As opposed to the fact that in the United States, there was *still* relatively good farmland (Dakotas if nowhere else) that could be taken from the Native Americans and used for Wheat(/Corn/Oats/Barley). Which reminds me, for a TL with a successful Confederacy, I need to comment onthe fact that the soil was being exhausted in the east and that once you reach central Texas you can't get new land for cotton, etc any more...
A detail which a lot of people forget is that the belief that slavery needed new soil was a cornerstone of both pro-slavery and anti-slavery politics. Southerners were well aware that their plantations were exhausted after cotton moniculture and they believed that unless new slave states were admitted slavery would wither and die. That's why they pushed for slavery in the territories so hard. But anti-slavery people were just as convinced of this, believing firmly that simply containing slavery would absolutely result in its end. This end would not be inmediate, but it would be safe and what's more important constitutional. So, for people of the era, something like Free-Soil, now perceived as a feeble and ineffective measure that wouldn't have freed a single slave, was a real threat and, moreover, the only threat available to anti-slavery men.
Thought I just had: just how long will it take to intergrate the South back into the country? As in, how many generations will it take for the descendants of Union veterans and Confederate Veterans to actually fight side by side? OTL it only took around two , ITTL… well OTL, we traded justice for reconciliation. From a pure might perspective, that payed off handsomely. We may get more justice here, but the country, geopolitically and internally, will be weaker.
Some resentment will probably remain for generations to come. I mean, there are idiots waving the Confederate flag nowadays despite the talk of reconciliation. There probably would be idiots waving it here ITTL, it's only that it would be more akin to hard die Nazis who refused to accept the demise of their regime.
Thing about the USA is that it is quite safe in its geographic location. Not to mention as the sole great power whose heartland is in the America’s it will always have an advantage against the others.
I think that long term internal stability and reduced if not eliminated racial tensions will be worth the short term ‘weakness’ overseas.
Something that's been often mentioned is that this war could result in a less interventionist USA.
It’s also possible that they become overly patriotic to prove they are good Americans who value what the country stands for. You see that today, even if it is often parodoxically by people who have CSA memorabilia.
That's likely the future of Unionists, who'll probably eternally dunk on "rebels" and take pride on how they upheld the government.
Thats because of the Reconciliation process that happened after the war, where things were basically left as it was and they were given a open hand in reintegrating into the country and a active part by Northerners to go along with the Lost Cause narrative as it benefited them. With all thats happened during this war (Burning Washington DC, the Campagins in the North, the vicous gurellia wars, the plagues...), that will very definitely not be in place.
At the very least, this radical war means that no matter what people won't be able to ignore the results and try to restore things as much as possible to the status quo ante bellum. How could they, when so many people have died, so much land has been confiscated and redistributed, and so many radical changes enacted? Reconciliation cannot, as in OTL, mean simply surrendering to the rebels in exchange of peace, but forcing them to accept the new world.
I don't know, the children of the many dead will be conflicted because the North will be providing them food. They will be survivors, they will often not have the fathers and grandfathers to tell them to continue the rebellion.
With the war more clearly being about slavery in this time line, at least the poor might be willing to help the northerners and fight in a couple of generations.
It will take time before they are fully in leadership but instead of a generation that in 1st part of the 20th century wanted to glorify the South, they will be a generation that wants to totally forget everything in the past. Everything possible will be done to make sure that that nothing is glorious about the rebellion.
A first World War analogy might still not draw a lot of them them, But I think it will be a start.
That's why I think there will be something of a "Clean Confederate myth", that states that honorable, good Southerners were tricked by rich slaveholders into fighting a terrible war for no benefit at all, lying about Lincoln's designs only to find that the Union was actually going to feed them and give them land. So Dad the soldier was honorable and brave, but the war and its leaders were not.
And, of course, you can't forget that the African American population will be much more onboard with the American project with a successful and more Radical Reconstruction. That will certainly go some way towards compensating for any loss of more extremist whites as a result.
As an outsider looking in, it always feels like African Americans are a foreign population that the White majority tolerates but never truly accepts as part of their nation. That's why they are African Americans but Whites are merely Americans. I hope such prejudice can be stamped out, so that someone being Black is not more exceptional than then being Irish is in the modern US.
Justice and reconciliation aren’t mutually exclusive though, there are plenty of analogies that can be made to OTL (like post-WWII).
The North will be changing the education of the upcoming generations. The North will be paying to rebuild the South from the ground up. The old order that controlled how things were done are going to be either ousted from power or outright killed by the end of the war. Poor whites have already been alluded to holding a simmering hatred of the Plantation autocrats who have misled the people of the South. Newly freedmen will make up a significant portion of the population and are going to be empowered and prefer their liberators than those that kept them in chains. Many of the men, the heads of households, are dead or gimped leading to their families to adapt or die. Many who make it out of the war physically unscathed are likely to pull up stakes and head out west.
I’m not saying there won’t be longer lasting animosity than OTL. I’m just saying there are other factors that will make up for that to not perpetuate that beyond a couple generations at most. If WWI happens, which is still likely, by then the pre-war South will probably be seen as some damned fool’s errand perpetuated by lying slavers, elites, and, ultimately, traitors.
At the very least, the true die hards will probably perish in battle or disease, since those are the ones willing to fight to the bitter end. Those who desert long before that are most likely easier to conciliate.
Makes me wonder, will this mean southern demographics changes enough that blacks become even more of a majority in certain areas and even bigger of a significant minority in others? If so, it could have some very interesting effects on occupation as well as reconstruction, not to mention the migration to northern cities that will still happen in this TL.
At the very least, I estimate that a combination of famine, disease, displacement and war has resulted in Black people being a majority in Louisiana, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida will have Black majorities of 55% or more, stregthened even further due to the fact that the war has affected White males more than Black males.
Honestly, in the long run a more thorough Reconstruction will help the country. Cuz who knows how much economic growth was stunted by black Americans not being allowed to gain wealth and contribute that wealth to the economy.
Generational wealth is a real thing. Even if this Reconstruction doesn't result in millions of Black farmers in the present day, it will result in millions more professionals and graduates, because a person has more opportunities when his grandparents were stable farmers rather than poor sharecroppers.
I'm late to the party, but I just got caught up on reading this whole timeline as a way to keep myself sane while I finish up with teaching for the year. Great stuff! Keep up the excellent work!
Thank you very much! I love comments like this, and want to thank you for taking the time to say so.
On the national novel writing month site, I asked about courtship in the Great Lakes area for a print on demand book I am starting. Someone posted
this great link on the South and courtship after the Civil War, and I thought it would be helpful if you don't have it.
Oh, that sounds interesting indeed.
