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
WI CSA wins after having a more decisive victory at Bull Run and taking Washington in July 1861?

There is no way that is happening. McDowell had reserves in between Bull Run and Washington just in case things went wrong. Even if there were a bigger victory Beauregard would be hitting fresh troops with tired ones.
 
I have my reservations there. Britain was still set on a global empire over nonwhite peoples, so even with a new birth of slavery, scientific racism has a very strong raison d'etre among the British. Aside from that, it's best not to underestimate peoples' capacity for self deception, or wildly different perspectives than we would imagine. After all, the continued vicious violence and pervasive social control over freed blacks in the Reconstruction south didn't prevent them from gobbling up scientific racism; if the South gave influential 'men of science' guided tours of their society, -one that wedded ancient slavery to modern technology, 'benevolent' Christianity to the scientific order,- I think you'd have fertile ground for scientific racism.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Britain was still set on a global empire over nonwhite peoples, so even with a new birth of slavery, scientific racism has a very strong raison d'etre among the British.
Britain in the 1850s and 1860s was aggressively racially equal (hence why Victoria had a black goddaughter, something widely praised). Their party line at the time was that people of all races are equal, it's just class that's different... well, that and culture.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Well, the Confederate Constitution made it almost impossible to abolish slavery, even if public opinion somehow shifted in favor of abolition. Congress was specifically prohibited from passing any legislation that would limit the right to own slaves. Theoretically, a state could abolish slavery within its own borders, but the Constitution also said that any man could travel to any part of the Confederacy and bring his slave property with him. So, in effect, slavery could continue to exist throughout the entire Confederacy until each and every state legislature choose to abolish it. So if every state except South Carolina (those perennial troublemakers) abolished slavery, it wouldn't matter. So long as it remained legal in South Carolina, it would be legal everywhere. So you either need a constitutional amendment or have every single state legislature pass measures abolishing slavery. To say that this wouldn't be easy is a massive understatement.

Moreover, there was effectively no anti-slavery sentiment anywhere in the South. The old Jeffersonian view that slavery was a necessary evil that eventually needed to disappear was dead, long since replaced by the vision of John Calhoun that slavery was a positive good. You can find some folks like Robert E. Lee who did not actively support slavery, but efforts to cast them as closet abolitionists are historical nonsense. Even Patrick Cleburne, whose proposal to emancipate slaves and enroll them in the army caused such trouble, was not motivated by any latent anti-slavery feelings. He simply didn't care about slavery one way or the other. The considerable majority of Confederates liked slavery, saw nothing wrong with it, responded defensively when confronted by foreign objections to it, and assumed that it would continue indefinitely. Needless to say, this is not fertile ground on which to build any kind of Confederate anti-slavery movement. Nor can we assume that economic changes would lead to the end of slavery, since many people in the South were making tons of money off slavery up until the moment Fort Sumter was fired upon.

The question is how much foreign pressure would have impacted the Confederacy. Would a victorious Confederacy have disillusioned the abolitionist movement in the North and Europe, causing them to move on to other causes like prison reform or expanding the franchise? Or would the fight against slavery have simply taken on a different form? Moreover, would there have ever been a major shift in Southern attitudes towards slavery? If so, what would cause it and how long would it take for it to happen? IOTL, there was a major shift during 1800-1830, when Southern society shifted from seeing slavery as a temporary necessary evil to being a perpetual positive good and it was caused mostly by the increase in the profitability of cotton. What could have caused a similarly seismic shift in the opposite direction?
 

jahenders

Banned
Two big ifs there. 1) CSA gains (and retains) its independence, and 2) It doesn't fall apart shortly thereafter.

Anyway, assuming it stays solid, it would definitely be abolished eventually in face of international pressure, changing economic incentives, etc. I suspect it would likely abolish it by 1890 or so, almost certainly by 1910.
 
WI CSA wins after having a more decisive victory at Bull Run and taking Washington in July 1861?

There are a lot of reasons that couldn't happen. The best chances the CSA has of military victory are as follows.

1) The US and the UK go to war over the Trent Affair.
2) Ulysses S. Grant gets killed in 1862.
3) Robert E. Lee's Maryland Campaign in 1862 is successful enough to prompt an international settlement.
4) The CSA has more competent commanders in the Western Theater, which would drain significant resources from the Eastern Theater.
5) Have someone other than Jefferson Davis be President of the Confederate States.
6) Abraham Lincoln dies in 1861, leaving less competent leadership in office.

And, for a long shot scenario, but one not outside the realm of possibility with the right POD.

7) Create a scenario where Missouri and Kentucky secede outright in 1861 rather than declare neutrality, thereby opening both states up to wider recruitment. It would have also given the Confederacy additional resources and made it much more difficult for the United States to seize control of the Mississippi River and Atlanta.
 

bguy

Donor
Well, the Confederate Constitution made it almost impossible to abolish slavery, even if public opinion somehow shifted in favor of abolition. Congress was specifically prohibited from passing any legislation that would limit the right to own slaves. Theoretically, a state could abolish slavery within its own borders, but the Constitution also said that any man could travel to any part of the Confederacy and bring his slave property with him. So, in effect, slavery could continue to exist throughout the entire Confederacy until each and every state legislature choose to abolish it. So if every state except South Carolina (those perennial troublemakers) abolished slavery, it wouldn't matter. So long as it remained legal in South Carolina, it would be legal everywhere. So you either need a constitutional amendment or have every single state legislature pass measures abolishing slavery. To say that this wouldn't be easy is a massive understatement.

Well at least in regards to overcoming the legal obstacles to abolition, I believe there were instances of the Confederate government seizing slaves from their owners during the Civil War (albeit to use the slaves to help the war effort rather than to set them free). That seems to establish the precedent that slaves were subject to the Confederate government's eminent domain power, so theoretically couldn't a Confederate government that wanted to end slavery simply seize all the slaves through its power of eminent domain without needing a constitutional amendment?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Well at least in regards to overcoming the legal obstacles to abolition, I believe there were instances of the Confederate government seizing slaves from their owners during the Civil War (albeit to use the slaves to help the war effort rather than to set them free). That seems to establish the precedent that slaves were subject to the Confederate government's eminent domain power, so theoretically couldn't a Confederate government that wanted to end slavery simply seize all the slaves through its power of eminent domain without needing a constitutional amendment?

Not if they wanted to avoid dying in the bloody uprising that would quickly break out in response.
 
That seems to establish the precedent that slaves were subject to the Confederate government's eminent domain power, so theoretically couldn't a Confederate government that wanted to end slavery simply seize all the slaves through its power of eminent domain without needing a constitutional amendment?

That was more of a war time measure, but was by no means a great war time measure once slaves started fleeing North. The Confederate government likely would have demanded reparations for seized property (including slaves) during the war, some of which would have been used to compensate slave owners for the loss of their slaves. The problem with seizing slaves to abolish slavery is it does not really account for the massive economic impact to the actual power base of the Confederacy, which was the slave owners. There has to be a major shift in attitudes towards slavery as a labor system to really make strides in getting rid of slavery. This is part of what I think Southern leaders realized when Cleburne petitioned arming slaves to solve the South's manpower problem. That sort of thing was done in the North during ARW namely because the North was hit hard by that war and the British were offering freedom to Northern slaves if they served the Crown.

I'm not completely sold that the Confederacy wouldn't receive immigrants post-war. Now they wouldn't receive as many as the Union, but I imagine the developing industrial sector would have attracted some people. Oil would have attracted more. New Jersey only managed to successfully pass graduated emancipation because white settlement in New Jersey grew massively despite the fact that New Jersey's slave population grew during the ARW. This is part of why I don't believe slavery would persist perpetually in the CSA, but it would hang on for a long time in the Deep South short of demographic shifts.
 
Two big ifs there. 1) CSA gains (and retains) its independence, and 2) It doesn't fall apart shortly thereafter.

Anyway, assuming it stays solid, it would definitely be abolished eventually in face of international pressure, changing economic incentives, etc. I suspect it would likely abolish it by 1890 or so, almost certainly by 1910.

1) Men fought and died to preserve slavery in the 1860's and in very large numbers. No way they are giving it up that quick. That would be saying that their friends fought and died to beat back the "Abolitionist Hordes" just to do the same thing themselves. It would be seen as utter madness. The next generation would seeing at spitting on the grave of their fathers who fought and sometimes died to prevent the abolition of slavery.
2) You would have to change the CSA constitution which would take agreement from planters who controlled the various state governments. Individual states couldn't do as "slave transit rights" in the CSA constitution made it so that if it was legal in even one state it was de-facto legal in all.
3) South Carolina and Texas, at the very least, would threaten to secede from the CSA if even a small step towards abolitionism was made.
 
Not if they wanted to avoid dying in the bloody uprising that would quickly break out in response.

Agreed, even the border states rejected "compensated emancipation" from the Lincoln Administration when you had to be willfully blind not to see the handwriting on the wall.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Agreed, even the border states rejected "compensated emancipation" from the Lincoln Administration when you had to be willfully blind not to see the handwriting on the wall.

And Delaware refused to ratify the 13th amendment in 1865. That tells you something.
 
I'm not completely sold that the Confederacy wouldn't receive immigrants post-war. Now they wouldn't receive as many as the Union, but I imagine the developing industrial sector would have attracted some people. Oil would have attracted more. New Jersey only managed to successfully pass graduated emancipation because white settlement in New Jersey grew massively despite the fact that New Jersey's slave population grew during the ARW. This is part of why I don't believe slavery would persist perpetually in the CSA, but it would hang on for a long time in the Deep South short of demographic shifts.

They would receive some, no doubt, but it would be insignificant. They would have even less immigration than the pathetic handful of OTL. Slavery would last as long as the Deep South held on. According to the CSA Constitution if it was legal in even one state it was de-facto legal in all of them.
 

bguy

Donor
Not if they wanted to avoid dying in the bloody uprising that would quickly break out in response.

Well obviously there would have to be substantial political support for abolition within the Confederacy before any plausible Confederate government would ever try such a thing. The point is though that there was a legal way for the Confederate government to carry out emancipation without needing a constitutional amendment if the Confederate government had the will to do so.
 
Well obviously there would have to be substantial political support for abolition within the Confederacy before any plausible Confederate government would ever try such a thing. The point is though that there was a legal way for the Confederate government to carry out emancipation without needing a constitutional amendment if the Confederate government had the will to do so.

Not if it wants to avoid bankruptcy. I don't think it could pull it off if it were debt free not talking about it being saddled with so much debt it owed everyone and his cousin in GB and France. The CSA government as is would be on a hamster wheel where virtually all its money is being used to pay off the debt and to keep the military happy.
 
Well obviously there would have to be substantial political support for abolition within the Confederacy before any plausible Confederate government would ever try such a thing. The point is though that there was a legal way for the Confederate government to carry out emancipation without needing a constitutional amendment if the Confederate government had the will to do so.

Majorities in the South supported some systems of tenant farming and share cropping not much shy of slavery, for hire chain gangs, and out right state terror against the black community right up until the Feds got sent in the 1960s. Passing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights act inspired such anger that it changed the face of American politics up to the present day.

There's no majority for changing the situation of black people in the South, and there isn't going to be until Northern in-migration to places like Virginia and North Carolina start changing the culture of the place in the 1990s.
 
in about 20 years, the sort of racial hierarchy that the South is so fond of will be considered the acme of scientific modernism.
Point being, thirty years after the South lost, the world will paradoxically be much more comfortable with the justification of the peculiar institution.
Any advance on thirty?

Britain was still set on a global empire over nonwhite peoples,
According to who? In the whole of the second half of the nineteenth century, there was only one decade (the 1880s) in which the increase in imperial population was greater by annexation than by natural increase. If they're set on a global empire, they're certainly not very active in going out and getting it.

scientific racism has a very strong raison d'etre among the British.
By the time that Darwin published The Origin of Species, the British had been ruling India for more than a century on the basis of cultural rather than racial superiority. This was founded on the belief that providentially, Britain had hit on the perfect combination - constitutional monarchy, Protestantism and free trade - in a way that Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Ashanti, Zulus, Chinese, Japanese, French, Russians, Austrians and Americans had all failed to do up to this point, but were still capable of achieving with a bit of work. The idea that scientific racism is necessary or inevitable for the British is nonsense: I'm not sure why, along with eugenics, it gets thrown into these discussions with depressing.
 
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