WI CSA wins after having a more decisive victory at Bull Run and taking Washington in July 1861?Good point. You're right - the CSA probably doesn't win without a Democratic victory in 1864.
WI CSA wins after having a more decisive victory at Bull Run and taking Washington in July 1861?
One reason is that with the CSA around there's more of a reason for Scientific Racism to be rejected by the Britith body politic.Why moderate a system that will be seen as so thoroughly scientific?
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.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.
WI CSA wins after having a more decisive victory at Bull Run and taking Washington in July 1861?
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
in about 20 years, the sort of racial hierarchy that the South is so fond of will be considered the acme of scientific modernism.
Any advance on thirty?Point being, thirty years after the South lost, the world will paradoxically be much more comfortable with the justification of the peculiar institution.
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.Britain was still set on a global empire over nonwhite peoples,
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.scientific racism has a very strong raison d'etre among the British.