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
My point is that you're wrong. It didn't.
But it did... When throughout the whole of history did slaves have full freedoms that were enshrined in law? Never.

Define draconian.
The clear violations of the constitutional rights of human beings. Restricting the travel of slaves, their ability to marry, to have control of their own children. The institution of slavery was draconian, and the absence of constitutional rights for slavery was solely justified in the non-citizenship of slaves. I mean you could call it abhorrent, you could call it draconian, but equating human beings to chattel was and is a disgusting piece of thought.
 
But it did... When throughout the whole of history did slaves have full freedoms that were enshrined in law? Never.
The clear violations of the constitutional rights of human beings.
That is total nonsense. And here's why:
Slavery was constitutional, and Constitution explicitly made provisions for maintaining of slavery:
Section 9 of Article I forbade the Federal government from banning the importation of slaves before 1808. Section 2 of Article IV prohibited states from freeing slaves who fled to them from another state, and required their return to their owners.
Constitutional rights of human being weren't being violated, because those particular group of people weren't granted those rights in the first place.
 
Slavery was constitutional, and Constitution explicitly made provisions for maintaining of slavery:
Section 9 of Article I forbade the Federal government from banning the importation of slaves before 1808. Section 2 of Article IV prohibited states from freeing slaves who fled to them from another state, and required their return to their owners.
Constitutional rights of human being weren't being violated, because those particular group of people weren't granted those rights in the first place.
I won't say this again – the Constitution, the slave states all worked to subvert the humanhood of African Americans. It wasn't until Dred Scott that it was determined that slaves didn't have the rights of citizenship, so I stand by what I said. I will not continue to argue back and forth about the unsustainable practice of slavery. It was bad for the land, it was bad for the economic equality of poor whites, and just an abhorrent practice. This fantasy of a long and successful Confederacy is disgusting in and of itself.
 
I won't say this again – the Constitution, the slave states all worked to subvert the humanhood of African Americans. It wasn't until Dred Scott that it was determined that slaves didn't have the rights of citizenship, so I stand by what I said. I will not continue to argue back and forth about the unsustainable practice of slavery. It was bad for the land, it was bad for the economic equality of poor whites, and just an abhorrent practice. This fantasy of a long and successful Confederacy is disgusting in and of itself.
No, Dred Scott said that those of African descent did not have any rights that whites need respect. It went further than just slaves.
Addition:
We also should not pretend that their status and ability to sue did not vary depending on their state. In Massachusetts, slavery was effectively abolished when a court ruled that slavery violated its constitution when a slave sued for her freedom.
 
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Dred Scott didn’t reverse the rights of those of African descent in free states, but it did enshrine the awful laws of the slave states.

It didn’t make them slaves again, but it did say that blacks could never be US citizens, and therefore couldn’t sue in federal courts.
 
An independent Confederacy would toss away every last vestige of constitutional rights for its citizenry along with republican government in general (much less the constitution they started with) before they did away with or compromised on slavery. Hence my question -- would collapsing or devolving into a tinpot dictatorship (overseeing an expansive set of central powers, including economic intervention) constitute "reform" under the OP?

In the immediate aftermath of Confederate independence, I agree that most Confederates would find almost anything more acceptable than ending slavery. Given time, that could change in parts of the Confederacy. Before the ACW, some Border Sates slaveholders offered their slaves deal where they would be freed after several years in return for working hard and not trying to escape. In an independent Confederacy runaway slaves only have to make it to Union territory instead of Canada. This should increase the number of runaway slaves, the number of slaves offered this deal, and the number of slaveholders who sell their slaves to the Deep South to about losing the investment. Also, the Border States of the Confederacy tended to be the most industrialized, and a lot of southern manufacturers favored slave workers since they could not go on strike. OTOH, many of these manufacturers found that paying a small amount to the slave workers sharply increased the amount of machinery, tools, and product "accidentally" broken by the slave workers. Some of these slaves were even able to save enough to buy their freedom. With clear white majorities and an increasing percent of blacks being free, I'd expect the Border Confederacy would be a lot less willing to part with civil liberties in order to maintain slavery. Faced with an over centralized they might seeking independence and could even decide to rejoin the Union if offered compensated emancipation. The TransMississippi already had a low percentage of both slaves and slaveholders for Confederate states. They also had the largest number of European immigrants, who tended to oppose slavery. Like the Border Confederacy, I'd expect the Border Confederacy would be a lot less willing then the Deep South to part with civil liberties in order to maintain slavery.

I'd guess a potential break point would happen sometime between 1900 to 1930 - most of the original Confederate civilian and military leaders, as well as many of the veterans, are dead, plus the oil boom and the boll weevil are causing economic upheaval.
 
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The Confederacy's Golden Circle ambitions also would not fit with an Union government that would likely develop expansionist desires itself. The CSA would not only have to deal with abolitionist raids, but it would be inviting itself into a second war with the United States over Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republican, Mexico and parts of northern South America. There would also be the Spanish to deal with. The entire theory of expanding southward was premised on expanding the slave power.

Britain probably wouldn't be too keen on Confederate expansionism, either, but unless Confederate attempts at expansion raise so much opposition that the Confederacy is conquered, this will not make slavery unsustainable.

What I do know is that restricting an entire group of people from being able to read (in violation of the First Amendment), restricting the right of an entire group of otherwise law-abiding persons to own firearms (in violation of the Second Amendment), forcing an entire group of people to accept Christ and reject their other God(s) (a violation of the First Amendment) are just a few extraordinary measures that slave states enacted to restrict the freedoms of blacks. The whole of African American society in the Southern United States just about lived under martial law, specially crafted just for them.

Before, during, and after the Civil War the majority of southern whites supported doing whatever it took to keep black people down and the majority of northern whites didn't care enough to try to stop them. This only started changing in the mid-20th century in OTL.

And a fraction of the population? 3.9 million slaves living in the United States in 1860, 4.4 million blacks total in the whole of the country. Mississippi's African American population today is 38%. Alabama's 31%. Louisiana nearly 39%. That ain't a small fraction of the states where slavery was most lucrative. The easy flow of information would not just allow for 50% of the 14% of African Americans to forever live in servitude.

What easy flow of information? Political and religious leaders in slaveholding states did their best to ensure that white southerners weren't exposed to abolitionist ideas. The mail was censored, presses were smashed, and men were lynched to keep southern white men from learning abolitionist ideas. Black people had the further handicap of it being illegal for them to learn to read.

This also does not take into consideration that a just few white planters owned most of the slaves. Income inequality and economic stratification on steroids, that's how one should describe slavery. The CSA would likely see an exodus of non-slaving owning and poor whites just because the economic system didn't include them.

To some extent that was already happening. In 1850 New York had more immigrants than the entire Confederacy would a decade later. For internal migration, roughly twice as many people moved to free states from slave states than moved to slave states from free states. OTOH, about 1/3rd of all families in Confederate states owned slaves, with many others profiting from slavery. Plus most southern whites feared that freeing the slaves would lead to white slaughter like had happened in Haiti.[/QUOTE]
 
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