WI: Confederate Government-in-Exile?

Plausible base for a Confederate government-in-exile?

  • France

    Votes: 23 18.5%
  • United Kingdom

    Votes: 23 18.5%
  • Russia

    Votes: 1 0.8%
  • Austria

    Votes: 2 1.6%
  • Prussia

    Votes: 2 1.6%
  • Other

    Votes: 73 58.9%

  • Total voters
    124

Saphroneth

Banned
That's a Portuguese colony though, not an independent nation
There's also an arguable couple from the Napoleonic Wars (e.g. the Bourbons) and a definite one in the English government-in-exile during the Commonwealth - that one was the Privy Council of England.
 
The overall concept of a government in exile is that it is a temporary thing. During a war, such a government is hosted by an ally and expects to return to home with a victory in the war. The other flavor is when you have a nationality movement that is planning to liberate its ethnic group from the tyranny of another ethnic group and the "revolutionary" leaders become the government in exile. In both cases there is either the real or supposed support for this government in exile by a large bulk of the people under occupation.

After the ACW there is absolutely nobody who would be an "ally" of the CSA helping them to regain lost territory, and frankly the bulk of the population of the Confederate States had accepted defeat and were not pining for the resumption of the war. To the extent there was a CSA government in exile, and there could be more than one, even under favorable circumstances with a friendly and tolerant host country it would eventually fade to a club for has-beens to discuss ASB possibilities.
 
This is somewhat off the immediate topic, but the entirety of the thread begs one overall question to me: What's the social/political impact of a CSA government-in-exile, on the USA? Especially if they're based in Cuba, as some have suggested, and this leads to war? Do Radical Republicans have a stronger case to make that Confederates and Confederate sympathizers are less deserving of rights/property than the newly freed Black Americans? Could this lead to more upward mobility for Black Americans than IOTL, and could Jim Crow in the south be avoided? Segregation would likely still exist, as it already did in the north, but could its impact be mitigated, and might the whole system eventually be abandoned in the name of black & white Americans fighting side by side, against the Confederate scourge? This might be a bit too optimistic a take, but i'm curious what others think.
 
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