So for a bit of light reading, I picked up a book about America's industrial expansion, and it gave some interesting food for thought for any civil war scenarios.
Interesting? Comments? There are some comments I might make on postwar southern and northern politics, if people have an interest.
- After the Civil War, income disparity between the North and the South mushroomed. In 1840, Per capita income in the South, slaves included, was close to parity with the Northern states. But as industrialization picked up, the difference became very stark. By 1880, people in the plains and west, as well as the northeast and miwest, were about twice as rich in people in the south. Why was this the case? Some was because of devastation by the civil war, but cotton production had recovered fairly quickly postwar. More was probably tied to systemic structutral problems.
- With the exception of central and west Texas, and some parts of Florida, much of the South showed no patent production in the late 19th century. Connecticut had 9.76 patents issued in 1892 per 10,000 people; Virginia had... .89. (This is indicative of education, and whether an economy rewards innovation).
- The highest rates of illiteracy in the nation were of course in the south. 37% of Louisiana's males were illiterate, while Virginia, the lowest Southern state, had an illiteracy rate of 25.3% of its males illiterate. Contrast this with the northeast, where almost five out of every six nonwhites could read and white. Note that OTL saw increasing rates of literacy among young blacks, which I am not sure you'll see in the Confederacy.
- Concerns about a lack of British capital , which often come up, are probably overstated. The overall level of foreign investment (all foreign nations was miniscule up until the 1890s. Even in railroads, the heaviest sector for European investment, three quarters of call capital still came from Americans. Overall, foreign capital was probably less than 5% of the addition to America's capital stock between 1799 and 1900.
- The South, though... was probably better integrated into the national capital market before the Civil War, than afterwards. Part of this was due to the higher capitalization of plantations than the postwar farms, and partly it was because the Confederate banking sector collapsed with defeat. So this probably would have changed for the better. But then again, southern states repeatedly repudiated their debt during the period, which hindered foreign and northern capital flows. Contrast this with the federal government sweating bullets to get back on the gold standard.
On the third hand, a lot of southern debt in the period was due to reconstruction era governments. So perhaps that would not be an issue. Overall, the southern banking system would be significantly stronger than it was postwar in OTL. This will certainly help promote investment, so I could see Birmingham and Louisville being far vastly more industrialized than OTL.
- America's own domestic capital markets "were probably the most sophiscated in the world, after Britain's." The national banks were shifting significant capital westward, but there was very little of it flowing to the south,save for reigonal exceptions like Birmingham. This won't change for the northern states either.
Interesting? Comments? There are some comments I might make on postwar southern and northern politics, if people have an interest.