The U.S. after a successful Confederate secession?

Once one area gets a negotiated peace and settlement for independence the others will have a right to demand that themselves.
But they won't really. Who would they appeal their 'right' of secession to? The Confederacy also said it had a right to secede, but that was meaningless without the ability to adequately defend itself.

I don't think the US government would be like "Well, they do have a point..." and just let California and Utah wander off. And if we come down to open hostility, the United States can demonstrably put down Utah, and it can field an army larger than California's total population.
 
For what it's worth, economically the US has the problem that the main cash crops of the pre-war US were cotton and indigo - both things grown in the South.

In 1860, the US exported:
$192 million in cotton
$46 million in manufactured goods
$22 million in grain
$17 million in meat and dairy products
$16 million in tobacco
Total exports were $316 million.

Total US GDP in 1860 was about $4.4 billion.
Total exports were about 7% of that GDP
Total cotton and tobacco exports were were about 5% of that GDP.

The North has little in the way of export material by contrast (grain is fungible, like any foodstuff, while southern cotton is as good as it gets.)
The independence of the South is a shock to the system like the US never had in OTL. I have to wonder if the result would be perhaps a little more humility as a nation...{/quote]

Not as big of a shock to the system as when Britain lost the US Colonies or India.
 
A precedent is set forth for legalized secession. Most of the western territories probably become independent countries like California, Utah, and otherwise. The U.S. never expands or gains future territories again like Spain's holdings, Hawaii, or Alaska. Alaska and Hawaii probably join the British Empire later on.

More likely an amendment is passed banning secession and all state militia.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Total US GDP in 1860 was about $4.4 billion.
Total exports were about 7% of that GDP
Total cotton and tobacco exports were were about 5% of that GDP.
But surely you realize from this that the Union now has the problem that cotton and indigo and tobacco and so on are no longer sources of foreign currency but sinks thereof?
Put another way, exports are what pay for imports. The Union now has significantly less cash to pay for imports, in general, especially since they now need to pay for cotton as a foreign import.



Not as big of a shock to the system as when Britain lost the US Colonies or India.

I fail to see how this is relevant - and, of course, I also dispute it. We're talking about a huge fraction of the metropole leaving. I'd say Irish independence might be the closer comparison as it split the country, but Irish independence if the UK didn't have an Empire to begin with.
 
They were willing to issue a law to conscript slaves into the Confederate Army on March 13 1865.

Needs must...............

That's roughly a month before the Confederacy fell. The Confederacy's back was to the wall and all they authorized was a law that did not conscript slaves, it allowed them to become soldiers. And this law specifically did not free those slaves. Unsurprisingly, only a few dozen slaves volunteered and they were widely expected to desert en masse at the first opportunity.
 
Also the lack of cotton and tobacco might kickstart a wave of synthetic technologies in the Union, while the South would focus on recycling (by necessity) with some interesting results.

Short term it would result in increased Union production of flax and wool.
 
But surely you realize from this that the Union now has the problem that cotton and indigo and tobacco and so on are no longer sources of foreign currency but sinks thereof?
Put another way, exports are what pay for imports. The Union now has significantly less cash to pay for imports, in general, especially since they now need to pay for cotton as a foreign import.
First time around when you wrote about indigo (a few weeks ago) I thought that indigo was just a mistype for tobacco, and thought nothing of it. Now it sounds like you're describing indigo as a meaningful crop in the South by 1860. Indigo production was minuscule, and irrelevant in a macroeconomic sense. Indigo's production had collapsed with the American Revolution, since it lost British subsidies, ceased to be a significant crop within about 3-4 years of the end of the ARW, and was completely irrelevant by 1810. What small-scale production existed by 1860 was largely a way of keeping rice-growing slaves busy during the off-season, and it would have been utterly pointless to cultivate it as a major crop on its own.
 
But surely you realize from this that the Union now has the problem that cotton and indigo and tobacco and so on are no longer sources of foreign currency but sinks thereof?
Put another way, exports are what pay for imports. The Union now has significantly less cash to pay for imports, in general, especially since they now need to pay for cotton as a foreign import.





I fail to see how this is relevant - and, of course, I also dispute it. We're talking about a huge fraction of the metropole leaving. I'd say Irish independence might be the closer comparison as it split the country, but Irish independence if the UK didn't have an Empire to begin with.

You do know that the US is big enough that it HAS to import virtually nothing? That virtually every raw material is found on its soil somewhere or another? It might slow the US down somewhat but it won't stop its rise. The US isn't the UK which has to import almost everything because it is merely a largish island. 5% of GDP is 5% of GDP no matter how you want to change it.
 
But surely you realize from this that the Union now has the problem that cotton and indigo and tobacco and so on are no longer sources of foreign currency but sinks thereof?
Put another way, exports are what pay for imports. The Union now has significantly less cash to pay for imports, in general, especially since they now need to pay for cotton as a foreign import.





I fail to see how this is relevant - and, of course, I also dispute it. We're talking about a huge fraction of the metropole leaving. I'd say Irish independence might be the closer comparison as it split the country, but Irish independence if the UK didn't have an Empire to begin with.

American imports were either luxury goods (coffee, tea, sugar) or speciality industrial goods (which eventually had tariffs targeting those anyway post war). The Union has hard money (gold and silver in large quantities) to what much be imported (coffee being a big one, the armies loved the stuff) could be paid for with cash.

Also, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri all grow cotton (especially Kentucky and Missouri), and for that matter you can grow cotton in Colorado and California (they do that now using irrigation). Cotton is a very short term issue.

The links I posted in this thread talk about American imports and exports
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-break-in-relations-late-19th-century.419905/
 
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That's roughly a month before the Confederacy fell. The Confederacy's back was to the wall and all they authorized was a law that did not conscript slaves, it allowed them to become
soldiers. And this law specifically did not free those slaves. Unsurprisingly, only a few dozen slaves volunteered and they were widely expected to desert en masse at the first opportunity.

The use of slave labor was highly useful for Confederate rear area jobs (teamsters, cooks, valets etc) and for large scale construction efforts. A big reason for the Union efforts to weaken the reliability of that through the Emancipation Proclamation.

Suddenly it got riskier to put Negros near Union Armies....
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Short term it would result in increased Union production of flax and wool.
Is there a good reason why the famine du coton didn't result in increased British and French production of flax and wool?
I'm fairly sure cotton has properties those other two things don't for the purposes of mechanized weaving...
 
In 1860, the US exported:
$192 million in cotton
$46 million in manufactured goods
$22 million in grain
$17 million in meat and dairy products
$16 million in tobacco
Total exports were $316 million.

Total US GDP in 1860 was about $4.4 billion.
Total exports were about 7% of that GDP
Total cotton and tobacco exports were were about 5% of that GDP.

I think the problem is that, rather likely Smoot and Hawley, you do not really grasp the importance of seemingly small external inputs in an economy. When in the 1930s the US manage to own goal about 60% of their export markets amounting to a mere 3.6% of GDP their domestic economy was basically bimated, that is diminished by half.

However the good news for the US is that most of the pump priming effect that drove the North was created in the North. The main form cotton exports took for example was as raw cotton, thus the only direct input to the economy of the Northern states was the shipping fees charged by Boston and New York etc based ship owners. Now it has been pointed out that raw cotton that might previously have been considered an internal commodity has now become an import but so too has manufactured goods such as clothing being sold back to the Southern States become an export. It is likely that clothes produced in workshops in Boston and New York are going to remain competitive in the Confederacy compared to those produced in Birmingham (the English one) and London in Confederate markets thanks to the shipping differential. It would likely be awhile, even assuming the Southern elites break the habits of a lifetime, before Southern investment produces large scale internal suppliers of manufactured goods.

Rather like the loss of the 13 Colonies the US has lost a war but gained an export market. The difference here, that rather complicates matters is that rather than reducing defence costs as happened to the British post 1783 is that it might rather drive up the costs as border fortifications and standing armies might be need to be maintained.

Now of course it is hard to see a clear picture without knowing how exactly the rebels won and what they made off with but a few things may or may not follow the OTL trajectory.

The US merchant fleet for example was crucified post war by the refusal to allow owners to return their ships to the flag and continuing protectionist policies on shipping rights. However in this scenario a lot of ports domestic are now effectively foreign or at least outside US control making the provisions forbidding foreign ships carrying goods from a northern port to one of them a bit nonsensical. A more open policy on shipping and especially a more open policy on where US owners can source their ships could well see the US continue to posses an effective merchant fleet into the late 19th Century. Not a given mind but on of the possibilities opened up.

The main drag on the Northern economy and indeed the Southern one but we are not looking at them here, relative to OTL is likely to be additional Government spending and thus borrowing and taxation on armies and fortifications and quite possibly the Navy. The rump US may well be more heavily armed than the entire OTL US but this will come at a long term economic cost as it transfers money from more productive and self-sustaining pursuits.

The biggest difference of course would be the Inner American Border. This IAB would need policing for tax purposes as it is highly likely to see a lot of traffic and I would greatly doubt either the USA or CSA would wish to give up those juicy tariffs nor would smugglers wish to pay them. In fact from a literary point of view the IAB could really be quite exciting with dashing villains and evil customs men or vice versa depending on an author's biases.
 
I think the problem is that, rather likely Smoot and Hawley, you do not really grasp the importance of seemingly small external inputs in an economy. When in the 1930s the US manage to own goal about 60% of their export markets amounting to a mere 3.6% of GDP their domestic economy was basically bimated, that is diminished by half.

However the good news for the US is that most of the pump priming effect that drove the North was created in the North. The main form cotton exports took for example was as raw cotton, thus the only direct input to the economy of the Northern states was the shipping fees charged by Boston and New York etc based ship owners. Now it has been pointed out that raw cotton that might previously have been considered an internal commodity has now become an import but so too has manufactured goods such as clothing being sold back to the Southern States become an export. It is likely that clothes produced in workshops in Boston and New York are going to remain competitive in the Confederacy compared to those produced in Birmingham (the English one) and London in Confederate markets thanks to the shipping differential. It would likely be awhile, even assuming the Southern elites break the habits of a lifetime, before Southern investment produces large scale internal suppliers of manufactured goods.

Rather like the loss of the 13 Colonies the US has lost a war but gained an export market. The difference here, that rather complicates matters is that rather than reducing defence costs as happened to the British post 1783 is that it might rather drive up the costs as border fortifications and standing armies might be need to be maintained.

Now of course it is hard to see a clear picture without knowing how exactly the rebels won and what they made off with but a few things may or may not follow the OTL trajectory.

The US merchant fleet for example was crucified post war by the refusal to allow owners to return their ships to the flag and continuing protectionist policies on shipping rights. However in this scenario a lot of ports domestic are now effectively foreign or at least outside US control making the provisions forbidding foreign ships carrying goods from a northern port to one of them a bit nonsensical. A more open policy on shipping and especially a more open policy on where US owners can source their ships could well see the US continue to posses an effective merchant fleet into the late 19th Century. Not a given mind but on of the possibilities opened up.

The main drag on the Northern economy and indeed the Southern one but we are not looking at them here, relative to OTL is likely to be additional Government spending and thus borrowing and taxation on armies and fortifications and quite possibly the Navy. The rump US may well be more heavily armed than the entire OTL US but this will come at a long term economic cost as it transfers money from more productive and self-sustaining pursuits.

The biggest difference of course would be the Inner American Border. This IAB would need policing for tax purposes as it is highly likely to see a lot of traffic and I would greatly doubt either the USA or CSA would wish to give up those juicy tariffs nor would smugglers wish to pay them. In fact from a literary point of view the IAB could really be quite exciting with dashing villains and evil customs men or vice versa depending on an author's biases.

An interesting theory but hard to prove either way. One could also argue, based on the boom bust cycle of the American economy 1865-1940 that a more solid floor of base government spending (on military forces and technology) might have a stimulating effect and indeed lesson the crashes even if it reduces the booms.

It would also probably result in a retention of the income tax (instead of waiting until 1912), might require a sooner adoption of the Federal Reserve System (to ensure a more stable currency to keep government revenues more predictable).

So as always, economic theory can be argued just about any number of ways. Being a strong Keynesian myself, I tend to think priming the pump has a lot of value and indeed when the US has embraced it seems to have done more good than harm.

As to the exports, why are we assuming that the Union would not be exporting anything again? (post war that is). I must have missed that assumption somewhere in this thread.
 
Is there a good reason why the famine du coton didn't result in increased British and French production of flax and wool?
I'm fairly sure cotton has properties those other two things don't for the purposes of mechanized weaving...

Most likely it was because the equipment had been installed on the factory floor to handle the specific properties of cotton fiber. Switching to other materials required retooling.. The Anglo French got around the problem by finding alternative sources to Confederate Cotton and being willing to pay more for what did get out (which is why blockade running was profitable in spite of risk).
 

RousseauX

Donor
A precedent is set forth for legalized secession. Most of the western territories probably become independent countries like California, Utah, and otherwise. The U.S. never expands or gains future territories again like Spain's holdings, Hawaii, or Alaska. Alaska and Hawaii probably join the British Empire later on.
OTOH it's equally as likely the SCOTUS or the remaining states simply declare secession illegal or pass a constitutional amendment forbidding it
 
But surely you realize from this that the Union now has the problem that cotton and indigo and tobacco and so on are no longer sources of foreign currency but sinks thereof?
Put another way, exports are what pay for imports. The Union now has significantly less cash to pay for imports, in general, especially since they now need to pay for cotton as a foreign import.

Exports are not what pay for imports, which is why there are trade surpluses and trade deficits. In period. cash to pay for imports meant gold and silver and the Union had the vast majority of both. The Union also had better credit, lower inflation, and a strong majority in foreign investment, which will also help their economy.

Indigo was a trivial crop in the 1860s. Cotton was the biggest export in 1860 - The Union will need to import basically all of it's cotton, but the Confederacy will need to import most of its cloth. Manufactured goods were the second biggest export in 1860- about 90% of manufacturing was in Union states, the Confederacy will need to import most of their manufactured goods. The third biggest export was grain - most grain came from Union states. The fourth largest export was meat and dairy products - about 90% of dairy products came from Union states, the Confederacy will likely have to import. The fifth biggest export was tobacco - about half of all tobacco was from Union states. Union states also produced over 4/5th of the wool and flax, plus almost all of the hops.
 

dcharleos

Donor
The use of slave labor was highly useful for Confederate rear area jobs (teamsters, cooks, valets etc) and for large scale construction efforts. A big reason for the Union efforts to weaken the reliability of that through the Emancipation Proclamation.

Suddenly it got riskier to put Negros near Union Armies....

Negroes? What is this, 1950?
 
This bings up an interesting point, which is that to properly evaluate this we should either have consistent definitions on which states would be Union states or separate commodities out into north/border/south.

The Confederacy's track record on the offense was one of unrelenting failure. Their greatest success, the New Mexico Campaign, lasted two months and cost the Confederates over 1/3rd of their numbers in casualties. If one is generous to the Confederates, an independent Confederacy should be considered as controlling all of the 11 states that seceded. A far more credible division would be the Confederacy loses West Virginia and major portions of Arkansas ans Tennessee; though even that is optimistic for the Confederates.
 
This bings up an interesting point, which is that to properly evaluate this we should either have consistent definitions on which states would be Union states or separate commodities out into north/border/south.

Quit prattling on about trade, it wasn't an important factor in the US economy. If trade were cut off altogether it would merely slow it down a bit. It was already a continental sized great power, it had virtually everything it needed. Food? Check Metal? Check Coal? Check Wood? Check Labor? Check Land? Check and on and on. It also manufactured virtually everything by this time. Steel, paper, food , furniture, building supplies and more. It was the 2nd or 3rd most industrialized power on the planet by this time with vast quantities of raw materials, a large and well educated work force, a lot of empty land and a lot of capital. It would do fine even without any trade which would happen only in an ASB scenario. The US is not GB, it does not need trade to be rich. Trade helps, but it isn't necessary. It is just too damn big to need it.
 
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