Why do you like a Confederate victory?
- Thread starter FinalTemplar
- Start date
Yes! Absolutely.
And I'm very disappointed that few people on either side of the debate are willing to actually be objective.
Edit: on the other hand, Ireland was invaded in the 1200's, and that is also still being worked through, so maybe it isn't so unusual.
BTW for those who argue that people don't actually like CSA victory threads check out "the Southerners were not fighting to preserve slavery arguments" being made here
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=328329
If you buy the false argument that Southerners were not fighting to preserve slavery then what's not to like about a Confederate victory
Precisely one person in that thread claimed the South wasn't fighting for slavery. Everyone else has agreed that the war was about slavery. What people disagree with is the assertion that all individual Southerners were fighting solely to maintain slavery. Which I'd argue is untrue because the majority had to be conscripted to fight at all.
Any way I enjoy Confederate victory timelines for the same reason I enjoy books like 1984, The Circle, or Brave New World. Because dystopias can be interesting. Furthermore, as an American it's fascinating to see how my country could have evolved differently. The Civil War really was a defining moment in America. It created the country we know today. It's entirely possible to like a Confederate victory timeline without liking the Confederacy itself.
I think that is how human society works. All in all, it may be a good thing that defeat in war doesn't mean that beliefs, ideas, customs, etc, are automatically destroyed.
JSmith
Banned
Its more accurate to say that the part of the US that lost the Civil War is still working its way though those echoes- and fairly badly in many ways.
usertron2020
Donor
1] Problem: If you do an ATL about 1984, with the rulers of Oceania as the "Good Guys", nobody will accuse you of being Pro-Big Brother.
1] Problem: If you do an ATL about 1984, with the rulers of Oceania as the "Good Guys", nobody will accuse you of being Pro-Big Brother.
To be fair, that's largely because 1984 is a mere theoretical construct, while the ACW is an historical event about which people are understandably very passionate.
Personally, I know some CSA Victory threads are written by folks who wish the Confederates had won. That's inevitable.
Deciding that everyone who writes such a thread can only be a racist neo-Confederate, however, is going too far.
usertron2020
Donor
1] As you, Fiver, and myself (post#158) have noted, there are plenty of people out there who post CSA Victory TLs who are NOT writing for the thrill of seeing the CSA survive itself, but rather for personal reasons [2] simply want to see the USA dissolve as a nation as a whole. [3]
2] See my earlier post for just a partial list of such motives.
3] Meaning, the more fragmentation, the better. [4]
4] A good indicator is the number of posters who jump from CSA Victory to Union Dissolution with the assumed inevitability of ice melting in summer.
Personally I like the CSA being victorious or at least independent after the ASW because the slaver scum didn't get punished enough in the war itself and Reconstruction and if they're just beaten by the Yanks they won't get slaughtered properly *AHEM* it gives the timeline writer a horrible dictatorship to smack around not that there's any lack of those in OTL and most ATLs.
and if they're just beaten by the Yanks they won't get slaughtered properly *AHEM* it gives the timeline writer a horrible dictatorship to smack around not that there's any lack of those in OTL and most ATLs.Personally I like the CSA being victorious or at least independent after the ASW because the slaver scum didn't get punished enough in the war itself and Reconstruction
Please refrain from revenge fantasies.
Alright, I will refrain from revenge fantasies (on this forum). In that case what CthulhuFhtagn said: let the States be united (at least in the East).
JSmith
Banned
I don't think the CSA was properly brought low after the war either- especially the CSA leadership. To use a term that was popular in Dixie-they remained uppity . But what are the alternates to what you say really ?Personally I like the CSA being victorious or at least independent after the ASW because the slaver scum didn't get punished enough in the war itself and Reconstruction
Alls well that ends well(OTL) or CSA leaders are treated like traitors and blacks are treated like citizens or the South should have won are the main 3 that I can see.
I don't know that I've ever seen a lot of Confederacy dystopias. Oddly, to me it seems the most likely outcome.
usertron2020
Donor
I think that it depends on your definition of what constitutes a "dystopia". Any CSA victory with the expected treatment of its Black population can be considered a dystopia. But then, the Antebellum South was rapidly devolving into a dystopia by the 1850s as it was.
Here are some. All of them are mine but that made it easy for me to look up. I knew ALL my CSA wins wind up as dystopias.
CSA: The Aftermath
CSA Economically dominated by USA
Reunification War
Victorious CSA in Turmoil
President Nathen Bedford Forrest
Balkinized South
JSmith
Banned
I don't know around here-the most famous is Harry Turtledoves Southern Victory series ie a Confederate Hitler with a Confederate Holocaust against blacks
A society whose founding principal was -overtly-white supremacy. What could go wrong with that
Interesting how much opposition you get.
As for dystopias, I've always seen Turtledove's series as a confederate wank. Sure they eventually go all holocaust and lose their great war. But up to that time, they're spectacularly victorious in two wars, barely lose a third, manage to become an industrial and political 'great power' etc.
usertron2020
Donor
And there's your dystopia.
Mind, I've always felt IMO that the ending of his Great War was an artificial construct to allow Turtledove to sell a WWII series of books. THREE Civil Wars don't end with an armistice. With two consecutive civil wars in which the CSA emerges victorious only through Foreign Intervention, after a third civil war resulting in a CSA defeat DESPITE yet another foreign intervention no way in f*****g HELL does any US government allow a CSA entity to survive to launch a (sure enough
) Round Four!