The CSA's interest in justice or the law can be summarized by the fact that at no point did Jefferson Davis bother to appoint the CSA Supreme Court despite several members of the US Supreme Court resigning and going south at the start of the war.
Slavery and the Civil War
- Thread starter Jude815
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As 67th Tigers said, this happens not to be the case. In fact, much the opposite is true.
Slaves were outright preferred for industrial operations and, even in 1860, the CSA was one of the leading industrial powers in the world (a fact usually obscured by the much greater industrialization across the border and the tendency to spread smaller works over larger areas, where the north had most of its industry in only a few states). The single factor keeping slaves out of southern industry, where they were in high demand for low cost and greater managerial control, was that the plantations could afford to pay more because cotton was so massively expensive. Whenever cotton prices dropped slave use in southern industries increased. It was the norm.
It wasn't just the south, either. In central Pennsylvania, with a strong majority in the eastern counties virulently anti-slavery and after the passage of the gradual emancipation bill, slave ownership actually increased for something like 30 years. I did my main History research on it in college. A few slaves were personally owned, but all of the increase in slave numbers was going to the small scale iron mills in the area. Agricultural use was negligible.
Why did people prefer slaves to free workers in industry?
Free American workers were usually either unhappy about the arrangement - working for a wage to sustain yourself was very much looked down on in early American history - or temporary. The latter sprung from the greater social acceptability of working for a wage "until you got the farm running." Historically this was solved by hiring recent immigrants who had no such compunctions. It's worth noting here that the south recieved few immigrants after about 1830 or so until generations after the Civil War.
Even if you had the foreigners to do your factory work, they suffered from the major problem that they would, leave you any time it suited them. Whether they find a better opportunity, want a better living environment, have made enough money to go back to the old country, or are moving closer to relatives, they are just gone as far as the employer is concerned. Slaves had the very major advantage that your highly trained and experienced technician couldn't just decide to leave.
As far as expense goes, it is true in theory that you can pay a wage worker less than you spend on a slave. In practice however, a wage worker paid below survival levels will not be a valuable or long-term employee. To guarantee the satisfaction and loyalty of a free worker would require vastly more than the food, shelter, and holiday "extra" you could use to sustain a slave family.
Finally, it bears mentioning that in the second quarter of the twentieth century slavery reversed its decline worldwide, and reappeared in developed nations. It wasn't just the Nazi slave factories or Soviet gulag system, although they were very substantial. The same period also saw an increased acceptance of the use of prisoner labor. If you're not paying a man, and he can't choose not to work, that's a slave - whether you call him a dissident, a Slav, or a felon. Given these trends, it's concievable that slavery had it survived in a significant form into the 1930s or so, would become more legitimized on the world stage and aped under a variety of much more politically correct names.
It does help that the CS constitution was essentially the US constitution with a few tweaks (mostly involving protection of slavery and state's rights).
As to the issue of slavery and the civil war, the only way I could possibly see slavery ending shortly after the war is in one of the late CSA victory scenarios like a peace of exhaustion after the 1864 election. By then the slave system across almost all Confederate territory had fallen apart to the point where an utterly battered and exhausted CSA simply couldn't put it back together again. Of course, that would not really count as abolition since it would be the CSA reluctantly conceding that the Union armies had broken slavery beyond repair and accepting a status quo it was incapable of changing.
Needless to say, the freedmen are not going to have a pleasant time in the CSA. Although officially bringing back slavery once it's gone would probably not be practical from an international political perspective, it is safe to expect a gradual reimplementation of de-facto slavery once the CSA recovers from the Civil War.
And that the Jim Crow system which replaced slavery (after the briefest hiccup) didn't start to crumble until the advent of the mechanical cotton picker around WW2. As long as slave or semi slave labour was profitable, even the civil war could do no more than rattle the bars a bit.
I'm not aware of any of the CSA Constitution's tweaks involving states rights, other than states could not free slaves brought into the states and some CSA officials could be impeached by the states.
I doubt they will accept that. There had already been movements to re-enslave free blacks in some slave-holding states before the ACW.
In addition to what Dathi Thorfinnsson mentioned, there were much heavier restrictions on the Confederate Congress's taxation powers (especially tariffs), a weaker Commerce Clause, budget restrictions, the requirement that every federal bill address only a single issue, and increased emphasis on the sovereignty of the states in the preamble, and the amendment process was completely in the hands of the states.
It's not a matter of accepting or refusing; by that late in the war it was simply not physically possible for the Confederacy to restore the slave system to its pre-war status.
David S Poepoe
Banned
I would consider that if Davis and the Confederate Congress could ever had really gotten along - and there not been a war going on at the same time - that a CS Supreme Court would have been appointed. However the rancor and dislike between two branches of government certainly throttled the formation of the third.
David S Poepoe
Banned
I think we look back upon such notions as misguided since we have become accustomed to (at least some of us) to the idea of the Federal Government spending money on infrastructure, etc. There is nothing limiting the states as individual or in league or even private ventures from putting money into infrastructure.
David S Poepoe
Banned
That would be an improvement on the US Constitution, especially if no earmarks were allowed also.
They certainly would have tried, though. Failure would no doubt be blamed on the "damnyankees".
usertron2020
Donor
Indeed. With a survival victory, the enlarged CS Army would be free to go after the freed slaves using "fire and sword". Led, no doubt, by Nathan Bedford Forrest.
67th Tigers
Banned
Put them up together. The differences are:
1. It's explicit that powers are delegated to the Federal government.
2. It also removes the right of any state to secede from the CSA in the first paragraph.
3. It restricts the vote to only citizens. Emigrants, even if having gained citizenship, have no vote.
4. It downsized Congress (1 congressman per 50,000 population, rather than 1 per 30,000)
5. Gives states the power to remove Federal officers that deal exclusively with their states (i.e. judges) on a 2/3rd vote of the state legismature.
6. Regulates terms of office for Congress
7. Congress gains the right to summon officers of the Executive before it.
8. Gives the CS President a line item veto.
9. Bans the tariff (note it still allows for excise etc., but not to protect CS industries).
10. Bans subsidies to private businesses, excepting waterborne transport.
11. Abolished the right of Congress to default on debt.
12. Makes permanent the abolishion of slave trading, except with the US. However, it allows Congress to ban imports of slaves from specific US states.
13. Makes it clear that slaves are considered property and are treated as such.
14. Gains the power to tax exports with 2/3rd approval of Congress.
15. Makes the appropriation of money by Congress specific to the use of it.
16. Removes the right of Congress to write "blank cheques" to businesses.
17. Simplifies law-making by outlawing "riders".
18. Drops the restriction on states issuing their own monetary bills.
19. Gains the power to tax internal trade between states.
20. Places a single term restriction on the presidents tenure (of six years) - no re-elections.
21. Codifies existing presidential powers to "hire and fire" into the constitution directly. Stops the president from appointing officers during a recess.
22. Some clarification on states immunity from being sued without good cause (again, in US law).
23. Some minor clarification of slaves inability to run across state lines to escape prosecution or to run to freedom.
24. No state can outlaw slavery.
25. Decreases the number of states required to summon a Constitutional Convention from 2/3rds to three.
26. Incorporates amendments 9 and 10 of the Bill of Rights into the Constitution.
It is basically the US Constitution with slavery guaranteed, no tariff, tax on internal trade, and attempts to prevent corruption by business.
No there hadn't been any such movement. If you want to make such a claim you'll need to back it up. In fact such an act would have been iminical to the value of slaves in what was then a bull market.
Agreed. Plenty of changes, some of them improvements, but those improvements don't necessarily have anything to do with State's Rights. Like line item vetos.
Not that southern leadership was very consistent on State's Rights. The LeCompton Constitution, Fugitive Slave Law, and Dred Scott decisions showed they were perfectly willing to trample on State's Rights, so long as it wasn't the rights of their states.
Not surprised you haven't heard of the attempts to re-enslave free blacks. It's not the kind of thing that fits well with the Lost Cause mythology. If you pick up The Road To Disunion: Volume 2 by William W. Freehling and turn to page 185, you will see Chapter 13 - Reenslaving Free Blacks.
David S Poepoe
Banned
Both the North and the South upheld and trampled on states' rights as they saw fit.
Not all the alternate histories play it down. Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee has Lee become president and abolishes it.
I can't see it lasting into the twentieth century not after other American countries come out of it i.e Brazil and Spain in Cuba. Also although this raises debate on this site, slavery is an economically backward system opposed by people such as Adam Smith on economic grounds and it would decline possibly a form of share cropping would come in and effectively be not a great improvement. The exposure of Leopold's slave state in the Congo would have brought the issue to the forefront if it hadn't have been abolished.
A lot would depend on how politics evolved in the South. Would Lee enter politics and possibly try to play down slavery or would Judah Benjamin succeed Davis as president and try to abolish slavery to appease international opinion. Although a two nation America may have been in Britains interests allying Britain with a slave state wasn't.
I can't see it lasting into the twentieth century not after other American countries come out of it i.e Brazil and Spain in Cuba. Also although this raises debate on this site, slavery is an economically backward system opposed by people such as Adam Smith on economic grounds and it would decline possibly a form of share cropping would come in and effectively be not a great improvement. The exposure of Leopold's slave state in the Congo would have brought the issue to the forefront if it hadn't have been abolished.
A lot would depend on how politics evolved in the South. Would Lee enter politics and possibly try to play down slavery or would Judah Benjamin succeed Davis as president and try to abolish slavery to appease international opinion. Although a two nation America may have been in Britains interests allying Britain with a slave state wasn't.
Two points:
1. One of my books on the ACW notes that slave owners generally wouldn't allow them to be used in jobs that had a high chance of death or dismemberment... because they had such a high value. From a purely business POV, neither is wanted; a dead slave was a pure loss of capital, and a dismembered slave was even worse, since he couldn't work but you still had to feed/cloth/house him. The big advantage of the wage worker was that you could always replace him if he got killed or fire him if he was dismembered (yeah, the wage workers had a dismal life back then), and clothing/feeding/housing him wasn't your concern.
2. As much as Turtledove's TL-191 is reviled on here, the first book actually has a fairly reasonable explanation for the end of slavery... basically, the south did it to get support from the UK and France in the Second Mexican War...
1. One of my books on the ACW notes that slave owners generally wouldn't allow them to be used in jobs that had a high chance of death or dismemberment... because they had such a high value. From a purely business POV, neither is wanted; a dead slave was a pure loss of capital, and a dismembered slave was even worse, since he couldn't work but you still had to feed/cloth/house him. The big advantage of the wage worker was that you could always replace him if he got killed or fire him if he was dismembered (yeah, the wage workers had a dismal life back then), and clothing/feeding/housing him wasn't your concern.
2. As much as Turtledove's TL-191 is reviled on here, the first book actually has a fairly reasonable explanation for the end of slavery... basically, the south did it to get support from the UK and France in the Second Mexican War...
67th Tigers
Banned
Smith only claimed it was inferior because he didn't understand it. He couldn't see any incentive system, but just because he couldn't see it (he never actually observed a slave farm in action) didn't mean it didn't exist. It did.
The abuse in the Belgian Congo was far, far worse than anything that ever happened in the south, and it was tolerated.
Lee will not abolish slavery. The idea that he would is rooted in Lost Cause mythology rather than any rational analysis. Indeed I have no doubt that the maintenance of that institution was *part* of the raison d'etre for the Confederacy to exist at all.
Wolfpaw
Banned
Are people seriously trying to bring back the "Robert E. Lee was not pro-slavery" angle again? People need to understand that the man was a traitor and a slavocrat. Period.
I always get annoyed when people try to make him into some sort of benevolent "make everything better" character that reconciles the Lost Cause myth to reality.
Also Judah P. Benjamin could never be elected president of the CSA. Ever.
Sorry for sounding like a curmudgeon
I always get annoyed when people try to make him into some sort of benevolent "make everything better" character that reconciles the Lost Cause myth to reality.
Also Judah P. Benjamin could never be elected president of the CSA. Ever.
Sorry for sounding like a curmudgeon
Are people seriously trying to bring back the "Robert E. Lee was not pro-slavery" angle again? People need to understand that the man was a traitor and a slavocrat. Period.
I always get annoyed when people try to make him into some sort of benevolent "make everything better" character that reconciles the Lost Cause myth to reality.
Also Judah P. Benjamin could never be elected president of the CSA. Ever.
Sorry for sounding like a curmudgeon
Thank you. This is part of what I was getting at earlier, the use of a hand wave to get rid of slavery. Even assuming that Lee was some benevolent southern paragon who was a closet abolitionist (as noted by others, this is very very far from the truth), he would not be able to get rid of slavery due to the nature of the confederate constitution, southern politics and culture, and the fact that the political class is entirely made up of slaveholders. No way, no how. It really strikes me as just lazy writing when these situations come up.