Would the Confederate States government need to be reformed had it won independence?

Would the Confederate States government need to be reformed had they won the American Civil War?

  • Yes

    Votes: 96 91.4%
  • No

    Votes: 9 8.6%

  • Total voters
    105
So? All those things would come out of workers wages anyway. If there is need to pay wages, owners or renters will spend the money on those things.

It will be far more expensive to have slaves do the work, if for no other reason than that slave owners will undoubtedly spend lots of money on security. Those guys will have to be well-paid and well-equipped. No slave owner is going to decide that a slave who wants to escape isn't worth chasing or capturing whereas a worker who wants to leave can easily be replaced with no attachment.
 

Maoistic

Banned
Wait, I'm confused -- why couldn't they just put their slaves to work doing low-skill work in factories instead of low-skill work on plantations?
They could, it just was more time consuming and resource expensive due to the nature of chattel slavery. It was more efficient to use paid workers.
 
No slave owner is going to decide that a slave who wants to escape isn't worth chasing or capturing whereas a worker who wants to leave can easily be replaced with no attachment.
It didn't work like that. All those things you said in theory applied to plantation work too: And yet runaways were hardly debilitating to profitability of plantations.
It would be even harder to run away from mines or factories than plantations. Plantations are in sparsely populated countryside, and you work in open air. In cities, unnacompanied slave would be immediately apprehended.
 
They could, it just was more time consuming and resource expensive due to the nature of chattel slavery. It was more efficient to use paid workers.

A specific and measurable for of efficiency is the ability to hire and fire at will, in line with demand/production.

With chattel slavery, an owner invests in a worker that must be (ideally, within human limits, although not always: see the sugarcane method in the Caribbean of work-em-dead) used to maximum extent at all times to derive profits, and is otherwise idle capital investment. If demand/input supply dips, slaves will have to be "repurposed" to effectively work for the owner's profit.

Wage laborers (during this time period, and when wage laborers are of high supply comparative to the demand for them) can be fired on the spot and sent home to twiddle their thumbs or find other employment on their own, where they are no longer the problem of the factory owner.

I would imagine that in a (more!) successfully industrial CSA, hybrid factories made of part chattel slave and part wage workers would develop

Edits: Clarity, adding a thought about the Caribbean
 
With chattel slavery, an owner invests in a worker that must be used to maximum extent at all times to derive profits, and is otherwise idle capital investment: if demand/input supply dips, slaves will have to be "repurposed" to effectively work for the owner's profit.
They were. Owners rented them away.

Wage laborers (during this time period, and when wage laborers are of high supply comparative to the demand for them) can be fired on the spot and sent home to twiddle their thumbs or find other employment on their own, where they are no longer the problem of the factory owner.
Whereas spare slaves who could be rented away weren't a problem to get rid off, but another opportunity to profit.
 

Maoistic

Banned
I would imagine that in a (more!) successfully industrial CSA, hybrid factories made of part chattel slave and part wage workers would develop
In fact, due to the nature of the factory economy and mass industrial production, wage labourers would eventually outnumber slaves.
 
A specific and measurable for of efficiency is the ability to hire and fire at will, in line with demand/production.

With chattel slavery, an owner invests in a worker that must be (ideally, within human limits, although not always: see the sugarcane method in the Carribbean of work-em-dead) used to maximum extent at all times to derive profits, and is otherwise idle capital investment. If demand/input supply dips, slaves will have to be "repurposed" to effectively work for the owner's profit.

Wage laborers (during this time period, and when wage laborers are of high supply comparative to the demand for them) can be fired on the spot and sent home to twiddle their thumbs or find other employment on their own, where they are no longer the problem of the factory owner.

I would imagine that in a (more!) successfully industrial CSA, hybrid factories made of part chattel slave and part wage workers would develop

Edits: Clarity, adding a thought about the Carribbean
In which case communism in the New World is going to be a good deal more lively. Both chattel slave and wage slave? Marx my words, that can't end well.

Also, unless cities are sectioned off and the slave quarters end up like prisons, there'll still be plenty of opportunities to escape. Through sewers, hidden in civilian+transport vehicles, shaking off pursuers in crowds...I can't imagine white factory workers in a CSA South being willing to work next to slave workers so there'd be large crowds of black workers that'd be hard to keep track of. Then monitoring gets harsher, the workers get more restless, and you've got the potential for valuable machinery to get damaged, parts stolen, generally unpleasant things and revolution abrewin'
 
Also, unless cities are sectioned off and the slave quarters end up like prisons, there'll still be plenty of opportunities to escape.
The thing with slaves, they were easy to tell apart from free men with high accuracy. As any slave-catcher would tell you: racial profiling works!

Through sewers, hidden in civilian+transport vehicles, shaking off pursuers in crowds...
You forgot air-vents.

I can't imagine white factory workers in a CSA South being willing to work next to slave workers.
They were and they did! Often as part of "lower management".
 
In which case communism in the New World is going to be a good deal more lively. Both chattel slave and wage slave? Marx my words, that can't end well.

Also, unless cities are sectioned off and the slave quarters end up like prisons, there'll still be plenty of opportunities to escape. Through sewers, hidden in civilian+transport vehicles, shaking off pursuers in crowds...I can't imagine white factory workers in a CSA South being willing to work next to slave workers so there'd be large crowds of black workers that'd be hard to keep track of. Then monitoring gets harsher, the workers get more restless, and you've got the potential for valuable machinery to get damaged, parts stolen, generally unpleasant things and revolution abrewin'

I mean, locking factory workers in was common practice IOTL with wage workers, just ask the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, so you’ve already got a simple but effective expedient right there.
 

samcster94

Banned
Other than the fact that slavery was enshrined almost in stone to the CSA Constitution, it seems that a few of the questions that the USA ironed out regarding federal vs state and the nature of the judiciary would have to be answered all over again in the CSA. So a reform may not he totally necessary; amendments may solve some of the big problems such as a 6-year lame duck as President (same as the 12th Amendment solved the bizarre VP situation in the USA) and slavery may technically be legal but just rarely practiced once industrialization kicks in full-swing (it's not an economically efficient model post-Industrial Revolution and industrialists loved money more than they loved owning people) but the issue wit the judiciary may end up being a problem for the CSA if no firm system of federal courts is ironed out.

I wonder when the spirit of states saying "fuck this shit, I'm out" ends if the CSA gains independence. The USA seceded from Britain and the CSA seceded from the USA. In 80 years or so, does Texas take Arkansas and Louisiana and form the Texan States of America, and if they do, do they succeed?
Georgia considered leaving the real life Confederacy in the war, so it is not inconceivable. Also, they'll keep slavery as "God given", and put them in the factories as slaves(The South sort of did that AFTER slavery in places like Birmingham, Alabama).
 
in gone with the wind Melanie mentions this in a conversation with scarlett.

"They'd do a lot better in gray and in Virginia

But Melanie there for the defense of the state

Bah if only the govener would deploy the home gaurd we'd lick those Yankees in a month"

She says that the governor of Georgia was deliberately keeping the state malita at home disobeying orders from Richmond to send them to Tennessee and Virginia I actually believe the only time the Georgia malita was deployed was when the Yankees entered Georgia participating in te battle of Dalton the siege of Atlanta the battle of Milledgeville. Gone with the wind also mentioned how the governor released federal convicts without Richmonds ok to fight in Milledgeville which was the capital of Georgia at the time.
 
The Confederacy would have to if it wanted to remain alive and not suffer a slave rebellion/revolution. Slavery had become unsustainable in the face of an industrial Union and an industrial Northern Europe that realised the efficiency of wage exploitation. Add to this that the European Scramble for Africa was taking away the Confederacy's source of slaves and that the rhetoric of the Civil War was that it was waged to abolish slavery, and it wasn't a matter of if, but when slavery was going to be abolished. If the Confederacy did this and still managed to survive, I doubt it would have industrialised as well as the North. It would be closer to Mexico than the Union.

The US ended the importation of slaves in 1808. While smuggling of slaves still occurred, almost all slaves in the American south were born in the US. Nothing about the Union or European industrialization would make slavery unsustainable in the Confederacy.
 
....which provoked a lot of anti-government protests in many areas of the CSA; States like Georgia and North Carolina openly defied Richmond.

As the war dragged on, they aided draft dodgers; Jeff Davis was still able to order around Georgian State Militia in November, 1864 regardless and North Carolina still contributed the most troops to the Confederacy.
 

Maoistic

Banned
The US ended the importation of slaves in 1808. While smuggling of slaves still occurred, almost all slaves in the American south were born in the US. Nothing about the Union or European industrialization would make slavery unsustainable in the Confederacy.
Slavery was unsustainable because slaves lacked freedom of movement, thus consuming a lot of time and limiting their productivity; it required individual slavers to take a lot of care for their slaves in order to make them optimal for work which made it expensive; there was a competition for who could buy and afford more slaves, and like their lack of freedom of movement, this slowed down their productivity.

In other words, slavery didn't make good workers and made industrialisation far more costly, which is why it was replaced with salaried labour.
 
They could, it just was more time consuming and resource expensive due to the nature of chattel slavery. It was more efficient to use paid workers.

In 1847, white workers at Tredegar Iron Works went on strike. The owners fired them adn replaced them with black slave workers and a handful of white overseers, since slaves could not go on strike.
 

Maoistic

Banned
In 1847, white workers at Tredegar Iron Works went on strike. The owners fired them adn replaced them with black slave workers and a handful of white overseers, since slaves could not go on strike.
And that's why the South became just a source of resources for industrialisation like cotton but fell behind in industrialisation in comparison to the North and Britain. If the Confederacy won and didn't abolish or at least reform its slave economy, it would have broken up thanks to a failing economy.
 
They were. Owners rented them away.

Whereas spare slaves who could be rented away weren't a problem to get rid off, but another opportunity to profit.

Definitely a way to mitigate down time/lack of profitability, and one that has roots in historical practice. Still, I'd argue it's much easier/more efficient from a factory owner's perspective to not even have to worry about rental; this also has roots in historical practice.

Not only does a slave owner have to find someone who wants to rent their slave at a profitable price, the owner has to worry about the conditions their expensive, fragile capital is working in (and if the renter damages their rented slave, the owner has to take the renter to court or otherwise extract damages).

Wage labor that can be hired/fired on the spot does away with both concerns: owners don't even have to hire the old wage workers, who can die, be damaged, or otherwise move in the meantime. There is extra worth for the factory owner in that they are no longer responsible for the wage worker care or employment once fired.

Ultimately, I don't think slaves are prohibitively expensive, and should slavery have remained legal for longer, I'm a firm believer there would have been ever more extensive industrial usage of slaves. My post was simply expanding on and providing concrete, measurable advantages of wage workers vis a vis chattel slave workers, which is why the South historically used both in their factories rather than slaves exclusively.
 
In 1847, white workers at Tredegar Iron Works went on strike. The owners fired them adn replaced them with black slave workers and a handful of white overseers, since slaves could not go on strike.

It is interesting to consider the point of view that the factory owners originally used wage laborers-- once could conceive that the use of slaves was for the specific purpose of precluding unionization, at higher cost. I don't have the balance sheets in front of me, however, so I'll refrain from saying it's the only conclusion.

This does, I think, lead neatly to concept that the event can be considered from multiple angles in debate over whether it was more efficient (in terms of cost and necessary exertion of control long term) to use slaves or wage workers.
 
Slavery was unsustainable because slaves lacked freedom of movement, thus consuming a lot of time and limiting their productivity; it required individual slavers to take a lot of care for their slaves in order to make them optimal for work which made it expensive; there was a competition for who could buy and afford more slaves, and like their lack of freedom of movement, this slowed down their productivity.

In other words, slavery didn't make good workers and made industrialisation far more costly, which is why it was replaced with salaried labour.

Slaves lack of freedom of movement did not limit their productivity or consume a lot of time. There was a massive internal slave trade within the American South allowing areas with a shortage of labor to purchase slaves from areas with a surplus. Slavery did make for less efficient workers. Working harder would not lead to a better paying job. Slaves could not save for a better future for themselves or their children. And whose heart would really be in the work after a parent, sibling, spouse, or child had been sold away for the master's profit? Slavery also also made for lower labor costs. Individual slaveholders seldom took a lot of care of their slaves - the vast majority of tenement dwelling northern factory workers still had better housing, better clothing, better food, and better medical care than all but the best treated house slaves of the richest plantation owners. Slaveholders in the American south believed that those lower costs at least made up for the lower production. The Peculiar Institution by Kenneth Stampp shows the image of slaves only being used in agriculture is incorrect. Slaves were used in mining, in forestry, and in industry. In many cases slaves were favored because they could not go on strike.

Slavery was horrible, but it was not unsustainable. There was far more to it than economics - even the poorest white man had the status of not being a slave, even a semi-literate white man had a better education than the cleverest slave. And there was the fear that if the slaves did become free, they would seek retribution. Many, perhaps most white people in slaveholding states feared that if not held down, the slaves would massacre the white men and rape the white women. Slavery was never replaced because it was less efficient than free labor. In the US, Haiti, and most independence movements in Latin America, slavery was replaced by force. In Brazil and the British Caribbean, slavery was replaced because it was morally repugnant, not because it was economically inefficient.
 
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