So I was wondering how a Confederate victory would affect southern demographics, on one hand blacks have a much bigger reason to escape but on the other hand slaveowners will likely want to keep them even more.
Thoughts?
Thoughts?
Would a Confederate victory mean more or less blacks in the South?
- Thread starter Copperhead
- Start date
Hm, a silly side-question: did the abolition of slavery have an effect on black natality?
Deleted member 142663
I have seen it series both ways, primarily based on birth rates.
The idea that the Southern white birth rate went down after the war OTL, but wouldn’t ATL = a whiter South VS
the continued institution of slavery (and thus slave farming) plus renewed (even is secret) importations = blacker South.
I tend to lean towards the later, but I do think post 1900 a lot depends on how the South’s slave system develops. Studying urban slavery in the South I think provides a lot of insights into how the system probably would have developed, and since OTL southern urbanites found all sorts of ways to work slaves that did not involve tasking them agricultural or domestic duties, I tend to think the institution would have survived further industrialization and urbanization in form if not necessarily in name for political reasons. And I think this tends to suggest the a blacker South as that would still correlate in Southern minds as a richer South.
(And frankly, if the Soviet Union could figure out a way to make collectivism work, at least sorts/kinda in the 20th century without not being as efficient as “capitalism”, the South has a chance of making racial based capitalism meet its 20th century needs sufficiently to preserve the ideology even if it isn’t competitive assuming it can avoid total war / a war of annihilation at least until the nukes are a thing.)
As far as you question about black natality, I am not sure anyone really knows. (If someone does, please enlighten us.) I have a seen a study which examined the effect of black births of white slave owning families fertility. It concluded that it had no effect on the fertility of the top 2/3rds of white families by enslaved ownership, but a black birth did lower the fertility of the smallest 1/3rd of families by enslaved ownership. The theory being that the smallest 1/3rd, ie poorest 1/3rd were mostly looking for children as laborers and a slave birth served that function.
The idea that the Southern white birth rate went down after the war OTL, but wouldn’t ATL = a whiter South VS
the continued institution of slavery (and thus slave farming) plus renewed (even is secret) importations = blacker South.
I tend to lean towards the later, but I do think post 1900 a lot depends on how the South’s slave system develops. Studying urban slavery in the South I think provides a lot of insights into how the system probably would have developed, and since OTL southern urbanites found all sorts of ways to work slaves that did not involve tasking them agricultural or domestic duties, I tend to think the institution would have survived further industrialization and urbanization in form if not necessarily in name for political reasons. And I think this tends to suggest the a blacker South as that would still correlate in Southern minds as a richer South.
(And frankly, if the Soviet Union could figure out a way to make collectivism work, at least sorts/kinda in the 20th century without not being as efficient as “capitalism”, the South has a chance of making racial based capitalism meet its 20th century needs sufficiently to preserve the ideology even if it isn’t competitive assuming it can avoid total war / a war of annihilation at least until the nukes are a thing.)
As far as you question about black natality, I am not sure anyone really knows. (If someone does, please enlighten us.) I have a seen a study which examined the effect of black births of white slave owning families fertility. It concluded that it had no effect on the fertility of the top 2/3rds of white families by enslaved ownership, but a black birth did lower the fertility of the smallest 1/3rd of families by enslaved ownership. The theory being that the smallest 1/3rd, ie poorest 1/3rd were mostly looking for children as laborers and a slave birth served that function.
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The North's policy towards folks escaping slavery by heading towards the Union is also relevant, I think. While the Union in a successful Confederacy scenario will probably be anti-slavery if only in reaction to their secessionist neighbor, I doubt the US and especially the border states will want a large amount of black immigration. Border control before the 1900s is pretty loose and this is a long land border rather than an ocean passage, but I wouldn't be surprised to see something like the Chinese Exclusion Act passed except for black immigrants from the Confederacy. In fact, restricting this immigration versus allowing it in order to undermine the slavery system would probably be a political faultline throughout the latter 19th century of this alt-US.
Ficboy
Banned
In so far as what happens to blacks in the post-war Confederacy vs it's post-Reconstruction South counterpart it needs to be pointed out that there will exist big differences between the two is what happens after the war. Anyone who is even familiar with Reconstruction knows that there were massacres, lynchings and other forms of violence by the Ku Klux Klan, White League, Redshirts and other organizations not to mention the Black Codes, Jim Crow aka segregation and sharecropping all of which led to the Great Migration of 6 million blacks from the South to the North.
Depending on what scenario you choose for blacks in the Confederacy after the war ends, it's likely that slavery exists for a decade or two until it is abolished for pragmatic reasons (trying to catch up economically and industrialize like the other Western nations). In that case, the ex-slave blacks won't have any rights to begin with not to mention the yeoman farmers and poor whites will definitely not be happy seeing huge competition in the job market and the sharecropping system won't even exist at least not the extent seen in OTL and non-planter white owned companies would be reluctant to employ blacks and prefer their own kind over them instead. Because of this, I think that most freed slave blacks would still emigrate to the United States due to a lack of opportunities in the Confederate States aside from notable exceptions such as free blacks and some of the former. This alternate Great Migration or whatever it's called would be a bit less spread out since these black emigrants are not citizens and it's going to be contained in the Northeast, the Old Northeast, the Border states (depending on how much the North keeps some or all of them) and to a lesser extent the Southwest after all given that slaves have also escaped through the Underground Railroad in the past it's unreasonable something similar could happen here. Of course, the United States wouldn't be accepting of black migrants for obvious reasons I mean just look at Chinese immigrants.
Depending on what scenario you choose for blacks in the Confederacy after the war ends, it's likely that slavery exists for a decade or two until it is abolished for pragmatic reasons (trying to catch up economically and industrialize like the other Western nations). In that case, the ex-slave blacks won't have any rights to begin with not to mention the yeoman farmers and poor whites will definitely not be happy seeing huge competition in the job market and the sharecropping system won't even exist at least not the extent seen in OTL and non-planter white owned companies would be reluctant to employ blacks and prefer their own kind over them instead. Because of this, I think that most freed slave blacks would still emigrate to the United States due to a lack of opportunities in the Confederate States aside from notable exceptions such as free blacks and some of the former. This alternate Great Migration or whatever it's called would be a bit less spread out since these black emigrants are not citizens and it's going to be contained in the Northeast, the Old Northeast, the Border states (depending on how much the North keeps some or all of them) and to a lesser extent the Southwest after all given that slaves have also escaped through the Underground Railroad in the past it's unreasonable something similar could happen here. Of course, the United States wouldn't be accepting of black migrants for obvious reasons I mean just look at Chinese immigrants.
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Miguel Lanius
Banned
Ironically, with less anger and resentment over what happened in the war and no Reconstruction, its possible that the CSA eventually ends less racist than the OTL South. There's racism but there ins't resentment and anger.
The ironing.
(bonus points if the CSA ends up being the less racist state while the North adopts a strong "White America" policy)
Ficboy
Banned
Well still kind of racist though no worse than other examples but with no Reconstruction race relations are ironically better than OTL's South. But still the races aren't equal and blacks are not going to have many opportunities in a post-slavery Confederacy and thus it could lead to many of them going to America instead since in the 1880s-1890s they were experiencing immigration from Eastern Europe and Central Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Well, it's varying but there are indications either way. Depending on the conditions of slavery, emancipation usually means a lowering in the death rates of slavery. In terms of the fertility rates of slavery, this is more mixed, there is evidence of either being more prominent. In the historical record, there is scant evidence of slave breeding.
Another interesting aspect is that African American on average saw 5% Caucasian admixture increase every generation from the slave trade ended and until slavery ended. There will be a growing population of very light skinned and even White slaves (by the standard of everyone outside CSA). These will likely have a far easier time to escape and they will also be a major international embarrassment for CSA, not only do they keep people in slavery, they also keep White people in slavery.
Difficult to say. I wouldn't expect more black emigration to the North prior to the OTL Great Migration, as the greater incentives to go north would be counterbalanced by the greater restrictions on freedom of movement on slaves. And by the time you get to the point that black migration north really got going IOTL, you're something like 50 years past the POD and a number of different scenarios are possible. In general, however, I would expect a blacker south, as the extension of slavery and other restrictions on the freedom of black people and the existence of a border between the North and the South which could have movement across it restricted would make it more difficult in general for black southerners to emigrate to the North than IOTL.
Although the extent to which a successful Confederacy could manage to preserve slavery in the long term is often overstated IMO, I'm exceedingly skeptical that the Confederacy could or would abolish slavery a mere twenty years after it became independent. This is a time when most Southern elites would be be plantation owners and/or Civil War veterans who fought specifically to defend slavery, and the idea that such a group could reach such a strong anti-slavery consensus that abolitionists could muster the support among them needed to amend the Confederate Constitution to abolish slavery (and to abolish slavery outright, no less, not even a gradual abolition in the style of OTL NY or NJ where all existing slaves would remain slaves and their children would only be freed upon reaching adulthood), well, it strains credulity. Likewise, the idea that you wouldn't have black sharecropping in such a scenario is absurd--prior to mechanization in the 1940s, the Southern plantation economy needed black farm labor, and if slavery is off the table, sharecropping is the obvious solution.
What if the Britain accepted the confederacy's offer of abolishing slavery during the war in exchange for recognition?
You have a source for this offer? Because I've never heard of it and it's very difficult to imagine the Confederate government agreeing to such a deal, given that the only reason the CSA seceded in the first place was to preserve the institution of slavery.
And possible actual White slaves. I can see situations were accusing your rival of having black blood and getting them enslaved would be something that's done.
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No this wouldn't happen, despite the existence of one drop rule as a concept people knew that many white people, even affluent ones, had black ancestry even if extremely minor, this was implicit.
I actually dont have a source I just have heard multiple people, even some people with strong anti confederate and anti lost cause leanings, say this
I have heard people on this site mention it IIRC. In the realistic Tl-191 thread it should be there. I personally think it would have been just lipservice though.
It's something I am having to tackle with the Communist CSA stuff... with an international border between North and South, the USA will never see the Great Migration, and save older black communities up north like Harlem, most of the urban black communities that formed up North are buttefied away. The USA's population of black Americans would be a fraction of what it was, given the only black folks heading north than the ones there pre-ACW will be the lucky escaped slave.
Meanwhile the CSA will be in the very precarious situation where blacks are a majority in half of its states and a sizable minority in all of them... one of the many things that will ensure slavery will only get nastier by the end.
Meanwhile the CSA will be in the very precarious situation where blacks are a majority in half of its states and a sizable minority in all of them... one of the many things that will ensure slavery will only get nastier by the end.
Nastier is one word for it.
I would say that the CSA, bankrupt and suffering devastating social conflict, is invaded and destroyed by the USA in the 1880s in a brief war that coincides with the mother of all slave revolts.
These old communities would likely also disappear through intermarriage.
It should be said that I would expect the White proportion of the population to rise. OTL South was rather closed off for immigration. CSA would be more open to immigration with the Texas, the Upper South and the major port cities likely see a significant influx of European immigrants. The only countries European immigrants stayed out of was unstable countries with civil wars and revolutions all the time. CSA would be mostly stable in the period where European outflow was the largest.
Of course that create dichotomy with a group of increasing White states and a group of increasing Black states. It will recreate the internal problems of USA before the Civil War just inside CSA.
On one hand, a divided America and the Confederacy being an oppressive slaver’s republic would most likely greatly hamper African American migration to northern cities as IOTL.
On the other hand, the terrible conditions of the Confederacy would likely drive many out of the country anyway, especially when they eventually have to abolish slavery.
On the other hand, the terrible conditions of the Confederacy would likely drive many out of the country anyway, especially when they eventually have to abolish slavery.