WI there was a Confederate insurgency?

[DuQuense]

That's pretty much OTL. There's a reason why the south was divided up into military districts postwar, after all.

Yes - But that didn't happen till 1867-- after the war was over, in 1866



Lees Surrender did NOT END the formal WAR, IIRC that was Beauregard's surrender in South Carolina two months later.
So there was a lot of Chances for the insurrection option to be chosen, Instead. And in fact it took another two years for the Insurrection to End

on April 2, 1866, President Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation that,

"the insurrection which heretofore existed in the States of Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Florida is at an end, and is henceforth to be so regarded."

The President's proclamation on June 13, 1866, declared the insurrection in the State of Tennessee had been suppressed.

August 20, 1866, the President proclaimed that the insurrection in the State of Texas had been completely ended; and his proclamation continued:

"the insurrection which heretofore existed in the State of Texas is at an end, and is to be henceforth so regarded in that State, as in the other States before named in which the said insurrection was proclaimed to be at an end by the aforesaid proclamation of the second day of April, one thousand, eight hundred and sixty-six.

And I do further proclaim that the said insurrection is at an end, and that peace, order, tranquillity, and civil authority now exist, in and throughout the whole of the United States of America."

Remembre even as the Insurrection Continued, the southern States were already sending members back to Congress, Including the Senators elected in 1860 who returned to take up the seats they had walked out of in 1861.
And many of the Congressmen in 1866 were the same reelected Congressmen who had walked out in 1861.

 

[General Zod]

If the idea is making the KKK larger, this goal is not to difficult. Slavery as an institution could be gone, but the KKK would either seek to re-instate it, or as a more moderate focus, seek to avoid changing race relations. A southern reign of terror against the Union Army could be in the works--and it could create a situation where the army is forced to occupy the South for longer than OTL--and this could lead to some kind of Neo-Confederate Movement for a later date...

A big problem any kind of KKK-writ-large Neo-Confederate insurgency will have is that the Black population shall be massively hostile to it. It's hard to an insurgency when it has to face both the occupying army and a hostile large part of the civilian population, which can act informer to the army and/or be armed and organized as a militia.

 

[Blue Max]

A big problem any kind of KKK-writ-large Neo-Confederate insurgency will have is that the Black population shall be massively hostile to it. It's hard to an insurgency when it has to face both the occupying army and a hostile large part of the civilian population, which can act informer to the army and/or be armed and organized as a militia.

You have a great idea of how it would turn out. But I still suggest that it would be possible, although not smart.

As a possible trigger, suppose the Hayes-Tilden electoral dispute triggers a crisis--the Republicans call the Southern Bluff that choosing Hayes as President will result in a second sucession. That could mean a short lived second insurgency that gets crushed.

 

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

What if Lee dies on the battlefield? His Prestige enabled the CSA to peacefully dissolve itself. I think it could go down far worse than it did.

That said, this is the first I've heard of this Foster.

I would consider the KKK to be Confederate Insurgents. A likely scenario is a nastier, larger KKK that forces Union Occupation instead of Administration over the defeated south...

Really ...

Check The List of Presidents Pro Tempore, Wade Replaced him Only a Day Before The End of The 39th Congress ...

In Fact, if I had to Pick someone to Assume The Presidency under Such Circumstances; Foster would be Second on that List to Joe Lieberman, a Man BOTH Parties had Every Reason to Trust!

 

[Johnrankins]

What if Lee dies on the battlefield? His Prestige enabled the CSA to peacefully dissolve itself. I think it could go down far worse than it did.

That said, this is the first I've heard of this Foster.

I would consider the KKK to be Confederate Insurgents. A likely scenario is a nastier, larger KKK that forces Union Occupation instead of Administration over the defeated south...

Doesn't matter, any insurgency would be hopeless. The Union took far more casualties during the war then any insurgency could ever dream of inflicting. Besides Lee; there was Joe Johnston, Piere Beuregard, Richard Taylor all opposing an insurgency. Even Nathon Bedford Forrest was opposed to the idea.

 

[zoomar]

Doesn't matter, any insurgency would be hopeless. The Union took far more casualties during the war then any insurgency could ever dream of inflicting. Besides Lee; there was Joe Johnston, Piere Beuregard, Richard Taylor all opposing an insurgency. Even Nathon Bedford Forrest was opposed to the idea.

True. The entire impetus for the secession and formation of the CSA was the preservation of the southern economic system based on a agrarian landed aristocracy controlling the labor of slaves. The aristocracy soon realized that this system could survive the forced emancipation of the slaves and would not support an insurrection which might lead to broader social and economic upheavals. That leads to another speculation. If there was an insurrection, I think it might take on a classist, in addition to a racist and anti-northern, cast, aiming at overthrowing the entire economic and social system in the south in addition to ridding it of Northern occupiers. Think Nazis.

 

[General Zod]

True. The entire impetus for the secession and formation of the CSA was the preservation of the southern economic system based on a agrarian landed aristocracy controlling the labor of slaves. The aristocracy soon realized that this system could survive the forced emancipation of the slaves and would not support an insurrection which might lead to broader social and economic upheavals. That leads to another speculation. If there was an insurrection, I think it might take on a classist, in addition to a racist and anti-northern, cast, aiming at overthrowing the entire economic and social system in the south in addition to ridding it of Northern occupiers. Think Nazis.

Turtledove-like Nazi Confederacy a century before ?

 

[Johnrankins]

I think if the Confederates won and there was a Nazi type government out there it would strongly ally itself with the Nazis.

 

[Snarf]

Once the North started taking back large expanses of Southern territory the cause was dead. The Confederacy suffered from mass desertions throughout the last two years of the war. These are men more interested in protecting their homes than in fighting for a 'peculiar institution'.

Just about the only thing that would start an insurgency would be a harsher occupation, and even then the goal wouldn't be a revived CSA (almost everyone in the South knew that to be a dead letter; Jefferson Davis was thoroughly reviled by the end of the war). The insurgency would be more along the lines of thousands of individual cases of payback rather than any coordinated effort. Think of the MacGregor clan in Canada in the Southern Victory series: they didn't become active insurgents until the war hit them personally and there really wasn't a larger agenda involved (i.e., no communication with other resistance cells, no attempts to sway the non-combatant population, very little outside assistance. You never saw Confederate or British agents showing up at the MacGregor farmstead in Manitoba with cases of dynamite and rifles.)

At most you end up with several small splinter groups each pursuing its own agenda (and possibly hostile to each other as well as the occupiers) not unlike what's going on in Iraq right now. Maybe some of the more hardcore state governments might have a chance of setting up shadow governments if the Union forces don't arrest all the principals in time, and coordinating a state-based resistance movement. I can see that happening in places like South Carolina (which started the whole thing) or Georgia (which suffered heavily at the hands of Sherman). But again it's more a case of local payback than any vision of the greater CSA.

 

[Fiver]

What if Lee dies on the battlefield? His Prestige enabled the CSA to peacefully dissolve itself. I think it could go down far worse than it did.

Confederate Secretary of War Breckinridge was also commited to having the CSA peacefully dissolve itself. And if Lee died, his successor would probably have seen things much as he did. Besides, much of the Army of Northern Virginia had stayed mainly out of personal loyalty to Lee. With Marse Robert dead, they would have gone home to their farms and their families.