WI/AHC: CSA Declares Independence

What if the southern states, instead of through individual acts of secession, organize the Confederacy and a declaration of independence.

The POD can be any time after 1850, and it is all 11 Confederate states plus Kentucky that join in this declaration.

Perhaps they start planning out the CSA when Lincoln announces his plan to run for election, and start to carefully buy industry and factory parts to create their own industry.

What happens?
 
This could very easily happen if either South Carolina were a bit slower to set up their secession convention or if the other Deep South states had moved faster.

Secessionists were not monolithic, and could be classified along roughly two axes: Conditional vs Unconditional (the former were open to a compromise where the union would be preserved or restored in exchange for northern concessions) and Unilateral vs Coordinated (the former wanted one state to secede on its own initiative with the hope others would follow, while the latter favored a convention of Southern states to agree to secede as a block). I get the impression that the Unconditional/Coordinated quadrant was dominant in most of the Deep South with the notable exception of South Carolina.

There was an active movement to organize a multistate southern convention almost immediately after the 1860 election, but South Carolina moved faster and forced the issue by seceding unilaterally.
 
I doubt it makes a massive difference unless this somehow nets them the recognition of a European power. No matter how the South went about doing so, Lincoln was under no circumstances going to legitimize the idea of secession, he would act as though the South was still a part of the Union and not recognize the legitimacy of any government in Richmond, Montgomery or what have you.
 
This could very easily happen if either South Carolina were a bit slower to set up their secession convention or if the other Deep South states had moved faster.

Secessionists were not monolithic, and could be classified along roughly two axes: Conditional vs Unconditional (the former were open to a compromise where the union would be preserved or restored in exchange for northern concessions) and Unilateral vs Coordinated (the former wanted one state to secede on its own initiative with the hope others would follow, while the latter favored a convention of Southern states to agree to secede as a block). I get the impression that the Unconditional/Coordinated quadrant was dominant in most of the Deep South with the notable exception of South Carolina.

There was an active movement to organize a multistate southern convention almost immediately after the 1860 election, but South Carolina moved faster and forced the issue by seceding unilaterally.
I was unaware of this. I always thought it was just lets secede and not much planning in the long term.
 
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