrants strongly favored public education - kindergarten is also German in origin. German immigrants were also more likely to be abolitionists - the American abolitionist movement started in 1688 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. In 1734, German-American John Peter Zenger helped lay the ground for freedom of the press.

Few Germans settled in the South which was more oligrachic and militaristic, opposed to public education, and anti-abolitionist to the point that is suppressed freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
 
The northern patrols might deport black US citizens thinking they are illegals(if your from 1890s rural New England their a good chance that you never seen a black person before so they might be much more ignorant when dealing with them. The south might look at them like dangerous cattle and pets but they could likely pick out their slaves in a large crowd of black people(those kidnapping of freeman were never a mistakes in identification. These people deal with human trafficking. They know how to pick out large crowd or they would suck at their job).

Until 1882, there was no such things as an illegal immigrant. Until 1921, the only illegal immigrants were Asians, so no US border agent is going to be deporting escaped slaves, let alone black US citizens. Any rural New Englanders who are part of the Border Patrol would be watching the border with Canada, not the border with the Confederacy. They would assume any black person that they met was an American or Canadian free black. If told that the black person was an escaped slave, they would probably help them, since abolitionism was strong.

The big problem would be white Confederates kidnapping free blacks from Union Border States.
 

Marc

Donor
I can't help but think of all those African-American regiments, the soldiers just resignedly returning to their lives in the North.
Sure...
 
I agree that making profit and political realpolitik will trump "morality" in most cases, though not always. For the USA after CSA secession, helping them industrialize, improve the rail system, etc is counter to realpolitik. Here you have a hostile country with a long and porous border right next to you who, for the moment, has serious issues with lack of industry and capital because the capital is tied up in land and slaves. Helping them industrialize is quite contrary to national interests. Selling finished goods is one thing, building factories is another. Of course, the issue of CS currency being quite soft and subject to more inflationary risks is another problem.

Agreed, there is no way in hell the US will help the CS industrialize. It makes no sense economically or politically.
 
Many Appalachians can be very stubborn and feel very tied to the land(also forcing whites out like natives are harder to justify and do most of the time). Many rather keep fighting or just hide deep in the mountains(a lot of places to hide). Flip floppers will also be common. These people often didn’t care about slavery that much morally.
Actually, a lot of them did. A lot more cared about competing against slave labor. It won't matter in the long run tied they feel to the land if the CSA decides to run them out by gunpoint. They have the mountains but they don't have the numbers. If the CSA is willing to take the causalties they will win in the end. If war proved anything it proved RE Lee didn't care if his men fell as the leaves fell.
Some just hated southern elites and lower south for its own personal reasons so they joined the union. You had some people attack both the union and confederates at different points of the war(the war in this area was more local confederates vs local unionist then anything else). They just don’t like people “imposing” on them. That’s what makes situation there crazy. They honestly might be too busy killing each in Appalachia(like in the civil war and reconstruction). CSA did have a decent amount of support there(plural or slight majority depending on area).
Rarely, they were mostly neutral leaning Union.
. The union and confederates could be giving guns to partisans to fight each other but those partisans could easily end up attacking them too. Appalachia isn’t going to be pleasant on either side of the border and locals might start hating each side more and more. Some will even think about Appalachian independence given the strong regionalism(neither the confederates or union would want this. It would almost split the CSA in half and the union doesn’t want to lose more states especially on the CSA border. Both sides won’t tolerate an independent movement especially if it is socialist in some of its beliefs).
It doesn't much matter what they think in the long run, they don't have the numbers to fight either the Union or the Confederacy. The Union might exile them to the Western Deserts if they become too annoying. The CSA might grab them and force them into some sort of serfdom under the planters.
The issue comes when coal barons, companies, and company towns become common in union Appalachia. Many of those people even the ones they armed will think those groups I mention(not the actual government yet but businesses in the area) are no better then the southerner elites if not worse.
Most likely they do what they did our timeline go on strikes and then be put down. Remember, they had guns OTL and it didn't help them much .

For example, Jesse James does his otl stuff. He attacks union businesses, rails, and government stuff in Missouri and Kansas. The union can’t catch him because he flees over to Arkansas and Oklahoma when in trouble. This is where he sets up base. The confederates government consider him a criminal but much of the public in the south romanticize him and see him as a “freedom fighter”.

The US then tells the CSA to do more to catch him otherwise they will send down bluecoats to do it for them. Once they find that the CSA can do nothing to stop them this time cue "The American Revanchivist War".
 
Outside of revolution, I think I side with the indefinate crowd.

Whilst not neccesarily efficient, slavery is still in effect for much of the world's economy. If you have eaten Nestle chocolate for instance, you are likely to have eaten slave produced products. Starbucks too for some of it's blends (potentially more so now it has partnered with Nestle).

Slavery is and can be very profitable in the modern world, being a $150 billion industry (https://www.freetheslaves.net/our-model-for-freedom/slavery-today/). Having an institution like that built into your state isn't inherently an economic sword of damocles when most of the world still allows it in a non confederate victory, pretending it doesn't benefit from it.

It is less "Allows it to happen" but can't completely stop it, like any other crime. $150 billion is a lot of money but the world GDP is $84 trillion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) this makes it around 0.18% of world GDP. This is a small fraction of the world GDP. Additional effort could be made, perhaps, but I don't know how much lower it could go realistically. At 0.18% it is almost extinct.
 
The Wehrmacht did a lot of terrible stuff during ww2 but they were still well trained and armed soldiers. Same goes for the Japanese military too. Because they are doing terrible things doesn’t mean they aren’t organized and get more efficient at doing it.

That is because the Germans were well educated and heavily industrialized the CSA was neither. The Japanese had FANATIC soldiers, not good ones.
 
That is because no country ever kept true slavery past 1888 once you get past 1910 no country will support any other country that has true slavery in name.

Now if the CSA changed it to sharecropping/segregation like OTL It could exist, the problem is that the ones who made the big decisions in the CSA where the plantation owners and they won' support any attempt to ban or restrict it so the transition to segregated wage slaves won't happen like in OTL, it only did in ours because the Union forced the end of slavery on them.


This is hogwash, you say the boil weevil and the destruction of cotton won't change anything but then turn around and say it "might" under "the right circumstances" ignoring the fact that to reach this point in time that's exactly what the CSA would need "the right circumstances", the moment you said a communist overthrow wouldn't end slavery (because you say so) you ceased to be making a credible argument, as anybody knows that the entire idea of communism is that everybody is treated equally and everybody gets their fair share, and that they typically only show up in societies that have no opportunity of advancement and are hopelessly corrupt or despotic, such as Tsarist Russia or the CSA....

Considering what the Far Left was willing to tolerate in the name of Communism OTL with leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot I don't think they would even blink at a form of Communism based on state-owned Black Slaves.
 
Thirty years is a full generation, two even, depending who you talk to. On top of that, money talks, and if slavery stopped being profitable and proved to be more of a economic burden than it was worth, the Confederacy would be forced to accept that model failed. Either that or dissolve the country.

Or more likely see the country reconquered by the Revanchist US.
 
Until 1882, there was no such things as an illegal immigrant. Until 1921, the only illegal immigrants were Asians, so no US border agent is going to be deporting escaped slaves, let alone black US citizens. Any rural New Englanders who are part of the Border Patrol would be watching the border with Canada, not the border with the Confederacy. They would assume any black person that they met was an American or Canadian free black. If told that the black person was an escaped slave, they would probably help them, since abolitionism was strong.

The big problem would be white Confederates kidnapping free blacks from Union Border States.

That's going to be a huge problem. And they won't confine themselves to 'blacks.' There are a lot of 'white people' who could end up being considered 'mixed race' to a slave raider, which would automatically translate to Black.
 
That's going to be a huge problem. And they won't confine themselves to 'blacks.' There are a lot of 'white people' who could end up being considered 'mixed race' to a slave raider, which would automatically translate to Black.
That would start a war, in which the Confederacy would find itself with no allies and the union would find itself with a lot support in the international community
 
That would start a war, in which the Confederacy would find itself with no allies and the union would find itself with a lot support in the international community

Maybe. People disappear. Probably poor people in marginal areas. The end up down on plantations in Mississippi, or in mines. No one ever sees or hears of them again. Lot and lots of rumours maybe. But it's not like the Confederacy is going to open up its mines and plantations to American inspectors looking for kidnapped free people.
 
Many of those Germans did retain their culture in OTL. Most of those ethnic enclaves disappeared around the Great War, though the Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonites still speak German. OTL's German-Americans did make the US more Germanic in character. Many Germans came the US to escape the militarism and oligarchism of their native lands in favor of living in a democratic republic. Quintessential American foods like hotdogs and hamburgers are German in origin, as is the Christmas tree. A lot of Germans came to the US for religious freedom, reinforcing an already existing American belief. German immigrants strongly favored public education - kindergarten is also German in origin. German immigrants were also more likely to be abolitionists - the American abolitionist movement started in 1688 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. In 1734, German-American John Peter Zenger helped lay the ground for freedom of the press.

Few Germans settled in the South which was more oligrachic and militaristic, opposed to public education, and anti-abolitionist to the point that is suppressed freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
You do realize blatant German culture was heavily discouraged during ww1 and ww2 and even suppressed heavily in the US. Same goes for the British Empire too. German culture and language largely disappeared due to pressure on Germans to assimilate within America due to the wars. German culture can still be seen in America but it hasn’t been acknowledged as German since before ww1. Acknowledgement and public perceptions are very important when talking about culture. Your statement shows a lack of understanding the situation of German Americans from ww1 to ww2. Many Many Americans now don’t even think those things are German. They think their completely American in origin. Without the US getting into a conflict with Germany the German language and openness about German culture is much much more common in the US. German was seen as a very respected academic language and the culture was one of the most respected among the world(the had a lot of renown scientist and engineers). Some wealthy Americans and Brits sent their kids to learn in Germany before ww1. People forget Germany was very respected by many in America and Britain before the world wars. Germans didn’t have to assimilate like Italians and Irish before ww1 because the German culture was seen as equal to Anglo Saxon culture. America and Britain distance themselves from that Germanic image due to the world wars
 

Thomas1195

Banned
Without the US getting into a conflict with Germany the German language and openness about German culture is much much more common in the US
This was all about German leaders with their "Place in the sun" ideal openly challenging both British naval supremacy and the Monroe Doctrine. German-American relation had been worsening long before 1917.
 
Top
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top