I saw Poepoe's review of "Dixie Victorious" and thought about it. The scenarios are improbable, granted, but there can be alternate histories where the South did win the civil war by not fighting it.
One way to not fight (and lose) a civil war is to break the Union alliance between the Northern abolitionists and the Northern bankers. In OTL the bankers didn't give a rat's ass what the Southerners did to their slaves as long as they continued to make payments on the plantation mortgages that paidd for them.
Let's assume a POD that the boll weevil got loose around 1850 and had doubled the cost of raising cotton so that slaves no longer made economic sense. You have to control the boll weevil by not planting cotton every other year. No cotton, no weevil. This means that each county or township has to raise cotton one year and corn the next, to allow the boll weevil population to collapse without cotton plants for food. Corn is best raised by free labor because it is both labor intensive and hard to monitor how your people are working. Which is why corn was raised by the slaves as share cropping and private plots they were allowed to work on after and before working in the fields.
This cuts your profit in slaves by about a third because you can get some work out of your slaves in the noncotton year by having them grow sweet potatos or corn or beans or something. This cuts the value of the slaves because you have to feed them and clothe them whether they are making a profit for you or not.
So you can't pay the mortgage to the Northern Bankers. So they try to foreclose on you. So you revolt. So they use their control of government to raise an army.
But the army was composed of abolitionists. It was paid for by income taxes on rich people, but it was not staffed by rich people. It was staffed by people who were willing to die for cause of freedom for all mankind, even if they were some other color.
So how do the Southerners split the abolitionists from the bankers? By liberating the worthless slaves. No slavery, no abolitionist recruits to the Union army, and no civil war.
And the Stars and Bars would be displayed on the bumper of every black owned automobile in America. It would be displayed on the automobiles of a lot of white people too. You know, the kind of people that want to screw over the bankers. You know, liberals...
One way to not fight (and lose) a civil war is to break the Union alliance between the Northern abolitionists and the Northern bankers. In OTL the bankers didn't give a rat's ass what the Southerners did to their slaves as long as they continued to make payments on the plantation mortgages that paidd for them.
Let's assume a POD that the boll weevil got loose around 1850 and had doubled the cost of raising cotton so that slaves no longer made economic sense. You have to control the boll weevil by not planting cotton every other year. No cotton, no weevil. This means that each county or township has to raise cotton one year and corn the next, to allow the boll weevil population to collapse without cotton plants for food. Corn is best raised by free labor because it is both labor intensive and hard to monitor how your people are working. Which is why corn was raised by the slaves as share cropping and private plots they were allowed to work on after and before working in the fields.
This cuts your profit in slaves by about a third because you can get some work out of your slaves in the noncotton year by having them grow sweet potatos or corn or beans or something. This cuts the value of the slaves because you have to feed them and clothe them whether they are making a profit for you or not.
So you can't pay the mortgage to the Northern Bankers. So they try to foreclose on you. So you revolt. So they use their control of government to raise an army.
But the army was composed of abolitionists. It was paid for by income taxes on rich people, but it was not staffed by rich people. It was staffed by people who were willing to die for cause of freedom for all mankind, even if they were some other color.
So how do the Southerners split the abolitionists from the bankers? By liberating the worthless slaves. No slavery, no abolitionist recruits to the Union army, and no civil war.
And the Stars and Bars would be displayed on the bumper of every black owned automobile in America. It would be displayed on the automobiles of a lot of white people too. You know, the kind of people that want to screw over the bankers. You know, liberals...