Would the Confederates ever abolish slavery if they had won?

Would the Confederates ever abolish slavery if they had won?

  • Yes

    Votes: 140 69.3%
  • No

    Votes: 62 30.7%

  • Total voters
    202

Saphroneth

Banned
They just never got around to establishing it cause they were fighting a massive war.
Well, that one strengthens my argument! Just goes to show you can't judge the functionality of a government by how it acts in the first year or four of its existence...
 
Seeing as many Confederates were also mainly fighting for states' rights, the Confederacy would probably abolish slavery eventually, but probably later than most other countries (mid 20th century?).

Which states would that be? How many Free States were in the CSA? Why did the Slaves states object to "personal liberty laws" if they were so big on "state's rights"? What about forcing Northern citizens to be deputized to catch escaped slaves up North? Wasn't that a violation of both "state's rights" and individual rights. The South didn't give a damn about state's rights!
 
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Their Constitution actually called for the creation of a Supreme Court.

ARTICLE III
Section I. (I) The judicial power of the Confederate States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may, from time to time, ordain and establish. The judges, both of the Supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services a compensation which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.

They just never got around to establishing it cause they were fighting a massive war.

It was called for by the Constitution, but they did a terrible job of actually enforcing the Constitution. One has to wonder if the Supreme Court would have been established in a post-war Confederacy. The fact that it wasn't present during war time was a terrible precedent.
 
And a Constitution is changeable. If not by the ballot then by the bullet. I have no doubt the Confederacy would be the last "western" nation to abolish slavery (even after Brazil), but no later than the early 20th century. By the disfunctional, Latin America-type system they had set up for themselves, the CSA military would do the job sooner or later to help modernise the place.

Why? The CSA was created of , for and by the planters. As long as the planters were in charge it wouldn't change. You would need a revolution. In which case the CSA probably stands for the "Communist States of America" if the US doesn't simply squash it sooner or later.
 
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It was called for by the Constitution, but they did a terrible job of actually enforcing the Constitution. One has to wonder if the Supreme Court would have been established in a post-war Confederacy. The fact that it wasn't present during war time was a terrible precedent.
Agreed, somehow they managed to establish the presidency and the legislature why didn't they get around to establishing a Supreme Court? They didn't WANT TO.
 
I would expect the abolition of slavery in the CSA would be on a state by state basis, given the design of states rights over central/federal authority. Even in agriculture as it progresses from labor intensive with relatively basic machinery to more mechanized with more complex machinery slavery becomes less useful. Slave labor is rarely efficient, and in general slaves are not highly motivated to take special care of of more "delicate" machinery - powered farm machinery needs more care than horse or human powered equipment, and costs more to fix. The experience OTL showed that slaves employed in industry who became skilled workers were given more slack than plantation hands, simply because without deliberate sabotage they could gum up the works quite easily and their expertise and skills had special value. As slavery becomes uneconomic state by state, those no longer in servitude will face highly restrictive black codes that make South African apartheid look like a children's party. The problem will become how does the CSA deal with the fact that as long as slavery exists and slaves have economic value, producing more slaves is a "good thing" which means the large black population becomes an even larger percentage of the population.

As far as international pressure goes, I very much doubt you'll see the sort of pressure through boycotts, economic isolation etc that was used against South Africa OTL (and a century after the ACW btw). The major international "pressure" will be the fact that the major southern export, cotton, will face increasing competition from other sources. Other than cotton, the south had very limited exports, and as an independent country will have more cash outflow for imports than when it was part of an internal market. As oil comes online later on that will help the CSA balance of payments, but the CSA will still be an economy based on extgraction of natural resources which is not a good thing.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
But when people write down their reasons for forming that government, we can be pretty sure that those are their reasons.
Of course we can. But the US of A wrote down their reasons for forming a government as including the British inciting domestic insurrections (i.e. slave revolts). They also included the declaration that taxation without representation is reprehensible... but I'm pretty sure that a woman still had to pay tax.

It was called for by the Constitution, but they did a terrible job of actually enforcing the Constitution. One has to wonder if the Supreme Court would have been established in a post-war Confederacy. The fact that it wasn't present during war time was a terrible precedent.
Again, Articles of Confederation. They didn't provide with any means for the Federal Government to levy funds from the states, for example - so the Continental Army was basically unpaid.
 
Again, Articles of Confederation. They didn't provide with any means for the Federal Government to levy funds from the states, for example - so the Continental Army was basically unpaid.

This is a false equivalence. The Confederate government was supposed to have a Supreme Court. They still managed to hold elections despite having an ongoing war. Plus they still managed to enforce conscription. Would it have really been that difficult to create a Supreme Court when the Confederate government could do everything else?
 
By 1860, slavery had been abolished in Britain, France, all of the new Latin American nations except Brazil, as well as in the Northern states. The global trend was definitely in the direction of abolitionism. Moral arguments aside, many people had come to the conclusion that paying workers a meager wage was preferable to housing, feeding and clothing them as slaves, while living in constant fear of uprisings.

Arguably the biggest thing that kept slavery going was the value of the slaves themselves. They represented a major investment on the part of their owners, who would demand compensation in the event of liberation.
The slaves were only so valuable because of the money you could make off their labor, which was considerably more efficient than free labor. Slavery had a very bright (dark) future in 1860; slaves more valuable than ever, and were being put to a wider variety of work than ever before. Southern property was generally more valuable than their northern equivalents. You cannot look at the profit margins the south was making off of cotton, tobacco, sugar, or their use of slaves building railroads, mining, working in distilleries and sawmills and iron foundries, and come away with the impression the institution is going anywhere.
 
I figure that the CSA would be pressured to abolish slavery by Foreign powers (which the CSA need to survive). Something along the lines of "If you don't give it up, we won't trade with you" and it's not like any foreign powers actually desperately needed anything from the CSA. Cotton from India and Egypt. Tobacco and sugar from Latin America or the Caribbean and food stuffs from the North. Did the CSA have anything else of value?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
This is a false equivalence. The Confederate government was supposed to have a Supreme Court. They still managed to hold elections despite having an ongoing war. Plus they still managed to enforce conscription. Would it have really been that difficult to create a Supreme Court when the Confederate government could do everything else?
I can see your argument, but I don't happen to agree with it - a supreme court is the kind of thing that could easily have been established in the peace but which takes effort away from the war. It seems more likely to me that they intended but did not have the effort to spare to implement a Supreme Court than that they did not intend a supreme court but wrote it into their constitution anyway. (They certainly weren't shy about making it their dream government in other ways.)
 

Saphroneth

Banned
I figure that the CSA would be pressured to abolish slavery by Foreign powers (which the CSA need to survive). Something along the lines of "If you don't give it up, we won't trade with you" and it's not like any foreign powers actually desperately needed anything from the CSA. Cotton from India and Egypt. Tobacco and sugar from Latin America or the Caribbean and food stuffs from the North. Did the CSA have anything else of value?
Cotton was important, actually. Indian cotton existed, as did Egyptian, but it was nowhere near the volumes needed to supply the hungry mills of the North (US) plus the British plus the French. Indeed, the cotton grown in Surat in India actually started a minor linguistic novelty - the term "surat" for second rate, as in "surat beer".

It's a heck of a lot of cotton - basically the sizable majority of the world supply AIUI - and that's a pretty valuable crop.

As for "we won't trade with you", that seems unlikely.
 
It was called for by the Constitution, but they did a terrible job of actually enforcing the Constitution. One has to wonder if the Supreme Court would have been established in a post-war Confederacy. The fact that it wasn't present during war time was a terrible precedent.

They did pass legislation towards creating the Supreme Court, with the Senate passing a bill regarding the establishment in March of 1863, but much of it was postponed and delayed due to more pressing war time concerns. The Judiciary isn't very vital to a war effort- even the already established US Supreme Court considered very few cases during the War. Was there a Confederate bias against Supreme Courts? I'll admit, yes, but they still put forth an effort to organize the Court, and I am guessing if the War was over, they would have taken more steps towards establishing the Court.
 
I figure that the CSA would be pressured to abolish slavery by Foreign powers (which the CSA need to survive). Something along the lines of "If you don't give it up, we won't trade with you" and it's not like any foreign powers actually desperately needed anything from the CSA. Cotton from India and Egypt. Tobacco and sugar from Latin America or the Caribbean and food stuffs from the North. Did the CSA have anything else of value?
Indian and Egyptian cotton can't hold a candle to what the South was making. Something like 80% of the cotton going into the textile mills in Britain came out of the U.S. South, who could make it better than anyone on earth thanks to slave labor. Not to mention, the South was a huge importer of green tea; that market had crashed after the blockade, to the ruin of many a trader. Plus, with New Orleans, the South can cork up the Mississippi River, which is where the European countries get so much of their cereals from. The CSA is small, population wise, but they're crucial to the global economy.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Something else it's worth remembering is that embargos are not a thing at this time. The CSA's trade will likely suffer from their peculiar institution, but it won't be anything like as serious as some make it out to be - it would be more along the lines of a partial boycott than anything, and there will be manifest advantages to traders who do choose to trade with the South (it's a decision made on an individual level).

In particular, the South was a major market for manufactures , and they bitterly resented the tarrif walls imposed to protect fledgeling Northern industries.
 
Resources...

As cotton starts to wind down, OIL will start to become valuable. I suspect that, if it doesn't happen earlier, Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma will find themselves receiving a permanent visit from the boys in Blue...

That either stays a North American problem, in which case the oil gets reclaimed by the north, or it triggers a world war...in which case, all bets are off...
 
Resources...

As cotton starts to wind down, OIL will start to become valuable. I suspect that, if it doesn't happen earlier, Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma will find themselves receiving a permanent visit from the boys in Blue...

That either stays a North American problem, in which case the oil gets reclaimed by the north, or it triggers a world war...in which case, all bets are off...

Not by this point, it was too late for that. North America would be a death trap for any European army.
 
Not by this point, it was too late for that. North America would be a death trap for any European army.

Even if it's a death trap for a European army, that wouldn't stop the Royal Navy from getting involved, or alliances sending troops to support one side or the other.
 
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