Results of CSA victory
- Thread starter tom
- Start date
Alright, here's my take on what a victorious Confederacy would be like:
- Borders: West Virginia going Confederate is out of the question. If the Confederacy tries to take it, they will have an epic guerrilla war on their hands. Kentucky also seems unlikely. Sure, the state had some Confederate sympathizers, but so did southern Illinois - the land of Lincoln. The pro-Confederate government that the secessionists set up was essentially powerless. Most Kentuckians were pro-Union, as evidenced in a special congressional election in 1861, when pro-Union candidates won nine of Kentucky's ten electoral seats. The sole Confederate victory was in the southwestern part of the state, which was economically linked to Tennessee. Missouri is a more interesting case. The Union won the battle there pretty early, and they needed St. Louis and the northern half of the state for trade with the western US, but the Confederate sympathizers there were fighting a fairly effective guerrilla war. The Union may get the northern half of the state, including St. Louis and the entire Missouri River area, while the Confederacy may get the Ozarks. The Indian Territory will probably go with the Confederacy, as the Indians are probably not too keen on the Union for reasons that should be obvious.
- The Union, post-war: American industrial development will likely progress as it did in OTL, as it still has a massive industrial base and tons of natural resources. The United States government will also become more centralized, having learned the lesson of the Civil War. However, any imperial ambitions that the US may have in the late 19th and early 20th centuries will be nipped in the bud. The prevailing thought will be, if the Union couldn't keep the South from seceding, then how can they hold an empire? This means Alaska never becomes part of the US, although business interests may still bring us into Hawaii. Also, the Confederacy will likely block any Union involvement in the Caribbean, and may try to compete in Latin America. This will butterfly away the Spanish-American War, which will in turn butterfly away the Philippines becoming a US colony. Civil rights are likely to progress much faster, what without the South holding the issue up in Congress and with the bad example that the Confederacy is setting. The civil rights movement could gain traction as early as the 1920s. The lack of the conservative Southern voting bloc will also mean that women's rights and gay rights will have a much easier time.
- The Confederacy, post-war: The Confederates are likely to be in bad shape down the line. Its economy is built on agriculture, particularly of the cotton crop. This leaves it highly vulnerable to price fluctuations and pests, which will kill King Cotton just as it did in OTL. Thus, it will have to industrialize. Northern Alabama, northern Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and the western Carolinas will have some industrialization in the early 20th century, but the Confederacy simply won't have enough resources to keep pace with the Union. Slavery is not likely to be phased out for decades. The South just won a war to protect their "peculiar institution", and they won't just give it up out of the kindness of their hearts. It will take events in the early 20th century - namely, international sanctions, industrialization, and the boll weevil - to break the power of the landed aristocracy and weaken slavery as an institution before it is finally abolished. Even then, civil rights will be a long time coming, and women's rights and especially gay rights will also be a ways off. Attempts to spread into the Caribbean and gain a Mexican route to the Pacific are not likely to end well, since the Confederacy doesn't have the military or industrial capacity of OTL's US. In fact, Mexico, looking to regain some lost territory and viewing the Confederacy as weak, may try to pick off western and southern Texas. And the Union will be happy to weaken the Confederacy any way they can. By 2000, the Confederacy will be much like Argentina or Slovakia - not a Third World country by any measure, but definitely not a developed nation, either.
- Borders: West Virginia going Confederate is out of the question. If the Confederacy tries to take it, they will have an epic guerrilla war on their hands. Kentucky also seems unlikely. Sure, the state had some Confederate sympathizers, but so did southern Illinois - the land of Lincoln. The pro-Confederate government that the secessionists set up was essentially powerless. Most Kentuckians were pro-Union, as evidenced in a special congressional election in 1861, when pro-Union candidates won nine of Kentucky's ten electoral seats. The sole Confederate victory was in the southwestern part of the state, which was economically linked to Tennessee. Missouri is a more interesting case. The Union won the battle there pretty early, and they needed St. Louis and the northern half of the state for trade with the western US, but the Confederate sympathizers there were fighting a fairly effective guerrilla war. The Union may get the northern half of the state, including St. Louis and the entire Missouri River area, while the Confederacy may get the Ozarks. The Indian Territory will probably go with the Confederacy, as the Indians are probably not too keen on the Union for reasons that should be obvious.
- The Union, post-war: American industrial development will likely progress as it did in OTL, as it still has a massive industrial base and tons of natural resources. The United States government will also become more centralized, having learned the lesson of the Civil War. However, any imperial ambitions that the US may have in the late 19th and early 20th centuries will be nipped in the bud. The prevailing thought will be, if the Union couldn't keep the South from seceding, then how can they hold an empire? This means Alaska never becomes part of the US, although business interests may still bring us into Hawaii. Also, the Confederacy will likely block any Union involvement in the Caribbean, and may try to compete in Latin America. This will butterfly away the Spanish-American War, which will in turn butterfly away the Philippines becoming a US colony. Civil rights are likely to progress much faster, what without the South holding the issue up in Congress and with the bad example that the Confederacy is setting. The civil rights movement could gain traction as early as the 1920s. The lack of the conservative Southern voting bloc will also mean that women's rights and gay rights will have a much easier time.
- The Confederacy, post-war: The Confederates are likely to be in bad shape down the line. Its economy is built on agriculture, particularly of the cotton crop. This leaves it highly vulnerable to price fluctuations and pests, which will kill King Cotton just as it did in OTL. Thus, it will have to industrialize. Northern Alabama, northern Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and the western Carolinas will have some industrialization in the early 20th century, but the Confederacy simply won't have enough resources to keep pace with the Union. Slavery is not likely to be phased out for decades. The South just won a war to protect their "peculiar institution", and they won't just give it up out of the kindness of their hearts. It will take events in the early 20th century - namely, international sanctions, industrialization, and the boll weevil - to break the power of the landed aristocracy and weaken slavery as an institution before it is finally abolished. Even then, civil rights will be a long time coming, and women's rights and especially gay rights will also be a ways off. Attempts to spread into the Caribbean and gain a Mexican route to the Pacific are not likely to end well, since the Confederacy doesn't have the military or industrial capacity of OTL's US. In fact, Mexico, looking to regain some lost territory and viewing the Confederacy as weak, may try to pick off western and southern Texas. And the Union will be happy to weaken the Confederacy any way they can. By 2000, the Confederacy will be much like Argentina or Slovakia - not a Third World country by any measure, but definitely not a developed nation, either.
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That's a nasty thought. If the British get blamed for the CSA surviving and the CSA starts stealing Spanish colonies how might Spain respond to the British or French in this TL's version of WWI?
Senor Ambassador, in light of the theft of Cuba and Puerto Rico by your ally the government in Madrid has concluded that it would be equitable and conducive to peaceful relations if French Morocco were to be ceded to us immediately with Gibralter to follow no more than five years following the end of this terrible war.
Senor Ambassador, in light of the theft of Cuba and Puerto Rico by your ally the government in Madrid has concluded that it would be equitable and conducive to peaceful relations if French Morocco were to be ceded to us immediately with Gibralter to follow no more than five years following the end of this terrible war.
Unless in TTL Spain is much tougher then OTL they will be ignored. In the end they can neither fight Britian or France with a prayer of winning.
I doubt it would reach superpower status.
third world maybe a possibility, but i doubt they'd be stupid enough to let the USA surpass them in tech. The CSA may fear the US would invade and try to reannex them or what have you.
I go with what Trotsky says.
CSA would be a secound tier power.
third world maybe a possibility, but i doubt they'd be stupid enough to let the USA surpass them in tech. The CSA may fear the US would invade and try to reannex them or what have you.
I go with what Trotsky says.
CSA would be a secound tier power.
I don't think they would LET anything, they very well not have any choice. If there are few engineers there are few engineers and it would be very difficult for the CSA to do anything about it.
Depending on how hard the Industrial Revolution hits, the Confederacy could get its industry, culture, and government totally altered.
If that happens, the CSA may become a power (not super-) if its government is centralized because of the reasons above. A confederacy in 20th century is just not competent enough to win a war.
If that happens, the CSA may become a power (not super-) if its government is centralized because of the reasons above. A confederacy in 20th century is just not competent enough to win a war.
That is not likely to happen as the people running the country were deeply conservative and so I don't see it changing that much.
Well admittedly blacks would live in virtual serfdom well beyond the official banning of slavery, but really the latter system is not something which could survive for very long, whether the Confederacy wins or not. By the end of the 1880s (and with the decision of Brazil to abolish it) no nation considered remotely 'civilised' by anyone has much truck with the idea of organised slavery, and at times the British government especially struck hard against its foreign proponents. Whether or not Richmond is even allied to London, Britain would have considerable leverage there (as by far its largest non-American trading partner, and a check to any US aggression) and frankly, very few Southerners would prefer the destruction of all they achieved vis a vis state's rights etc. in order to maintain what was clearly a doomed practice.
Well, Spain was a marginal power at the time. It certainly didn't have the strength to simply demand important British and French territories and expect anything but laughter in reply.
I checked 'Third World'.
Somewhere in between Mexico and Brazil, and definitely not in a nice way - richer than Mexico, but still crippled by a late and uneven industrialization, a downright 1950s South African justice system and hideous poverty for African-Confederates. Parts of the rural Confederacy will still lack electricity, and general technology will lag significantly behind the US - along with wages, which will make preventing the flight of industry south an issue in TTL's US politics. The federal government at any given date looks a lot like the US federal government ten or twenty years before.
States - KY, MO, MD, and WV are firmly Union even if they grumble, although they might be trimmed at the edges to remove pro-CS border counties - ditto for the Southwest, which will join the Union. The Indian Territory may side with the CSA initially, but I can't see ordinary white Confederates being particularly more welcoming to the red man than the black man, so they're a plausible independent buffer state. Texas will be leaving as soon as it becomes clear their oil wealth can earn them US protection. Any other states that leave will do so based solely on their chances of readmission to the Union - Virginia would probably make it if they left, North Carolina maybe. Anyone else - I'd bet against it. US attitudes to returning states would be a lot like young South Koreans today feel about reunification - why pay to raise someone else's standard of living at the cost of your own?
Slavery will last, at least formally, up through 1950. Laws will be enacted to reduce maltreatment well before this, though - and sometimes they'll even work. Emancipation will be de jure, freedom in name only. TTL's Berlin Wall analogues may very well be erected to keep blacks out of the white neighborhoods of Confederate cities which are either developing or already have a majority black population. The urban ghettoes will be genuinely horrific, and police will be breaking heads and asking questions later, if they even bother - plenty of OTL US cops don't respond to ghetto 911 calls in anything like a timely fashion, and the CS response is likely to be 'let the damn n******s kill each other all they want'.
Butterflies for the US will include a national healthcare system, looser immigration regs, and much less racial bigotry - don't like your daughter going out with a black guy? Suck it up or head south. The Army and Navy will be bigger earlier - by 1900 the US Army will be more than capable of stomping through the Upper South without breaking step, and the CSA may even realize this in time to avoid fighting another war. By 1950 it will be obvious to all but the most fanatical Confederate jingoists that the USA could grind them out of existence by lunchtime if they felt like it - thankfully, they don't feel like it. African-Americans in border states are unpleasantly well-armed, and even more reluctant than the National Guard to hand over escaped slaves, and later illegal immigrants.
The presence of an independent CSA doesn't affect US imperialism much - less in the Caribbean, more in the Pacific islands and Asia, probably. I could see a canny CS president going half and half on the *Spanish-American War, with Puerto Rico and the Philippines going to the USA, Cuba to the CSA. I wonder if the Philippines get statehood in this TL? Puerto Rico almost certainly does - and it's going to have quite the military base on it either way, to check Confederate ambitions.
Somewhere in between Mexico and Brazil, and definitely not in a nice way - richer than Mexico, but still crippled by a late and uneven industrialization, a downright 1950s South African justice system and hideous poverty for African-Confederates. Parts of the rural Confederacy will still lack electricity, and general technology will lag significantly behind the US - along with wages, which will make preventing the flight of industry south an issue in TTL's US politics. The federal government at any given date looks a lot like the US federal government ten or twenty years before.
States - KY, MO, MD, and WV are firmly Union even if they grumble, although they might be trimmed at the edges to remove pro-CS border counties - ditto for the Southwest, which will join the Union. The Indian Territory may side with the CSA initially, but I can't see ordinary white Confederates being particularly more welcoming to the red man than the black man, so they're a plausible independent buffer state. Texas will be leaving as soon as it becomes clear their oil wealth can earn them US protection. Any other states that leave will do so based solely on their chances of readmission to the Union - Virginia would probably make it if they left, North Carolina maybe. Anyone else - I'd bet against it. US attitudes to returning states would be a lot like young South Koreans today feel about reunification - why pay to raise someone else's standard of living at the cost of your own?
Slavery will last, at least formally, up through 1950. Laws will be enacted to reduce maltreatment well before this, though - and sometimes they'll even work. Emancipation will be de jure, freedom in name only. TTL's Berlin Wall analogues may very well be erected to keep blacks out of the white neighborhoods of Confederate cities which are either developing or already have a majority black population. The urban ghettoes will be genuinely horrific, and police will be breaking heads and asking questions later, if they even bother - plenty of OTL US cops don't respond to ghetto 911 calls in anything like a timely fashion, and the CS response is likely to be 'let the damn n******s kill each other all they want'.
Butterflies for the US will include a national healthcare system, looser immigration regs, and much less racial bigotry - don't like your daughter going out with a black guy? Suck it up or head south. The Army and Navy will be bigger earlier - by 1900 the US Army will be more than capable of stomping through the Upper South without breaking step, and the CSA may even realize this in time to avoid fighting another war. By 1950 it will be obvious to all but the most fanatical Confederate jingoists that the USA could grind them out of existence by lunchtime if they felt like it - thankfully, they don't feel like it. African-Americans in border states are unpleasantly well-armed, and even more reluctant than the National Guard to hand over escaped slaves, and later illegal immigrants.
The presence of an independent CSA doesn't affect US imperialism much - less in the Caribbean, more in the Pacific islands and Asia, probably. I could see a canny CS president going half and half on the *Spanish-American War, with Puerto Rico and the Philippines going to the USA, Cuba to the CSA. I wonder if the Philippines get statehood in this TL? Puerto Rico almost certainly does - and it's going to have quite the military base on it either way, to check Confederate ambitions.
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It isn't enough, unless London is willing to go to war over it slavery will remain. It is damn near impossible to ban under the Confederate Constitution.
Deleted member 1487
Much of the issue with the end state of the Confederacy is going to have to do with the terms of their victory. Industrialization is going to occur, though no where near what the US is going to be. In fact the US is likely to be better off in many ways without the south, as it has proven to be a drain on economic resources (Federal government puts in more than it gets out).
The Confederacy is going to rely on France and Britain for survival, because as time goes on, it will be completely outpaced by the US economically. Expect a relatively compliant south. I do see the Southwest getting split with the north, meaning NM and AZ go to the Confederacy depending on how long both sides take to get their act together. Also Cuba is probably out of the question and may remain Spanish. Mexico is likely to experience some imperialist attitudes from the Confederacy, as oil tycoons and other southern businessmen move to economically exploit their southern neighbors, but I don't think that war is going to happen. More likely a sort of banana republic situation, as the government of Mexico becomes dependent on the Confeds to keep out European interests (France's intervention still fresh in their minds).
Slavery is the one issue that is going to hurt the Confederacy for a long time and I do expect some changes. Wage slavery and share cropping are the likely solutions that the south is going to experiment with to deal with the 'official' end of slavery (much like during the reconstruction). Social rather than legal constraints will keep former slaves "in line". As cotton dies out (probably later than OTL if the Civil War ends by '62) oil will pick up, which will drive the economy for a while and if they are smart, the profits will be invested in industry. Still, expect tobacco to be big and various agriculture products. It will be a sort of Argentina and heavily socially stratified society. I doubt the states' rights meme is going to survive long, as they will come to realize that, just like in the articles of confederation, a stronger federal government will be needed to get things done. Britain and the CSA are going to be good buddies for a while and it will continue to be a dumping ground for British colonists (immigrants) that otherwise would be headed to Oceana and Africa. The US is likely to be somewhat vengeful and may work something out with Germany, but that depends on whether or not the US will keep low tarriffs for American goods. Also, the colonial situation of the US is a big question, as the issue of overseas possessions becomes very situationally dependent. I don't know if the US will get involved with the Spanish war, as the Confederacy will likely object, but who knows if they will have support from their European allies. Maybe Germany buys the Philipines?
Overall the Confederacy is likely to be a first world nation, but like Spain or Italy. More developed than Mexico, but probably not as nice as Canada (for individuals-as a nation they would be considerably more powerful).
The Confederacy is going to rely on France and Britain for survival, because as time goes on, it will be completely outpaced by the US economically. Expect a relatively compliant south. I do see the Southwest getting split with the north, meaning NM and AZ go to the Confederacy depending on how long both sides take to get their act together. Also Cuba is probably out of the question and may remain Spanish. Mexico is likely to experience some imperialist attitudes from the Confederacy, as oil tycoons and other southern businessmen move to economically exploit their southern neighbors, but I don't think that war is going to happen. More likely a sort of banana republic situation, as the government of Mexico becomes dependent on the Confeds to keep out European interests (France's intervention still fresh in their minds).
Slavery is the one issue that is going to hurt the Confederacy for a long time and I do expect some changes. Wage slavery and share cropping are the likely solutions that the south is going to experiment with to deal with the 'official' end of slavery (much like during the reconstruction). Social rather than legal constraints will keep former slaves "in line". As cotton dies out (probably later than OTL if the Civil War ends by '62) oil will pick up, which will drive the economy for a while and if they are smart, the profits will be invested in industry. Still, expect tobacco to be big and various agriculture products. It will be a sort of Argentina and heavily socially stratified society. I doubt the states' rights meme is going to survive long, as they will come to realize that, just like in the articles of confederation, a stronger federal government will be needed to get things done. Britain and the CSA are going to be good buddies for a while and it will continue to be a dumping ground for British colonists (immigrants) that otherwise would be headed to Oceana and Africa. The US is likely to be somewhat vengeful and may work something out with Germany, but that depends on whether or not the US will keep low tarriffs for American goods. Also, the colonial situation of the US is a big question, as the issue of overseas possessions becomes very situationally dependent. I don't know if the US will get involved with the Spanish war, as the Confederacy will likely object, but who knows if they will have support from their European allies. Maybe Germany buys the Philipines?
Overall the Confederacy is likely to be a first world nation, but like Spain or Italy. More developed than Mexico, but probably not as nice as Canada (for individuals-as a nation they would be considerably more powerful).
Why in God's name would the Union hand over ANY territory to the CSA? My guess is that the CSA loses KY and MO permenantly and likely TN as well, at the very least.
You keep saying that, but I don't see why, in practice rather than abstract theory. It was 'damn near impossible', constitutionally, for those in D.C. ever to have the possibility of the vote, for female suffrage to become a reality, for abortion to be legalised. All of those things happened for the simple reason that nations change and adapt to constantly evolving circumstances. You can't hold back reality by making it illegal.
South Africa did, and they didn't write apartheid into their founding documents.
I'm not so sure on loose immigration for the north- I'd see them activly fighting to stop massive black immigration from the CSA.
They won't be so racist as the CSA but will still at least be on a par with OTL if not lagging behind. And of course itsa mass of poor people coming in, black or no thats not welcome.
They won't be so racist as the CSA but will still at least be on a par with OTL if not lagging behind. And of course itsa mass of poor people coming in, black or no thats not welcome.
This largely depends on the POD. If the South wins in '62, as wiking is going off of, there's no reason to think the South couldn't keep them. Missouri is likely to still be more pro-South, Arizona has been largely ignored so they're still pro-South, if Kentucky wasn't invaded by the Rebs then it's possible that Kentuckians would vote not to sever its strong cultural ties to the Victorious South, and there's no way Tennessee leaves this just proves they made the right decision to secede.