The C.S.A and its Jews

:rolleyes:

You know what I mean.
It would be officially illegal but due to being uneconomical few would practice it.
Not really. Jared's written on it a bit, but the myth that slavery was uneconomical is misguided. For example, the Iron Works in Birmingham were most profitable when worked by slaves, as were many light industries.

You can make a case that slavery would have been outlawed because of domestic pressure about jobs, but not about it being uneconomical.
 
Not really. Jared's written on it a bit, but the myth that slavery was uneconomical is misguided. For example, the Iron Works in Birmingham were most profitable when worked by slaves, as were many light industries.

I find that very hard to believe. Birmingham, Alabama, was only founded in 1871. Unless you are thinking about slaves in Birmingham, England, or some other Birmingham.
 
Not really. Jared's written on it a bit, but the myth that slavery was uneconomical is misguided. For example, the Iron Works in Birmingham were most profitable when worked by slaves, as were many light industries.

I believe you're thinking of the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia. This was the South's biggest steel producer, and up to half of its workforce was slaves at one point. The owner loved using slaves, and would have used more if not for the cotton boom forcing slave prices so high that he couldn't buy enough slaves.

It was a similar story at the Cumberland Iron Works in Tennessee, the South's second biggest steel producer, which used a substantial proportion of slaves in its workforce. There there were ropewalks in Kentucky, factories which made rope out of hemp... which were conducted entirely by slaves. And a variety of other industrial and proto-industrial jobs in the South, which were done by slaves.

The reason that more wasn't done with slaves in industry was because there was a limited supply of slaves, and during the period of roughly 1840-1860, cotton was booming to the point that it sucked slave labour out of pretty much everything else. This included not just urban industries, but also other cash crops. This is why slavery was slowly withering in Maryland and Delaware; tobacco didn't give the same rate of return which cotton did, so a lot of the slaves were sold down the river.

However, the cotton boom was not a permanent condition, and the thing about a slave workforce is that it is actually more flexible in response to changing market conditions. (This is because free workers are less likely to move to somewhere new. Slaves don't have a choice.) Historically, slave labour moved between economic sectors based on changing conditions, and had done since before the Revolution. The big crops before the revolution were tobacco, rice and indigo. The indigo market collapsed after the Revolution, and rice declined. Wheat became more profitable in parts of Virginia, and planters there switched from tobacco to wheat as a result. There were actually two stages to the cotton boom, with a depression in between (roughly 1835-1840). In that depression, slaves moved out of cotton plantations and back into urban industries.

In other words, a successfully independent CSA which preserved slavery would not necessarily have been using those slaves in cotton plantations. They'd have switched to industry if it offered better rates of return. Or back to tobacco - the tobacco market got a big boost when cigarettes became popular.

And to comment on the original thread topic, in the South what matter was whether someone had the right views on the "Negro question." Someone who was sound on that question would be tolerated. Not necessarily loved, but tolerated. This would have applied to Jews, and to others. For instance, the Five Civilized Tribes included some who were slaveowners...
 
In other words, a successfully independent CSA which preserved slavery would not necessarily have been using those slaves in cotton plantations. They'd have switched to industry if it offered better rates of return. Or back to tobacco - the tobacco market got a big boost when cigarettes became popular.

An odd thought: Who is Southern industry producing for?
 
Getting back to the ending of slavery question again, let us not forget Guns of the South. Obviously, this is fiction, but Turtledove may not have been too far off the mark when he had a CSA [who had fought a bloody war against abolitionists] willing to begin the process of abolition in 1872. Of course this was with the anti-slavery Marse Robert at the helm in Richmond, but I still believe that even without Lee urging for it, the Confeds would begin to give way after 1888. Many southerners would become too ashamed to be citizens of the only country left in the Am ericas to be a slave nation. I mean, how much can it cost to pay ex-slaves a pittance, and not have to feed and house them any more?
 

Keenir

Banned
Also, frankly, the CSA's ruling classes would be to busy being rascist towards Africans to focus on the Jews. And since most rascism in the one encounter the otl has had with a CSA (1861-65) was directed at Blacks and passed over others to some extent, I don't think these conclusions are to improbable.

*nods* weren't there also some Native American slaveholders?
 
Getting back to the ending of slavery question again, let us not forget Guns of the South. Obviously, this is fiction, but Turtledove may not have been too far off the mark when he had a CSA [who had fought a bloody war against abolitionists] willing to begin the process of abolition in 1872. Of course this was with the anti-slavery Marse Robert at the helm in Richmond, but I still believe that even without Lee urging for it, the Confeds would begin to give way after 1888. Many southerners would become too ashamed to be citizens of the only country left in the Am ericas to be a slave nation. I mean, how much can it cost to pay ex-slaves a pittance, and not have to feed and house them any more?


1872 is way,way,way too early being shortly after the war. There is NO way in hell even RE Lee can get slavery banned or even restricted that early. Why would they become ashamed? Even in 1861 the South was one of the few areas in the Western World to still have slavery and they weren't ashamed then.
 
Getting back to the ending of slavery question again, let us not forget Guns of the South. Obviously, this is fiction, but Turtledove may not have been too far off the mark when he had a CSA [who had fought a bloody war against abolitionists] willing to begin the process of abolition in 1872. Of course this was with the anti-slavery Marse Robert at the helm in Richmond, but I still believe that even without Lee urging for it, the Confeds would begin to give way after 1888. Many southerners would become too ashamed to be citizens of the only country left in the Am ericas to be a slave nation. I mean, how much can it cost to pay ex-slaves a pittance, and not have to feed and house them any more?

A book where the Confederacy's leadership is persuaded that slavery is wrong by knowledge from he future may not be the most reliable indicator of what would happen.

How many Soviet citizens do you think were ashamed to be part of th eonly Communsit nation in the 1930s?
 
An odd thought: Who is Southern industry producing for?

Depends what kind of industry. Most heavy industry would be for domestic use (railroads, shipbuilding etc), and even then I suspect that the South would still be importing some manufactures.

A partial exception is steel, and this depends a lot on how the Birmingham site develops, if it all. Historically, the development of Birmingham steel was hampered by a lot of idiotic decisions, which meant that steel which should be cheaper than anything produced in the North in fact became more expensive. (Forgetting tariffs, for the moment.) If some of these decisions are avoided, the South could be producing some Birmingham steel for export.

However, most of the export production of any Southern industry would be the product of light industry, not heavy. Textiles, cigarettes and related products, processed sugar and candies, rum, whiskey and alcholic beverages,
and potentially other light manufacturing. The main markets for such goods would be Europe and the rest of North America. How well these industries perform would be affected by the broader political situation, whether there would be slave-related boycotts is a good question (I suspect no effective ones), the general state of international tariffs, and so on.

On a related note, I'd expect most southern industry to be light industry, rather than heavy industry. Outside of the Birmingham site and perhaps some parts of the Upper South (especially whatever parts of the Appalachian coal-producing regions which the South holds), I'd expect the large majority of Southern industry to be light industry rather than heavy industry.

Getting back to the ending of slavery question again, let us not forget Guns of the South. Obviously, this is fiction, but Turtledove may not have been too far off the mark when he had a CSA [who had fought a bloody war against abolitionists] willing to begin the process of abolition in 1872.

It is indeed fiction, and in the How Few Remain universe, Turtledove also has the CSA abandoning slavery because their allies ask them to do so. I suspect that reader appeal rather than plausibility was the motivation behind both of those abolitions.

Of course this was with the anti-slavery Marse Robert at the helm in Richmond, but I still believe that even without Lee urging for it, the Confeds would begin to give way after 1888. Many southerners would become too ashamed to be citizens of the only country left in the Am ericas to be a slave nation.

Slavery was far, far more entrenched in the South than it was in Brazil. More capital tied up in it, more entrenched views on racism, different cultural and religious attitude toward freeing slaves, and quite a few other reasons. But the big one was the slavery in the South was self-supporting; the slave population grew through natural increase, and had done since the 1700s. The slave population in Brazil was in net natural decrease (i.e. more slaves died or were freed than were born), and always had been, and relied on new slaves being brought in through the (illegal) slave trade. The death knell for slavery in Brazil was when Britain started sending ships into Brazilian waters to capture illegal slave traders, and thus shut down the illegal slave trade into Brazil. This happened in the early 1850s, and the writing was on the wall for slavery in Brazil ever since. The South had no such problems.

As for being ashamed of slavery, well, the South had entrenched racism for rather a long time after the historical abolition of slavery, and it was only ended due to federal government intervention and the civil rights movement in the 1960s. I can't see them getting ashamed of slavery in a hurry.

I mean, how much can it cost to pay ex-slaves a pittance, and not have to feed and house them any more?

At the minimum, exactly the same. At the maximum, quite a lot more.

The thing to remember is that slaves were in effect paid subsistence wages. It's simply not possible to pay people any less than subsistence wages in the long-term (unless they're getting money from elsewhere), because otherwise they won't subsist. Whether someone is having food and housing provided as a slave is irrelevant, since if they aren't getting it provided then you have to pay them high enough wages so that they can buy food and housing themselves.

Slaves turn out to be even cheaper than free workers for a variety of other reasons, such as being worked for longer hours and not getting pay rises. Not being able to go on strike made a difference too.

And incidentally, the two biggest barriers to emancipation were:

i) the sheer cost of freeing the slaves. Paying the owners would have cost an absolute fortune, even if it could be done legally.
ii) the social fear of what would happen if the slaves were freed. The propaganda about what freed slaves would do was crude but widely-believed.
 

Keenir

Banned
Getting back to the ending of slavery question again,

umm... *points politely to subject line*

Many southerners would become too ashamed to be citizens of the only country left in the Am ericas to be a slave nation.

never underestimate the value of uniqueness.
:p

I mean, how much can it cost to pay ex-slaves a pittance, and not have to feed and house them any more?

and then what do you do with all the ex-slaves roaming the streets and backwoods?
 

Keenir

Banned
There were Native American slaveholders long before Columbus discovered America. Slavery was rampant all over the world in that era.

to quote others here, "you know what I mean"....I meant in the Confederacy before and-or during the Civil War.
 
As someone above said, there are unlikely to be enough Jewish people for resentment to set in. Odds are they exist in the similar manner to OTL.

Personally I tend to think the Slavery issue is tied to economics and economics are complex because everything effects everything else.
So a possible idea for why slavery would be abolished "soon". I.E early 20th century.

1. Slavery is profitable. It seems difficult to deny. It makes the fact it was abolished elsewhere all the more virtuous. In a vacuum the CSA would probably not abolish it any time soon. The South however is not in a vacuum.
2. At the time of independence the South possesses a small industry and is primarilly an agricultural power. It may remain so with a very weak central government. It may, depending on whether it wishes to challenge the North, seek to expand its industry. Regardless this will take time.
3. The Confederate states are thus very dependent upon international trade to sustain their wealth.
4. Being dependent upon international trade in the mid-19th century essentially means being dependent upon Britain. Britain is likely to be both the primary buyer and financier to the CSA.
5. Do the British care about slavery? The answer is yes and no. Money lenders and cotton buyers are unlikely to care if they can make a profit. On the otherhand it could, circumstances permitting, become a political issue in the late 19th century. It wouldn't be driven by profit but abolishing slavery rarely was.
6. Could the CSA stand up to real opposition from Britain and much of the rest of the world? It doesn't even need to be war. A certain person in government mentions to a certain bank that Britain can't protect investment in the CSA to the same extent as it can protect investment in say Egypt or even Mexico and investors are likely to go elsewhere.
7. The resulting concern see's a decline in the Confederate economy. Small holders are the first and worst hit (they usually are) and in such circumstances what do you do? You can sell your holdings or more reasonably sell your slaves. Selling your slaves is likely to exasperate the situation, leading to you selling your holdings. Plantations in the CSA become even more consolidated into a few hands.
8. What is the result of this consolidation? First of all more power will consolidate in the hands of the land owners. There will be a growth in the non-slave owning, probably poor white man. They will probably go into industry and thus the cities (assuming agriculture is still drawing in the slave population).
9. Over time resentment will build between the industrialising cities and the political clout of these increasingly few but increasingly rich plantation owners. One possible solution to bring these magnates down to size would be abolishing slavery. Thirty-fourty years on most who fought are dead the next generation are brought up on myths. Numerous confederates will say they fought a war to be free of the North not to be impoverished to the benefit of a few.
10. Slavery becomes a political issue. Enter the Boll weevil. The wealth of the slave owning magnates is harmed and suddenly Cotton may no longer be king. A need to balance the books. Where are all those slaves going to go? Industry ofcourse, except that industry is full of those poor-whites who hardly want their jobs removed. The result is significant civil unrest.
11. Under those circumstances, slavery is phased out/abolished, depending on events.
 
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