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
Yeah, I just thought I'd make clear that there's an additional and non-trivial (though minor) way for the free labour pool to grow, since your question above seemed to equate "white" and "free".
We do a disservice to forget that the CSA had free and even patriotic Black citizens - the very fact the 1st Louisiana Native Guard existed to be banned by the Confederate government shows that. (15% of the free black residents of Louisiana signed up.)

In other words as small percentage of a small percentage.
 
Quite simply, actually - it's a lot like the Roman Empire. (Romans, ie whites, are not to be slaves, but ex-slaves can become good enough to own slaves of their own.)

The idea is that the free blacks are the best of the race, and that blacks who work hard and prove themselves can aspire to be as good as the average white.

No, the idea is if they worked hard and proved themselves they could aspire to being one step below a Poor White.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Hypothetically, that's how it would work. In practice, I think that America as a whole over the course of the 1850s and 1860s saw a tendency to view even free blacks as inferior to whites (e.g. the restrictions on immigration to Northern states). As such, it would seem more likely that in an independent Confederacy even the most patriotic black slave-owner would be seen as a tier below not just the average white, but the poorest.
Fair enough, thanks for the clarification.

In other words as small percentage of a small percentage.
A large percentage of a small percentage, actually. 15% enlistment as a fraction of population is pretty high - were it followed through across the whole of the Union, for example, the enlistment right at the start of the war would have been 3.3 million; as such more free black Louisianans volunteered for service in the Confederate army as a percentage than Union citizens volunteered and were drafted combined, even counting multiple enlistments as separate people.
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
Gulag labour tended to work fairly well.

But that is something different.
I know more about the way KZ worked, but I guess it wasn't that much different.
The value of a slave in the CSA was higher than that of a KZ worker, because they could not be replaced for free.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
But that is something different.
I know more about the way KZ worked, but I guess it wasn't that much different.
The value of a slave in the CSA was higher than that of a KZ worker, because they could not be replaced for free.
The reason I mentioned gulag labour is because it was coerced. Of course the CSA won't manage "epitome of productivity" but it'll probably manage something more or less in line with the overworked, underpaid wage workers in the Gilded Age.
 
The reason I mentioned gulag labour is because it was coerced. Of course the CSA won't manage "epitome of productivity" but it'll probably manage something more or less in line with the overworked, underpaid wage workers in the Gilded Age.

Probably not, wage workers could be both fired and work their way up. A slave could do neither and had no incentive to work hard and well.
 
The calibrated application of pain was a tool slaveholders applied very well, and the Germans were able to use bonuses in food or cigarettes to wring more productivity out of their coerced industrial laborers. The rental fee paid to the SS was usually around half the comparable pay to a German worker, so even if slave labor was only around half as productive, it could still be a net gain, as indeed it usually was in the antebellum south's industries. The question would then be if the profit on rental fees and harvest labor for a large scale wheat farmer, who has no use for slaves throughout much of the year, but needs every hand he can get in the fall, would be enough to sustain the institution.
 
With the bolded part, I was actually thinking less of slavery and more of coerced labor in general. You are absolutely right that slavery was ended before we saw a modern industrialised economy, but things like sweatshops and some of the things done to migrant farm workers exist and are profitable. While they certainly aren't slavery, they are forms of coerced labor, at least to some degree and they work, as do indentured labor, peonage, debt slavery, wage slavery, corvee labor, and straight up impressment - so I don't see why slavery couldn't work in the same roles in TTL. This is in addition to the sad truth that slavery is far from gone in the present day. It is alive and well in many parts of the world, just less well known and thankfully less widespread than it used to be.


That's interesting, but does make a certain amount of sense. Do you happen to know why slavery was less efficient per capita?



I guess, I'd disagree because I see the CSA as far more likely to manumit and maintain their system largely intact with some other name serving as a fig leaf for slavery than refuse and see the whole system jeopardized

I remember reading about during the days of slavery slaves would deliberately work slower and even engage in small acts of sabotage via destruction of equipment as a sort of quiet rebellion if you will. Similar things were seen during the holocaust from Nazi slave labor.

That and another factor to keep in mind was the lack of education among slaves which is essential for an advanced manufacturing base. In many states it was literally against the law for slaves to even be taught to read let alone go to any sort of school as such that is a pretty significant impediment to increased productivity.
 
Probably not, wage workers could be both fired and work their way up. A slave could do neither and had no incentive to work hard and well.
Slaves did not have as many incentives as free workers, naturally, but it's an overstatement to say that they had none. Slaveowners used a variety of positive (short of freedom) and negative incentives to motivate slaves to work. Some even paid cash bonuses to slaves. This is not to detract from the viciousness of slavery, of course. Quite to the contrary; it's that slaveowners had (mostly) worked out that a combination of carrot and stick worked better than stick alone.
 

Spengler

Banned
I think it's likely that they would - after much internal debate - start doing things that are "totally not" slavery, and keep doing those little changes ("intentured servitude", "apprenticeship") until they got to something which British public opinion would reluctantly accept. Definitely well behind the Western Civilization curve on the matter, but not quite wilfully ignoring it.

(I'm sort of interested in where slavery goes in the union in a CSA independence...)
It goes as abolitionism doesn't die with the civil war as much as Harry Turtledove would like people to think.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
It goes as abolitionism doesn't die with the civil war as much as Harry Turtledove would like people to think.
Well, it wasn't until 1863 that the Union adopted the Emancipation Proclamation. Would they have abolished slavery even if it meant basically having to deal with attempts by Kentucky/Maryland/Delaware to join the Confederacy?
(Of course this is moot and abolition is likely if the CSA gets all the slave states.)
 
I remember reading about during the days of slavery slaves would deliberately work slower and even engage in small acts of sabotage via destruction of equipment as a sort of quiet rebellion if you will. Similar things were seen during the holocaust from Nazi slave labor.

Not nearly enough to make the system uneconomical.

That and another factor to keep in mind was the lack of education among slaves which is essential for an advanced manufacturing base. In many states it was literally against the law for slaves to even be taught to read let alone go to any sort of school as such that is a pretty significant impediment to increased productivity.

What's the data on that? Where's the point of diminishing returns on education and unskilled labor? Being able to tell time and count to a hundred is one thing, but obviously having a degree in literature doesn't make you a jot better as a steelworker. Would having slaves as the factory muscle and whites as foremen and technicians be an inviable model?
 
By the time of the Civil War many of the southern states had laws that required manumitted slaves to leave the state within a short period of time. Throughout MOST of the "CSA" the number of free blacks was small. Louisiana was a significant exception and even at the very end of the war when the CSA allowed the existence of black troops, full manumission for those blacks was not a guarantee.
 
Well, it wasn't until 1863 that the Union adopted the Emancipation Proclamation. Would they have abolished slavery even if it meant basically having to deal with attempts by Kentucky/Maryland/Delaware to join the Confederacy?
(Of course this is moot and abolition is likely if the CSA gets all the slave states.)

Even Jeff Davis knew the CSA would never get Delaware as that was all but a nominal slave state and Maryland damn near impossible with the B&O being controlled by hard core Unionists and the state largely indefensible.
 
Slavery could possibly end in the CSA for reasons other the it being officially abolished, a slave revolt, or simply the slaves bleeding away, escaping/being killed revolting quicker than they are 'replaced' seeing as the slave trade has been ended at the point of a cannon (unless the CSA can get their own colonies). Although I believe that eventually slavery would have to be ended due to economic disparity that would eventually exist between the CSA and the USA making the citizens of the CSA rather angry.

Of course for me this brings up another question, would a CSA that won the war, and then later abolished slavery, petition to rejoin the USA?
 

Spengler

Banned
Well, it wasn't until 1863 that the Union adopted the Emancipation Proclamation. Would they have abolished slavery even if it meant basically having to deal with attempts by Kentucky/Maryland/Delaware to join the Confederacy?
(Of course this is moot and abolition is likely if the CSA gets all the slave states.)
After the war it will probably be done as a way to differentiate the country from the oor blighted CSA, it certainly will probably take at least a decade but it will happen. Also now there is only 4 states with slaves out of by 1872 like 20 Free states only takes 16 free states electing Abolitionists to end slavery permanently.
 
Free states don't necessarily elect abolitionists. If Lincoln's party goes down in flames with the failure of the war, the Democrats who take over aren't going to indulge in all this 'abolitionist extremism'; they would have a solid hold on the border states and on the votes of immigrants who don't care about slavery. You also might see large scale defection of free soil Whigs from the Republicans to the Democrats, depending on how the issue of the territories is handled. Would have to look up the relevant democrat views on the issue.
 

Spengler

Banned
The idea that the civil war would end Abolition is quite hilarious. I mean what would people just suddenly become robots with no ability to want to improve the lives of their fellow men and remove what was gnerally seen as an evil if the Noth loses the civil war? It might not be in 1866, but 1876? 1882? 1888? Yeah by 1890 the North would not have slavery.
 
The idea that the civil war would end Abolition is quite hilarious. I mean what would people just suddenly become robots with no ability to want to improve the lives of their fellow men and remove what was gnerally seen as an evil if the Noth loses the civil war? It might not be in 1866, but 1876? 1882? 1888? Yeah by 1890 the North would not have slavery.

Agreed, slavery would end sooner up North. It is gone by 1890 at the very latest.
 
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